Juan Cole offers today his expert comments on and links to recent events and trends in Afghanistan. You can find this information, as well as other recent and past posts, at his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. One implication of today's post by Cole is that the US-led war in Afghanistan is on a downward spiral with respect to winning the hearts and minds of Afghan citizens or with respect to the creation of a legitimate and un-corrupted Afghan government.
Afghan Villagers Protest US Air Strike, as Ballot Fraud Evidence Surfaces
Posted on September 27, 2010 by Juan Cole
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According to the Afghanistan government, about 186 civilians have died in each of the last 6 months in the war. (Other studies suggest the bulk of them are killed in Taliban attacks).
While it is true that some 300 civilians were killed in Iraq in August, or nearly twice the Afghan toll, earlier in 2010 the toll there was on the order of 200 a month. That is, Afghanistan violence is creeping up toward Iraq levels.
Past 6 months in Afghanistan according to Ministry of Interior spokesman, Zemarai Bahsari (Tolo News):
Insurgent attacks:
4012 Civilians killed:
1119 Civilians wounded:
2473 Police killed:
959 Police wounded:
1345 Insurgents killed:
3098 Insurgents arrested:
2800 Insurgents wounded:
632....
Lara Logan’s report on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday struck me as highly pessimistic and as supporting with its footage the reality of these grim statistics.
One of her stories was about going out to a village with an American officer and his men. They found that the village had turned against them and would not talk to them. Then on the way back they were attacked and seemed barely to get out of it alive. It sounded to me like the surrounding countryside was full of such dangerous villages, and that the previously safe village had turned deadly strikes me as a bad sign. The officeer admits that he controls perhaps 18 sq. kilometers of the 300 sq. km. for which he is responsible; the rest is in Taliban hands and there are many villages to which he cannot go. Logan points out that the datum is astonishing. I would have said depressing.
Andrew Bacevich slams Bob Woodward for indulging in Washington salon gossip in his new book on the Afghanistan war, instead of asking the hard questions of an investigative reporter about what in the world we are doing there.
Der Spiegel is reporting that recently Afghan army and police have been boycotting joint patrols with American and German troops in Qunduz Province. The German article is here.
Meanwhile, Aljazeera English is reporting that video evidence is now emerging of ballot fraud in the recent parliamentary elections. This issue has the potential to render the Afghanistan government invalid altogether, which would be a real blow to it in the midst of a hard fought battle against the Taliban.
A recount has been ordered of ballots at voting stations across 7 provinces.
Afghans were not surprised. Before the election, only 36% though that the election would be free, fair and transparent. Some 65 percent of Afghans think Karzai is doing a bad job, and 95 percent of people in Kabul (where he actually rules) think that. Only half say that NATO & US troops make them safer.
According to this Dari Persian newspaper, hundreds of people demonstrated on Saturday in Mehtarlam, Laghman province, over a US-led raid on Masmood village in Alishang district, Laghman Province, that allegedly killed innocent, civilian villagers. The demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans.
NATO initially announced that it had killed 30 insurgents and that no civilians had been in the area.
The governor of Laghman Province, Muhammad Iqbal Azizi, initially denied the villagers’ claims. But on Sunday he met with the villagers and became convinced that 13-14 civilians had in fact been killed in the operation, which had involved 250 NATO, US and Afghanistan army and police personnel.
A provincial council member blamed an overzealous American pilot for the error.
Afghans all across the country are suspicious of the US military presence and have been demonstrating against it in recent weeks. The threat of some Christian crazies in the US to burn the Quran explains some of the failure to win hearts and minds.
Showing posts with label Juan Cole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Juan Cole. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Drone attacks kill civilians in Waziristan
Juan Cole makes it clear today in the following report from his blog, Informed Comment, that there is not just one monolithic insurgent group of Taliban. Rather, there are five or so such groups. He refers to "fighters of the Haqqani network" as one non-Taliban group. Ironically, Cole writes, the Haqqani network was one of the group's identified by Ronald Reagan as "Freedom Fighters" during the 1980s. Now they are the target of US drone attacks, and in the process unmanned drone weapons are killing more civilians than insurgents. Drone warfare and counterinsurgency, Gen. Patraeus' strategy in Afghanistan, appear in essential ways to be contradictory and hardly to advance the goal of "winning hearts and minds."
Juan Cole, "US Drone Strikes kill 15 [60] in N. Waziristan"
http://www.juancole.com/, Sept. 15, 2010
The Associated Press does an important story about an intensive drone strike campaign by the US military since September 2 in southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s North Waziristan that has left 60 persons dead, among them innocent civilians.
On Tuesday alone, US drone attacks targeted suspected militants killed some 15 persons in the village of Dargah Mandi village on the outskirts of Miranshah, N. Waziristan’s main city.
The drone strikes have targeted fighters of the Haqqani network, one of five or so major insurgent groups fighting against the US & NATO presence in Afghanistan and against the Karzai government. Jalaluddin Haqqani is one of Ronald Reagan’s “Freedom Fighters,” who battled the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s with American aid. He could not accept the US invasion and occupation of his country, either, and organized an insurgency now mainly led by his son Siraj. The Haqqani group is not Taliban but rather Mujahidin and has only a vague tactical alliance with Mulla Omar’s Taliban and similar groups.
Pakistani opposition to the US incursions against Pakistani sovereignty has been muted because of the vast flooding that has affected much of the country, and dealing with which has pinned down the Pakistani military. Another 25 villages in the Sindh province were submerged by flood waters on Tuesday. Hundreds of more villages are menaced by the waters of Manchhal Lake, which is now full to capacity and could overflow. Incredibly, the flooding continues to displace Sindhi villagers on a massive scale without generating much in the way of news in the US. The displaced are facing lack of potable water and food shortages.
Juan Cole, "US Drone Strikes kill 15 [60] in N. Waziristan"
http://www.juancole.com/, Sept. 15, 2010
The Associated Press does an important story about an intensive drone strike campaign by the US military since September 2 in southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s North Waziristan that has left 60 persons dead, among them innocent civilians.
On Tuesday alone, US drone attacks targeted suspected militants killed some 15 persons in the village of Dargah Mandi village on the outskirts of Miranshah, N. Waziristan’s main city.
The drone strikes have targeted fighters of the Haqqani network, one of five or so major insurgent groups fighting against the US & NATO presence in Afghanistan and against the Karzai government. Jalaluddin Haqqani is one of Ronald Reagan’s “Freedom Fighters,” who battled the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s with American aid. He could not accept the US invasion and occupation of his country, either, and organized an insurgency now mainly led by his son Siraj. The Haqqani group is not Taliban but rather Mujahidin and has only a vague tactical alliance with Mulla Omar’s Taliban and similar groups.
Pakistani opposition to the US incursions against Pakistani sovereignty has been muted because of the vast flooding that has affected much of the country, and dealing with which has pinned down the Pakistani military. Another 25 villages in the Sindh province were submerged by flood waters on Tuesday. Hundreds of more villages are menaced by the waters of Manchhal Lake, which is now full to capacity and could overflow. Incredibly, the flooding continues to displace Sindhi villagers on a massive scale without generating much in the way of news in the US. The displaced are facing lack of potable water and food shortages.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Afghan bank caught in huge ponzi scheme
Historian Juan Cole writes informed and insightful commentary on events in the Middle East, important political developments in the US, and much more, on his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. On today's blog, his first post deals with another case of corruption among friends of President Karzai. (See below.) The focus of the article is on the present crisis of Da Kabul Bank, which is embroiled in financial irregularities, suggesting a ponzi scheme, having a debt of $300 million, and facing a run on the bank by depositors. Cole writes that this corruption "could be catastrophic for the country." He is angered by the thought that so many troops from the US, NATO, and Afghanistan have given their lives for what is a corrupt and illegitimate government and for the rich thieves associated with it.
From our perspective, this is yet more evidence that we are on a fool's errand in Afghanistan, compounded immensely by a US military policy that lurches from one strategy to another and calls for extending the US-led occupation of Afghanistan for years into the future. In the meantime, there are profound costs to US taxpayers, in Afghan and US lives, and to the waning credibility of the US in Central Asia, the Middle East and around the world.
Collapse of Kabul Bank Points to Fatal Corruption of Karzai Government
Posted on September 3, 2010 by Juan Cole at http://juancole.com
I write in anger. Not blind rage, mind you. A cool, searing, steady anger. I think it is a righteous anger. It is not consequential, but it is my reality. I am angry about the 1,172 US troops dead in the Afghanistan War, and all the other brave NATO and Afghan soldiers who gave their lives for a new Afghanistan. Because they haven’t gotten a new Afghanistan. They have paid the ultimate sacrifice for a ponzi scheme masquerading as a reformist government. And, as usual, you and I may well get stuck with the bill for the economic damage done by the fraud.
The house of cards that is the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul may be falling before our eyes, as vast, globe-spanning webs of corruption, formerly hidden in shadows, have suddenly had a spotlight thrown on them. The crisis raises the severest questions about whether the Obama administration can plausibly hope to stand up a stable government in Afghanistan before US troops depart.
As with the second phase of the Great Depression in the United States, the crisis begins with a run on Da Kabul Bank. Depositors took out $85 million on Wednesday, after a damning story appeared in the Washington Post. They took out another $70 million on Thursday. The bank, which owes $300 million, may now have as little as $120 million left in the kitty, though it had once been worth over a billion. But the problem is not just a run on one bank. Can Afghanistan’s whole financial system and economy emerge unscathed?
Pajhwok News Service reports,
‘The immediate concern was that news of the bank’s financial irregularities, already spreading through the capital, would prompt a run on the bank itself and that the panic would spread to other financial institutions. Bank deposits in Afghanistan are not guaranteed by the central government, officials here said. “This could be catastrophic for the country,” a senior Afghan banking official said. “The next few days are critical. I am worried.” ‘
The same world-wide real estate crisis that abruptly revealed the ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff has undone Da Bank Kabul. But imagine if Madoff had not merely been a criminal who preyed on the wealthy, but had bankrolled a president’s political campaign with his ill-gotten gains and had brought the president’s brother and the brother of the vice-president into his inner circle. And imagine if he had been only one of a handful of financiers in New York with substantial capital.
The story begins with Sherkhan Farnood, a financier who founded Da Kabul Bank after the fall of the Taliban. Over the years he appears to have used the institution for patronage for politicians and their families. Farnood gave millions to the presidential campaign of Hamid Karzai last summer, a campaign that Karzai was accused of only winning through substantial ballot fraud. (Hint: a vote wouldn’t cost much to buy in Afghanistan, and ‘millions’ would buy a lot). The other top executive at the bank, Khalilu’llah Frozi, was a campaign adviser to Karzai. Hamid Karzai’s brother Mahmoud has a 9% share in the bank.
Instead of wiring money overseas, as banks typically do, Farnood used a traditional money-transfer or hawala service, the New Ansari, which is also alleged to have been resorted to by drug smugglers, some of whose proceeds go to the Taliban and other insurgents that kill US troops. Money transferred by hawala cannot be traced electronically. The New Ansari itself is under investigation by US authorities. Persistent news reports suggest that billions of dollars in cash are being flown out of Afghanistan to Dubai, and that, let us say, irregularities are involved.
Farnood often gave out loans without proper collateral or other formalities. He loaned $100 million to Haseen Fahim, the brother of Marshal Mohammad Fahim (an old-time Northern Alliance warlord whom Karzai brought back into government as his vice-presidential running mate in summer of 2009). Haseen Fahim has substantial investments in Afghanistan’s small natural gas sector.
Farnood also apparently loaned himself $140 million to invest in real estate in Dubai, including in villas on the world islands off Jumeirah. These artificial islands made of landfill were to resemble the map of the globe once constructed, and were intended to give the wealthy the opportunity to own an entire faux country. Farnood has been flying out connected people like Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Fahim and putting them up in the fancy chalets. Afghanistan is the fifth-poorest country in the world, with 36% of the population under the poverty line.
With the world economic downturn and real estate crash of 2008-2009, the Dubai world project largely fell apart, with investors going bankrupt in droves. Indeed, Dubai itself had to be bailed out by its rich sibling Abu Dhabi (which has petroleum; Dubai just has a financial sector). The artificial islands appear from NASA photos to have been abandoned since late 2009 when the own, Nakheel Properties, asked for a delay in repaying $29 billion in debt. Some seem to be sinking back into the lagoon or their boundaries are blurring. Close-up pictures of some of them show an eyesore.
So Farnood’s $140 million investment was suddenly not worth anything at all, and his bank began spiraling down. The details of his other bad investments have not yet emerged. The bank went from having over $1 billion in capital to now having only $120 million and owing $300 million.
President Hamid Karzai is notorious for running interference for his corrupt cronies, and that Farnood and Frozi were out of control appears to have been known for some time but nothing was allowed to be done about it. The two have now been forced out, but the question is whether it is in time to save not only the bank (doubtful) but also the entire Afghan financial system, rebuilt after the fall of the Taliban.
The Karzai government is corrupt and rotten to the core. Not a single US soldier should die to prop it up. The lie that we are fighting “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan needs to be exposed. The US and NATO are fighting four or five groups of Pashtun insurgents, some of them until fairly recently US allies. The goal of the fighting is to keep the Karzai government from falling to the guerrillas and to train up an army and police force that could go on defending Kabul. The Afghanistan National Army from all accounts has poor morale. No wonder. What Afghan soldier or policeman would die for a ponzi scheme?
NATO should not have allowed Karzai to steal the presidential election. (At least now we have more of an idea how the theft was accomplished). It should not have allowed him to block corruption investigations.
You have to wonder if the Afghanistan parliament is up to impeaching Karzai. One thing is certain. He is part of the problem, not the solution, and as long as he is at the helm, the situation is highly unlikely to get better.
And our troops will go on dying for a vague and probably unattainable goal that the politicians dress up in idealistic flourishes, and worse, dying for a lie.
From our perspective, this is yet more evidence that we are on a fool's errand in Afghanistan, compounded immensely by a US military policy that lurches from one strategy to another and calls for extending the US-led occupation of Afghanistan for years into the future. In the meantime, there are profound costs to US taxpayers, in Afghan and US lives, and to the waning credibility of the US in Central Asia, the Middle East and around the world.
Collapse of Kabul Bank Points to Fatal Corruption of Karzai Government
Posted on September 3, 2010 by Juan Cole at http://juancole.com
I write in anger. Not blind rage, mind you. A cool, searing, steady anger. I think it is a righteous anger. It is not consequential, but it is my reality. I am angry about the 1,172 US troops dead in the Afghanistan War, and all the other brave NATO and Afghan soldiers who gave their lives for a new Afghanistan. Because they haven’t gotten a new Afghanistan. They have paid the ultimate sacrifice for a ponzi scheme masquerading as a reformist government. And, as usual, you and I may well get stuck with the bill for the economic damage done by the fraud.
The house of cards that is the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul may be falling before our eyes, as vast, globe-spanning webs of corruption, formerly hidden in shadows, have suddenly had a spotlight thrown on them. The crisis raises the severest questions about whether the Obama administration can plausibly hope to stand up a stable government in Afghanistan before US troops depart.
As with the second phase of the Great Depression in the United States, the crisis begins with a run on Da Kabul Bank. Depositors took out $85 million on Wednesday, after a damning story appeared in the Washington Post. They took out another $70 million on Thursday. The bank, which owes $300 million, may now have as little as $120 million left in the kitty, though it had once been worth over a billion. But the problem is not just a run on one bank. Can Afghanistan’s whole financial system and economy emerge unscathed?
Pajhwok News Service reports,
‘The immediate concern was that news of the bank’s financial irregularities, already spreading through the capital, would prompt a run on the bank itself and that the panic would spread to other financial institutions. Bank deposits in Afghanistan are not guaranteed by the central government, officials here said. “This could be catastrophic for the country,” a senior Afghan banking official said. “The next few days are critical. I am worried.” ‘
The same world-wide real estate crisis that abruptly revealed the ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff has undone Da Bank Kabul. But imagine if Madoff had not merely been a criminal who preyed on the wealthy, but had bankrolled a president’s political campaign with his ill-gotten gains and had brought the president’s brother and the brother of the vice-president into his inner circle. And imagine if he had been only one of a handful of financiers in New York with substantial capital.
The story begins with Sherkhan Farnood, a financier who founded Da Kabul Bank after the fall of the Taliban. Over the years he appears to have used the institution for patronage for politicians and their families. Farnood gave millions to the presidential campaign of Hamid Karzai last summer, a campaign that Karzai was accused of only winning through substantial ballot fraud. (Hint: a vote wouldn’t cost much to buy in Afghanistan, and ‘millions’ would buy a lot). The other top executive at the bank, Khalilu’llah Frozi, was a campaign adviser to Karzai. Hamid Karzai’s brother Mahmoud has a 9% share in the bank.
Instead of wiring money overseas, as banks typically do, Farnood used a traditional money-transfer or hawala service, the New Ansari, which is also alleged to have been resorted to by drug smugglers, some of whose proceeds go to the Taliban and other insurgents that kill US troops. Money transferred by hawala cannot be traced electronically. The New Ansari itself is under investigation by US authorities. Persistent news reports suggest that billions of dollars in cash are being flown out of Afghanistan to Dubai, and that, let us say, irregularities are involved.
Farnood often gave out loans without proper collateral or other formalities. He loaned $100 million to Haseen Fahim, the brother of Marshal Mohammad Fahim (an old-time Northern Alliance warlord whom Karzai brought back into government as his vice-presidential running mate in summer of 2009). Haseen Fahim has substantial investments in Afghanistan’s small natural gas sector.
Farnood also apparently loaned himself $140 million to invest in real estate in Dubai, including in villas on the world islands off Jumeirah. These artificial islands made of landfill were to resemble the map of the globe once constructed, and were intended to give the wealthy the opportunity to own an entire faux country. Farnood has been flying out connected people like Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Fahim and putting them up in the fancy chalets. Afghanistan is the fifth-poorest country in the world, with 36% of the population under the poverty line.
With the world economic downturn and real estate crash of 2008-2009, the Dubai world project largely fell apart, with investors going bankrupt in droves. Indeed, Dubai itself had to be bailed out by its rich sibling Abu Dhabi (which has petroleum; Dubai just has a financial sector). The artificial islands appear from NASA photos to have been abandoned since late 2009 when the own, Nakheel Properties, asked for a delay in repaying $29 billion in debt. Some seem to be sinking back into the lagoon or their boundaries are blurring. Close-up pictures of some of them show an eyesore.
So Farnood’s $140 million investment was suddenly not worth anything at all, and his bank began spiraling down. The details of his other bad investments have not yet emerged. The bank went from having over $1 billion in capital to now having only $120 million and owing $300 million.
President Hamid Karzai is notorious for running interference for his corrupt cronies, and that Farnood and Frozi were out of control appears to have been known for some time but nothing was allowed to be done about it. The two have now been forced out, but the question is whether it is in time to save not only the bank (doubtful) but also the entire Afghan financial system, rebuilt after the fall of the Taliban.
The Karzai government is corrupt and rotten to the core. Not a single US soldier should die to prop it up. The lie that we are fighting “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan needs to be exposed. The US and NATO are fighting four or five groups of Pashtun insurgents, some of them until fairly recently US allies. The goal of the fighting is to keep the Karzai government from falling to the guerrillas and to train up an army and police force that could go on defending Kabul. The Afghanistan National Army from all accounts has poor morale. No wonder. What Afghan soldier or policeman would die for a ponzi scheme?
NATO should not have allowed Karzai to steal the presidential election. (At least now we have more of an idea how the theft was accomplished). It should not have allowed him to block corruption investigations.
You have to wonder if the Afghanistan parliament is up to impeaching Karzai. One thing is certain. He is part of the problem, not the solution, and as long as he is at the helm, the situation is highly unlikely to get better.
And our troops will go on dying for a vague and probably unattainable goal that the politicians dress up in idealistic flourishes, and worse, dying for a lie.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan spurred by US and NATO attacks
Without Juan Cole's blog, the Middle East would be more in an intellectual fog than it is. In the following post from today's Informed Comment, Cole refers to two recent studies indicating that after civilian deaths from attacks by US/NATO, Afghan insurgents or others retaliate - and the war escalates and drags on.
Civilian Casualties are Causing the War in the First Place: Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 4
Posted on July 24, 2010 by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 24- 2010
[....]
A new study by America’s National Bureau for Economic Research looking at the circumstances around 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan found a high correlation between NATO killing of even two civilians in an area and a spike of attacks on NATO and US troops. It turns out that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s much-maligned stricter rules of engagement, especially limitations on blunt air strikes, actually likely reduced the number of attacks. Gen. David Petraeus is said to be considering altering the ROE.
There is only one way to interpret the NBER report, which is that President Obama was wrong to escalate the Afghanistan war, since US and NATO war-fighting, which inevitably causes civilian deaths, is actually ratcheting up the war. A heavy footprint and more NATO operations likely will create the monster Washington fears, a growing insurgency, rather than ‘blunting the momentum’ of the ‘Taliban’ as Obama and Petreaus hope.
The Afghan Human Rights Monitor recently issued a report on civilian casualties in the first half of 2010. AFP summarized key findings:
‘ About 1,074 civilians were killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents in the first six months of 2010, compared with 1,059 killed in the same period last year, ARM said. “Up to 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June, the highest number of incidents compared to any month since 2002,” it said. . . In a breakdown of parties to blame for civilian deaths, ARM says 61 percent were caused by insurgents, 30 percent by US, NATO and Afghan forces, six percent by “criminals and private security firms”, with three percent unknown.
The full report in pdf format is here
See also their report, “Children Suffered the Brunt of War Casualties in 2009″
Aljazeera English has a recent report on rising children and adult Afghan casualties:
and here is Rethinking Afghanistan pt. 4: http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/civilian-casualties-rethinking-afghanistan-pt-4.html;
Civilian Casualties are Causing the War in the First Place: Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 4
Posted on July 24, 2010 by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 24- 2010
[....]
A new study by America’s National Bureau for Economic Research looking at the circumstances around 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan found a high correlation between NATO killing of even two civilians in an area and a spike of attacks on NATO and US troops. It turns out that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s much-maligned stricter rules of engagement, especially limitations on blunt air strikes, actually likely reduced the number of attacks. Gen. David Petraeus is said to be considering altering the ROE.
There is only one way to interpret the NBER report, which is that President Obama was wrong to escalate the Afghanistan war, since US and NATO war-fighting, which inevitably causes civilian deaths, is actually ratcheting up the war. A heavy footprint and more NATO operations likely will create the monster Washington fears, a growing insurgency, rather than ‘blunting the momentum’ of the ‘Taliban’ as Obama and Petreaus hope.
The Afghan Human Rights Monitor recently issued a report on civilian casualties in the first half of 2010. AFP summarized key findings:
‘ About 1,074 civilians were killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents in the first six months of 2010, compared with 1,059 killed in the same period last year, ARM said. “Up to 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June, the highest number of incidents compared to any month since 2002,” it said. . . In a breakdown of parties to blame for civilian deaths, ARM says 61 percent were caused by insurgents, 30 percent by US, NATO and Afghan forces, six percent by “criminals and private security firms”, with three percent unknown.
The full report in pdf format is here
See also their report, “Children Suffered the Brunt of War Casualties in 2009″
Aljazeera English has a recent report on rising children and adult Afghan casualties:
and here is Rethinking Afghanistan pt. 4: http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/civilian-casualties-rethinking-afghanistan-pt-4.html;
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Additional reasons to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan
Here are parts of what you can find today (July 1, 2010) on Juan Coles' award-winning blog, Informed Comment. One focuses on rising US troop deaths in Afghanistan, which appear to be the result of growing aggressiveness by group identified as Taliban. The other part reports that the US Congress has cut $4 billion out of civilian aid to Afghanistan.
In short, Gen. Patraeus maintains that rising troop casualties are to be expected as the counter-insurgency strategy is implemented. The Congress justifies its reduction in civilian aid to Afghanistan by saying that too much of it ends up in the wrong hands and for unintended purposes.
From our perspective, these two examples provide additional evidence that the US occupation of Afghanistan is mired in chaotic conditions, that US troops are suffering from the make-it-up-as-you-go occupation and interventions. And, further, the White House and US Congress should withhold additional funding for Afghanistan and affirm their support for a substantial and continuing withdrawal of troops no later than in July 2011,
Posted on July 1, 2010 by Juan
As the Senate confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as commander of US troops in Afghanistan, CNN estimated that 101 NATO troops (including Americans) were killed in June, the highest total ever since the NATO presence began in 2001. The Pentagon maintains that such a spike in troop deaths is to be expected given the counter-insurgency push that began this winter, in which troops were given the task of ‘taking, clearing, holding and building’ in Pashtun territory.
Taliban guerrillas boldly attacked a NATO air base at the eastern Pashtun city of Jalabad on Tuesday. A Taliban spokesman said that the operation was intended to send a signal to Gen. Petraeus, that they considered him no different from any other general. At least one NATO soldier was killed in the assault becoming death number 101 for June). A Taliban spokesman said that six of them detonated their payloads or were killed, while 4 escaped. NATO said that there were 6-8 attackers and all were killed. The Pajhwok News Agency reports, “A top Afghan army official on the base, Col. Jahangir Azimi, said six attackers, equipped with two machine guns, automatic rifles and a rocket launcher, stormed the airbase from its northern gate. One bomber blew himself up at the gate and the rest of the attackers infiltrated the camp, he added. Two of the bombers were killed by Afghan soldiers and three others were hunted by NATO choppers which were immediately called after the explosion, Col. Azimi further said.”
Aljazeera English has video:
The battle of Marawara in the eastern Kunar province between NATO forces and Taliban continued on Wednesday. It began on Sunday, when two US troops and a third NATO soldier were killed.
Meanwhile, Congress cut $4 billion out of civilian aid to Afghanistan, owing to fears that it was just being eaten up by corruption. Afghanistan is listed as the second most corrupt country in the world after Somalia by Transparency International, and reports have circulated for months about mysterious large shipments of cash out of Kabul airport to Dubai. It has also been alleged that money paid to security contractors in Afghanistan who oversee the safety of US convoys is often in turn paid out to Taliban as a bribe not to attack the convoys. Still, the civilian aid money is crucial to the Obama administration’s counter-insurgency campaign, and it had been hoped that providing, e.g., more electricity to Pashtun areas such as the city of Qandahar might help NATO and the Karzai government blunt the appeal of the Taliban there. Apparently, though, the money was not so much denied as put in escrow until a better general accounting system can be put in to keep track of it.
In short, Gen. Patraeus maintains that rising troop casualties are to be expected as the counter-insurgency strategy is implemented. The Congress justifies its reduction in civilian aid to Afghanistan by saying that too much of it ends up in the wrong hands and for unintended purposes.
From our perspective, these two examples provide additional evidence that the US occupation of Afghanistan is mired in chaotic conditions, that US troops are suffering from the make-it-up-as-you-go occupation and interventions. And, further, the White House and US Congress should withhold additional funding for Afghanistan and affirm their support for a substantial and continuing withdrawal of troops no later than in July 2011,
Posted on July 1, 2010 by Juan
As the Senate confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as commander of US troops in Afghanistan, CNN estimated that 101 NATO troops (including Americans) were killed in June, the highest total ever since the NATO presence began in 2001. The Pentagon maintains that such a spike in troop deaths is to be expected given the counter-insurgency push that began this winter, in which troops were given the task of ‘taking, clearing, holding and building’ in Pashtun territory.
Taliban guerrillas boldly attacked a NATO air base at the eastern Pashtun city of Jalabad on Tuesday. A Taliban spokesman said that the operation was intended to send a signal to Gen. Petraeus, that they considered him no different from any other general. At least one NATO soldier was killed in the assault becoming death number 101 for June). A Taliban spokesman said that six of them detonated their payloads or were killed, while 4 escaped. NATO said that there were 6-8 attackers and all were killed. The Pajhwok News Agency reports, “A top Afghan army official on the base, Col. Jahangir Azimi, said six attackers, equipped with two machine guns, automatic rifles and a rocket launcher, stormed the airbase from its northern gate. One bomber blew himself up at the gate and the rest of the attackers infiltrated the camp, he added. Two of the bombers were killed by Afghan soldiers and three others were hunted by NATO choppers which were immediately called after the explosion, Col. Azimi further said.”
Aljazeera English has video:
The battle of Marawara in the eastern Kunar province between NATO forces and Taliban continued on Wednesday. It began on Sunday, when two US troops and a third NATO soldier were killed.
Meanwhile, Congress cut $4 billion out of civilian aid to Afghanistan, owing to fears that it was just being eaten up by corruption. Afghanistan is listed as the second most corrupt country in the world after Somalia by Transparency International, and reports have circulated for months about mysterious large shipments of cash out of Kabul airport to Dubai. It has also been alleged that money paid to security contractors in Afghanistan who oversee the safety of US convoys is often in turn paid out to Taliban as a bribe not to attack the convoys. Still, the civilian aid money is crucial to the Obama administration’s counter-insurgency campaign, and it had been hoped that providing, e.g., more electricity to Pashtun areas such as the city of Qandahar might help NATO and the Karzai government blunt the appeal of the Taliban there. Apparently, though, the money was not so much denied as put in escrow until a better general accounting system can be put in to keep track of it.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Counter-terrorism rather than counter-insurgency, Juan Cole contends
Below you can find some major parts of Juan Cole's post today, June 22, 2010, on his blog Informed Comment, and my outline/comments on them. You can go to Cole's award-winning blog for the full article.
Cole reconstructs some of the present sniping within the Obama Administration over what the appropriate strategy in Afghanistan should be. The conflict revolves around the counter-insurgency strategy of General McChrystal, a strategy that now is in effect. On the other side, Cole identifies some of those who are opposed to this strategy, including Cole himself. The other strategy worth considering - and supporting - is a "minimalist" strategy of counter-terrorism. He also thinks that a third approach endorsing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country would result in a brutal Taliban victory, which he finds unacceptable.
If you have been following the posts on our blog, you know that we have been in support of a planned withdrawal of troops. Our position has been influenced by Afghan citizens like Malalai Joya. My impression of Cole's position is that he is grasping at straws when he discribes - and supports- a counter-terrorism strategy.
So, Cole says, it is counter-insurgency versus counter-terrorism, with the withdrawal of troops off the table. It is up to President Obama to decide the strategy that will prevail [between two bad options]. Here is some of what Cole suggests.
One, get rid of Gen. McChrystal, and plan to disgard the counter-insurgency strategy.
If Obama doesn’t fire McChrystal, he will never be respected by anybody in the chain of command that leads to his desk. Moreover, moving McChrystal out now would be a perfect opportunity to pull the plug on the impractical counter-insurgency campaign that the latter has been pursuing, which probably has only a 10% chance of success. (A RAND study found that where a government that claimed to be a democracy actually was not, and where it faced an insurgency, it prevailed only 10% of the time. Sounds like President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan to me.)
[....]
Two, Obama should move toward support of a counter-terrorism strategy. [This approach would preclude bringing additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan. It is not clear whether the number of troops already stationed in the country would be kept at the same level or reduced.] He does offer an idea of what counter-terrorism would include: "intelligence work, deployment of special operations forces against small, specific targets, and use of air strikes and drones."
The most recent roots of this grudge match go back to the dispute within the Obama administration last year over how to deal with Afghanistan. Eikenberry, a former general, had been one of McChrystal’s predecessors as commander of US troops in Afghanistan. And Biden had spent decades either chairing or being ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. These seasoned observers of Central and South Asia concluded that the best the US could do in Afghanistan was small-scale targeted counter-terrorism. Counter-terrorism implies intelligence work, deployment of special operations forces against small, specific targets, and use of air strikes and drones. Biden is said to have suggested getting most US troops out of Afghanistan and just striking at al-Qaeda wherever it popped up, especially in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Three, more on what the ineffective counter-insurgency strategy entails.
In contrast, McChrystal’s plan called for counter-insurgency, which implies large-scale conventional military campaigns, to “take, clear, hold and build.” That is, the US troops would take territory now held by insurgents, would clear it of Taliban or other militants, would hold it for the medium or long term so as to reassure local elders that they were in no danger from returning Taliban, and would use the opportunity to build infrastructure and services. Biden’s target was the largely Arab, foreign al-Qaeda, organized as small terrorist cells; but McChrystal wanted to root out the Taliban and their new Mujahidin allies, a much larger force that had roots in Pashtun society in a way that al-Qaeda does not. McChrystal’s plan required a massive troop escalation and the conquest by the US of large swathes of Pashtun territory in the southeast and southwest of the country. The hope was that while the US did counter-insurgency on a large scale, NATO and US troops would be training and equipping a large Afghanistan National Army of 200,000 and a similarly sized police force, and that in a few years the country could be turned over to them.
Four, reasons why counter-insurgency will fail.
Eikenberry worried, in cables later leaked, that going beyond counter-terrorism to large-scale counter-insurgency was impractical because:
A big US troop escalation would have the effect of actually making the Afghanistan security forces more dependent on the US, not less, and so significantly delay the day when they could or would step up to security duties on their own;
A large-scale counter-insurgency campaign requires a strong Afghan political partner for the ‘hold’ and ‘build’ phases. But there is no such partner. President Hamid Karzai stole the presidential election last year, and is notoriously unreliable. The Afghanistan National Army will not soon be able to take over from the US troops as they take and clear wide swathes of territory.
Five, Obama hedged.
Obama backed McChrystal against Biden and Eikenberry, but threw McChrystal a curve ball by talking about beginning a troop withdrawal in summer of 2011 (thus taking a little piece of the Biden plan and inserting it awkwardly in the middle of Gen. McChrystal’s years-long counter-insurgency struggle– and thus inevitably undermining the latter).
Six, all the strategies have shortcomings, but counter-terrosim makes more sense than the other, Coal suggests.
Both the Biden/ Eikenberry and the McChrystal approaches have drawbacks. Counter-terrorism focusing like a laser on al-Qaeda would be largely irrelevant now in Afghanistan, where there is virtually no al-Qaeda. But that policy is being pursued in the tribal belt in Pakistan, alienating the Pakistani public because the drones often also kill innocent civilians. And, a rapid draw-down of US troops in favor of newly trained Afghan recruits may not be practical, given the poor esprit de corps, illiteracy, drug use, corruption and over-representation of minorities in the Afghanistan National Army and police. What would happen if, as the US drew down, the provinces around Kabul started swiftly falling to the Taliban or allied insurgents?
Seven, but withdrawal is out of the question, at least for some, perhaps, lengthy period of time.
I know one Afghan scholar who for years went back and forth consulting with the Karzai government, who is convinced that if the US and NATO suddenly pulled up stakes, the Karzai government would fall within 3 days. Whatever you think of President Karzai, the prospect of him being hanged by Mulla Omar is hard to contemplate with equanimity.
Eight, the counter-insurgency strategy is far too ambitious and should therefore be phased out.
On the other hand, McChrystal’s plan is in my view far too ambitious and likely completely impractical. It assumes that the Pashtuns want US Marines in their villages and would prefer them to the Taliban or other insurgents (most of whom are actually from the same tribes as and therefore cousins to these villagers). It assumes that the Kabul government can provide a ‘government in a box’ (in McChrystal’s words) to the provinces once the US military has conquered them. But Kabul is not well governed itself, much less being able swiftly to provide services and expertise in the provinces on demand. It assumes that the US push won’t alienate ever more Pashtuns, pushing them into the arms of the Taliban. It makes no distinction between Eastern and Western Pashtuns. And it assumes that an Afghanistan National Army of double the current size can be swiftly trained and deployed to replace the US troops as they move on to the next conquest. None of these assumptions is warranted, as is becoming clear in Helmand Province, where McChrystal’s demonstration project was the small farming villages of Marjah. It hasn’t gone as well as was initially suggested.
Nine, the next planned phase of counter-insurgency is counterproductive and should, implicitly, be discontinued.
McChrystal’s next Big Idea was to attack Taliban strongholds the major southwestern Pashtun city of Qandahar (pop. about 1 million). Such an operation is extremely dangerous. If urban Pashtuns were alienated by it, they could go over to the insurgency in much greater numbers. (Right now, the Pashtuns are probably split 80-20 in favor of Karzai against the Taliban, but the US could easily push the rest of the Pashtuns into the arms of the insurgents if it isn’t careful. That would set the stage for another Afghanistan Civil War, since the northern ethnic groups– Tajiks, Hazarahs, Uzbeks, etc., absolutely despise the Taliban).
Ten, Afghanistan is a mess.
Afghanistan is a mess and likely will go on being a mess. It is the fifth poorest country in the world, is a major center of opium production and trafficking, has been wracked by decades of war (for much of which Washington is responsible), has a literacy rate of only 28%, and suffers from poor infrastructure and weak, corrupt, inefficient government. Its most troubled regions are populated by tribal people who have it as a code of honor to engage in feuds, and some of what the US sees as insurgency is just ordinary feuding. Tribes fall out with each other, and fight for a while until they make up. That way of life will eventually subside, when people become more settled, urban, and educated. But that day is a ways off for most Pashtuns.
Eleven, Cole supports counter-terrorism with reservations, that is intelligence work, special forces' operations, and air-attacks including drones. The focus is on suspected Al Qaeda areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He conveys great ambivalence about drone attacks on Pakistan
In the meantime, I think counter-terrorism in Afghanistan is the right policy, though I think the drone strikes on Pakistani territory are very problematic and concur with those CIA officers who hold that they do more harm than good.
Twelve, Cole suggests that a counter-terrorism strategy will require the U.S.-led occupation to have the capacity to keep the Karzai government from falling and at the same time become effective, and also have the time to train new Afghan security forces so they can stand up to the enemy or die. But this seems to conflict with his ideas of accelerating the training of Afghan troops [which is bound to take a long time, if ever], holding the number of U.S. troops where it is. and, implicitly, winning support from Afghan villagers. Cole does not refer to reconstruction as an element of counter-terrorism. It is also not clear how a counter-terrorism strategy would keep the government from falling, let alone rising.
What you need in Afghanistan is a way of keeping the government from falling while you train up the new security forces (which must be put in a position where they either stand and fight or risk destruction– without the ability to depend on US infantrymen). I think this minimalist goal can be achieved via counter-terrorism. The counter-insurgency campaign was a dead end.
Cole reconstructs some of the present sniping within the Obama Administration over what the appropriate strategy in Afghanistan should be. The conflict revolves around the counter-insurgency strategy of General McChrystal, a strategy that now is in effect. On the other side, Cole identifies some of those who are opposed to this strategy, including Cole himself. The other strategy worth considering - and supporting - is a "minimalist" strategy of counter-terrorism. He also thinks that a third approach endorsing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country would result in a brutal Taliban victory, which he finds unacceptable.
If you have been following the posts on our blog, you know that we have been in support of a planned withdrawal of troops. Our position has been influenced by Afghan citizens like Malalai Joya. My impression of Cole's position is that he is grasping at straws when he discribes - and supports- a counter-terrorism strategy.
So, Cole says, it is counter-insurgency versus counter-terrorism, with the withdrawal of troops off the table. It is up to President Obama to decide the strategy that will prevail [between two bad options]. Here is some of what Cole suggests.
One, get rid of Gen. McChrystal, and plan to disgard the counter-insurgency strategy.
If Obama doesn’t fire McChrystal, he will never be respected by anybody in the chain of command that leads to his desk. Moreover, moving McChrystal out now would be a perfect opportunity to pull the plug on the impractical counter-insurgency campaign that the latter has been pursuing, which probably has only a 10% chance of success. (A RAND study found that where a government that claimed to be a democracy actually was not, and where it faced an insurgency, it prevailed only 10% of the time. Sounds like President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan to me.)
[....]
Two, Obama should move toward support of a counter-terrorism strategy. [This approach would preclude bringing additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan. It is not clear whether the number of troops already stationed in the country would be kept at the same level or reduced.] He does offer an idea of what counter-terrorism would include: "intelligence work, deployment of special operations forces against small, specific targets, and use of air strikes and drones."
The most recent roots of this grudge match go back to the dispute within the Obama administration last year over how to deal with Afghanistan. Eikenberry, a former general, had been one of McChrystal’s predecessors as commander of US troops in Afghanistan. And Biden had spent decades either chairing or being ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. These seasoned observers of Central and South Asia concluded that the best the US could do in Afghanistan was small-scale targeted counter-terrorism. Counter-terrorism implies intelligence work, deployment of special operations forces against small, specific targets, and use of air strikes and drones. Biden is said to have suggested getting most US troops out of Afghanistan and just striking at al-Qaeda wherever it popped up, especially in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Three, more on what the ineffective counter-insurgency strategy entails.
In contrast, McChrystal’s plan called for counter-insurgency, which implies large-scale conventional military campaigns, to “take, clear, hold and build.” That is, the US troops would take territory now held by insurgents, would clear it of Taliban or other militants, would hold it for the medium or long term so as to reassure local elders that they were in no danger from returning Taliban, and would use the opportunity to build infrastructure and services. Biden’s target was the largely Arab, foreign al-Qaeda, organized as small terrorist cells; but McChrystal wanted to root out the Taliban and their new Mujahidin allies, a much larger force that had roots in Pashtun society in a way that al-Qaeda does not. McChrystal’s plan required a massive troop escalation and the conquest by the US of large swathes of Pashtun territory in the southeast and southwest of the country. The hope was that while the US did counter-insurgency on a large scale, NATO and US troops would be training and equipping a large Afghanistan National Army of 200,000 and a similarly sized police force, and that in a few years the country could be turned over to them.
Four, reasons why counter-insurgency will fail.
Eikenberry worried, in cables later leaked, that going beyond counter-terrorism to large-scale counter-insurgency was impractical because:
A big US troop escalation would have the effect of actually making the Afghanistan security forces more dependent on the US, not less, and so significantly delay the day when they could or would step up to security duties on their own;
A large-scale counter-insurgency campaign requires a strong Afghan political partner for the ‘hold’ and ‘build’ phases. But there is no such partner. President Hamid Karzai stole the presidential election last year, and is notoriously unreliable. The Afghanistan National Army will not soon be able to take over from the US troops as they take and clear wide swathes of territory.
Five, Obama hedged.
Obama backed McChrystal against Biden and Eikenberry, but threw McChrystal a curve ball by talking about beginning a troop withdrawal in summer of 2011 (thus taking a little piece of the Biden plan and inserting it awkwardly in the middle of Gen. McChrystal’s years-long counter-insurgency struggle– and thus inevitably undermining the latter).
Six, all the strategies have shortcomings, but counter-terrosim makes more sense than the other, Coal suggests.
Both the Biden/ Eikenberry and the McChrystal approaches have drawbacks. Counter-terrorism focusing like a laser on al-Qaeda would be largely irrelevant now in Afghanistan, where there is virtually no al-Qaeda. But that policy is being pursued in the tribal belt in Pakistan, alienating the Pakistani public because the drones often also kill innocent civilians. And, a rapid draw-down of US troops in favor of newly trained Afghan recruits may not be practical, given the poor esprit de corps, illiteracy, drug use, corruption and over-representation of minorities in the Afghanistan National Army and police. What would happen if, as the US drew down, the provinces around Kabul started swiftly falling to the Taliban or allied insurgents?
Seven, but withdrawal is out of the question, at least for some, perhaps, lengthy period of time.
I know one Afghan scholar who for years went back and forth consulting with the Karzai government, who is convinced that if the US and NATO suddenly pulled up stakes, the Karzai government would fall within 3 days. Whatever you think of President Karzai, the prospect of him being hanged by Mulla Omar is hard to contemplate with equanimity.
Eight, the counter-insurgency strategy is far too ambitious and should therefore be phased out.
On the other hand, McChrystal’s plan is in my view far too ambitious and likely completely impractical. It assumes that the Pashtuns want US Marines in their villages and would prefer them to the Taliban or other insurgents (most of whom are actually from the same tribes as and therefore cousins to these villagers). It assumes that the Kabul government can provide a ‘government in a box’ (in McChrystal’s words) to the provinces once the US military has conquered them. But Kabul is not well governed itself, much less being able swiftly to provide services and expertise in the provinces on demand. It assumes that the US push won’t alienate ever more Pashtuns, pushing them into the arms of the Taliban. It makes no distinction between Eastern and Western Pashtuns. And it assumes that an Afghanistan National Army of double the current size can be swiftly trained and deployed to replace the US troops as they move on to the next conquest. None of these assumptions is warranted, as is becoming clear in Helmand Province, where McChrystal’s demonstration project was the small farming villages of Marjah. It hasn’t gone as well as was initially suggested.
Nine, the next planned phase of counter-insurgency is counterproductive and should, implicitly, be discontinued.
McChrystal’s next Big Idea was to attack Taliban strongholds the major southwestern Pashtun city of Qandahar (pop. about 1 million). Such an operation is extremely dangerous. If urban Pashtuns were alienated by it, they could go over to the insurgency in much greater numbers. (Right now, the Pashtuns are probably split 80-20 in favor of Karzai against the Taliban, but the US could easily push the rest of the Pashtuns into the arms of the insurgents if it isn’t careful. That would set the stage for another Afghanistan Civil War, since the northern ethnic groups– Tajiks, Hazarahs, Uzbeks, etc., absolutely despise the Taliban).
Ten, Afghanistan is a mess.
Afghanistan is a mess and likely will go on being a mess. It is the fifth poorest country in the world, is a major center of opium production and trafficking, has been wracked by decades of war (for much of which Washington is responsible), has a literacy rate of only 28%, and suffers from poor infrastructure and weak, corrupt, inefficient government. Its most troubled regions are populated by tribal people who have it as a code of honor to engage in feuds, and some of what the US sees as insurgency is just ordinary feuding. Tribes fall out with each other, and fight for a while until they make up. That way of life will eventually subside, when people become more settled, urban, and educated. But that day is a ways off for most Pashtuns.
Eleven, Cole supports counter-terrorism with reservations, that is intelligence work, special forces' operations, and air-attacks including drones. The focus is on suspected Al Qaeda areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He conveys great ambivalence about drone attacks on Pakistan
In the meantime, I think counter-terrorism in Afghanistan is the right policy, though I think the drone strikes on Pakistani territory are very problematic and concur with those CIA officers who hold that they do more harm than good.
Twelve, Cole suggests that a counter-terrorism strategy will require the U.S.-led occupation to have the capacity to keep the Karzai government from falling and at the same time become effective, and also have the time to train new Afghan security forces so they can stand up to the enemy or die. But this seems to conflict with his ideas of accelerating the training of Afghan troops [which is bound to take a long time, if ever], holding the number of U.S. troops where it is. and, implicitly, winning support from Afghan villagers. Cole does not refer to reconstruction as an element of counter-terrorism. It is also not clear how a counter-terrorism strategy would keep the government from falling, let alone rising.
What you need in Afghanistan is a way of keeping the government from falling while you train up the new security forces (which must be put in a position where they either stand and fight or risk destruction– without the ability to depend on US infantrymen). I think this minimalist goal can be achieved via counter-terrorism. The counter-insurgency campaign was a dead end.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Bombings by US air force and Taliban, increase in violence and casualties
As usual, Juan Cole provides information that keeps readers up-to-date on events in Afghanistan and across the region and in the Middle East. The substance of Juan's post today, June 20, 2010, is captured by his headlines: "U.S. Strikes Kill Civlians in Khost. Bombings Rock Helmand Capital. Roadside Bombings Double."
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, June 20, 2010
Things are not going well for the Obama administration in Afghanistan, and the only good news for the White House is that almost no one in the United States seems to be paying attention.
Supposedly precision strikes by the US air force against the militant Haqqani Network in Khost province in the south of the country appear to have gone awry and killed 10 civilians. Errant fighter-jet and drone strikes that kill civilians is the number one complaint of Afghans against the growing US military presence, and this incident will further fan the flames of that fuel.
The USG Open Source Center translated an article about the innocent civilians being mistakenly bombarded, which appeared in the Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto on Saturday June 19. It claims not 10 dead but 20, and note that it is getting these figures from officials of the Karzai government.
Khost, 19 June: A bombardment has inflicted heavy civilian casualties.Last night, from 18 to 19 June, foreign aircraft bombarded some villages in Mosakhel District of Khost Province, inflicting civilian casualties.
The Khost security commander, Abdol Hakim Ishaqzai, told Afghan Islamic Press in this regard that foreign aircraft had bombarded Mosakhel District during an operation, as a result of which five civilians were killed. The security commander confirmed that women and children were also among the killed people.
On the other hand, the head of the provincial council in Khost, Mohammad Shafiq Mojahed, told Afghan Islamic Press about civilian casualties that based on his primary information, six civilians had been killed and four others wounded in the bombardments. He added that the bombardments continued by the foreign aircraft this morning as well, but he did not know why the foreign aircraft bombarded the area.
The ISAF press office in Khost told Afghan Islamic Press that the foreign aircraft had dropped only one bomb on a military training centre of the Taleban in the area, which inflicted no casualties to civilians.
While the NATO press office denies civilian casualties, a resident of Mosakhel District, Hazrat Wali, told Afghan Islamic Press this afternoon that at least 20 civilians had been killed and 16 others wounded in the bombardments. Speaking angrily to the Afghan Islamic Press, Hazrat Wali added “The aircraft started bombardments on four villages in the areas of Madar, Tishanki, Lezhagi and Khairi at 2200 (local time; 1730 gmt) while the helicopters still fly over the area.”
He said: “We have taken 20 bodies from under debris so far. The killed include women, children and old people who are all civilians and there are no Taleban among them.”Giving more details, Hazrat Wali said: “We took five dead bodies from under debris in Madar village, four of whom were children and one of them was a woman. We also took seven bodies out of debris in Tishanki village, three bodies in Khairi village and four bodies in Lezhagi village. Also, a young kid who was running away from the bombardment near Lezhagi village was martyred.”
Hazrat Wali further said that 16 wounded people had also been taken out of debris in these villages and taken to nearby health centres in the area for treatment.
Regarding the current situation in the area, he said: “Some people have packed their belongings and escaped to different directions. They do not know where to go and do not know why they were bombarded.”
The Taleban have not commented on the incident.
(Description of Source: Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto — Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto — Peshawar-based agency, staffed by Afghans, that describes itself as an independent “news agency” but whose history and reporting pattern reveal a perceptible pro-Taliban bias; the AIP’s founder-director, Mohammad Yaqub Sharafat, has long been associated with a mujahidin faction that merged with the Taliban’s “Islamic Emirate” led by Mullah Omar; subscription required to access content; http://www.afghanislamicpress.com)
More bad news. On Sunday, two bombs rocked the provincial city of Lashkar Gah, killing 3 and wounding 23 other civilians. A bank and a school were the two targets.
The reason these bombings are bad news is that Lashkar Gah is the capital of Helmand province and is the city from which the Marjah campaign of this winter-spring was launched. Bombings in Lashkar Gah are a worrisome sign that the Marjah campaign did not entirely succeed. (That Marjah was not the success it was ballyhooed to be was first recognized by the McClatchy wire service reporters, who have consistently been ahead of the curve in both Afghanistan and Iraq.)
And then to cap it all off, the UN came out with a report this weekend that reveals that the number of suicide bombings has doubled in 2010 as opposed to 2009.z And, the number of assassinations is also up, to one a day.
Finally, the LAT reports that attempts by the US to set up anti-Taliban militias have not yielded the desired results.
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, June 20, 2010
Things are not going well for the Obama administration in Afghanistan, and the only good news for the White House is that almost no one in the United States seems to be paying attention.
Supposedly precision strikes by the US air force against the militant Haqqani Network in Khost province in the south of the country appear to have gone awry and killed 10 civilians. Errant fighter-jet and drone strikes that kill civilians is the number one complaint of Afghans against the growing US military presence, and this incident will further fan the flames of that fuel.
The USG Open Source Center translated an article about the innocent civilians being mistakenly bombarded, which appeared in the Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto on Saturday June 19. It claims not 10 dead but 20, and note that it is getting these figures from officials of the Karzai government.
Khost, 19 June: A bombardment has inflicted heavy civilian casualties.Last night, from 18 to 19 June, foreign aircraft bombarded some villages in Mosakhel District of Khost Province, inflicting civilian casualties.
The Khost security commander, Abdol Hakim Ishaqzai, told Afghan Islamic Press in this regard that foreign aircraft had bombarded Mosakhel District during an operation, as a result of which five civilians were killed. The security commander confirmed that women and children were also among the killed people.
On the other hand, the head of the provincial council in Khost, Mohammad Shafiq Mojahed, told Afghan Islamic Press about civilian casualties that based on his primary information, six civilians had been killed and four others wounded in the bombardments. He added that the bombardments continued by the foreign aircraft this morning as well, but he did not know why the foreign aircraft bombarded the area.
The ISAF press office in Khost told Afghan Islamic Press that the foreign aircraft had dropped only one bomb on a military training centre of the Taleban in the area, which inflicted no casualties to civilians.
While the NATO press office denies civilian casualties, a resident of Mosakhel District, Hazrat Wali, told Afghan Islamic Press this afternoon that at least 20 civilians had been killed and 16 others wounded in the bombardments. Speaking angrily to the Afghan Islamic Press, Hazrat Wali added “The aircraft started bombardments on four villages in the areas of Madar, Tishanki, Lezhagi and Khairi at 2200 (local time; 1730 gmt) while the helicopters still fly over the area.”
He said: “We have taken 20 bodies from under debris so far. The killed include women, children and old people who are all civilians and there are no Taleban among them.”Giving more details, Hazrat Wali said: “We took five dead bodies from under debris in Madar village, four of whom were children and one of them was a woman. We also took seven bodies out of debris in Tishanki village, three bodies in Khairi village and four bodies in Lezhagi village. Also, a young kid who was running away from the bombardment near Lezhagi village was martyred.”
Hazrat Wali further said that 16 wounded people had also been taken out of debris in these villages and taken to nearby health centres in the area for treatment.
Regarding the current situation in the area, he said: “Some people have packed their belongings and escaped to different directions. They do not know where to go and do not know why they were bombarded.”
The Taleban have not commented on the incident.
(Description of Source: Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto — Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto — Peshawar-based agency, staffed by Afghans, that describes itself as an independent “news agency” but whose history and reporting pattern reveal a perceptible pro-Taliban bias; the AIP’s founder-director, Mohammad Yaqub Sharafat, has long been associated with a mujahidin faction that merged with the Taliban’s “Islamic Emirate” led by Mullah Omar; subscription required to access content; http://www.afghanislamicpress.com)
More bad news. On Sunday, two bombs rocked the provincial city of Lashkar Gah, killing 3 and wounding 23 other civilians. A bank and a school were the two targets.
The reason these bombings are bad news is that Lashkar Gah is the capital of Helmand province and is the city from which the Marjah campaign of this winter-spring was launched. Bombings in Lashkar Gah are a worrisome sign that the Marjah campaign did not entirely succeed. (That Marjah was not the success it was ballyhooed to be was first recognized by the McClatchy wire service reporters, who have consistently been ahead of the curve in both Afghanistan and Iraq.)
And then to cap it all off, the UN came out with a report this weekend that reveals that the number of suicide bombings has doubled in 2010 as opposed to 2009.z And, the number of assassinations is also up, to one a day.
Finally, the LAT reports that attempts by the US to set up anti-Taliban militias have not yielded the desired results.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Questions about the potential value of Afghanistan's mineral wealth
Juan Cole raises questions about whether Afghanistan's mineral wealth is easily accessible and it's true marketable value. Note that at the end of the article, he refers to articles in The Atlantic and Politico that provide further details on the story. One implication of Juan's post and the two magazine stories is that the alleged potential mineral wealth of Afghanistan might distract from how poorly the US-led military offenses are going and provide a rationale for extending the occupation and war. There is no doubt that the White House and the Pentagon have the resources to promote whatever propaganda they favor. And there are other disturbing aspects of the possibility of gigantic mineral extraction industries. They are environmentally distructive, create terrible work conditions, contribute to global warming, and are likely to consolidate the power and wealth of a few. So does war. So, the Afghanistan war would remains a losing proposition for most of the Afghan people and a continuing drain on the resoures of US citizens.
Meh story about $1 Trillion in Minerals in Afghanistan
Posted on June 15, 2010 by Juan Cole
The report that geologists have found $1 trillion in mineral wealth in Afghanistan is less important than it seems..
That Afghanistan has minerals is not in fact news. But none of the sort of research that would be necessary to place a value on them has been done, so no one actually knows what they are worth of if they are worth anything after expenses.
Then, for a country of 34 million, it isn’t that much money even if the minerals could easily be extracted and actually exist in the imagined quantities. If you mined $100 billion a year, that would be a lower middle class income for the country, but only for 10 years. And, then back to grinding poverty.
In contrast, the nominal gross domestic product of the United States is on the order of $14 trillion, year after year.
It is silly to say that $1 trillion in hard-to-mine minerals in a landlocked Afghanistan make it like Saudi Arabia. The latter has 267 billion barrels of petroleum that is fairly easy to get at and to export, which at today’s prices is worth over $18 trillion. Not to mention its natural gas.
The US will likely end up spending $1 trillion destroying things in Afghanistan.
So even if the whole benefit of the minerals went to the US, it would be in the hole.
Hype.
—
See also The Atlantic and
Politico.com.
Meh story about $1 Trillion in Minerals in Afghanistan
Posted on June 15, 2010 by Juan Cole
The report that geologists have found $1 trillion in mineral wealth in Afghanistan is less important than it seems..
That Afghanistan has minerals is not in fact news. But none of the sort of research that would be necessary to place a value on them has been done, so no one actually knows what they are worth of if they are worth anything after expenses.
Then, for a country of 34 million, it isn’t that much money even if the minerals could easily be extracted and actually exist in the imagined quantities. If you mined $100 billion a year, that would be a lower middle class income for the country, but only for 10 years. And, then back to grinding poverty.
In contrast, the nominal gross domestic product of the United States is on the order of $14 trillion, year after year.
It is silly to say that $1 trillion in hard-to-mine minerals in a landlocked Afghanistan make it like Saudi Arabia. The latter has 267 billion barrels of petroleum that is fairly easy to get at and to export, which at today’s prices is worth over $18 trillion. Not to mention its natural gas.
The US will likely end up spending $1 trillion destroying things in Afghanistan.
So even if the whole benefit of the minerals went to the US, it would be in the hole.
Hype.
—
See also The Atlantic and
Politico.com.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Poll finds Afghans in war zones more negative toward US and NATO than toward Taliban
In the following segment of his Informed Comment blog, historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole reviews highlights of a poll done with Aghan citizens in war zones and draws some implications. The poll finds that the majority of respondents are more negative toward US and NATO than toward the Taliban. One implication is that the recent surge in US troops and the adoption of a "counterinsurgency" strategy by US generals are not yielding the hopeful results that were expected in Pashtun areas of Helman Province and Qandahar. Cole fears that the US-led offenses will end up strengthening the position of Taliban insurgents, perceived as the lesser of evils. The majority of Afghans interviewed want security, but believe that US military offenses have led and will lead to more killing, refugees, and destruction, without permanently dislodging the Taliban.
--------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Consent, May 4, 2010
Opinion polling in war zones is fraught with difficulties, but the results of a new poll by the International Council on Security and Development carried out among over 400 male respondents in parts of Helmand Province and Qandahar, Afghanistan, in March, 2010, are extremely troubling. (Executive summary here in html, the whole report is here in pdf format.) I conclude from this sounding that the planned US invasion of Qandahar city is likely to be a disaster that turns millions of Western Pashtuns against the US and NATO. The Eastern Pashtuns are already regularly demonstrating and demanding that the foreign troops depart their provinces.
The Marjah campaign this winter involved US and British troops coming into a rural part of Helmand province in the Pashtun southwest of Afghanistan that had been dominated by the Taliban. The farms in this region specialize in poppy growing, and there are reputedly many makeshift heroin labs there. Some observers estimate that 40 % of drug profits overall flow to the Afghanistan insurgent groups, so presumably the US wanted to damage a profit center of the enemy.
But what you’d like to hear from the people of Marjah and nearby Lashkargah, and from Qandahar (the next US target) is that they are sick and tired of the Taliban, felt oppressed by them, and are really glad to see NATO and Afghanistan national army troops show up. Such anti-Taliban sentiments appear common, after all, in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, where from all accounts locals were glad that the Pakistani army cleaned the Taliban out last summer, even though they are dissatisfied with the resulting displacements, property damage and slowness in the delivery of reconstruction aid.
But the Pashtuns of southern Helmand and of Qandahar are not talking like the people of Swat Valley. The report finds that “61% of those interviewed feel more negative about NATO forces than before the military offensive. ” We aren’t winning hearts and minds, folks.
In a startling statistic, nearly 80% of these Pashtun men say that they are now often or always angry, a doubling of this response from one year ago. Nearly half are specifically furious at NATO (over “occupation, civilian casualties and night raids”) and over a third are upset at war and instability (likely also blamed on NATO). Only 9 percent say they are angry with the Taliban!
Almost everyone said that the Marjah campaign produced more refugees (ICOS estimates at least 30,000), who are now living in tent cities or makeshift refugee camps.
Nearly 60% of respondents said they believed the Taliban would just return to Marjah, so the US has not in fact succeeded in convincing locals that they are even capable of the “clear” operation in the take, clear, hold and build strategy. Skepticism about holding and building is therefore likely to be even higher. And 95 percent, almost all, believe more young men have joined the Taliban in the aftermath of the Marjah campaign.
Another troubling finding is that slightly over half now believe the angry young men are motivated to join the Taliban by a belief in “jihad,” i.e. a desire to fight to end the foreign military occupation of their country. Other studies have suggested that many Taliban footsoldiers are just in it for the money. If these respondents are correct in their perception, it would be a troubling development– that young Pashtun males are becoming ideologically radicalized against NATO. A majority still feels, however, that if jobs could be provided to the angry young men, it would draw them away from the Taliban.
The report says, “The principal demand expressed by 70% of Afghans interviewed is the immediate provision of help from NATO, the international community and the Afghan government: they expect shelter and food for the refugees, the rebuilding of destroyed property and the clearing of landmines.” They don’t think they are getting a ‘government in a box’ as Gen. McChrystal promised. They don’t think they are getting basic post-campaign aid. No NGOs are operating in Marjah itself and only two in nearby Lashkargah.
Although the respondents do want security and two-thirds do hope NATO will clear insurgents from the road to the capital of Kabul from their region, and even say they would a similar clearing in Qandahar (!), given their other responses I conclude that they want security imposed in a way that does not displace people or kill innocents. I.e. they want better and less intrusive policing, not a military attack on a civilian area.
--------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Consent, May 4, 2010
Opinion polling in war zones is fraught with difficulties, but the results of a new poll by the International Council on Security and Development carried out among over 400 male respondents in parts of Helmand Province and Qandahar, Afghanistan, in March, 2010, are extremely troubling. (Executive summary here in html, the whole report is here in pdf format.) I conclude from this sounding that the planned US invasion of Qandahar city is likely to be a disaster that turns millions of Western Pashtuns against the US and NATO. The Eastern Pashtuns are already regularly demonstrating and demanding that the foreign troops depart their provinces.
The Marjah campaign this winter involved US and British troops coming into a rural part of Helmand province in the Pashtun southwest of Afghanistan that had been dominated by the Taliban. The farms in this region specialize in poppy growing, and there are reputedly many makeshift heroin labs there. Some observers estimate that 40 % of drug profits overall flow to the Afghanistan insurgent groups, so presumably the US wanted to damage a profit center of the enemy.
But what you’d like to hear from the people of Marjah and nearby Lashkargah, and from Qandahar (the next US target) is that they are sick and tired of the Taliban, felt oppressed by them, and are really glad to see NATO and Afghanistan national army troops show up. Such anti-Taliban sentiments appear common, after all, in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, where from all accounts locals were glad that the Pakistani army cleaned the Taliban out last summer, even though they are dissatisfied with the resulting displacements, property damage and slowness in the delivery of reconstruction aid.
But the Pashtuns of southern Helmand and of Qandahar are not talking like the people of Swat Valley. The report finds that “61% of those interviewed feel more negative about NATO forces than before the military offensive. ” We aren’t winning hearts and minds, folks.
In a startling statistic, nearly 80% of these Pashtun men say that they are now often or always angry, a doubling of this response from one year ago. Nearly half are specifically furious at NATO (over “occupation, civilian casualties and night raids”) and over a third are upset at war and instability (likely also blamed on NATO). Only 9 percent say they are angry with the Taliban!
Almost everyone said that the Marjah campaign produced more refugees (ICOS estimates at least 30,000), who are now living in tent cities or makeshift refugee camps.
Nearly 60% of respondents said they believed the Taliban would just return to Marjah, so the US has not in fact succeeded in convincing locals that they are even capable of the “clear” operation in the take, clear, hold and build strategy. Skepticism about holding and building is therefore likely to be even higher. And 95 percent, almost all, believe more young men have joined the Taliban in the aftermath of the Marjah campaign.
Another troubling finding is that slightly over half now believe the angry young men are motivated to join the Taliban by a belief in “jihad,” i.e. a desire to fight to end the foreign military occupation of their country. Other studies have suggested that many Taliban footsoldiers are just in it for the money. If these respondents are correct in their perception, it would be a troubling development– that young Pashtun males are becoming ideologically radicalized against NATO. A majority still feels, however, that if jobs could be provided to the angry young men, it would draw them away from the Taliban.
The report says, “The principal demand expressed by 70% of Afghans interviewed is the immediate provision of help from NATO, the international community and the Afghan government: they expect shelter and food for the refugees, the rebuilding of destroyed property and the clearing of landmines.” They don’t think they are getting a ‘government in a box’ as Gen. McChrystal promised. They don’t think they are getting basic post-campaign aid. No NGOs are operating in Marjah itself and only two in nearby Lashkargah.
Although the respondents do want security and two-thirds do hope NATO will clear insurgents from the road to the capital of Kabul from their region, and even say they would a similar clearing in Qandahar (!), given their other responses I conclude that they want security imposed in a way that does not displace people or kill innocents. I.e. they want better and less intrusive policing, not a military attack on a civilian area.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Marja residents say security has not improved
Juan Cole points out on his Informed Comment blog today that the US-led assault on Marja has not brought local residents the security they were promised.
Cole:
The violence is placing in doubt supposed US achievements on the security front. Pajwhok News Agency reports that, ironically, the residents of Marjah are complaining about poor security in the aftermath of the US move into that area. They say that there is poor security, that civilians are caught in the cross-fire between US/ Afghanistan National Army troops and the Taliban, and that it is dangerous to work their fields (Marjah is a set of agricultural villages and scattered farm houses). They say that the Afghanistan police have not provided even the level of security that the Taliban once had.
Here are excerpts from the report by the Pajwhok News Agency, to which Cole alludes. You can find the full report at http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Main%20news3.html#70
Report: Marjah Residents Complain of Poor Security
LASHKARGAH - Residents of the Marjah district in southern Helmand province say a recent military operation has failed to bring any improvement to their lives. Instead the offensive has added to their problems.
Cole:
The violence is placing in doubt supposed US achievements on the security front. Pajwhok News Agency reports that, ironically, the residents of Marjah are complaining about poor security in the aftermath of the US move into that area. They say that there is poor security, that civilians are caught in the cross-fire between US/ Afghanistan National Army troops and the Taliban, and that it is dangerous to work their fields (Marjah is a set of agricultural villages and scattered farm houses). They say that the Afghanistan police have not provided even the level of security that the Taliban once had.
Here are excerpts from the report by the Pajwhok News Agency, to which Cole alludes. You can find the full report at http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Main%20news3.html#70
Report: Marjah Residents Complain of Poor Security
LASHKARGAH - Residents of the Marjah district in southern Helmand province say a recent military operation has failed to bring any improvement to their lives. Instead the offensive has added to their problems.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Juan Cole, five arguments against US-led surge in Afghanistan
Juan Cole offers a five-point argument for why the "surge" of US and allied troops in Afghanistan is unlikely to work and therefore, implicitly, why an alternative plan of withdrawal would make better sense. But, unfortunately, the US generals and civilians in charge of this occupation want to remain in the country for many years to come. Obama seems to be going along. They tell us that this is a counterinsurgency policy that is aimed at "protecting the Afghan people" and will prove to be a successful approach. But, they add, it will require many years to take back the cities and thousands of villages using this counterinsurgency method.
The policy is currently being employed in the southern Afghan city of Marja, as Cole notes. At some point, they say, the Afghan army will take over the responsibility of bringing some sort of "security" to the country. There is no persuasive evidence yet that this has happened.
Some of you have viewed the DVD, Rethinking Afghanistan, which advances an argument against the US-led occupation. For a broader view of the Afghan situation from an Afghan woman, I recommend a book by Malalai Joya, A Woman Among Warlords. In addition, Joya's appearances on programs like Democracy Now and her speeches to audiences in America and Canada are readily available on the Internet. For now, here is Cole's sophisticated position.
Bob
----------------------------
Monday, February 22, 2010
Juan Cole, Informed CommentFive Questions for the Afghan Surge; Or, Getting Past the Hype Gen. David Petraeus, a straight shooter, admitted on Meet the Press Sunday that the Afghanistan War will take years and incur high casualties.. His implicit defense of President Obama from Dick Cheney on the issues of torture and closing Guantanamo will make bigger headlines, but sooner or later the American public will notice the admission. The country is now evenly divided between those who think the US can and should restore a modicum of stability before getting out, and those who want a quick withdrawal. The Marjah Campaign, the centerpiece of the new counter-insurgency strategy, is over a week old, and some assessment of this new, visible push by the US military in violent Helmand Province is in order.
There was never any doubt that the US and NATO would win militarily, fairly easily occupying Marjah and nearby Nad Ali. Marjah at 85,000 or so is a city smaller than Ann Arbor, Michigan. The campaign is only significant in a larger social and political context. The questions are:
1. Can the stategy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, of taking, clearing, holding and building be extended deep into the Pashtun regions? Marjah is only a stepping stone to the key southern city of Qandahar, which has a population of a million, more the size of Detroit.
This outcome has yet to be seen. But for rural Pashtuns to come to love foreign occupiers is an unlikely proposition. Even the WSJ admits that in Marjah, the Marines are not exactly feeling the love from the civilians they have supposedly just liberated. Since the Taliban are typically not as corrupt as the warlords, in fact, to any extent that the US and NATO re-install corrupt warlord types in power, they may alienate the locals. And keeping civilian casualties low so as to win hearts and minds is key here. That task will become more difficult as the US inserts itself more deeply into Pashtun territory, since insurgent villages will have to be defeated. The Soviet occupation produced 5 million externally displaced and 2 million internally displaced, along with hundreds of thousands dead. A campaign in Qandahar could easily displace half a million people, and they might mind. Meanwhile, on Monday, the governor of Dai Kundi asserted that a US airstrike killed 27 persons, mostly civilians. There is also the question, raised by Tom Englehardt, of whether the US is capable of good governance in Afghanistan when it is not in Washington, DC.
2. Can the demonstration of vitality and of a sense of progress mollify NATO publics long enough to fight a prolonged war and do intensive training of troops and police over several years?
No. Over the weekend, the center-right government of the Netherlands fell over whether to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war is universally unpopular in continental Europe, and governments have troops there mostly in the teeth of popular opposition, because NATO invoked article 5 of its charter, 'an attack on one is an attack on all' with regard to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks. It may take months after the next elections this spring for the Dutch to form a new government, in part because of the surging popularity of the far-right populist anti-Muslim 'Freedom Party' of Islamophobe Geert Wilders-- a smelly party the others will probably not want in their coalition. Holland's 2000 troops are likely to be withdrawn by late summer. Canada's military is also departing Afghanistan. Are these one-off situations, or are they the beginning of a NATO withdrawal over-all, which will leave Obama in the lurch? Australia is already refusing to take up the Dutch slack, and its government is under public pressure to get out, itself. While it is entirely possible that scandal-plagued rightwing billionaire Silvio Berlusconi will survive the next elections in Italy, it is also possible that he will not, and his successor may well want out of the unpopular Afghanistan quagmire. Moreover, the Pashtun insurgents may smell blood in the water with the Dutch withdrawal from Uruzgan (the home province of Mullah Omar), and target the smaller NATO contingents (the deaths of 6 Italian troops last fall raised public ire against the war).
There are about 45,000 NATO and other allied troops in Afghanistan, and 74,000 American. Obama wanted to increase the European contingent by 10,000, but NATO generally declined that offer, and now the NATO contingent may begin to shrink just when more trainers in particular are desperatedly needed. The Afghanistan National Army is supposedly nearly 100,000 strong, but many critics say the true number is half that, and that even that half is mostly illiterate, poorly trained, and often suffers from uncertain loyalties, drug use, or other debilitating considerations.
3. Can an Afghan army be stood up in short order that has the capacity to patrol independently and keep order after the US and NATO troops withdraw?
Unlikely. The answer to the question about Afghan military preparedness-- after nearly a decade of training and an investment of $1 billion that Afghan troops are not ready for prime time. In the Marjah campaign, they showed no initiative, no ability to fight independently. They are poorly served by their junior field officers, and they are 90% illiterate. (The NYT reporter expected to see them with maps out planning approaches!) The ethnic make-up of the particular Afghanistan National Army units sent into Marjah is also not clear. Almost no ANA troops hail from Helmand Province, and Tajiks (native speakers of Dari Persian, often from towns and cities) are vastly over-represented in the army. There is often bad blood between Tajiks and Pashtuns, the group that predominates in Marjah. The same skill set of the ANA most prized by the US Marines during the assault-- the ability to sniff out which households are Taliban-- may be a liability in the holding and building phase, since it stems from a decade and a half of Tajik Northern Alliance battles against the Taliban.
4. Can the Afghan public, which includes many groups (Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks) deeply harmed by Taliban rule, accept reconciliation, as well?
Unlikely. Former Northern Alliance leader popular among Tajiks, Abdullah Abdullah, warned Karzai against reconciling with the Taliban this weekend. Abdullah dropped out of last fall's presidential contest in protest against alleged ballot fraud in Karzai's favor. There is general hostility toward reconciliation with the Taliban among the parties representing northern, non-Pashtun ethnic groups.
5. Can so much pressure be put on the Taliban that at least their middle and lower ranks will accept reconciliation with the Karzai government? So far, there is no sign that the Taliban leadership still at large is interested in negotiations. A Taliban spokesman replied to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's call for reconciliation with Kabul over the weekend with a resounding 'No!'. Qari Muhammad Yusuf Ahmadi told the Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto that the Taliban would cease fighting when there were not further foreign troops in his country. He said, according to the translation in The News:
"The entire world knows that foreign forces have invaded Afghanistan and occupied this country. They have also started the fighting. Taliban will neither lay down weapons nor will hold talks with Karzai administration even in the presence of a single foreign soldier in Afghanistan. . ."
"The ongoing war in Afghanistan is between Afghans and foreigners. The responsibility of the war lies on the foreigners and their slaves. They continue fighting in the populated areas and have sent 15000 troops to small area like Marja; and are killing civilians and trying to impose infidels on Afghans."
"Karzai himself has no power. The foreigners control everything and the nation is fighting against them."
Commenting on the deaths of 12 civilians in Marjah, Qari Muhammad said: "Karzai should have said who martyred the people. In fact neither Taliban kill the people and nor destroy their houses. These are foreigners who are bombing the houses and killing civilians everywhere as they have brought miseries to the people of Marja."
On the other hand, those members of the Taliban shadow government now in Pakistani custody may be less categorical. A third Taliban commander, Maulvi Kabir (the shadow governor of Nangarhar Province) has been captured by the Pakistani military, allegedly based on information provided by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar, the military chief of staff for the Old Taliban of Mullah Omar, was picked up recently in Karachi in a joint operation of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and US intelligence, which picked up signals from Baradar. Serious inroads are being made by these arrests into the Taliban 'shadow government' of officials who plan out roadside bombings and other attacks in specific provinces of Afghanistan while hiding out in Pakistan.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Riza Yusuf Gilani, and the military chief of state, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, appear to believe that capturing these high Afghan Taliban leaders will give Islamabad leverage in a negotiated settlement of the contest between the Karzai government and the Pashtun religious far right, which is in insurgency. Obama's Afghanistan escalation among the sullen Pashtuns is a desperate policy, as dangerous as attempting to build a series of sand castles on the beach at high tide. Ironically, his bigger success has come in Pakistan, where he appears to have convinced the Pakistani elite to intervene decisively against their own, Pakistani Taliban, and also now to begin arresting the Old Taliban shadow government that is hiding out on Pakistani soil. If he can go further and convince Islamabad that its support of the Afghan Taliban was all a long a key strategic error that has blown back on Pakistan proper, he will thereby come closer to victory than he could by any military measures inside Afghanistan itself. End/ (Not Continued)
The policy is currently being employed in the southern Afghan city of Marja, as Cole notes. At some point, they say, the Afghan army will take over the responsibility of bringing some sort of "security" to the country. There is no persuasive evidence yet that this has happened.
Some of you have viewed the DVD, Rethinking Afghanistan, which advances an argument against the US-led occupation. For a broader view of the Afghan situation from an Afghan woman, I recommend a book by Malalai Joya, A Woman Among Warlords. In addition, Joya's appearances on programs like Democracy Now and her speeches to audiences in America and Canada are readily available on the Internet. For now, here is Cole's sophisticated position.
Bob
----------------------------
Monday, February 22, 2010
Juan Cole, Informed CommentFive Questions for the Afghan Surge; Or, Getting Past the Hype Gen. David Petraeus, a straight shooter, admitted on Meet the Press Sunday that the Afghanistan War will take years and incur high casualties.. His implicit defense of President Obama from Dick Cheney on the issues of torture and closing Guantanamo will make bigger headlines, but sooner or later the American public will notice the admission. The country is now evenly divided between those who think the US can and should restore a modicum of stability before getting out, and those who want a quick withdrawal. The Marjah Campaign, the centerpiece of the new counter-insurgency strategy, is over a week old, and some assessment of this new, visible push by the US military in violent Helmand Province is in order.
There was never any doubt that the US and NATO would win militarily, fairly easily occupying Marjah and nearby Nad Ali. Marjah at 85,000 or so is a city smaller than Ann Arbor, Michigan. The campaign is only significant in a larger social and political context. The questions are:
1. Can the stategy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, of taking, clearing, holding and building be extended deep into the Pashtun regions? Marjah is only a stepping stone to the key southern city of Qandahar, which has a population of a million, more the size of Detroit.
This outcome has yet to be seen. But for rural Pashtuns to come to love foreign occupiers is an unlikely proposition. Even the WSJ admits that in Marjah, the Marines are not exactly feeling the love from the civilians they have supposedly just liberated. Since the Taliban are typically not as corrupt as the warlords, in fact, to any extent that the US and NATO re-install corrupt warlord types in power, they may alienate the locals. And keeping civilian casualties low so as to win hearts and minds is key here. That task will become more difficult as the US inserts itself more deeply into Pashtun territory, since insurgent villages will have to be defeated. The Soviet occupation produced 5 million externally displaced and 2 million internally displaced, along with hundreds of thousands dead. A campaign in Qandahar could easily displace half a million people, and they might mind. Meanwhile, on Monday, the governor of Dai Kundi asserted that a US airstrike killed 27 persons, mostly civilians. There is also the question, raised by Tom Englehardt, of whether the US is capable of good governance in Afghanistan when it is not in Washington, DC.
2. Can the demonstration of vitality and of a sense of progress mollify NATO publics long enough to fight a prolonged war and do intensive training of troops and police over several years?
No. Over the weekend, the center-right government of the Netherlands fell over whether to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war is universally unpopular in continental Europe, and governments have troops there mostly in the teeth of popular opposition, because NATO invoked article 5 of its charter, 'an attack on one is an attack on all' with regard to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks. It may take months after the next elections this spring for the Dutch to form a new government, in part because of the surging popularity of the far-right populist anti-Muslim 'Freedom Party' of Islamophobe Geert Wilders-- a smelly party the others will probably not want in their coalition. Holland's 2000 troops are likely to be withdrawn by late summer. Canada's military is also departing Afghanistan. Are these one-off situations, or are they the beginning of a NATO withdrawal over-all, which will leave Obama in the lurch? Australia is already refusing to take up the Dutch slack, and its government is under public pressure to get out, itself. While it is entirely possible that scandal-plagued rightwing billionaire Silvio Berlusconi will survive the next elections in Italy, it is also possible that he will not, and his successor may well want out of the unpopular Afghanistan quagmire. Moreover, the Pashtun insurgents may smell blood in the water with the Dutch withdrawal from Uruzgan (the home province of Mullah Omar), and target the smaller NATO contingents (the deaths of 6 Italian troops last fall raised public ire against the war).
There are about 45,000 NATO and other allied troops in Afghanistan, and 74,000 American. Obama wanted to increase the European contingent by 10,000, but NATO generally declined that offer, and now the NATO contingent may begin to shrink just when more trainers in particular are desperatedly needed. The Afghanistan National Army is supposedly nearly 100,000 strong, but many critics say the true number is half that, and that even that half is mostly illiterate, poorly trained, and often suffers from uncertain loyalties, drug use, or other debilitating considerations.
3. Can an Afghan army be stood up in short order that has the capacity to patrol independently and keep order after the US and NATO troops withdraw?
Unlikely. The answer to the question about Afghan military preparedness-- after nearly a decade of training and an investment of $1 billion that Afghan troops are not ready for prime time. In the Marjah campaign, they showed no initiative, no ability to fight independently. They are poorly served by their junior field officers, and they are 90% illiterate. (The NYT reporter expected to see them with maps out planning approaches!) The ethnic make-up of the particular Afghanistan National Army units sent into Marjah is also not clear. Almost no ANA troops hail from Helmand Province, and Tajiks (native speakers of Dari Persian, often from towns and cities) are vastly over-represented in the army. There is often bad blood between Tajiks and Pashtuns, the group that predominates in Marjah. The same skill set of the ANA most prized by the US Marines during the assault-- the ability to sniff out which households are Taliban-- may be a liability in the holding and building phase, since it stems from a decade and a half of Tajik Northern Alliance battles against the Taliban.
4. Can the Afghan public, which includes many groups (Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks) deeply harmed by Taliban rule, accept reconciliation, as well?
Unlikely. Former Northern Alliance leader popular among Tajiks, Abdullah Abdullah, warned Karzai against reconciling with the Taliban this weekend. Abdullah dropped out of last fall's presidential contest in protest against alleged ballot fraud in Karzai's favor. There is general hostility toward reconciliation with the Taliban among the parties representing northern, non-Pashtun ethnic groups.
5. Can so much pressure be put on the Taliban that at least their middle and lower ranks will accept reconciliation with the Karzai government? So far, there is no sign that the Taliban leadership still at large is interested in negotiations. A Taliban spokesman replied to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's call for reconciliation with Kabul over the weekend with a resounding 'No!'. Qari Muhammad Yusuf Ahmadi told the Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto that the Taliban would cease fighting when there were not further foreign troops in his country. He said, according to the translation in The News:
"The entire world knows that foreign forces have invaded Afghanistan and occupied this country. They have also started the fighting. Taliban will neither lay down weapons nor will hold talks with Karzai administration even in the presence of a single foreign soldier in Afghanistan. . ."
"The ongoing war in Afghanistan is between Afghans and foreigners. The responsibility of the war lies on the foreigners and their slaves. They continue fighting in the populated areas and have sent 15000 troops to small area like Marja; and are killing civilians and trying to impose infidels on Afghans."
"Karzai himself has no power. The foreigners control everything and the nation is fighting against them."
Commenting on the deaths of 12 civilians in Marjah, Qari Muhammad said: "Karzai should have said who martyred the people. In fact neither Taliban kill the people and nor destroy their houses. These are foreigners who are bombing the houses and killing civilians everywhere as they have brought miseries to the people of Marja."
On the other hand, those members of the Taliban shadow government now in Pakistani custody may be less categorical. A third Taliban commander, Maulvi Kabir (the shadow governor of Nangarhar Province) has been captured by the Pakistani military, allegedly based on information provided by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar, the military chief of staff for the Old Taliban of Mullah Omar, was picked up recently in Karachi in a joint operation of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and US intelligence, which picked up signals from Baradar. Serious inroads are being made by these arrests into the Taliban 'shadow government' of officials who plan out roadside bombings and other attacks in specific provinces of Afghanistan while hiding out in Pakistan.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Riza Yusuf Gilani, and the military chief of state, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, appear to believe that capturing these high Afghan Taliban leaders will give Islamabad leverage in a negotiated settlement of the contest between the Karzai government and the Pashtun religious far right, which is in insurgency. Obama's Afghanistan escalation among the sullen Pashtuns is a desperate policy, as dangerous as attempting to build a series of sand castles on the beach at high tide. Ironically, his bigger success has come in Pakistan, where he appears to have convinced the Pakistani elite to intervene decisively against their own, Pakistani Taliban, and also now to begin arresting the Old Taliban shadow government that is hiding out on Pakistani soil. If he can go further and convince Islamabad that its support of the Afghan Taliban was all a long a key strategic error that has blown back on Pakistan proper, he will thereby come closer to victory than he could by any military measures inside Afghanistan itself. End/ (Not Continued)
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Juan Cole update on US-led assault on Marja
Juan Cole reviews current reports on the US-led attacks on Marja, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The most significant fact here is that the Taliban may have vacated the area and thus avoided a major battle. If this turns out to be true, then the destruction, civilian casualties, and injuries and killing of combatants on both sides may have been minimized.
There are other questions. One of the most important is what happens now in Marja? Will the refugees be able to return to Marja without difficulty? There is a reference in the following report that Afghan police will "establish order." Will they have the motivation and resources to do this in a way that is beneficial to the local people? And, importantly, will there be some sort of meaningful reconstruction or development assistance? We'll see.
Bob
-----------------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Saturday, February 13, 2010
NATO/ ANA Assault on Marjah; Has the City already Fallen without a Shot?
AFP reports that the joint NATO/ Afghanistan National Army assault force of 15,000 on Friday moved toward the Helmand city of Marjah, at the center of the poppy growing heartland of Helmand Province. The city of some 80,000 has been surrounded for weeks.
On Friday the road east to the capital, Lashkar Gah, was crowded with Afghans fleeing Marjah, where some had been kept against their will by the Taliban or were too poor to be able to afford to leave.
The military forces are spearheaded by the US Marines and Afghanistan National Army troops, in the first major test of the latter, and a British contingent of over 1,000 is being sent in. Radio Azadi reports in Dari Persian that the helicopter gunships were sent in first.Pajwhok news agency reports that there were 'shaping' attacks on Friday: "In one clash, Marines fought off an ambush against one of their convoys with 50-caliber machine guns and grenade launchers. Reporters with the U.S. 5th Stryker Brigade heard a large explosion, which troops said was from a missile attack against a Taliban compound." These actions appeared to have produced no casualties on Friday, though on Thursday the Taliban had killed a British soldier with a roadside bomb.(Hundreds of miles to the east of Marjah, a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan police uniform wounded 5 US troops when he detonated his payload on Friday.)
But it may be that no Taliban stood and fought as the invasion took place. The USG Open Source center translated an item from the Afghan Islamic Press in Pasho early on Saturday, February 13, 2010 that reported,
' Foreign forces have reportedly captured Marja. Mohammad Salem Wardag, a former member of the Helmand provincial council, told Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) this morning, 13 February, that last night the foreign and domestic forces captured the Marja area (district). Wardag added:
"The local residents told me over the satellite phone that when we woke up this morning, we saw Americans walking in Marja, and they have captured the area." Wardag said no clashes had taken place in Marja and that the foreigners had captured the whole area. '
The Afghan government says it has 1900 police ready to go into Marjah and establish long-term order. But if these police prove corrupt, oppressive, or lazy (and many Afghan police are on the take and are regular drug users), then the area could easily fall back under Taliban rule.CBS News has video on preparations for the assault:AP emphasized the way in which the assembled NATO and ANA forces had surrounded Marjah
There are other questions. One of the most important is what happens now in Marja? Will the refugees be able to return to Marja without difficulty? There is a reference in the following report that Afghan police will "establish order." Will they have the motivation and resources to do this in a way that is beneficial to the local people? And, importantly, will there be some sort of meaningful reconstruction or development assistance? We'll see.
Bob
-----------------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Saturday, February 13, 2010
NATO/ ANA Assault on Marjah; Has the City already Fallen without a Shot?
AFP reports that the joint NATO/ Afghanistan National Army assault force of 15,000 on Friday moved toward the Helmand city of Marjah, at the center of the poppy growing heartland of Helmand Province. The city of some 80,000 has been surrounded for weeks.
On Friday the road east to the capital, Lashkar Gah, was crowded with Afghans fleeing Marjah, where some had been kept against their will by the Taliban or were too poor to be able to afford to leave.
The military forces are spearheaded by the US Marines and Afghanistan National Army troops, in the first major test of the latter, and a British contingent of over 1,000 is being sent in. Radio Azadi reports in Dari Persian that the helicopter gunships were sent in first.Pajwhok news agency reports that there were 'shaping' attacks on Friday: "In one clash, Marines fought off an ambush against one of their convoys with 50-caliber machine guns and grenade launchers. Reporters with the U.S. 5th Stryker Brigade heard a large explosion, which troops said was from a missile attack against a Taliban compound." These actions appeared to have produced no casualties on Friday, though on Thursday the Taliban had killed a British soldier with a roadside bomb.(Hundreds of miles to the east of Marjah, a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan police uniform wounded 5 US troops when he detonated his payload on Friday.)
But it may be that no Taliban stood and fought as the invasion took place. The USG Open Source center translated an item from the Afghan Islamic Press in Pasho early on Saturday, February 13, 2010 that reported,
' Foreign forces have reportedly captured Marja. Mohammad Salem Wardag, a former member of the Helmand provincial council, told Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) this morning, 13 February, that last night the foreign and domestic forces captured the Marja area (district). Wardag added:
"The local residents told me over the satellite phone that when we woke up this morning, we saw Americans walking in Marja, and they have captured the area." Wardag said no clashes had taken place in Marja and that the foreigners had captured the whole area. '
The Afghan government says it has 1900 police ready to go into Marjah and establish long-term order. But if these police prove corrupt, oppressive, or lazy (and many Afghan police are on the take and are regular drug users), then the area could easily fall back under Taliban rule.CBS News has video on preparations for the assault:AP emphasized the way in which the assembled NATO and ANA forces had surrounded Marjah
Monday, January 25, 2010
Afghan election postponed due to Washington concerns over election fraud
Juan Cole, along with a number of sources, reports that the Afghanistan parliamentary elections have been postponed for four months. Cole and others emphasize that pressure was brought on the Karzai government to postpone the election because of concerns in the administration to avoid another fraudulent election.
These reports help to confirm the view taken in other articles and comments on this blog, and by Malalai Joya, namely, that the Karzai government is riddled with corrupt officials, many of them warlords and/or narco-trafficker in control of districts or villages outside of Taliban-dominated areas.
Bob
---------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, January 25, 2010
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections - latimes.comThe LAT lays out the basic facts around the postponement of parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. The Afghan press stresses two factors aboveall:Afghanpaper.com writing in Dari Persian says it was told by concerned Afghan officials who declined to allow their names to be used that the four-month delay was almost entirely a result of pressure from the Obama administration and its Western allies, and was aimed at allowing UN election workers to allow for anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures to be taken so as to forestall a fiasco like the August presidential election, where substantial numbers of ballots were disqualified.
In addition, the electoral commission says it only has $70 mn. in the kitty to hold the parliamentary elections, which will cost $120. President Hamid Karzai is asking the international community for the other $50 mn., so presumably he had the Independent Electoral Commission make this announcement now so that he can go hat in hand to international donors at the Istanbul and London conferences. So the postponement is being positioned by Karzai and his people as a fundraising stunt (the political scientists would speak of the extraction of strategic rent). But Afghanpaper.com suggests that the money shortfall is only a cover story, and if we took that position seriously it would indicate that the Obama team just does not want another election fiasco in Afghanistan in the build-up to the 2010 midterms.
These reports help to confirm the view taken in other articles and comments on this blog, and by Malalai Joya, namely, that the Karzai government is riddled with corrupt officials, many of them warlords and/or narco-trafficker in control of districts or villages outside of Taliban-dominated areas.
Bob
---------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, January 25, 2010
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections
Afghanistan postpones parliamentary elections - latimes.comThe LAT lays out the basic facts around the postponement of parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. The Afghan press stresses two factors aboveall:Afghanpaper.com writing in Dari Persian says it was told by concerned Afghan officials who declined to allow their names to be used that the four-month delay was almost entirely a result of pressure from the Obama administration and its Western allies, and was aimed at allowing UN election workers to allow for anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures to be taken so as to forestall a fiasco like the August presidential election, where substantial numbers of ballots were disqualified.
In addition, the electoral commission says it only has $70 mn. in the kitty to hold the parliamentary elections, which will cost $120. President Hamid Karzai is asking the international community for the other $50 mn., so presumably he had the Independent Electoral Commission make this announcement now so that he can go hat in hand to international donors at the Istanbul and London conferences. So the postponement is being positioned by Karzai and his people as a fundraising stunt (the political scientists would speak of the extraction of strategic rent). But Afghanpaper.com suggests that the money shortfall is only a cover story, and if we took that position seriously it would indicate that the Obama team just does not want another election fiasco in Afghanistan in the build-up to the 2010 midterms.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Taliban attacks in Kabul
There are so many places that suicide bombers can strike in Afghanistan. Kabul is no exception, as the following report by Juan Cole indicates. While the US-led occupation (mostly US) gears up to intensify counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism efforts in Taliban-controlled parts of the country, especially in the southern and eastern regions, the Taliban bent on expanding their fundamentalist regime are still able to launch strikes even in the capitol city.
Counter-insurgency has as one of its elements the idea that the US-led occupation can win support of the Afghan people village-by-village with a combination of force, reconstruction projects, the pursuit of good relations with village elders, and cash. This is a daunting challenge, given there are 34,000 Afghan villages.
As reported in other articles on this blog, the occupation forces are light on knowledge of Afghan culture and social structures and limited in the time they are able to spend developing trustworthy relations. In the meantime, the occupation, directly or through armed drones, is still killing civilians and destroying the lands and homes of Afghans. And, very importantly, the legitimacy of the occupation is tainted by its close relations with warlords outside of Taliban-influenced or -dominated areas. These are warlords who are corrupt, connected to the drug trade, who control their own militias, and who have little interest in the well-being of their own people, especially girls and women. As Malalai Joya points out, the majority of Afghan people are caught up in a conflict in which there are no good choices, except the latent democratic spirit and resilience of many ordinary Afghans.
Out of the desperation of extreme poverty or fear, Afghans are frequently coming under the rule of the Taliban as they look for some semblance of order and wherewithal to surviv. In the meantime, the areas from which the Taliban can foster violence and its tyrannical governance is unabated and, according to reports on this blog, slowly grows. Suicide bombings are one reflection of grisly state of affairs.
Bob
------------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, January 18, 2010
Kabul gets the Baghdad Treatment from Taliban Bombers
The Taliban mounted their boldest and most ambitious assault on the capital of Kabul in recent years on Monday, with a series of well-coordinated bombings in the vicinity of the presidential palace and a platoon-sized expeditionary force wreaking havoc. The Afghan Voice Agency reports in Dari Persian that numerous bombs were set off near the presidential palace, shaking Kabul. The first was detonated at 9:45 am local time at the five-star Hotel Kabul Serena, 500 meters (yards) from the presidential palace, where many diplomats and journalists stay. The Serena was still on fire Monday night. As ambulances raced to the site to pick up the wounded, the attackers set off a second bomb at the Malik Asghar intersection in the capital. This blast was close to the central government ministries of foreign affairs, the economy, education, and Kabul municipality.
This tweet from Kabul says that there were lots of bombs going off.
Other news sources speak of machine gun fire echoing through Kabul all day, as streets were deserted.At the same time the bombs were being set off, a platoon of armed insurgents holding a five-story downtown Kabul City Center shopping mall began firing at nearby government buildings and banks. KabuL City Center Mall, courtesy Afghanistan Online and Maria Amiri.
The gunmen then engaged with Afghan National Army troops. Afghan government and NATO helicopters arrived to give air support against the attackers. Eyewitnesses report that the attackers killed and wounded dozens of people.Then the shopping center caught or was set on fire, and the fire brigrades raced toward it and toward the Hotel Serena. A second shopping center, Gulbahar, was also bombed or set ablaze, according to AFP.
The News (Pakistan) reports that by mid-afternoon Afghanistan officials were saying that the situation was under control. At least ten persons were left dead, including four suicide bombers. AFP reported 13 injured. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that 20 guerrillas, some armed with suicide belts, had come into the city to target the presidential palace and government edifices.
The terrorist tactic here, of targeting nice hotels, shopping districts and government buildings, seems to me to be modeled on what Sunni extremists did twice in 2009 (August and November) to Baghdad, though this Kabul operation was not nearly as sophisticated or destructive. The choice to use a guerrilla platoon, some with vest bombs, limited its scope, as compared to what could have been achieved with car bombs (but perhaps NATO is better at searching trunks than are the Baghdad authorities.)
The attack seems likely to have aimed at making Karzai look weak and not in control on the eve of his attendance at the upcoming London international conference on Afghanistan. It may also have been a reply to Karzai's appointment of about half the ministers on the way to forming a new government.
Counter-insurgency has as one of its elements the idea that the US-led occupation can win support of the Afghan people village-by-village with a combination of force, reconstruction projects, the pursuit of good relations with village elders, and cash. This is a daunting challenge, given there are 34,000 Afghan villages.
As reported in other articles on this blog, the occupation forces are light on knowledge of Afghan culture and social structures and limited in the time they are able to spend developing trustworthy relations. In the meantime, the occupation, directly or through armed drones, is still killing civilians and destroying the lands and homes of Afghans. And, very importantly, the legitimacy of the occupation is tainted by its close relations with warlords outside of Taliban-influenced or -dominated areas. These are warlords who are corrupt, connected to the drug trade, who control their own militias, and who have little interest in the well-being of their own people, especially girls and women. As Malalai Joya points out, the majority of Afghan people are caught up in a conflict in which there are no good choices, except the latent democratic spirit and resilience of many ordinary Afghans.
Out of the desperation of extreme poverty or fear, Afghans are frequently coming under the rule of the Taliban as they look for some semblance of order and wherewithal to surviv. In the meantime, the areas from which the Taliban can foster violence and its tyrannical governance is unabated and, according to reports on this blog, slowly grows. Suicide bombings are one reflection of grisly state of affairs.
Bob
------------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Monday, January 18, 2010
Kabul gets the Baghdad Treatment from Taliban Bombers
The Taliban mounted their boldest and most ambitious assault on the capital of Kabul in recent years on Monday, with a series of well-coordinated bombings in the vicinity of the presidential palace and a platoon-sized expeditionary force wreaking havoc. The Afghan Voice Agency reports in Dari Persian that numerous bombs were set off near the presidential palace, shaking Kabul. The first was detonated at 9:45 am local time at the five-star Hotel Kabul Serena, 500 meters (yards) from the presidential palace, where many diplomats and journalists stay. The Serena was still on fire Monday night. As ambulances raced to the site to pick up the wounded, the attackers set off a second bomb at the Malik Asghar intersection in the capital. This blast was close to the central government ministries of foreign affairs, the economy, education, and Kabul municipality.
This tweet from Kabul says that there were lots of bombs going off.
Other news sources speak of machine gun fire echoing through Kabul all day, as streets were deserted.At the same time the bombs were being set off, a platoon of armed insurgents holding a five-story downtown Kabul City Center shopping mall began firing at nearby government buildings and banks. KabuL City Center Mall, courtesy Afghanistan Online and Maria Amiri.
The gunmen then engaged with Afghan National Army troops. Afghan government and NATO helicopters arrived to give air support against the attackers. Eyewitnesses report that the attackers killed and wounded dozens of people.Then the shopping center caught or was set on fire, and the fire brigrades raced toward it and toward the Hotel Serena. A second shopping center, Gulbahar, was also bombed or set ablaze, according to AFP.
The News (Pakistan) reports that by mid-afternoon Afghanistan officials were saying that the situation was under control. At least ten persons were left dead, including four suicide bombers. AFP reported 13 injured. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that 20 guerrillas, some armed with suicide belts, had come into the city to target the presidential palace and government edifices.
The terrorist tactic here, of targeting nice hotels, shopping districts and government buildings, seems to me to be modeled on what Sunni extremists did twice in 2009 (August and November) to Baghdad, though this Kabul operation was not nearly as sophisticated or destructive. The choice to use a guerrilla platoon, some with vest bombs, limited its scope, as compared to what could have been achieved with car bombs (but perhaps NATO is better at searching trunks than are the Baghdad authorities.)
The attack seems likely to have aimed at making Karzai look weak and not in control on the eve of his attendance at the upcoming London international conference on Afghanistan. It may also have been a reply to Karzai's appointment of about half the ministers on the way to forming a new government.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Juan Cole says US should "tread lightly" in Afghanistan
The following article is a transcript of an interview with Juan Cole by reporters from the Detroit Metro Times. The URL for the piece is: http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.?id=14540
Juan Cole is a history professor at the University Michigan who specializes in the Middle East. He also has an award winning and very useful bl0g, Informed Comment, and posts up-to-date commentary seven days a week on it, along with links to other articles and occasionally guest essays. (See more on Cole in the article.)
In the interview with Metro Times, Cole offers his views on the current situation in Afghanistan, with a few statements late in the interview on Pakistan. Cole tends to view Afghanistan separately from Pakistan and requiring a different strategy than the US employed in Iraq. Hs is clearly opposed to sending more US troops to the country and would like to see a shift in the US efforts from military engagement and assault to localized reconstruction projects. He would be opposed to using private contractors and in support of maximizing the use of Afghanistan expertise and labor whenever feasible. Profit-making should not be the goal of any such reconstruction.
If you go to his blog today, Cole is impressed with the news that President Obama has decided that before sending additional troops to Afghanistan he must have a clear understanding of what the goal is and a time table. Contributors to this blog like the idea of a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, especially if it is relatively short.
Among Cole's points are these:
(1) We should never forget that Afghanistan is a tribal society, where localism is the principle orientation, and where there is pervasive distrust of any central government.
(2) At best, the US might be able to train an Afghan army and police force, but he suggests the odds are against this. [There are a number of posts on this blog that suggest that the success of any such training is already failing and not likely to succeed in the future.]
(3) There is room for some constructive interventions in the form of road building, encouraging markets to open, and other targeted projects that have an relatively immediate benefit to the people in various communities or of a particular ethnicity or tribal system. [This point also resonates with a number of the articles posted on the blog.]
(4) The Taliban are "just regional warlords" and does not represent a unified entity. And the Taliban are not likely to become a large, unified force, except perhaps in parts of provinces that are mostly of Pashtun ethnicity.
(5) Al Qaeda is not an important influence in Afghanistan.
(6) There is no credible central government.
Bob Sheak
_______________________________
Juan Cole is a history professor at the University Michigan who specializes in the Middle East. He also has an award winning and very useful bl0g, Informed Comment, and posts up-to-date commentary seven days a week on it, along with links to other articles and occasionally guest essays. (See more on Cole in the article.)
In the interview with Metro Times, Cole offers his views on the current situation in Afghanistan, with a few statements late in the interview on Pakistan. Cole tends to view Afghanistan separately from Pakistan and requiring a different strategy than the US employed in Iraq. Hs is clearly opposed to sending more US troops to the country and would like to see a shift in the US efforts from military engagement and assault to localized reconstruction projects. He would be opposed to using private contractors and in support of maximizing the use of Afghanistan expertise and labor whenever feasible. Profit-making should not be the goal of any such reconstruction.
If you go to his blog today, Cole is impressed with the news that President Obama has decided that before sending additional troops to Afghanistan he must have a clear understanding of what the goal is and a time table. Contributors to this blog like the idea of a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, especially if it is relatively short.
Among Cole's points are these:
(1) We should never forget that Afghanistan is a tribal society, where localism is the principle orientation, and where there is pervasive distrust of any central government.
(2) At best, the US might be able to train an Afghan army and police force, but he suggests the odds are against this. [There are a number of posts on this blog that suggest that the success of any such training is already failing and not likely to succeed in the future.]
(3) There is room for some constructive interventions in the form of road building, encouraging markets to open, and other targeted projects that have an relatively immediate benefit to the people in various communities or of a particular ethnicity or tribal system. [This point also resonates with a number of the articles posted on the blog.]
(4) The Taliban are "just regional warlords" and does not represent a unified entity. And the Taliban are not likely to become a large, unified force, except perhaps in parts of provinces that are mostly of Pashtun ethnicity.
(5) Al Qaeda is not an important influence in Afghanistan.
(6) There is no credible central government.
Bob Sheak
_______________________________
War Tread lightly Juan Cole argues against sending lots of troops to Afghanistan
By Curt Guyette and W. Kim Heron
A history professor at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole's notoriety as a scholar focusing on Islam was largely confined to academic circles until 2002, when he began writing his Informed Comment blog. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States, Cole's significant insights suddenly became important to a much wider audience. Having lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly a decade, with a command of Arabic and Persian, his ability to put current conflicts into a historical context made him a highly sought-after commentator. Along with frequent television and radio appearances, he writes a regular column for Salon.com. He's also the author of several books, including his most recent, Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan).
In advance of an upcoming Royal Oak appearance to discuss the Obama administration's Afghanistan and Pakistan policies, we caught up with the busy Cole last week by phone.
Metro Times: By most accounts, the debate in the White House right now isn't over whether to escalate or de-escalate the war in Afghanistan, but rather over how many more troops to send there. If you were talking to the president right now instead of us, what would you say to him?
Juan Cole: If you are going to accomplish anything in Afghanistan, you need a very light footprint.
MT: What would that footprint look like?
Cole: Let's back up and talk about what the goal is in Afghanistan. Your strategy and your tactics are going to come out of your goal. I'm a little bit afraid that, in regard to the goal, you see a lot of mission creep. The goal has become standing up an Afghan government and an Afghan military that's relatively stable and can control the country. There's a lot of state-building involved in that.
I am a severe skeptic on this score. I don't think that's a proper goal for the U.S. military. I think we are dealing with a tribal society of people who, as a matter of course, are organized by clan and have feuds with each other, and feuds with other tribes, and feuds with their cousins. I think that Washington misinterprets this feuding as Talibanism, and thinks that if you put a lot of troops in there, you can pacify the country and settle it down.
I just think it is a misreading of the character of the country. Afghanistan is a country where localism is important, where people don't like the central government coming in and bothering them. There's a sense in which the communist government of the 1980s, backed by the Soviet Union, wanted to drag Afghanistan kicking and screaming into the late 20th century, and to do that you had to impose central government policy on the countryside and on the villagers. And the villagers rose up and kicked the Soviets and the communists out. They were outraged, in part, against the centralizing tendency of Kabul.
So, I just think that Afghanistan is a country that needs a light touch. You just have to accept that there's going to be a certain amount of disorder in the countryside as long as people are organized tribally. And if you put 100,000 or 150,000 Western troops in there, that's just more people to feud with.
MT: Given all that, what do you think success in Afghanistan would entail?
Cole: If you are asking what I think is a plausible goal, I'd say it is training an Afghan army and police force as best you can. But you are just going to have to accept that it's going to be a weak government. You can shore it up to some extent, but you need to shore it up behind the scenes. It can't be seen to be a puppet government, because that will undermine its legitimacy.
A government that can provide more services to people is good. Road building is good. Encouraging the markets to open is good. But as far as fighting what the U.S. is calling Taliban, they are really just regional warlords. They might have a tactical alliance with the old Taliban of Mullah Omar, but it's a mistake to sweep them all up into a single category.
MT: Do you think there is a possibility that the Taliban that was in power before the U.S. sent in troops could return to a position of power that they held before?
Cole: It is unlikely the Taliban will come back in that way.
First of all, the opinion polls show that only 5 percent of Afghans think well of Taliban. Five percent is a pretty low approval rating. Of course, Taliban are mainly from the Pashtun ethnic group, which is about 42 percent of the country, so there might be a few districts that would be under Taliban rule if people have their say. But the country's other ethnic groups don't support the Taliban. So I don't anticipate them coming back.
And, even when they were in power, it was fairly easy to dislodge them. All the U.S. had to do in 2001 was to give close air support to the enemies of the Taliban. What I don't understand is why that's not a standing option. This may be part of what Vice President Joe Biden is saying, that it is always the case that if things get out of hand we just give close air support to the enemies of the Taliban and push them back.
MT: One version of events of 9/11 is that it was part of bin Laden's strategy to lure us into Afghanistan and bleed us the way the Soviets were bled ...
Cole: Bin Laden said this explicitly in 1996.
MT: So why do you think we fell for the trap?
Cole: It's just so tempting for a great power to have an area to go into. Central Asia is rich in resources — natural gas, and Kazakhstan has petroleum and gold — and there was this opportunity to assert U.S. interests in Central Asia and push Russia back. There are all kinds of reasons for which bin Laden was making us a very attractive offer. He was offering us a very large, delicious piece of cheese. Of course, it turns out that there was a very large mousetrap attached to the cheese.
MT: What about the terrorism component of this — the fear the Taliban will shield al-Qaeda and provide a safe haven that will give them a staging area to plan another attack on the United States?
Cole: First of all, that premise is flawed. There is virtually no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. As we speak, something on the order of 10 to 15 percent of Afghanistan is more or less controlled by Taliban. And yet, there is virtually no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So if the idea that Taliban equals safe harbor for al-Qaeda isn't true in the present, why would it be true in the future?
In fact, why is it we don't think the Taliban can learn? They're pretty smart people. They took on the Soviets and defeated them. Surely they're dismayed at what happened to them after al-Qaeda attacked the United States. I imagine a lot of them would slit al-Qaeda's throats if they came anywhere near, out of anger at them for ruining the good deal the Taliban had in Afghanistan.
MT: Al-Qaeda is a presence in Pakistan, though. How do we pursue them there?
Cole: Al-Qaeda is a presence in some parts of the Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, not in Pakistan proper. There are 15 federally administrated tribal areas. They are extremely craggy countryside. Very, very difficult to penetrate.
And how many al-Qaeda operatives do you think are in the tribal areas of Pakistan? Five hundred? A thousand? What I can't understand is the argument that we need 100,000 troops in neighboring Afghanistan because there is a small number of Arab radicals hiding out in the hills of Waziristan. What can they do from there exactly? I can't imagine that they have high-speed Internet. They're just hiding out. Obviously, the way to deal with them is to have the Pakistani government deal with them.
MT: We're increasingly seeing references to the AfPak conflict. Is there a way that conflating issues involving Afghanistan and Pakistan hinders understanding that those two countries are so dissimilar?
Cole: It's crazy to put Afghanistan and Pakistan into the same basket. Pakistan is a real country. It has a big civil service, and it has a big army, and it has a long tradition of central government rule. To conflate it with Afghanistan, which is just a very rural, tribal, undeveloped place, is crazy.
MT: What do you think about the policy that began under Bush and apparently increased under Obama to use unmanned drone aircraft to take out suspected terrorists remotely in Pakistan? Do you think that is working, or is that simply creating more enemies because innocent civilians are also getting killed in those operations?
Cole: I think it is a very bad policy. First of all, it is illegal under international law. It is a kind of summary execution. Second of all, it angers the Pakistani public, and we want the Pakistani public on our side. It detracts from the legitimacy of the Pakistani government. The Pakistani government denounces us for doing it in public, but we know behind the scenes that they are fully cooperative with this program. In some ways it is laziness; those drone strikes are substituting for the Pakistani government actually asserting itself in Pakistani villages. It would be much better if the Pakistani constabulary and security forces could actually assert the prerogative of the Pakistani state in those areas. But we're bombing them from the air. It is alleged that the U.S. drone strikes kill far more civilians than terrorists. It's not the case that they've killed no terrorists. Some known bad guys have been struck in this way, but the price is too high.
MT: The war on terror is also one in which there is really no end point. Isn't that one of the problems here?
Cole: The Obama administration, to its credit, has abandoned the terminology of a war on terror. They are calling it an overseas contingency operation, which sounds very temporary indeed. So, the rhetoric of a long war is gone, but the policy of using this sledgehammer of the Pentagon to deal with the mosquitoes of al-Qaeda is still in place, and that's what needs to change.
MT: While Obama has been weighing the decision about what to do in Afghanistan, and where to go from here, former Vice President Dick Cheney has accused him of dithering. Do you think that is a fair criticism, that Obama is coming off as being Hamlet-like and afraid to take action?
Cole: Given that Cheney rushed us into at least two wars and seemed eager for more, with hardly any debate, I just wish we'd had more deliberation and planning in the past when he was in power. No, I think the criticism is a complete crock. It's just an attempt to play politics.
Look, when Obama came into office, the Afghan presidential elections were scheduled for Aug. 20. How is Obama going to make policy about Afghanistan without knowing who the president is going to be as of Aug. 21? In fact, in Afghanistan, politics is very personalistic, so it is important to know who your partner is going to be. I think Obama came in hoping [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai might be defeated; he thought that Karzai is part of the problem, and then Karzai tried to steal the election, and we've had a lot of ups and downs since then. It now appears that Karzai will remain in power. But whether you do counterinsurgency or counterterrorism as policy will depend very much on whether you have a reliable Afghan government to fight with. And the Obama administration clearly doesn't believe that Karzai is such a credible partner. So, I don't see how he could have made policy with this political backdrop. It would have been very dangerous. Now, the situation has been clarified. It's not a good situation, and Obama will be in a position to come to a considered, mature opinion.
MT: As we're talking, Abdullah has pulled out of the presidential race and the Afghanistan runoff has been canceled; Karzai is talking about cleaning up corruption and reaching out to the Taliban. Do you think either of those things is likely to happen?
Cole: I think reaching out to the Taliban has already been happening. Saudi Arabia has hosted meetings between Karzai's representatives and major opposition forces. There are some groups that are being called Taliban that are not; they are simply religious Pashtun nationalists who have a beef with Karzai. They can be cajoled; they can be offered positions; they can be offered services from the central government. So they might be brought in from the cold.
And, to his credit, that is one thing Karzai has been trying to do — to negotiate with his opposition. However, when you talk about cleaning up corruption, even if Karzai wanted to do it, he wouldn't be able to. Afghanistan is the fifth poorest country in the world, with a culture of corruption that pervades the government. It's just a way of life over there. If somebody does a favor for you, even if they are in government service, they expect a tip. For us to imagine that it is gong to be different anytime soon would be foolish.
MT: There is a widespread impression among a lot of people that the troop surge worked in Iraq and that same type of effort could be transferred to Afghanistan. Could you talk about that?
Cole: That would be a book, all of the reasons for which the two are not the same. Iraq is a relatively advanced country. It's probably 60 or so percent literate; it has an industrial infrastructure. And it is possible to have a government that functions in Iraq. In Afghanistan — and people don't understand this, but — 90 percent of the new Afghan army is illiterate. So you send these guys into Kandahar to an address and they wouldn't even be able to read the street signs. So, you just can't analogize from one to the other. It's just crazy to try. They are not the same kinds of societies.
Also, I don't think the surge is what mainly turned things around in Iraq. The Shiites won the civil war in Iraq. Nobody is winning civil wars in Afghanistan. In fact, in Iraq, we were betting on the 60 percent majority Shiites. In Afghanistan, we're betting on the minority against the Pashtun plurality. So the demographics are not working for us in Afghanistan.
So, a) I don't think the surge is mainly what turned things around and b) it's just not the same situation. So, if they are making policy in Afghanistan by analogies from Iraq, that is very dangerous.
MT: Speaking of Iraq, Obama has been committed to removing all U.S. troops from there by the end of 2011 under the Status of Forces agreement. Do you still see us on track to do that?
Cole: Obama is ahead of schedule on the Iraq withdrawal. In fact, it's clear to me he's won that argument in Washington and with the Pentagon. When he first came in, Petraeus and the other big generals were on his case and were trying to reverse his commitment to get out of Iraq, and they failed. And now, they appear to have become convinced that he was right.
Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog is at juancole.com.
Curt Guyette and W. Kim Heron are news editor and editor of Metro Times. Send comments to cguyette@metrotimes.com.
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