In my last post, February 6, 2011, I commented on and referred to articles that document how tens of billions of dollars in US and UK development funds have been squandered or just vanished in a maze of official and unofficial corruption in Afghanistan. The corruption doesn’t stop with the misuse of “development” funds. Indeed, Afghanistan is rated by Transparency International in their “Corruption Perceptions Index 2010” as the second most corrupt country in a list of 178 countries. Afghanistan is tied with Myanmar for second, just ahead of Somalia, viewed as the most corrupt, and just below Iraq the fourth most corrupt country.
When corruption is widespread and explicitly or implicitly sanctioned by powerful governing groups in a society, it follows that there is little true “democracy.” Corruption requires secrecy among networks of beneficiaries who nefariously steal or divert the people’s taxes, foreign aid, and some of the profits from foreign investment into their own pockets or the pockets of their cronies instead of into programs that are publicly beneficial. Corruption may also involve bureaucrats and police who compel people to pay bribes for services that in law or by convention are considered rights. It may involve kickbacks from foreign or domestic companies to government officials that want government contracts. It may involve the income and profits that come from the production and distribution of illegal drugs, which is particularly true of Afghanistan. Corruption in it various manifestations is inherently anti-democratic, self-serving, favors inequality, works against sustainable development, and requires secrecy and authoritarian and/or plutocratic government to thrive.
Consider some examples of the evidence.
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A year ago, Daniel Schulman examined a UN study on drugs and bribery in Afghanistan in an article for the Mother Jones magazine. His article refers to the massive costs of bribes, kickbacks, and the opium trade. [See full citation after quotes.]
“Earlier this month [Jan 2011], Afghan President Hamid Karzai [1] fought back against allegations of pervasive graft [2] within his government, telling [3] Al Jazeera that ‘the Western media has blown corruption totally out of all proportion in Afghanistan.’
“Perhaps Karzai should have a conversation with Antonio Maria Costa, the United Nations' drug and crime czar. His office released a report [4]on Tuesday concluding that in the past year Afghans paid out $2.5 billion in bribes and kickbacks—the equivalent of 23 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The income generated by corruption is exceeded only by the booming opium trade [5], which brings in an estimated $2.8 billion annually. ‘In other words, this is shocking, drugs and bribes are the two largest income generators in Afghanistan,’ writes Costa, who heads the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in the preface of the study.
The report, based on interviews with 7,600 Afghans, is yet another indicator that any US policy on Afghanistan that is predicated on cooperation with the government is threatened by endemic graft. As it stands, writes Costa, ‘It is almost impossible to obtain a public service in Afghanistan without greasing a palm: bribing authorities is a way of life.’
“The average payoff, according to UNODC, was $159—a modest sum in Western terms, but a massive expenditure in a country with a per-capita income of $425. This, Costa says, amounts to a ‘crippling tax on people who are already among the world's poorest.’ And he notes that the massive influx of aid funding coupled with soaring drug revenues ‘have created a new cast [sic] of rich and powerful individuals who operate outside the traditional power/tribal structures and bid the cost of favours and loyalty to levels not compatible with the under-developed nature of the country.’
“According to the study, 59 percent of Afghans identified corruption as their biggest concern—more worrisome even than the deteriorating security situation and widespread unemployment.
[….]
“….Presently, says Costa, members of the Afghan government are not doing their part to fight graft. That's not entirely surprising, since Afghan officials—on both the local and national level—appear to be the ones profiting most handsomely from bribes and kickbacks.”
Source: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/corruption-afghanistan-its-even-worse-you-think#
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Since last summer, there have been spates of articles focused on an particularly egregious example of corruption, namely, the people who stole from billions from Da Kabul Bank, the state bank, and caused it to collapse.
CORRUPTION AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY AND THE GOVERNMENT MEAN THAT OUR SOLDIERS ARE DYING FOR A LOST CAUSE
On his blog Informed Comment (Sept, 3, 2010), the title of Juan Cole’s article reflects the thrust of his analysis - “Collapse of Kabul Banks Points to Fatal Corruption of Karzai Government.” I quote from the article.
“I [Juan Cole] 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 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.
[….]
“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.
[….]
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.
[….]
“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
[….]
http://www.juancole.com/2010/09/collapse-of-kabul-bank-points-to-terminal-corruption-of-karzai-government.html
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STEAL WHAT YOU CAN BECAUSE THE COUNTRY DOES NOT HAVE A FUTURE
Julius Cavendish provides an updated report (Feb 2, 2011) on the bank failure in an article for The Independent titled “Afghan elite 'plundered $900m' from leading bank.”
“A coterie of well-connected Afghan businessmen and politicians may have plundered as much as $900m from the country's biggest commercial bank, three times the amount of earlier estimates, and the equivalent of about 7 per cent of Afghanistan's total gross domestic product.
“Kabul Bank's funds were treated like personal accounts, it is claimed by several well-known members of Afghan society. Mahmoud Karzai, a brother of the Afghan President and prominent shareholder in Kabul Bank, told The New York Times that the bank's former chairman lent himself about $98m (£62m) to buy one of Afghanistan's airlines, and then used deposits to subsidise the carrier in an attempt to drive rivals out of business. Yet so difficult has the hunt for the missing millions become that the very same man, Sherkhan Farnood, had been brought in to help trace the missing cash.
“Officials say the value of questionable outstanding loans written by the bank is far greater than originally thought – and auditors pouring over the lender's books think up to $800m is potentially unrecoverable.
“The crisis is so severe – with fears that a run on the embattled Kabul Bank could lead to its collapse – that Afghanistan's central bank chief, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, was forced yesterday to deny reports that the embattled lender was close to failure.
[….]
“The case is acutely embarrassing both for President Hamid Karzai, whose tenure has seen Afghanistan turn into a mafia state, and the Obama administration, which has adopted a policy of ignoring institutionalised corruption after several bitter diplomatic spats with Mr Karzai got it nowhere.
“In an account of goings-on at Kabul Bank that is devastating in its detail, the New Yorker magazine records how ‘Kabul Bank's largesse included members of parliament and almost anyone whose silence would allow bank executives to embark on a spree of buying, lending and looting.
"In addition, some former and current Afghan officials say, Kabul Bank became an unofficial arm of the Karzai government, bribing parliamentarians in order to secure votes for its legislative agenda,’ it reports.
"Dozens of Afghan leaders and businessmen... collectively, accepted tens of millions of dollars in gifts and bribes – some sources say as much as a hundred million dollars – from executives at Kabul Bank."
[….]
“American investigators say many of Mr Karzai's closest advisers, some with regulatory responsibilities over the Afghan financial system, are implicated in the scandal.
[….]
“It's a meticulous account of the workings of kleptocracy, but from a Western perspective perhaps the most terrifying part of the tale is the motive. The businessmen, politicians and officials – the cream of Afghan society – are milking Afghanistan for all they can. Why? Because they don't believe their country has a future.”
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghan-elite-plundered-900m-from-leading-bank-2200176.html#
---------------
Another source: Dexter Filkins, “The Afghan Bank Heist,” The New Yorker, Feb 14, 2011 – http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_filkins?currentPage=all
Showing posts with label Karzai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karzai. Show all posts
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Two levels in understanding US Afghanistan War
Two levels for understanding US Afghanistan War
Post for stopafghanwar
There are two levels for understanding the US-led and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.
One level deals with news and analysis about current developments and debates about US troop casualties, whether troop levels are sufficient, whether US forces are making military progress (or is there light at the end of the tunnel), whether the Afghan elections are honest (or just how dishonest), whether the Karzai government is totally corrupt or only partially so, whether the special forces and unmanned drones and other destructive tactics are counterproductive with the goals of counterinsurgency, whether and to what extent the “Taliban” is gaining the support of the Afghan people, whether or how much private contractors are exploiting US taxpayer funds, whether the US military is forced to pay lucrative bribes to Taliban forces and certain tribal groups just to allow military supplies to get to their destinations, how long the US-led occupation will last, whether there will be a need for additional “surges,” and so forth, like, what’s with the training efforts of Afghan police and army and what is Pakistan up to. US think tanks and policy advisers are constantly offering ideas on how to deal with one or more of these problems.
Here is an example of analysis at this level. Juan Cole, the expert commentator on the Afghanistan situation – and much more – provides the following post on Dec 3, 2010, from his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. The title: “The Karzai Problem in Afghanistan: Wikileaks”
“The bodies of the six US troops — killed Monday by a newly recruited Afghan border guard who turned Taliban — arrived back in the United States late Wednesday. That 6 US soldiers were killed in one day was generally not news on the so-called news networks, though of course the major print media reported it.
“The troubling question is what they died fighting for. My own hypothesis is that the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai.
“But Karzai is himself extremely problematic. According to cables released by Wikileaks, and summarized by the Guardian, Karzai is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories, believes that the US is animated by sinister motives such as breaking up Pakistan and undermining Afghanistan, and is erratic and corrupt. He blithely just released 5 notorious drug runners captured by the US and turned over to him. He accused the US of funding the presidential campaign of his rival, Abdallah Abdallah, in the fall of 2009.
“Gen. David Petraeus is quoted as admitting that Karzai is “weak” but saying it is better to leave him there.
“But the problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly.
“And here is the moral question: Is it right to ask US warriors to fight and die to prop up the administration of Hamid Karzai?
“And, how likely is it that Afghanistan National Army officers and troops are going to risk their lives for someone who is paranoid, erratic and corrupt?
“In short, the whole strategy of the US, of rapidly training Afghan security forces who could establish order in the country, assumes that the Afghanistan National Army and the police will be loyal to Karzai. But how likely is that?
“PS Wikileaks was down Thursday evening but went live with a new dns early Friday morning. The 600 or so State Department cables so far releasedcan be searched here.”
There is nothing wrong with this first level of analysis. As in Cole’s many posts, they are absolutely necessary to help us keep abreast of events in this war-torn and devastated country. Another level of analysis, which Cole well understands and writes about in some other posts, articles, and a book, deals with more fundamental strategic and political-economic forces. David Williams and Phyllis Bennis provide an example of this perspective in their book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, which is an outstanding reference book for learning about a host of important questions and answers on Afghanistan. They write as follows.
“While Afghanistan has only relatively small reserves of strategic resources, it is located smack in the middle of the oil- and gas-rich Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region. Land-locked Afghanistan has a millennial history as part of the trade and cultural exchange of the Silk Road, and in the modern world remains a strategic transit point for its resource-rich neighbors to get oil and gas to far-off markets. The US relationship with Afghanistan both pre- and post-9/11…has been grounded in the potential for these oil and natural gas pipelines.
“Afghanistan’s neighbors are also almost all of strategic interest to the US. US tensions with Pakistan and Iran dominate the southern east-to-west arc of Afghanistan’s frontier. Dependence on airbases, access to natural gas and oil, and especially competition – resource-driven and otherwise – with an ascendant Russia…shape US relations with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on Afghanistan’s northern borders” (pp. 44-47).
Additionally, one should bear in mind that both Pakistan and India have major interests in how Afghanistan is governed, there are great tensions between them (e.g., Kashmir), and they both have nuclear weapons, along with the capacity to deliver them on each other’s territory. Also recall that the US has played a significant role in the development of their nuclear capacities. The reasons go on. US leaders also want to do everything they can to persuade India not to develop relations with China that may further undermine US hegemonic aspirations in Asia. It’s all bewildering, but real.
So what’s the point of all this. We shouldn’t get entirely lost in the rapid-fire and changing events that are covered by the media and delivered in policy-statements by the White House. And we should never forget that all wars are based on lies, the manipulation of public opinion, destruction and huge numbers of civilian deaths and casualties in the affected countries, our own troop casualities, the waste of US resources, the weakening of diplomatic and other peace-oriented approaches to conflict, the strengthening of conservative and reactionary forces in the US itself, justifications for yet more military spending and a distortion of budget priorities, etc. It all adds up to a no-win, no-win, even worst, unfolding and tragic process.
For a provocative and useful defense of the claim that “War is a Lie,” read the book by that title, authored by David Swanson.
Post for stopafghanwar
There are two levels for understanding the US-led and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.
One level deals with news and analysis about current developments and debates about US troop casualties, whether troop levels are sufficient, whether US forces are making military progress (or is there light at the end of the tunnel), whether the Afghan elections are honest (or just how dishonest), whether the Karzai government is totally corrupt or only partially so, whether the special forces and unmanned drones and other destructive tactics are counterproductive with the goals of counterinsurgency, whether and to what extent the “Taliban” is gaining the support of the Afghan people, whether or how much private contractors are exploiting US taxpayer funds, whether the US military is forced to pay lucrative bribes to Taliban forces and certain tribal groups just to allow military supplies to get to their destinations, how long the US-led occupation will last, whether there will be a need for additional “surges,” and so forth, like, what’s with the training efforts of Afghan police and army and what is Pakistan up to. US think tanks and policy advisers are constantly offering ideas on how to deal with one or more of these problems.
Here is an example of analysis at this level. Juan Cole, the expert commentator on the Afghanistan situation – and much more – provides the following post on Dec 3, 2010, from his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. The title: “The Karzai Problem in Afghanistan: Wikileaks”
“The bodies of the six US troops — killed Monday by a newly recruited Afghan border guard who turned Taliban — arrived back in the United States late Wednesday. That 6 US soldiers were killed in one day was generally not news on the so-called news networks, though of course the major print media reported it.
“The troubling question is what they died fighting for. My own hypothesis is that the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai.
“But Karzai is himself extremely problematic. According to cables released by Wikileaks, and summarized by the Guardian, Karzai is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories, believes that the US is animated by sinister motives such as breaking up Pakistan and undermining Afghanistan, and is erratic and corrupt. He blithely just released 5 notorious drug runners captured by the US and turned over to him. He accused the US of funding the presidential campaign of his rival, Abdallah Abdallah, in the fall of 2009.
“Gen. David Petraeus is quoted as admitting that Karzai is “weak” but saying it is better to leave him there.
“But the problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly.
“And here is the moral question: Is it right to ask US warriors to fight and die to prop up the administration of Hamid Karzai?
“And, how likely is it that Afghanistan National Army officers and troops are going to risk their lives for someone who is paranoid, erratic and corrupt?
“In short, the whole strategy of the US, of rapidly training Afghan security forces who could establish order in the country, assumes that the Afghanistan National Army and the police will be loyal to Karzai. But how likely is that?
“PS Wikileaks was down Thursday evening but went live with a new dns early Friday morning. The 600 or so State Department cables so far releasedcan be searched here.”
There is nothing wrong with this first level of analysis. As in Cole’s many posts, they are absolutely necessary to help us keep abreast of events in this war-torn and devastated country. Another level of analysis, which Cole well understands and writes about in some other posts, articles, and a book, deals with more fundamental strategic and political-economic forces. David Williams and Phyllis Bennis provide an example of this perspective in their book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, which is an outstanding reference book for learning about a host of important questions and answers on Afghanistan. They write as follows.
“While Afghanistan has only relatively small reserves of strategic resources, it is located smack in the middle of the oil- and gas-rich Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region. Land-locked Afghanistan has a millennial history as part of the trade and cultural exchange of the Silk Road, and in the modern world remains a strategic transit point for its resource-rich neighbors to get oil and gas to far-off markets. The US relationship with Afghanistan both pre- and post-9/11…has been grounded in the potential for these oil and natural gas pipelines.
“Afghanistan’s neighbors are also almost all of strategic interest to the US. US tensions with Pakistan and Iran dominate the southern east-to-west arc of Afghanistan’s frontier. Dependence on airbases, access to natural gas and oil, and especially competition – resource-driven and otherwise – with an ascendant Russia…shape US relations with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on Afghanistan’s northern borders” (pp. 44-47).
Additionally, one should bear in mind that both Pakistan and India have major interests in how Afghanistan is governed, there are great tensions between them (e.g., Kashmir), and they both have nuclear weapons, along with the capacity to deliver them on each other’s territory. Also recall that the US has played a significant role in the development of their nuclear capacities. The reasons go on. US leaders also want to do everything they can to persuade India not to develop relations with China that may further undermine US hegemonic aspirations in Asia. It’s all bewildering, but real.
So what’s the point of all this. We shouldn’t get entirely lost in the rapid-fire and changing events that are covered by the media and delivered in policy-statements by the White House. And we should never forget that all wars are based on lies, the manipulation of public opinion, destruction and huge numbers of civilian deaths and casualties in the affected countries, our own troop casualities, the waste of US resources, the weakening of diplomatic and other peace-oriented approaches to conflict, the strengthening of conservative and reactionary forces in the US itself, justifications for yet more military spending and a distortion of budget priorities, etc. It all adds up to a no-win, no-win, even worst, unfolding and tragic process.
For a provocative and useful defense of the claim that “War is a Lie,” read the book by that title, authored by David Swanson.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Afghanistan: Endless war, poor intelligence, and astronomical costs
Withdrawal date extended, training of Afghan troops goes badly, US intelligence on Taliban is very poor, and there is little to show, outside of death, destruction, and corruption, for the tens of billions the US spends on the Afghanistan War.
The last few months of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan has done little to reverse the growing opposition among ordinary Americans to this costly and misbegotten intervention that appears to lurch from one strategy to another with little progress to show for it. Despite all this, the consensus among policy-makers in US government and military higher circles is that the occupation will continue until at least the end of 2014. Further, Gen. Petraeus and others have specified that 2014 is not a firm date for troop withdrawal. Whether there is any troop withdrawal depends on conditions on the ground.
There is another implication of this unfolding policy. While the US now has 100,000 or so combat troops in Afghanistan, along with special forces, an escalating air war, and more than 200,000 “trained” Afghan soldiers and police, news reports agree that the Taliban and various other insurgent groups are increasing their control or influence across the country, not only in southern provinces.
----------
Jason Ditz reports that the US occupation is now as long as the Soviet occupation, each lasting 9 years and fifty days, though the US occupation will continue years beyond Nov 25, 2010. Ditz notes that the US generals lack an exit strategy.
Source: Jason Ditz, “NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan as long as Soviet one,” Nov 25, 2010.
----------
Tom Engelhardt confirms Ditz’s reading of the situation and writes that US troops are not leaving any time soon, that is, “If you take the word of the Afghan war commanders, the secretary of defense, and top officials of the Obama administration and NATO.”
These high officials now agree that the withdrawal date of US troops from Afghanistan will be at the end of 2014, though General Petraeus waffles on this seeming consensus. Engelhardt refers to statements by Patraeus in which “he insisted that 2014 was nothing more than ‘an inflection point’ in an ever more-drawn out drawdown process.” Indeed, Petraeus insists that the US occupation “would likely extend to 2015 and beyond, which, Engelhardt says now puts “2016 officially in play.”
In the meantime – right now – US air attacks have increased. According to Engelhardt, “In Oct [2010], US planes launched missiles or bombs on 1,000 separate Afghan missions, numbers seldom seen since the 2001 invasion….Civilian deaths are rising rapidly….Special Operations’ night raids on Afghan homes by ‘capture/kill teams have tripled with 1,572 such operations over the last three months….”
The escalated military actions indicate that force now overshadows any attempts to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans. As a consequence, Engelhardt concludes: “Afghans will once again pay with lives and treasure in a war that couldn’t be more bizarre, a war with no end in sight.”
Source: Tom Engelhardt, “How to Schedule a War: The Incredible Shrinking Withdrawal Date, “ Tomdispatch, Nov 24, 2010.
----------
There is another serious problem with the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, that is, US intelligence of the Taliban and other insurgent groups is extremely poor. Gareth Porter discusses a recent example to illustrate this point. Porter writes that in the last few months General Petraeus has repeatedly remarked that the Taliban leadership has shown a willingness to talk peace with Karzai. Patreus has suggested that this is a sign that his strategy, whatever it is, happens to be effective. But the central, or only, Afghan person in this supposed unfolding negotiation did not represent any Taliban group. “…Petraeus even deceiving himself as well as the news media in accepting the man claiming to be the second-ranked Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as genuine, despite a number of indications to the contrary.”
Then “on September 29, a Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Majahid said that Petraeus claims that the Taliban were negotiating with the Afghan government was completely baseless, and that the Taliban would not negotiate with ‘foreign invaders or their puppet government.’” Back to where we started.
Source: Gareth Porter, “Why Gen. Petraeus was Snookered by the ‘Taliban’ Imposter,” Counter Punch, Nov 25, 2010.
----------
The problems facing the US-led occupation of Afghanistan are not related to insufficient funding. According to Juan Cole’s review of the evidence, “the war is costing on the order of $7 billion a month, a sum that is still being borrowed and adding nearly a $100 billion a year to the already burgeoning national debt.”
Cole adds: “Although the US and NATO have spend $27 billion on training Afghan troops, only 12 percent of them can operate independently.” There is more from Cole. He writes “Karzai and his circle are extremely corrupt, taking millions in cash payments from Iran and looting a major bank for unsecured loans, allowing the purchase of opulent villas in fashionable Dubai.”
Source: Juan Cole, “Afghanistan: Obscenely Well-Funded, But Largely Unsuccessful War Rages Out of Sight of the American Public,” Informed Comment, Nov 19, 2010.
The last few months of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan has done little to reverse the growing opposition among ordinary Americans to this costly and misbegotten intervention that appears to lurch from one strategy to another with little progress to show for it. Despite all this, the consensus among policy-makers in US government and military higher circles is that the occupation will continue until at least the end of 2014. Further, Gen. Petraeus and others have specified that 2014 is not a firm date for troop withdrawal. Whether there is any troop withdrawal depends on conditions on the ground.
There is another implication of this unfolding policy. While the US now has 100,000 or so combat troops in Afghanistan, along with special forces, an escalating air war, and more than 200,000 “trained” Afghan soldiers and police, news reports agree that the Taliban and various other insurgent groups are increasing their control or influence across the country, not only in southern provinces.
----------
Jason Ditz reports that the US occupation is now as long as the Soviet occupation, each lasting 9 years and fifty days, though the US occupation will continue years beyond Nov 25, 2010. Ditz notes that the US generals lack an exit strategy.
Source: Jason Ditz, “NATO’s occupation of Afghanistan as long as Soviet one,” Nov 25, 2010.
----------
Tom Engelhardt confirms Ditz’s reading of the situation and writes that US troops are not leaving any time soon, that is, “If you take the word of the Afghan war commanders, the secretary of defense, and top officials of the Obama administration and NATO.”
These high officials now agree that the withdrawal date of US troops from Afghanistan will be at the end of 2014, though General Petraeus waffles on this seeming consensus. Engelhardt refers to statements by Patraeus in which “he insisted that 2014 was nothing more than ‘an inflection point’ in an ever more-drawn out drawdown process.” Indeed, Petraeus insists that the US occupation “would likely extend to 2015 and beyond, which, Engelhardt says now puts “2016 officially in play.”
In the meantime – right now – US air attacks have increased. According to Engelhardt, “In Oct [2010], US planes launched missiles or bombs on 1,000 separate Afghan missions, numbers seldom seen since the 2001 invasion….Civilian deaths are rising rapidly….Special Operations’ night raids on Afghan homes by ‘capture/kill teams have tripled with 1,572 such operations over the last three months….”
The escalated military actions indicate that force now overshadows any attempts to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans. As a consequence, Engelhardt concludes: “Afghans will once again pay with lives and treasure in a war that couldn’t be more bizarre, a war with no end in sight.”
Source: Tom Engelhardt, “How to Schedule a War: The Incredible Shrinking Withdrawal Date, “ Tomdispatch, Nov 24, 2010.
----------
There is another serious problem with the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, that is, US intelligence of the Taliban and other insurgent groups is extremely poor. Gareth Porter discusses a recent example to illustrate this point. Porter writes that in the last few months General Petraeus has repeatedly remarked that the Taliban leadership has shown a willingness to talk peace with Karzai. Patreus has suggested that this is a sign that his strategy, whatever it is, happens to be effective. But the central, or only, Afghan person in this supposed unfolding negotiation did not represent any Taliban group. “…Petraeus even deceiving himself as well as the news media in accepting the man claiming to be the second-ranked Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as genuine, despite a number of indications to the contrary.”
Then “on September 29, a Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Majahid said that Petraeus claims that the Taliban were negotiating with the Afghan government was completely baseless, and that the Taliban would not negotiate with ‘foreign invaders or their puppet government.’” Back to where we started.
Source: Gareth Porter, “Why Gen. Petraeus was Snookered by the ‘Taliban’ Imposter,” Counter Punch, Nov 25, 2010.
----------
The problems facing the US-led occupation of Afghanistan are not related to insufficient funding. According to Juan Cole’s review of the evidence, “the war is costing on the order of $7 billion a month, a sum that is still being borrowed and adding nearly a $100 billion a year to the already burgeoning national debt.”
Cole adds: “Although the US and NATO have spend $27 billion on training Afghan troops, only 12 percent of them can operate independently.” There is more from Cole. He writes “Karzai and his circle are extremely corrupt, taking millions in cash payments from Iran and looting a major bank for unsecured loans, allowing the purchase of opulent villas in fashionable Dubai.”
Source: Juan Cole, “Afghanistan: Obscenely Well-Funded, But Largely Unsuccessful War Rages Out of Sight of the American Public,” Informed Comment, Nov 19, 2010.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Malalai Joya offers an inspiring example and vision for an Afghanistan of justice and democracy
Malalai Joya represents a voice for Afghanistan independence and democracy about which you rarely read or hear. She was elected to the lower house of the Afghan parliament in 2005. Then banned from the parliament after she criticized the warlords who were "chosen" or "elected" by the people in their districts. From Malalai's point of view, they were in the parliament not because of their desire to serve their constituents and the public good, but because of the fear of reprisal that they generated in the villages and towns.
In her book, A Woman Among Warlords, Malalai provides a memoir and political analysis of her journey from being a refugee with her family to her election to the parliament and to the years thereafter. As a member of parliament, she continued to speak out against the corrupt government of President Karzai and the warlords who dominate the parliament and Karzai's government. She does not mince words when it comes to the Taliban, speaking out agains them for their undemocratic, oppressive and mysogynist agenda and for their violence and extremist Islamic religious beliefs. As a result there have been assassination attempts on her life. She must move from safe-house to safe-house to avoid her would-be killers. And, all along, she continues to speak out against the warlords, Taliban, Karzai government, and the US-NATO occupation that causes more death and devastation than anything else. In the last pages of her book, Malalai writes these inspiring words:
"I am young [born in 1978 in a small village of Ziken] and value life; I don't want to be killed. But I don't fear death; I fear remaining silent in the fact of injustice...You can kill me, but you can never kill my spirit...Afghans are more than just a handful of warlords, Taliban, drug lords, and lackeys." She continues: "I have a country full of people who know what I know and believe what I believe: That we Afghans can govern ourselves without foreign interference. That democracy is possible here but can never be imported at gunpoint. That the blood of millions of freedom-loving martyrs runs through our veins, and their memories live on in every corner of our country. That Afghan women have been at the forefront of our struggle throughout our proud history....Out enemies can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of spring" (pp. 228-229).
An article
I just came across the following article by Malalai Joya, titled "Afghanistan neither wants nor needs NATO's occupying force," at: http://stopwar.org/uk/content/view/2132/1/
Afghanistan neither needs nor wants Nato's occupying forces
The question should be not "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" but "What happens while we are in Afghanistan", because crimes of mutilation, rape and murder against women are commonplace today. While Afghans want the world's support and solidarity, we neither need nor want Nato's occupying forces.
By Malalai Joya The Guardian 02 November 2010
One year ago Hamid Karzai was declared re-elected as president of Afghanistan, ending an election that had no legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Afghans.
The presidential election last year was a fraud, with ballot stuffing, vote buying and massive corruption reported by the world's media.
Even if the independent election commission had not cancelled the planned run-off between Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, it would have represented only a choice of the "same donkey with a new saddle".
People had no incentive to participate as they knew that both main candidates would bring nothing positive for Afghan people.
Karzai had lost his popularity way before the 2009 election. This was due to the ever increasing corruption of the government, the never-ending crimes of the many fundamentalists and warlords in his regime, and the financial scandals and corruption of his brothers. In Kandahar people even started calling Ahmed Wali Karzai the "little Bush", after the hated US president.
The vast majority of Afghans have lost all hope in Karzai. For us his words and actions have no value, and that includes his latest "peace negotiations" and other measures. Including killers like Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government is not about negotiating for peace, but completing the decades-old circle of warlordism and fundamentalism.
It's important to say that these so-called elections haven't damaged Afghanistan as much as the US and its Nato allies have, with their bombing and occupation. Wikileaks has exposed some of the truth about the civilian toll of this war against the Afghan and Iraqi peoples. Afghans hold the US and Nato, and their puppet Karzai, responsible for these war crimes.
Biggest terrorists
They claim to fight terrorism, but in fact they are the biggest terrorists in the eyes of our people because of their crimes and brutalities.
Unfortunately the Afghan people are not yet strong enough to drive out the US, overthrow the mafia government of Karzai and bring an end to the crimes of the Taliban and other fundamentalists. Our history proves that this resistance to occupation will continue until we have won our freedom. Until both the US and the fundamentalists – of both the Northern Alliance and Taliban brands – are driven out of power in Afghanistan, we cannot see a bright future.
It is now more than five years since I was elected to the Afghan parliament. My experience of this "democratic process" was to see my microphone cut off, and to be threatened with death by other MPs – many of whom teamed up to remove me illegally from my seat. My case alone is enough to prove that women's rights in Afghanistan have not truly been safeguarded – our situation was just invoked to justify the war.
In fact, it's important to remember another document that Wikileaks exposed earlier this year: a CIA paper assessing western public opinion on the war that recommended using "testimonials by Afghan women" expressing fear about a Taliban takeover in the event of Nato pulling out. A Time cover story featuring the disfigured Bibi Aisha was a clear example of using the plight of women as war propaganda.
The headline – "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" – could have, or should have, been "What happens while we are in Afghanistan", because crimes of mutilation, rape and murder against women are commonplace today.
Many warlords and commanders aligned with Nato and Karzai carry out their sexist, misogynist crimes with impunity. Time could, for example, have done a cover story condemning the law signed by Karzai in 2009 that legalised crimes against Shia women, or about the shocking levels of women committing suicide by self-immolation.
Bad joke
We had another so-called parliamentary election in September, but I chose not to run. Any hope I had for using the ballot box to achieve change in Afghanistan is gone. Like last year's presidential vote, September's election was full of the buying and selling of votes – one province, Paktika, reported a turnout of 626%. This sort of thing is the reason elections in Afghanistan long ago became a bad joke.
Tomorrow there is an election in the US, and it is now two years since Barack Obama was elected president. His surge of troops has brought only a surge of violence, and his expansion of the war into Pakistan has claimed many innocent lives. Obama promised "hope" and "change", but Afghans have seen only change for the worse. Here he is now seen as a "second Bush".
The only change that can make us hopeful about the future is the strengthening and expansion of a national anti-fundamentalist and democracy-loving movement. Such a movement can be built only by Afghans. And while we want the world's support and solidarity, we neither need nor want Nato's occupying forces.
See also by Malalai Joya:
Memo to America: Stop murdering my people...
A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan...
Afghan people want immediate end to US occupation...
In her book, A Woman Among Warlords, Malalai provides a memoir and political analysis of her journey from being a refugee with her family to her election to the parliament and to the years thereafter. As a member of parliament, she continued to speak out against the corrupt government of President Karzai and the warlords who dominate the parliament and Karzai's government. She does not mince words when it comes to the Taliban, speaking out agains them for their undemocratic, oppressive and mysogynist agenda and for their violence and extremist Islamic religious beliefs. As a result there have been assassination attempts on her life. She must move from safe-house to safe-house to avoid her would-be killers. And, all along, she continues to speak out against the warlords, Taliban, Karzai government, and the US-NATO occupation that causes more death and devastation than anything else. In the last pages of her book, Malalai writes these inspiring words:
"I am young [born in 1978 in a small village of Ziken] and value life; I don't want to be killed. But I don't fear death; I fear remaining silent in the fact of injustice...You can kill me, but you can never kill my spirit...Afghans are more than just a handful of warlords, Taliban, drug lords, and lackeys." She continues: "I have a country full of people who know what I know and believe what I believe: That we Afghans can govern ourselves without foreign interference. That democracy is possible here but can never be imported at gunpoint. That the blood of millions of freedom-loving martyrs runs through our veins, and their memories live on in every corner of our country. That Afghan women have been at the forefront of our struggle throughout our proud history....Out enemies can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of spring" (pp. 228-229).
An article
I just came across the following article by Malalai Joya, titled "Afghanistan neither wants nor needs NATO's occupying force," at: http://stopwar.org/uk/content/view/2132/1/
Afghanistan neither needs nor wants Nato's occupying forces
The question should be not "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" but "What happens while we are in Afghanistan", because crimes of mutilation, rape and murder against women are commonplace today. While Afghans want the world's support and solidarity, we neither need nor want Nato's occupying forces.
By Malalai Joya The Guardian 02 November 2010
One year ago Hamid Karzai was declared re-elected as president of Afghanistan, ending an election that had no legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Afghans.
The presidential election last year was a fraud, with ballot stuffing, vote buying and massive corruption reported by the world's media.
Even if the independent election commission had not cancelled the planned run-off between Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, it would have represented only a choice of the "same donkey with a new saddle".
People had no incentive to participate as they knew that both main candidates would bring nothing positive for Afghan people.
Karzai had lost his popularity way before the 2009 election. This was due to the ever increasing corruption of the government, the never-ending crimes of the many fundamentalists and warlords in his regime, and the financial scandals and corruption of his brothers. In Kandahar people even started calling Ahmed Wali Karzai the "little Bush", after the hated US president.
The vast majority of Afghans have lost all hope in Karzai. For us his words and actions have no value, and that includes his latest "peace negotiations" and other measures. Including killers like Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government is not about negotiating for peace, but completing the decades-old circle of warlordism and fundamentalism.
It's important to say that these so-called elections haven't damaged Afghanistan as much as the US and its Nato allies have, with their bombing and occupation. Wikileaks has exposed some of the truth about the civilian toll of this war against the Afghan and Iraqi peoples. Afghans hold the US and Nato, and their puppet Karzai, responsible for these war crimes.
Biggest terrorists
They claim to fight terrorism, but in fact they are the biggest terrorists in the eyes of our people because of their crimes and brutalities.
Unfortunately the Afghan people are not yet strong enough to drive out the US, overthrow the mafia government of Karzai and bring an end to the crimes of the Taliban and other fundamentalists. Our history proves that this resistance to occupation will continue until we have won our freedom. Until both the US and the fundamentalists – of both the Northern Alliance and Taliban brands – are driven out of power in Afghanistan, we cannot see a bright future.
It is now more than five years since I was elected to the Afghan parliament. My experience of this "democratic process" was to see my microphone cut off, and to be threatened with death by other MPs – many of whom teamed up to remove me illegally from my seat. My case alone is enough to prove that women's rights in Afghanistan have not truly been safeguarded – our situation was just invoked to justify the war.
In fact, it's important to remember another document that Wikileaks exposed earlier this year: a CIA paper assessing western public opinion on the war that recommended using "testimonials by Afghan women" expressing fear about a Taliban takeover in the event of Nato pulling out. A Time cover story featuring the disfigured Bibi Aisha was a clear example of using the plight of women as war propaganda.
The headline – "What happens if we leave Afghanistan" – could have, or should have, been "What happens while we are in Afghanistan", because crimes of mutilation, rape and murder against women are commonplace today.
Many warlords and commanders aligned with Nato and Karzai carry out their sexist, misogynist crimes with impunity. Time could, for example, have done a cover story condemning the law signed by Karzai in 2009 that legalised crimes against Shia women, or about the shocking levels of women committing suicide by self-immolation.
Bad joke
We had another so-called parliamentary election in September, but I chose not to run. Any hope I had for using the ballot box to achieve change in Afghanistan is gone. Like last year's presidential vote, September's election was full of the buying and selling of votes – one province, Paktika, reported a turnout of 626%. This sort of thing is the reason elections in Afghanistan long ago became a bad joke.
Tomorrow there is an election in the US, and it is now two years since Barack Obama was elected president. His surge of troops has brought only a surge of violence, and his expansion of the war into Pakistan has claimed many innocent lives. Obama promised "hope" and "change", but Afghans have seen only change for the worse. Here he is now seen as a "second Bush".
The only change that can make us hopeful about the future is the strengthening and expansion of a national anti-fundamentalist and democracy-loving movement. Such a movement can be built only by Afghans. And while we want the world's support and solidarity, we neither need nor want Nato's occupying forces.
See also by Malalai Joya:
Memo to America: Stop murdering my people...
A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan...
Afghan people want immediate end to US occupation...
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Another disappointing month in Afghanistan
What has the month of October brought us so far from the increased US military forces in Afghanistan? President Karzai government is holding talks with some top Taliban leaders, though US military and government leaders don’t like the idea. The US airwar in Afghanistan creeps up. The US offensive against the rural district of Marjah remains a failure, as marines face full-blown insurgency. General Patraeus continues to suggest we need to stay in Afghanistan for some undefined number of years beyond next summer, when Obama promises the beginning of the withdrawal of US troops from the country. Here are some other reports from the month.
A shaky national election - Jason Ditz highlights some of major problems with the September parliamentary elections in the country. For example, he reports on fraud in the elections which increasingly leaves the official elections results in doubt. “Officials say, 4,169 complaints were issued, centered around 175 candidates,” 25 of whom are “current members of parliament.” Ditz also notes that “more than 1,500 of the nation’s 6,800 [election] centers never even opened.”
Little interest in the ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Josh Rushing writes an article for Al Jazeera (Oct, 9, 2010) on the lack of interest among Americans on the anniversary. His first sentence encapsulates the main point of the article: “The invasion of Afghanistan’s ninth anniversary passed in DC this week with hardly a notice.” He found a few dozen vets representing Afghanistan Veterans Against the War demonstrating in front of the Walter Reed Medical Center, urging “the US to stop redeploying soldiers who have been identified as suffering trauma – either post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, military sex trauma, or others.”
By the way, Aaron Glantz covers the myriad obstacles veterans fact in trying to get treatment in the VA medical system in his fine book, The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.”
An BBC News online headline reads “NATO contractors attacking own vehicles in Pakistan” (Oct. 8, 2010). Riaz Sohail reports: “NATO supply convoys travelling through Pakistan to Afghanistan have regularly come under attack in the past, but following, Pakistan’s decision to block their route through the Khyber Pass, they now face an even bigger security threat.” Sohail continues: “Hundreds of tankers and trucks have been stranded on highways and depots across Pakistan, with little or no security.” The individuals or companies who own the vehicles and who have contracts with NATO, have sell the fuel, blow up their truck, and then receive compensation from NATO for the fuel and a new vehicle.
Juan Cole broadens the context and discusses another aspect of the convoy problem in a post on his blog Informed Comment (Oct. 4, 2010). His headline reads: “28 More US Fuel Trucks Set Ablaze in Pakistan, 6 Killed, as Convoy Boycott Continues.” The focus here is on the Taliban rather than the contractors. Here is most of Cole’s article.
The Taliban Movement of Pakistan (Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or TTP) claimed on Monday that it was responsible for yet another attack on NATO fuel trucks, this time near Islamabad. Some twenty trucks were set ablaze and 6 people were killed. The trucks were parked in a poorly guarded area near the capital, awaiting permission to cross into Afghanistan at Torkham, the Pakistani checkpoint at the Khyber Pass. Since Friday, Pakistan has closed the crossing to US and NATO military supply vehicles, as a way of protesting the attack last Thursday by US helicopter gunships flying from Afghanistan on a Pakistani checkpoint inside Pakistan, which killed and wounded Pakistani Frontier Corpsmen. A similar attack took place near Shikarpur in Sindh on Thursday night.
The closing of the Khyber crossing and the exposure of stalled NATO convoys to attacks by Muslim extremists has roiled Islamabad’s relations with Washington. The Pakistani government appears to have felt that it had no choice but to take some visible action against the US, given the public rage throughout the country over the US attack on the Pakistani checkpoint and US violations of Pakistani sovereignty.
Some 75 percent of supplies (food, ammunition, even military vehicles) and 50 percent of the fuel needed by US and NATO troops in Afghanistan flow from the Arabian Sea port of Karachi in Pakistan’s Sindh Province up highways to Peshawar and then across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. The convoys are being impeded not only by the closure to them of the crossing at Torkham but also by all the bridges and highways washed out by Pakistan’s recent massive flooding.
High US officers in Afghanistan are said to be furious about the Pakistani closure of the Khyber pass to their convoys. Some one hundred trucks are waiting at Torkham. After Monday’s attack on more fuel trucks, the officers must be even more angry.
[….]
So the US may be done out with Pakistan, and vice versa, but as long as the US and NATO are fighting in Afghanistan, likely Pakistan is the indispensable country for them.
Even inside Afghanistan, convoys are often attacked or are guarded by a ragtag band of private companies, which President Hamid Karzai plans to get rid of, even though there is nothing to put in their place. They have been accused of demanding big bribes
US Army digs in for long haul in Afghanistan, according to Nick Turse’s article published on TomDispatch. I found it on Salon (Oct. 21, 2010). The concluding paragraphs of the article captures its principal points:
“At the moment, the American people are being offered one story about how the American war in Afghanistan is to proceed, while in Afghanistan their tax dollars are being invested in another trajectory entirely. The question is: How permanent are U.S. bases in Afghanistan? And if they are not meant to be used for a decade or more to come, why is the Pentagon still building as if they were?
“Recently, the Army sought bids from contractors willing to supply power plants and supporting fuel systems at forward operating bases in Afghanistan for up to five years. Power plants, fuel systems, and the bases on which they are being built are facts on the ground. Such facts carry a weight of their own, and offer a window into U.S. designs in Afghanistan that may be at least as relevant as anything Barack Obama or his aides have been saying about draw-downs, deadlines, or future withdrawal plans. If you want to ask hard questions about America's Afghan War, start with those bases.”
A shaky national election - Jason Ditz highlights some of major problems with the September parliamentary elections in the country. For example, he reports on fraud in the elections which increasingly leaves the official elections results in doubt. “Officials say, 4,169 complaints were issued, centered around 175 candidates,” 25 of whom are “current members of parliament.” Ditz also notes that “more than 1,500 of the nation’s 6,800 [election] centers never even opened.”
Little interest in the ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Josh Rushing writes an article for Al Jazeera (Oct, 9, 2010) on the lack of interest among Americans on the anniversary. His first sentence encapsulates the main point of the article: “The invasion of Afghanistan’s ninth anniversary passed in DC this week with hardly a notice.” He found a few dozen vets representing Afghanistan Veterans Against the War demonstrating in front of the Walter Reed Medical Center, urging “the US to stop redeploying soldiers who have been identified as suffering trauma – either post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, military sex trauma, or others.”
By the way, Aaron Glantz covers the myriad obstacles veterans fact in trying to get treatment in the VA medical system in his fine book, The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.”
An BBC News online headline reads “NATO contractors attacking own vehicles in Pakistan” (Oct. 8, 2010). Riaz Sohail reports: “NATO supply convoys travelling through Pakistan to Afghanistan have regularly come under attack in the past, but following, Pakistan’s decision to block their route through the Khyber Pass, they now face an even bigger security threat.” Sohail continues: “Hundreds of tankers and trucks have been stranded on highways and depots across Pakistan, with little or no security.” The individuals or companies who own the vehicles and who have contracts with NATO, have sell the fuel, blow up their truck, and then receive compensation from NATO for the fuel and a new vehicle.
Juan Cole broadens the context and discusses another aspect of the convoy problem in a post on his blog Informed Comment (Oct. 4, 2010). His headline reads: “28 More US Fuel Trucks Set Ablaze in Pakistan, 6 Killed, as Convoy Boycott Continues.” The focus here is on the Taliban rather than the contractors. Here is most of Cole’s article.
The Taliban Movement of Pakistan (Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or TTP) claimed on Monday that it was responsible for yet another attack on NATO fuel trucks, this time near Islamabad. Some twenty trucks were set ablaze and 6 people were killed. The trucks were parked in a poorly guarded area near the capital, awaiting permission to cross into Afghanistan at Torkham, the Pakistani checkpoint at the Khyber Pass. Since Friday, Pakistan has closed the crossing to US and NATO military supply vehicles, as a way of protesting the attack last Thursday by US helicopter gunships flying from Afghanistan on a Pakistani checkpoint inside Pakistan, which killed and wounded Pakistani Frontier Corpsmen. A similar attack took place near Shikarpur in Sindh on Thursday night.
The closing of the Khyber crossing and the exposure of stalled NATO convoys to attacks by Muslim extremists has roiled Islamabad’s relations with Washington. The Pakistani government appears to have felt that it had no choice but to take some visible action against the US, given the public rage throughout the country over the US attack on the Pakistani checkpoint and US violations of Pakistani sovereignty.
Some 75 percent of supplies (food, ammunition, even military vehicles) and 50 percent of the fuel needed by US and NATO troops in Afghanistan flow from the Arabian Sea port of Karachi in Pakistan’s Sindh Province up highways to Peshawar and then across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. The convoys are being impeded not only by the closure to them of the crossing at Torkham but also by all the bridges and highways washed out by Pakistan’s recent massive flooding.
High US officers in Afghanistan are said to be furious about the Pakistani closure of the Khyber pass to their convoys. Some one hundred trucks are waiting at Torkham. After Monday’s attack on more fuel trucks, the officers must be even more angry.
[….]
So the US may be done out with Pakistan, and vice versa, but as long as the US and NATO are fighting in Afghanistan, likely Pakistan is the indispensable country for them.
Even inside Afghanistan, convoys are often attacked or are guarded by a ragtag band of private companies, which President Hamid Karzai plans to get rid of, even though there is nothing to put in their place. They have been accused of demanding big bribes
US Army digs in for long haul in Afghanistan, according to Nick Turse’s article published on TomDispatch. I found it on Salon (Oct. 21, 2010). The concluding paragraphs of the article captures its principal points:
“At the moment, the American people are being offered one story about how the American war in Afghanistan is to proceed, while in Afghanistan their tax dollars are being invested in another trajectory entirely. The question is: How permanent are U.S. bases in Afghanistan? And if they are not meant to be used for a decade or more to come, why is the Pentagon still building as if they were?
“Recently, the Army sought bids from contractors willing to supply power plants and supporting fuel systems at forward operating bases in Afghanistan for up to five years. Power plants, fuel systems, and the bases on which they are being built are facts on the ground. Such facts carry a weight of their own, and offer a window into U.S. designs in Afghanistan that may be at least as relevant as anything Barack Obama or his aides have been saying about draw-downs, deadlines, or future withdrawal plans. If you want to ask hard questions about America's Afghan War, start with those bases.”
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Negotiations, while airwar increases
The following headline from Democracy Now's program today (10-20-10) suggests that there is some tentative headway in efforts to toward a negotiated settlement between the Karzai government and various factions of the Taliban. which are being facilitated by NATO.
"US Allowing Key Taliban Factions to Attend Peace Talks
"New details have emerged on the Obama administration’s backing of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The New York Times reports US-led forces have allowed senior Taliban leaders to enter Afghanistan for meetings with Afghan leaders in Kabul. The talks have included leaders of three key Taliban factions, including the Quetta shura, which oversees the Taliban’s armed operations in Afghanistan. In at least one case, Taliban leaders flew into Kabul aboard a NATO aircraft."
Dexter Filkins is the journalist who authored the New York Times article referred to by Democracy Now. Filkins opens his article on a hopeful note: "The discussions, some of which have taken place in Kabul, are unfolding between the inner circle of President Hamid Karzai and members of the Quetta shura, the leadership group that oversees the Talaiban war effort in Afghanistan. [In addition, leaders of two other factions are involved:] Afghan leaders of the Haqqqani network, considered to be one of the most hard-line guerilla factionrs fighting here; and members of the Peshawar shura, whose fighters are based in 'eastern Afghanistan'"
Filkins reports that NATO is providing transportation and security in bringing Taliban leaders to Kabul. He also notes that "the talks have been held on several different occasions and appear to represent the most substantive effort to date to negotiate an end to the nine-year old war...."
There are caveats. One is that the Pakistan Inter-Service Intelligence is reported to be opposed to the negotiations without other Taliban leaders being included. Two, US officials do not see evidence of truly peaceful initiatives from the Taliban. Filkins writes: "As long as the Taliban believe they are winning, they do not seem likely to make a deal." Filkins quotes Leon Panetta, CIA director: "If there are elements that wish to reconcile and get reintegrated, that ought to be obviously explored....But I still have not seen anything that indicates that at this point a serious effort is being made to reconcile."
In the meantime the US airwar in Afghanistan is being escalated. Jason Ditz reports in an article on antiwar.com (8-19-10): "September saw a massive increase in the number of US air strikes in Afghanistan, with at least 700 distinct strikes across the nation, up from 257 the year prior." Ditz continues: "But the tactic may be even further on the rise in the future, as reports suggest that the Obama Administration has ordered the deployment of the USS Lincoln, another aircraft carrier into the region, adding scores of additional warplanes to the theater of operations."
It's not clear yet whether negotiations have any sound basis.
"US Allowing Key Taliban Factions to Attend Peace Talks
"New details have emerged on the Obama administration’s backing of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The New York Times reports US-led forces have allowed senior Taliban leaders to enter Afghanistan for meetings with Afghan leaders in Kabul. The talks have included leaders of three key Taliban factions, including the Quetta shura, which oversees the Taliban’s armed operations in Afghanistan. In at least one case, Taliban leaders flew into Kabul aboard a NATO aircraft."
Dexter Filkins is the journalist who authored the New York Times article referred to by Democracy Now. Filkins opens his article on a hopeful note: "The discussions, some of which have taken place in Kabul, are unfolding between the inner circle of President Hamid Karzai and members of the Quetta shura, the leadership group that oversees the Talaiban war effort in Afghanistan. [In addition, leaders of two other factions are involved:] Afghan leaders of the Haqqqani network, considered to be one of the most hard-line guerilla factionrs fighting here; and members of the Peshawar shura, whose fighters are based in 'eastern Afghanistan'"
Filkins reports that NATO is providing transportation and security in bringing Taliban leaders to Kabul. He also notes that "the talks have been held on several different occasions and appear to represent the most substantive effort to date to negotiate an end to the nine-year old war...."
There are caveats. One is that the Pakistan Inter-Service Intelligence is reported to be opposed to the negotiations without other Taliban leaders being included. Two, US officials do not see evidence of truly peaceful initiatives from the Taliban. Filkins writes: "As long as the Taliban believe they are winning, they do not seem likely to make a deal." Filkins quotes Leon Panetta, CIA director: "If there are elements that wish to reconcile and get reintegrated, that ought to be obviously explored....But I still have not seen anything that indicates that at this point a serious effort is being made to reconcile."
In the meantime the US airwar in Afghanistan is being escalated. Jason Ditz reports in an article on antiwar.com (8-19-10): "September saw a massive increase in the number of US air strikes in Afghanistan, with at least 700 distinct strikes across the nation, up from 257 the year prior." Ditz continues: "But the tactic may be even further on the rise in the future, as reports suggest that the Obama Administration has ordered the deployment of the USS Lincoln, another aircraft carrier into the region, adding scores of additional warplanes to the theater of operations."
It's not clear yet whether negotiations have any sound basis.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Obstacles to a negotiated settlement between Karzai government and Taliban
Juan Cole links to the following article by Chris Sands on his blog today (Informed Comment, 10-8-10). In the end, Cole thinks, there will be a negotiated settlement between the Karzai government and the leaders of the Taliban. Reports from other sources indicate that negotiations are already underway, despite objections by the US military.
Sands identifies some of the complex obstacles that stand in the way of an eventually successful negotiation, citing the Washington Post for some of his information. My comments are in parentheses.
See the Sands' full article at: http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/south-asia/afghanistan-chance-for-a-breakthrough?pageCount=0
(1) The Taliban have ties with al Qaeda. Sands reports, however, that the Taliban leaders have expressed a willingness "to cut these ties," as part of a general agreement.
(2) The Taliban leaders demand a withdrawal of US and other foreign troop. Sands thinks that the US leadership, implicitly Obama and the generals, want to find a way out of this quagmire and have already promised to "start" pulling out US troops by next summer. (However, Obama has recently suggested that it may take longer than one year to create a "stable" Afghan government.)
(3) "The US has ruled out a deal with [the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar], yet he remains central to the Taliban and there are few divisions among the insurgents." (The US may not have the final say in this regard.)
(4) There are divisions among Afghans "across ethnic, religious and party lines," which complicate negotiations limited to the Taliban and Karzai government.
(5) The Taliban are known for their adherence to their fundamentalist principles and will have to compromise them in order to join a corrupt Karzai administration, which includes many of the Taliban's most hated enemies.
(6) For the Taliban to agree to a settlement, its leaders would have to be given important positions in the government. Such a settlement would generate opposition from leaders of the Tajik ethnic group and the Shite Hazara.
(7) There is concern in Washington that the Taliban would want to restrict women's rights and religious, cultural and social freedoms. (There is already such restrictions, especially on women's rights.)
(Sands finishes his article as follows.) But all the stars surely have to be aligned for this to bring a definitive end to the Afghan tragedy. If the Post's story is correct, there is some hope. But if it is simply an attempt by US officials to sow discord among the Taliban, it is unlikely to succeed. The insurgents now control a large part of rural Afghanistan and have a presence in most provinces across the country. They will not give up easily. (That is, there is no military settlement in sight.)
Sands identifies some of the complex obstacles that stand in the way of an eventually successful negotiation, citing the Washington Post for some of his information. My comments are in parentheses.
See the Sands' full article at: http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/south-asia/afghanistan-chance-for-a-breakthrough?pageCount=0
(1) The Taliban have ties with al Qaeda. Sands reports, however, that the Taliban leaders have expressed a willingness "to cut these ties," as part of a general agreement.
(2) The Taliban leaders demand a withdrawal of US and other foreign troop. Sands thinks that the US leadership, implicitly Obama and the generals, want to find a way out of this quagmire and have already promised to "start" pulling out US troops by next summer. (However, Obama has recently suggested that it may take longer than one year to create a "stable" Afghan government.)
(3) "The US has ruled out a deal with [the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar], yet he remains central to the Taliban and there are few divisions among the insurgents." (The US may not have the final say in this regard.)
(4) There are divisions among Afghans "across ethnic, religious and party lines," which complicate negotiations limited to the Taliban and Karzai government.
(5) The Taliban are known for their adherence to their fundamentalist principles and will have to compromise them in order to join a corrupt Karzai administration, which includes many of the Taliban's most hated enemies.
(6) For the Taliban to agree to a settlement, its leaders would have to be given important positions in the government. Such a settlement would generate opposition from leaders of the Tajik ethnic group and the Shite Hazara.
(7) There is concern in Washington that the Taliban would want to restrict women's rights and religious, cultural and social freedoms. (There is already such restrictions, especially on women's rights.)
(Sands finishes his article as follows.) But all the stars surely have to be aligned for this to bring a definitive end to the Afghan tragedy. If the Post's story is correct, there is some hope. But if it is simply an attempt by US officials to sow discord among the Taliban, it is unlikely to succeed. The insurgents now control a large part of rural Afghanistan and have a presence in most provinces across the country. They will not give up easily. (That is, there is no military settlement in sight.)
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.
Friday, August 27, 2010
CIA support a corrupt Afghan Official, additional reports
Kucinich: Afghanistan is ‘spy versus spy carnival of corruption’
By Muriel KaneThursday, August 26th, 2010
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0826/kucinich-afghanistan-spy-spy
In the wake of new revelations by the New York Times of CIA support for a corrupt Afghan official, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) accused the United States of turning Afghanistan into a "spy versus spy versus spy carnival of corruption."
"We are paying all sides to fight all sides and to betray all sides," Kucinich charged in a statement released on Wednesday. "This is further evidence that the United States must remove all its troops and assets out of Afghanistan."
"The tragedy is rapidly becoming a farce," he added. "They call it intelligence, but it is actually an innovative way to steal tens of billions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayers."
The Times story had reported that the chief of administration in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's national security council, who is currently "at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation," has apparently been on the CIA payroll for many years.
Mohammed Zia Salehi was arrested last month on charges of soliciting a bribe "in exchange for impeding an American-backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents." He was released a few hours later after President Karzai personally intervened, and Karzai "has since threatened to limit the power of the anticorruption unit that carried out the arrest."
Reporters Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti go on to suggest that the Salehi story "underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan."
They write that some administration officials "view public corruption as the single greatest threat to the Afghan government and the American mission," while others describe the anti-corruption drive as "mission creep" and worry that "attacking corrupt officials who are crucial to the war effort could destabilize the Karzai government."
Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel's page at website firedoglake, however, believes the story has to be read in connection with two other stories by Filkins this week, both of which suggest infighting between the CIA and military special forces over which is pursuing the more effective strategy in Afghanistan.
"So after stories about who is doing more damage," Wheeler concludes, "special forces or credulous CIA, the debate shifts to whether it is more important to crack down on the corruption within Karzai’s government -- even if it means cracking down on CIA’s key assets -- or whether we have to deal with corruption because that’s the way of the world."
"Boy," Wheeler concludes, "Dexter Filkins sure has had an interesting week cataloging the sniping within American strategy, huh? Mind you, I’m not complaining about Filkins’ reporting (though his descriptions of anonymous sources doesn’t seem to comply with the NYT’s policy on identifying the motives for these anonymous leaks). ... But he does seem to be the focus of a lot of competing leaks of late."
By Muriel KaneThursday, August 26th, 2010
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0826/kucinich-afghanistan-spy-spy
In the wake of new revelations by the New York Times of CIA support for a corrupt Afghan official, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) accused the United States of turning Afghanistan into a "spy versus spy versus spy carnival of corruption."
"We are paying all sides to fight all sides and to betray all sides," Kucinich charged in a statement released on Wednesday. "This is further evidence that the United States must remove all its troops and assets out of Afghanistan."
"The tragedy is rapidly becoming a farce," he added. "They call it intelligence, but it is actually an innovative way to steal tens of billions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayers."
The Times story had reported that the chief of administration in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's national security council, who is currently "at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation," has apparently been on the CIA payroll for many years.
Mohammed Zia Salehi was arrested last month on charges of soliciting a bribe "in exchange for impeding an American-backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents." He was released a few hours later after President Karzai personally intervened, and Karzai "has since threatened to limit the power of the anticorruption unit that carried out the arrest."
Reporters Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti go on to suggest that the Salehi story "underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan."
They write that some administration officials "view public corruption as the single greatest threat to the Afghan government and the American mission," while others describe the anti-corruption drive as "mission creep" and worry that "attacking corrupt officials who are crucial to the war effort could destabilize the Karzai government."
Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel's page at website firedoglake, however, believes the story has to be read in connection with two other stories by Filkins this week, both of which suggest infighting between the CIA and military special forces over which is pursuing the more effective strategy in Afghanistan.
"So after stories about who is doing more damage," Wheeler concludes, "special forces or credulous CIA, the debate shifts to whether it is more important to crack down on the corruption within Karzai’s government -- even if it means cracking down on CIA’s key assets -- or whether we have to deal with corruption because that’s the way of the world."
"Boy," Wheeler concludes, "Dexter Filkins sure has had an interesting week cataloging the sniping within American strategy, huh? Mind you, I’m not complaining about Filkins’ reporting (though his descriptions of anonymous sources doesn’t seem to comply with the NYT’s policy on identifying the motives for these anonymous leaks). ... But he does seem to be the focus of a lot of competing leaks of late."
CIA-assisted corruption at the highest levels in Afghan government
On July 8th, 2010, I posted a short article from Agence France Presse that cites a few facts and implications on corruption in Afghanistan. In today's post, I want to below refer back to a few of the highlights of this article.
Today I also print an article from English Aljazeera on corruption high up in the Karzai government which also involves the CIA. The Aljazeera article is titled "Karzai aide paid by CIA." The URL for the article is: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/201082643550599917.html
The point that stands out in the information is that corruption is rampant in Afghanistan and is encouraged by some parts of the US government. It is a perverse reflection of what the US does with taxpayer money in Afghanistan - and other places. This ongoing and widespread corruption is not only a sheer waste of money with respect to American taxpayers and Afghan citizens but also serves to perpetuate some of the most unsavory and anti-democratic Afghan leaders.
Facts from Agence France Presse:
Today I also print an article from English Aljazeera on corruption high up in the Karzai government which also involves the CIA. The Aljazeera article is titled "Karzai aide paid by CIA." The URL for the article is: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/201082643550599917.html
The point that stands out in the information is that corruption is rampant in Afghanistan and is encouraged by some parts of the US government. It is a perverse reflection of what the US does with taxpayer money in Afghanistan - and other places. This ongoing and widespread corruption is not only a sheer waste of money with respect to American taxpayers and Afghan citizens but also serves to perpetuate some of the most unsavory and anti-democratic Afghan leaders.
Facts from Agence France Presse:
- "Corruption in Afghanistan has doubled in three years since 2006 [according to Integrity Watch Afganistan]
- "more than a quarter of households [say] they had paid a bribe to receive a public service [frm a poll of 6,500 Afghan adults]
- The previous source found corruption "had become so entrenched that it threatened the multi-billion-dollar effors of the international community to help end nearly nine years of current conflict...."
- Widespread corruption also has the following effects: (1) "threatens the legitimacy of state-building; (2) "leads to increasing inquality"; (3) 'impedes the rule of law"; (4) hinders access to basic services"; (5) "and has a major [negative] effect on economic development."
Report on "Karzai aide paid by CIA"
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, allegedly pressured investigators to free Salehi [AFP]
An aide to the Afghan president at the centre of a corruption probe is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, The New York Times has reported, citing Afghan and American officials.
Mohammed Zia Salehi, chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the CIA's payroll for many years, the US news organisation quoted officials in Kabul and Washington saying, although exactly what services he provides for the money was unclear.
Afghan security forces arrested Salehi in July, for allegedly soliciting a bribe in exchange for impeding a US backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of Afghanistan in the service of government officials, drug smugglers and anti-government fighters.
After being held for seven hours, Salehi was released from jail when Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, intervened forcefully on his behalf, The New York Times reported.
Salehi is being protected by Karzai allegedly because he knows too much about the inner workings of the presidential palace, including details of widespread corruption, an Afghan politician told the Times.
Money transfers
Police arrested Salehi during an investigation into New Ansari, a money transfer firm that relies on couriers and other low-technology methods to move cash into and out of Afghanistan.
Since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, New Ansari has grown into a financial hub in Afghanistan, moving billions out of the country, mostly to Dubai, for "wealthy Afghans of every sort" including politicians, drug traffickers and anti-government fighters, The New York Times reported.
Salehi is allegedly a confidant of some of the most powerful people in the Afghan government, including Engineer Ibrahim Spinzada who was, until recently, the deputy chief of the Afghan intelligence service.
The CIA declined to comment on allegations that it paid Salehi.
Allegations of corruption and nepotism have dogged the US presence in Afghanistan and such problems undermine support for Karzai's government and foreign nation-building efforts, analysts say.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
RAWA statement: peace jirga dominated by criminals of war
The key point made by RAWA in the following statement is that representatives of the ordinary people of Afghanistan are not included in the peace jirga called by President Karzai. We have included articles that have called for negotiations with Taliban leaders to lead to the end of violence. However, RAWA believes that negotiations between warlords and Taliban will perpetuate the misery and domination of the majority of Afghanis. This is also the position of Malalai Joya, in which she articulates a position very similar to that of RAWA. (You can see statements by Joya on this site.)
“Consultative Peace Jirga”
http:// www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/06/01/peace-with-criminals-war-with-people.html
By inviting criminals like the Taliban, the leaders of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party and other “Jehadi leaders” to be part of a “Consultative Peace Jirga,” Mr. Karzai is committing yet another treason against the Afghan people. Like any puppet, anti-people ruler, he initially compromised with all the murderers associated with April 27th 1978 (former Russian puppets) and April 28 1992 (the Northern Alliance warlords) and installed them in key posts of his government. He then went to the extent of assigning the two most notorious warlords Karim Khalili and Qasim Fahim as his vice presidents. Now, he calls the Taliban and Hekmatyar party terrorists “Afghan sons” and tries to either share power with them, or offer them the opportunity of asylum and amnesty to their leaders in any country of their choice. He is also offering jobs to their gunmen so he can prolong his mafia-style rule with ease of mind.
A known terrorist from Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party called Farooq Wardak has been awarded the responsibility of running the Jirga. Additionally, the delegates from Hekmatyar’s blood-thirsty party in Kabul were received like showbiz celebrities with local Afghan media being offered in their service. The infamous criminals Mullah Wakil Ahmad Motawakal, Mullah Zaef, Humayun Jarir, Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, Sabaoon, Mullah Rocketi and many other such terrorists of the Taliban and Islamic Party have had their reputations sugarcoated in the past few years. All these things not only illuminate the true nature and goal of this Jirga, but also constitute an insult to our people who have sought their liberation in the prosecution and punishment of Khaliqi, Parchami, Jehadi and Taliban criminals, but instead still feel the heavy load of these brutal enemies on their wounded bodies.
Without receiving a green light from their US masters, the puppet government of Afghanistan could never raise a hue and cry about this “Consultative Peace Jirga.” It could also not consider making peace with the Taliban and Islamic Party assassins while they are apparently still on the “Black List” of the US government. This in itself proves that the US doesn’t just want a puppet government, but also a stable and efficient government to easily change Afghanistan into a strong military base in Asia, extend its grip on the oil and gas of the Central Asian Republics and maintain its supremacy in competition with rivals such as China and other regional powers. For the US and allies, the deeply criminal, treacherous, anti-democracy and anti-independence essence of this puppet regime has no significance at all. Apart from a handful of sold-off intellectuals of Afghanistan, this reality is crystal clear to even our children that the claim of the US about bringing “democracy” and “women’s liberation” to Afghanistan was the biggest lie of the century. In fact, it was even more striking than the claims of the US about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and more comic than its pretence of having an opposition to fundamentalist bands and governments.
At the height of a piercing outcry over a “Peace Jirga,” the Taliban intensified their inhuman brutalities by killing school children, teachers, men, and women of Kabul and other cities, but Karzai and his spokesmen expressed with detestable indifference that, “Inshallah, with national unity soon we will emerge from these problems”! If their own sister, mother or daughter were raped, killed publicly or torn to pieces by suicide bombings, would they still call these killings “problems” they have with Taliban, their “disaffected brothers”? But considering the power-lust and impunity of the ruling mafia, they may still not call the Taliban criminals, and their acts as crimes, because despite having some differences, in the final stage they regard themselves from the same ranks and deem it necessary to become united in order to run the state machinery in front of people’s wrath. Both the Taliban and the ruling mafia know well that the day US/NATO occupation forces leave Afghanistan; all the tribes of Afghanistan will consider unity amongst themselves to topple their bloody rule.
While the US is trying to unite its lackeys through the “Peace Jirga” and other means, it is afraid of unity and integration among Afghan people. Therefore, through its puppet government and Northern Alliance agents, the US is trying hard to sow disruption and animosity among the different tribes of Afghanistan. For example, in Behsood and Daimirdad they inflamed fighting between Hazaras and Nomads and similarly in Northern Afghanistan among Tajiks, Pushtoons and Uzbeks so they can continue the occupation of a divided and disarrayed nation.
The so-called intellectuals of Afghanistan who directly or indirectly hope that the Taliban will end the US occupation, are carving a dark mark of history on their forehead. They are like those who rely on the US and the bloodthirsty Iranian regime to emancipate them from the yoke of the Taliban. If such people are not foolish, then they are spineless because they neither remember the marks of the Taliban flogging our mothers, sisters and fathers nor the beheading of our children and poor women (in the name of rooting out “spies”), or the spraying of acid on innocent school-girls. If they believe that by relying on tribal issues, corruption, and looting of the puppet regime they can find an argument for their support of the brutal Taliban, then by what trick can they ignore the ISI-born nature and medieval mentality of the Taliban? Can they point out any example anywhere in the world of such an anti-democratic and anti-women group dominated by drug lords and dependent on the intelligence agency of a foreign country that dares to struggle for independence and liberation? The intellectual supporters of the Taliban are possibly agents of the US CIA and other agencies who by upholding the Taliban and calling them a “resistance movement” want to pave the way for their joint domination with President Karzai and the “National Front” mafia.
In the past, through the meddling of Zalmay Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai as representatives of UNOCAL, the US dealt with the Taliban and pumped tens of millions of dollars into their pockets. Today if the Taliban once again comes to power, the US will easily “work” with them and prefer their bloody and suffocating rule of Afghanistan to an independent, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights government, because the US counts on them as the most loyal group to safeguard its interests in the region. The Taliban also will not forget that the US was their creator, trainer and mentor through Pakistan’s ISI god-fathers.
The current conflict between the US, Taliban, and Northern Alliance is in fact a family matter between them which will be solved sooner or later. When that happens, the ranks of friends and enemies of our people will become clear and the illusion spread by pro-Taliban, pro-April 27 and April 28 treacherous intellectuals will be countered. Under such conditions, it is the duty of pro-independence, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights intellectuals to increase their organized efforts for a coordinated uprising of our people against all traitors to Afghanistan.
Let the puppet mafia government of Karzai bring together all its agents in the “Peace Jirga” and similar ridiculous shows and by organizing luxury meetings, dance over the dead bodies of our innocent people, but the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), alongside the aggrieved Afghan people thinks that such deceitful games mean throwing salt on the wounds of our people caught in the US/NATO bombings, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and desperation all over Afghanistan.
Shame to the “Peace Jirga” of criminals with criminals!Neither USA, Nor Taliban and the National Front murderers!An independent and democratic Afghanistan!
Category: English, RAWA Documents
Peace with Criminals, War with People!
Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on
“Consultative Peace Jirga”
http:// www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/06/01/peace-with-criminals-war-with-people.html
By inviting criminals like the Taliban, the leaders of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party and other “Jehadi leaders” to be part of a “Consultative Peace Jirga,” Mr. Karzai is committing yet another treason against the Afghan people. Like any puppet, anti-people ruler, he initially compromised with all the murderers associated with April 27th 1978 (former Russian puppets) and April 28 1992 (the Northern Alliance warlords) and installed them in key posts of his government. He then went to the extent of assigning the two most notorious warlords Karim Khalili and Qasim Fahim as his vice presidents. Now, he calls the Taliban and Hekmatyar party terrorists “Afghan sons” and tries to either share power with them, or offer them the opportunity of asylum and amnesty to their leaders in any country of their choice. He is also offering jobs to their gunmen so he can prolong his mafia-style rule with ease of mind.
A known terrorist from Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party called Farooq Wardak has been awarded the responsibility of running the Jirga. Additionally, the delegates from Hekmatyar’s blood-thirsty party in Kabul were received like showbiz celebrities with local Afghan media being offered in their service. The infamous criminals Mullah Wakil Ahmad Motawakal, Mullah Zaef, Humayun Jarir, Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, Sabaoon, Mullah Rocketi and many other such terrorists of the Taliban and Islamic Party have had their reputations sugarcoated in the past few years. All these things not only illuminate the true nature and goal of this Jirga, but also constitute an insult to our people who have sought their liberation in the prosecution and punishment of Khaliqi, Parchami, Jehadi and Taliban criminals, but instead still feel the heavy load of these brutal enemies on their wounded bodies.
Without receiving a green light from their US masters, the puppet government of Afghanistan could never raise a hue and cry about this “Consultative Peace Jirga.” It could also not consider making peace with the Taliban and Islamic Party assassins while they are apparently still on the “Black List” of the US government. This in itself proves that the US doesn’t just want a puppet government, but also a stable and efficient government to easily change Afghanistan into a strong military base in Asia, extend its grip on the oil and gas of the Central Asian Republics and maintain its supremacy in competition with rivals such as China and other regional powers. For the US and allies, the deeply criminal, treacherous, anti-democracy and anti-independence essence of this puppet regime has no significance at all. Apart from a handful of sold-off intellectuals of Afghanistan, this reality is crystal clear to even our children that the claim of the US about bringing “democracy” and “women’s liberation” to Afghanistan was the biggest lie of the century. In fact, it was even more striking than the claims of the US about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and more comic than its pretence of having an opposition to fundamentalist bands and governments.
At the height of a piercing outcry over a “Peace Jirga,” the Taliban intensified their inhuman brutalities by killing school children, teachers, men, and women of Kabul and other cities, but Karzai and his spokesmen expressed with detestable indifference that, “Inshallah, with national unity soon we will emerge from these problems”! If their own sister, mother or daughter were raped, killed publicly or torn to pieces by suicide bombings, would they still call these killings “problems” they have with Taliban, their “disaffected brothers”? But considering the power-lust and impunity of the ruling mafia, they may still not call the Taliban criminals, and their acts as crimes, because despite having some differences, in the final stage they regard themselves from the same ranks and deem it necessary to become united in order to run the state machinery in front of people’s wrath. Both the Taliban and the ruling mafia know well that the day US/NATO occupation forces leave Afghanistan; all the tribes of Afghanistan will consider unity amongst themselves to topple their bloody rule.
While the US is trying to unite its lackeys through the “Peace Jirga” and other means, it is afraid of unity and integration among Afghan people. Therefore, through its puppet government and Northern Alliance agents, the US is trying hard to sow disruption and animosity among the different tribes of Afghanistan. For example, in Behsood and Daimirdad they inflamed fighting between Hazaras and Nomads and similarly in Northern Afghanistan among Tajiks, Pushtoons and Uzbeks so they can continue the occupation of a divided and disarrayed nation.
The so-called intellectuals of Afghanistan who directly or indirectly hope that the Taliban will end the US occupation, are carving a dark mark of history on their forehead. They are like those who rely on the US and the bloodthirsty Iranian regime to emancipate them from the yoke of the Taliban. If such people are not foolish, then they are spineless because they neither remember the marks of the Taliban flogging our mothers, sisters and fathers nor the beheading of our children and poor women (in the name of rooting out “spies”), or the spraying of acid on innocent school-girls. If they believe that by relying on tribal issues, corruption, and looting of the puppet regime they can find an argument for their support of the brutal Taliban, then by what trick can they ignore the ISI-born nature and medieval mentality of the Taliban? Can they point out any example anywhere in the world of such an anti-democratic and anti-women group dominated by drug lords and dependent on the intelligence agency of a foreign country that dares to struggle for independence and liberation? The intellectual supporters of the Taliban are possibly agents of the US CIA and other agencies who by upholding the Taliban and calling them a “resistance movement” want to pave the way for their joint domination with President Karzai and the “National Front” mafia.
In the past, through the meddling of Zalmay Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai as representatives of UNOCAL, the US dealt with the Taliban and pumped tens of millions of dollars into their pockets. Today if the Taliban once again comes to power, the US will easily “work” with them and prefer their bloody and suffocating rule of Afghanistan to an independent, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights government, because the US counts on them as the most loyal group to safeguard its interests in the region. The Taliban also will not forget that the US was their creator, trainer and mentor through Pakistan’s ISI god-fathers.
The current conflict between the US, Taliban, and Northern Alliance is in fact a family matter between them which will be solved sooner or later. When that happens, the ranks of friends and enemies of our people will become clear and the illusion spread by pro-Taliban, pro-April 27 and April 28 treacherous intellectuals will be countered. Under such conditions, it is the duty of pro-independence, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights intellectuals to increase their organized efforts for a coordinated uprising of our people against all traitors to Afghanistan.
Let the puppet mafia government of Karzai bring together all its agents in the “Peace Jirga” and similar ridiculous shows and by organizing luxury meetings, dance over the dead bodies of our innocent people, but the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), alongside the aggrieved Afghan people thinks that such deceitful games mean throwing salt on the wounds of our people caught in the US/NATO bombings, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and desperation all over Afghanistan.
Shame to the “Peace Jirga” of criminals with criminals!Neither USA, Nor Taliban and the National Front murderers!An independent and democratic Afghanistan!
Category: English, RAWA Documents
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
All relevant actors should be at the bargaining table
After the Karzai Visit, Who's at the Negotiating Table?
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
An overview of what an alternative to war in Afghanistan might look like - negotiations, what a concept...The high-profile Washington visit of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is only partly about smoothing over what has become his extraordinarily prickly relationship with the Obama administration. Even the appearance of smoothing over those rough edges, corruption-related and otherwise, is only part of the story. (Although that part is pretty important to the White House as the Congressional vote nears on President Obama's demand for $33 billion more in taxpayer money to fund the current military escalation in Afghanistan.)
The most important part of the Karzai visit has to do with resolving the huge strategic disagreement between the Afghan president and his U.S. benefactor on the fundamental question of negotiations and reconciliation. Everybody admits-and history confirms-that every war ultimately involves negotiations at the end. But for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is increasingly isolated from its friends, allies, and even dependents over the key issues of when, with whom, and over what, those negotiations should take place.
The Obama administration agrees that negotiating with the Taliban will be necessary. In January, when U.S., British, and other NATO leaders met in London to discuss Afghan strategy, Pentagon CentCom chief General David Petraeus told the Times of London that he recognized the possibility of "the concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders.
Kill More Afghans FirstTheir big hesitation, they say, is on the timing. President Obama's hand-picked Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal said in London that he hoped the recently announced escalation of 30,000 new troops would weaken the Taliban enough that its leaders would accept a peace deal. In other words they want to weaken the Taliban first-Pentagon-speak for "kill more Afghans." We should negotiate, but only from "a position of strength." They're wrong. Whatever other things the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, winning a "position of strength" is not one of them. The biggest U.S./NATO offensive since the beginning of the war in 2001 began in February in Marjah. It failed. According to a survey of Marjah's men conducted by the International Council on Security and Development, 61 percent feel more negative about the occupation forces after the get-rid-of-the-Taliban-and-win-the-Afghans'-hearts-and-minds military offensive than they did before. Hardly the definition of a position of strength.An even larger-scale U.S./NATO offensive is scheduled to begin in earnest in early June in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the original home of the Taliban. The prospect of U.S. troops emerging in a "position of strength" from that almost certain debacle is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty lousy. There is simply no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership will be any more likely to negotiate after more of them (and many more civilians) have been killed, than they are now. U.S. influence over events in Afghanistan is diminishing despite the increase in military attacks. Karzai is eager to initiate negotiations with the Taliban ASAP, and may have already begun moves to do so; he knows that his corrupt and delegitimized government may well not survive any lessening of U.S. support. But because Karzai's government is widely viewed by most Afghans as not only corrupt but largely unable to implement any serious governance outside of parts of Kabul, the current U.S. prohibition on talks guarantees that negotiations that could lead to real reconciliation cannot go forward. The Taliban needs the U.S. at the table, not just Karzai.
Negotiations Over What? The Obama administration also insists that any negotiations with the Taliban, whenever they happen, must be limited essentially to terms of surrender. Low-ranking Taliban foot soldiers might be offered "de-radicalization" programs and maybe even some job possibilities, but key regional and national Taliban commanders, the ones who would actually have to sign off on any deal to make it work, would be offered only the option of complete surrender, giving up their weapons and any claim to power or influence, plus maybe the possibility of exile in another country. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned. But the Taliban are Afghans, not Saudis; their goal has always been to rule Afghanistan, not to go abroad. They speak a different language than Saudis do, they are not Arabs. Saudi exile is not likely to win negotiators' hearts and minds-or acquiescence. It seems those in the Administration floating such trial balloons have forgotten what their own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered when challenged by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Taliban have no tanks, no planes, said the senator, so how is it that they're winning? "It's their country," Mullen answered. So who's saying what about all this? The U.S. position is pretty clear (despite already visible disagreements even within the administration). Efforts to bribe and buy off low-level Taliban foot soldiers are grudgingly acceptable. Serious negotiations with Taliban leadership is forbidden until more Taliban soldiers or leaders (or civilians near them?) have been killed or, more rarely, captured. Any future negotiations with Taliban leaders will be limited to the terms of their surrender; power-sharing in a unified Afghanistan is not an option.
The Afghan government-or at least President Karzai himself, since it's unclear who else he speaks for even within his own government-wants to begin negotiations with the Taliban right away. He disagrees with his U.S. sponsors on timing, but appears to accept their view that only surrender is an option for top Taliban commanders; he has no interest in sharing power with them. Pakistan's primary concern is to insure a reliable surrogate to defend its interests in a post-U.S., post-occupation Afghanistan where arch-rival India will have influence. In the past that surrogate has been the Afghan Taliban, and there's no indication Islamabad is making a different choice. Pakistan is determined to have a say in when, whether, with whom and over what negotiations might occur; the recent arrest of a top Taliban leader, Mullah Baradar, after years of providing him with safe haven in Pakistan, was widely viewed as a message to the U.S. and Kabul, reminding them that if negotiations are going to occur, Pakistan is going to be part of them. Pakistan supports immediate negotiations aimed at a power-sharing role for the Taliban in the future.
The British position and that of some other NATO countries is close to that of Karzai, accepting negotiations with the Taliban at all levels right away. London has accepted (though it is unclear what changes the new government under David Cameron's Conservative-Lib/Dem coalition might make) the idea of some sort of power-sharing in Afghanistan that could include the Taliban. Who else needs to be at the table? Of those commentators and pundits who recognized the centrality of the reconciliation issue, almost all focused on whether/when/what the U.S. should negotiate with the Talilban. But that's not enough. If negotiations are to be taken seriously, if there is any hope that reconciliation is possible, who is present is also crucial. Everyone must be at the table. Does that include the Taliban? Of course it does. But Afghanistan isn't a two-sided country, where the only local players are the U.S.-backed government and the anti-U.S. Taliban. The resistance isn't only the Taliban, and the government doesn't reflect much of the population. Afghan society is richly complex, with men and women, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and traditional, a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, and cultures playing important roles. And Afghanistan doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is bordered directly by six complicated countries in a strategic region roiling with political, economic, and social tensions.
Real negotiations mean everyone who has a legitimate stake in the outcome must be at the table. That means the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, and inevitably some of the other warlords, often longtime clients of the United States, who remain as regressive and repressive towards women as the Taliban ever were. Those warlords exist both within the Afghan government and among the anti-government resistance forces. But it also means including representatives of Afghanistan's traditional governing structures, the tribe- and village-based leaders, mosque-linked and otherwise, who are recognized as holding the country's legitimacy. It means women must be involved, both as an organized sector and as individuals, including the professional women's associations who have recently publicly called for negotiating with the Taliban. It means the traditional and newly rebuilding civil society of both cities and rural areas, including farmers' alliances and trade unions, organizations of teachers and doctors, students, and so many more. If the national peace jirga, or council, is held as planned, all of these components of Afghan society must be present. They must be empowered to speak and to participate in the consensus process that Afghan governance has long relied on.And if an Afghan peace jirga is to succeed, it will have to be part of a much broader international diplomatic process. That means bringing together all of Afghanistan's neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan, and all of the regional powers, including China and India. Key Muslim countries such as Turkey and perhaps the Organization of the Islamic Conference will play vital roles, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. And once all its troops are on their way out the U.S. will have to endorse, bankroll, and support such a campaign-but, crucially, will have to break from its long and painful pattern of dominating such efforts. With U.S. and NATO troops and mercenaries withdrawn and serious diplomatic efforts underway both inside Afghanistan and in the region, perhaps we can finally begin making good on the enormous debt-financial, humanitarian, developmental and so much more-that we owe to the people of Afghanistan.
But first, everybody has to be at the table.Thanks,Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
An overview of what an alternative to war in Afghanistan might look like - negotiations, what a concept...The high-profile Washington visit of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is only partly about smoothing over what has become his extraordinarily prickly relationship with the Obama administration. Even the appearance of smoothing over those rough edges, corruption-related and otherwise, is only part of the story. (Although that part is pretty important to the White House as the Congressional vote nears on President Obama's demand for $33 billion more in taxpayer money to fund the current military escalation in Afghanistan.)
The most important part of the Karzai visit has to do with resolving the huge strategic disagreement between the Afghan president and his U.S. benefactor on the fundamental question of negotiations and reconciliation. Everybody admits-and history confirms-that every war ultimately involves negotiations at the end. But for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is increasingly isolated from its friends, allies, and even dependents over the key issues of when, with whom, and over what, those negotiations should take place.
The Obama administration agrees that negotiating with the Taliban will be necessary. In January, when U.S., British, and other NATO leaders met in London to discuss Afghan strategy, Pentagon CentCom chief General David Petraeus told the Times of London that he recognized the possibility of "the concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders.
Kill More Afghans FirstTheir big hesitation, they say, is on the timing. President Obama's hand-picked Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal said in London that he hoped the recently announced escalation of 30,000 new troops would weaken the Taliban enough that its leaders would accept a peace deal. In other words they want to weaken the Taliban first-Pentagon-speak for "kill more Afghans." We should negotiate, but only from "a position of strength." They're wrong. Whatever other things the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan, winning a "position of strength" is not one of them. The biggest U.S./NATO offensive since the beginning of the war in 2001 began in February in Marjah. It failed. According to a survey of Marjah's men conducted by the International Council on Security and Development, 61 percent feel more negative about the occupation forces after the get-rid-of-the-Taliban-and-win-the-Afghans'-hearts-and-minds military offensive than they did before. Hardly the definition of a position of strength.An even larger-scale U.S./NATO offensive is scheduled to begin in earnest in early June in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the original home of the Taliban. The prospect of U.S. troops emerging in a "position of strength" from that almost certain debacle is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty lousy. There is simply no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership will be any more likely to negotiate after more of them (and many more civilians) have been killed, than they are now. U.S. influence over events in Afghanistan is diminishing despite the increase in military attacks. Karzai is eager to initiate negotiations with the Taliban ASAP, and may have already begun moves to do so; he knows that his corrupt and delegitimized government may well not survive any lessening of U.S. support. But because Karzai's government is widely viewed by most Afghans as not only corrupt but largely unable to implement any serious governance outside of parts of Kabul, the current U.S. prohibition on talks guarantees that negotiations that could lead to real reconciliation cannot go forward. The Taliban needs the U.S. at the table, not just Karzai.
Negotiations Over What? The Obama administration also insists that any negotiations with the Taliban, whenever they happen, must be limited essentially to terms of surrender. Low-ranking Taliban foot soldiers might be offered "de-radicalization" programs and maybe even some job possibilities, but key regional and national Taliban commanders, the ones who would actually have to sign off on any deal to make it work, would be offered only the option of complete surrender, giving up their weapons and any claim to power or influence, plus maybe the possibility of exile in another country. Saudi Arabia has been mentioned. But the Taliban are Afghans, not Saudis; their goal has always been to rule Afghanistan, not to go abroad. They speak a different language than Saudis do, they are not Arabs. Saudi exile is not likely to win negotiators' hearts and minds-or acquiescence. It seems those in the Administration floating such trial balloons have forgotten what their own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, answered when challenged by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Taliban have no tanks, no planes, said the senator, so how is it that they're winning? "It's their country," Mullen answered. So who's saying what about all this? The U.S. position is pretty clear (despite already visible disagreements even within the administration). Efforts to bribe and buy off low-level Taliban foot soldiers are grudgingly acceptable. Serious negotiations with Taliban leadership is forbidden until more Taliban soldiers or leaders (or civilians near them?) have been killed or, more rarely, captured. Any future negotiations with Taliban leaders will be limited to the terms of their surrender; power-sharing in a unified Afghanistan is not an option.
The Afghan government-or at least President Karzai himself, since it's unclear who else he speaks for even within his own government-wants to begin negotiations with the Taliban right away. He disagrees with his U.S. sponsors on timing, but appears to accept their view that only surrender is an option for top Taliban commanders; he has no interest in sharing power with them. Pakistan's primary concern is to insure a reliable surrogate to defend its interests in a post-U.S., post-occupation Afghanistan where arch-rival India will have influence. In the past that surrogate has been the Afghan Taliban, and there's no indication Islamabad is making a different choice. Pakistan is determined to have a say in when, whether, with whom and over what negotiations might occur; the recent arrest of a top Taliban leader, Mullah Baradar, after years of providing him with safe haven in Pakistan, was widely viewed as a message to the U.S. and Kabul, reminding them that if negotiations are going to occur, Pakistan is going to be part of them. Pakistan supports immediate negotiations aimed at a power-sharing role for the Taliban in the future.
The British position and that of some other NATO countries is close to that of Karzai, accepting negotiations with the Taliban at all levels right away. London has accepted (though it is unclear what changes the new government under David Cameron's Conservative-Lib/Dem coalition might make) the idea of some sort of power-sharing in Afghanistan that could include the Taliban. Who else needs to be at the table? Of those commentators and pundits who recognized the centrality of the reconciliation issue, almost all focused on whether/when/what the U.S. should negotiate with the Talilban. But that's not enough. If negotiations are to be taken seriously, if there is any hope that reconciliation is possible, who is present is also crucial. Everyone must be at the table. Does that include the Taliban? Of course it does. But Afghanistan isn't a two-sided country, where the only local players are the U.S.-backed government and the anti-U.S. Taliban. The resistance isn't only the Taliban, and the government doesn't reflect much of the population. Afghan society is richly complex, with men and women, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and traditional, a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, and cultures playing important roles. And Afghanistan doesn't exist in a vacuum; it is bordered directly by six complicated countries in a strategic region roiling with political, economic, and social tensions.
Real negotiations mean everyone who has a legitimate stake in the outcome must be at the table. That means the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, and inevitably some of the other warlords, often longtime clients of the United States, who remain as regressive and repressive towards women as the Taliban ever were. Those warlords exist both within the Afghan government and among the anti-government resistance forces. But it also means including representatives of Afghanistan's traditional governing structures, the tribe- and village-based leaders, mosque-linked and otherwise, who are recognized as holding the country's legitimacy. It means women must be involved, both as an organized sector and as individuals, including the professional women's associations who have recently publicly called for negotiating with the Taliban. It means the traditional and newly rebuilding civil society of both cities and rural areas, including farmers' alliances and trade unions, organizations of teachers and doctors, students, and so many more. If the national peace jirga, or council, is held as planned, all of these components of Afghan society must be present. They must be empowered to speak and to participate in the consensus process that Afghan governance has long relied on.And if an Afghan peace jirga is to succeed, it will have to be part of a much broader international diplomatic process. That means bringing together all of Afghanistan's neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan, and all of the regional powers, including China and India. Key Muslim countries such as Turkey and perhaps the Organization of the Islamic Conference will play vital roles, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. And once all its troops are on their way out the U.S. will have to endorse, bankroll, and support such a campaign-but, crucially, will have to break from its long and painful pattern of dominating such efforts. With U.S. and NATO troops and mercenaries withdrawn and serious diplomatic efforts underway both inside Afghanistan and in the region, perhaps we can finally begin making good on the enormous debt-financial, humanitarian, developmental and so much more-that we owe to the people of Afghanistan.
But first, everybody has to be at the table.Thanks,Phyllis Bennis
Source: Yes! Magazine
Monday, May 17, 2010
US "flailing wars" in Afghanistan, etc.
In the following entry, I paraphrase and draw loosely on Tom Engelhardt's essay, "Obama's Flailing Wars." The full and original version of the article can be retreived at http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/05/16/obama-flailing-wars
Engelhardt sees US military strategy and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a "tragedy," when not viewed as a "farce."
He reviews recent attempts by the US President and other US military and civilian leaders to stir Afghan President Hamid Karzai into more productive action, advising him, threatening him. Barak Obama recently flew into Kabul for a six hour for a dressing down of Karzai. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen met with Karzai a few days later in the same critical mode.
Then changing the tone, at least for the media, Karzai and some of his government officials visited the White House for what was orchestrated as a congenial confab. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan War Commander Gen. Stanley McChristal were reported to reassure Karzai that the US military presence in Afghanistan was for the long term.
The flip flops, as Engelhard describes them, "seemed to reflect tactical and strategic incoherence," both with respect to Afghanistan and to Pakistan. He adds (later), "In place of strategic coherence, there is just one knee-jerk response: escalation," something like "the Washington mentality in the Vietnam War years."
Some seriously-grounded evidence indicaes that "the US mission in Afghanistan is going dreadfully, evan as the Taliban insurgency gains potency and expands." The recent US offensive in Marjah has proven to be a "fiasco," as Taliban groups "re-infiltrate the area," in the absence of a competent and non-corrupt Afghan government, police, and military. Engelhardt refers "to a report by the International Council on Security and Development...," which finds "the local population [in Marjah] is far more hostile about NATO forces after" the US-led attacks than before them.
Engelhardt stresses that the US occupation and escalation cannot succeed without an effective Afghan government "partner," and without well-trained, honest, and reliable Afghan police and army troops.
Any vision of winning some sort of American hegemony in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is losing credibility, at great expense and destructiveness. That's a tragedy. That it is has something to do with ridding the world of Islamic extremists or Islamic insurgents appears more and more like a "farce."
Engelhardt sees US military strategy and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a "tragedy," when not viewed as a "farce."
He reviews recent attempts by the US President and other US military and civilian leaders to stir Afghan President Hamid Karzai into more productive action, advising him, threatening him. Barak Obama recently flew into Kabul for a six hour for a dressing down of Karzai. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen met with Karzai a few days later in the same critical mode.
Then changing the tone, at least for the media, Karzai and some of his government officials visited the White House for what was orchestrated as a congenial confab. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan War Commander Gen. Stanley McChristal were reported to reassure Karzai that the US military presence in Afghanistan was for the long term.
The flip flops, as Engelhard describes them, "seemed to reflect tactical and strategic incoherence," both with respect to Afghanistan and to Pakistan. He adds (later), "In place of strategic coherence, there is just one knee-jerk response: escalation," something like "the Washington mentality in the Vietnam War years."
Some seriously-grounded evidence indicaes that "the US mission in Afghanistan is going dreadfully, evan as the Taliban insurgency gains potency and expands." The recent US offensive in Marjah has proven to be a "fiasco," as Taliban groups "re-infiltrate the area," in the absence of a competent and non-corrupt Afghan government, police, and military. Engelhardt refers "to a report by the International Council on Security and Development...," which finds "the local population [in Marjah] is far more hostile about NATO forces after" the US-led attacks than before them.
Engelhardt stresses that the US occupation and escalation cannot succeed without an effective Afghan government "partner," and without well-trained, honest, and reliable Afghan police and army troops.
Any vision of winning some sort of American hegemony in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is losing credibility, at great expense and destructiveness. That's a tragedy. That it is has something to do with ridding the world of Islamic extremists or Islamic insurgents appears more and more like a "farce."
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
US financed contracts sometimes end up in the wrong places
"Warlords feed on US contracts, say critics." This is the headline of an article written by Richard Shilito and Matthew Green (in Kandahar) for the Financial Times, May 11, 2010. You can find the full article at: http://freedomsyndicate.com/fairOOOO/ft05.html.
On this blog or ours, we have reprinted and/or commented on reports of corruption in the Afghan government and among warlord in provinces and districts outside of Taliban dominance. In some cases, the warlords also hold positions in the government. Since the US military has not defined the warlords as Al Qaeda or Taliban, they are implicitly considered allies of the US-led occupation and given far more trust than they deserve.
The corruption aspect has to do with how US funded contracts, or some portion of them, end up in the hands for powerful warlords and are used to consolidate their own power and serve their private interests rather than for projects in the public good for which they were intended. some of this money trickles down to various Taliban groups. The opaque networks involved in the trucking business border on the absurd.
Shilito and Green provide new details for this story.
From the article:
On this blog or ours, we have reprinted and/or commented on reports of corruption in the Afghan government and among warlord in provinces and districts outside of Taliban dominance. In some cases, the warlords also hold positions in the government. Since the US military has not defined the warlords as Al Qaeda or Taliban, they are implicitly considered allies of the US-led occupation and given far more trust than they deserve.
The corruption aspect has to do with how US funded contracts, or some portion of them, end up in the hands for powerful warlords and are used to consolidate their own power and serve their private interests rather than for projects in the public good for which they were intended. some of this money trickles down to various Taliban groups. The opaque networks involved in the trucking business border on the absurd.
Shilito and Green provide new details for this story.
From the article:
"...mounting evidence that a $2.16bn trucking contract is enriching Afghan warlords linked to the controversial half-brother of President Hamid Karzai."
"...congressional investigators are looking into whether millions of taxpayers' dollars are being paid to militia commanders to protect convoys ferrying supplies through Kandahar province, where US troops are preparing an offensive."
"Critics say the militias form part of a mafia-like network..."
"...in Washington, concerns are growing that inadequate oversight of Afghan expenditure is financing a heavily armed cabal that will jeopardise the broader US strategy of promoting good governance to counter the Taliban."
"John F. Tierney, a Democratic member of Congress from Massachusetts....chairs the national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, which launched the investigation, partly in response to a Financial Times report on Taliban insurgents extorting money from trucking contractors supplying Isaf, the international force in Afghanistan."
The companies on which the investigation is focusing includes "eight trucking contractors who share the US military's $2.16bn (€1.7bn, £1.5bn) two-year host nation trucking contract. The companies in-clude NCL Holdings, run by Hamed Wardak, the son of Afghanistan's defence minister, and others founded by US and Gulf investors."
Key points: "The system relies on an opaque network of sub-contractors who pay Afghan security companies to escort their trucks. Investigators suspect these companies in turn pay tolls to militia leaders with groups of hundreds of gunmen."
".... Industry insiders say militias run what amount to protection rackets on convoys passing through their territory."
"Investigators suspect that commanders controlling long stretches of highway share multi-million-dollar incomes each year by demanding $1,000-$1,200 for each of the trucks, making up to 10,000 trips a month under the contract."
"Investigators also suspect that some of the funds from the contract end up in the hands of the Taliban, either through bribes paid by sub-contractors or extortion rackets run by militia leaders colluding with insurgents."
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Openings for peace talks in Afghanistan?
The following article is reported on the Just Foreign Policy News website on May 5, 2010: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/567. The source of the article is, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban. Jonathan Steele wrote the article.
Steele finds from his interviews and various reports that there is serious consideration now being given from the Karzai government, Afghan woman leaders, overwhelmingly by the Afghan people as a whole, and even the British, a key US ally, for and end to the war and talks with the Taliban. The Taliban are reported to be willing to end hostilities in return for the opportunity to share power in the national government. The chief reason for this widespread change in views among the Afghan is the disillusion with the war and with the notion that the US-led occupation will lead to improvements in the material conditions of the Afghans and an increase in security.
Steele also reports that the Taliban have become less intolerant toward the idea of girls and women going to school and working in the larger economy (e.g., as doctors). While a harsh patriarchy is pervasive in the rural areas of Afghanistan, this is a cultural fact that has existed for generations. Afghan women overwhelmingly want talks to occur with the Taliban leaders.
In short, the Afghan people want an end to war and are willing to take risks that the Taliban is less rigid and intolerant of other beliefs than before. On an encouraging note, Steele also points out that the Taliban in Pakistan send their girls to school and accept them in professions and work outside the home.
Steele says nothing about whether the Taliban still insist that talks be preconditioned on the departure of foreign troops from the country.
The Obama administration has not yet shown a willinging to become a part of, initiate, or even encourage talks with the Taliban.
--------------------------------
From Just Foreign Policy: Excerpts from Jonathan Steele's article.
Afghanistan: is it time to talk to the Taliban?Until recently it seemed an absurd idea. But now, eight years after its overthrow, is negotiating with the Taliban the only realistic way forward?Jonathan Steele, Guardian, Tuesday 4 May 2010 21.00 Thttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban
Eight years after they were overthrown by US air power, a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favour of talking to the Taliban, the country's once-hated former rulers. An idea that used to seem absurd, if not defeatist, is coming to be seen as the only credible way to end an ever-widening war. Moreover, the proposed agenda of negotiations is not a Taliban surrender, but an offer to share power in Kabul.President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan politicians support the idea. So too do a growing number of foreign governments, including Britain's - at least tentatively - now that British troops are being killed at twice the rate they were in early 2009.
Perhaps most surprisingly, even among Afghanistan's small but determined group of woman professionals, the notion of making a deal with the ultra-conservative men who forced them into burkas and denied them the right to work outside the home is no longer anathema. A desperate desire for peace is trumping concern over human rights.
[...]
I was one of the few journalists in Kabul as the Taliban swept up from Kandahar to take control of the Afghan capital in 1996, prompting the mujahideen warlords to abandon resistance and flee. The sudden shift left everyone stunned, but the crowds that came out to watch the Taliban's pick-up trucks roaring around the streets were mainly supportive. The bearded young Islamists with their promise of social justice seemed to offer an end to the fighting between rival mujahideen leaders that had devastated large parts of the city and forced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps abroad.
[...]
Young Taliban gunmen ran into hospitals, ordering male doctors to grow beards and female doctors to go home. Burkas, once worn only by poorer women in the bazaar, became compulsory for all women. Taliban thugs flayed the ankles of anyone who showed even an inch of bare skin below the regulation new hemlines. But even as repression grew women could still be heard saying that their family's new-found safety from the civil war's shells and rocket-fire made it worth it.A similar calculus of security-versus-rights is re-emerging now. Three years ago, when I was last in Kabul and the Taliban were only just starting their comeback on the battlefield, defeating them was the watchword of the day. There has been a tectonic shift in Afghanistan's public mood since then. It is prompted by a host of factors: growing disappointment with western governments and the ineffectiveness of billions of dollars in aid that seems to go nowhere except into the bank accounts of foreign consultants or local politicians; a sense that there can be no military solution to the new civil war and that outsiders are deliberately prolonging it; grief and despair over the mounting toll of civilian casualties, many caused by US airstrikes; rising nationalist anger and a feeling of humiliation; and a desire to return to an Afghan consensus in which Afghans create their own space and find their own solutions. Karzai's recent outbursts against the Americans and other foreigners are no aberration. They reflect a widely held mood.
[...]
Anders Fänge, the country director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, a large aid agency, has spent around 20 years in the country, also working as a journalist and a UN official. The Taliban should never have been portrayed in the black-and-white terms that Bush and Blair used, he says. During their period in power they often turned a blind eye to the discreet "home schools" where teachers taught girls in people's flats or family compounds. "In 1998 the Taliban governor of [the central Afghan city] Ghazni told me, 'We know you have these girls' schools, but just don't tell me about them.' A Taliban minister even approached me and said, 'I have two daughters. Can you get them in?'" he recalls.
Similar attitudes exist today, he says. In Wardak, a province close to Kabul that is heavily contested by Taliban and Nato forces, "we don't have much problem with the Taliban," says Fänge. "They accept girls' schools and women doctors. They just ask for two hours of Islamic education in schools, that teachers grow beards and not spread propaganda against the Taliban."The difficulty comes from foreign Taliban, the Pakistanis and Arabs, or Taliban from other provinces. "At the local level, it's a patchwork, a mosaic of local commanders, who may recognise Mullah Omar as their spiritual leader but are not under his control," he adds.
Fänge's points support the case, rarely mentioned by western politicians, that Taliban conservatism differs from the rest of the country in degree, not in kind. Afghanistan is a largely rural society where the oppression of women runs deep. Even in villages populated by Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek, Afghan women are routinely banned by husbands or fathers from leaving the family compounds, and girls are kept out of school, according to Afghan women reporters.
[...]
Arsalan Rahmani was deputy minister of higher education and later minister of Islamic affairs in the Taliban government. Four years ago Karzai invited him back to Kabul and made him a senator. He accepts the Taliban made a string of mistakes. "They didn't have good management, they were young, they had no experts, doctors, and couldn't run ministries. My boss was a boy of 25, who couldn't even sign an official letter."He describes reports of restrictions on girls' education and women being denied the chance to work as false. "That wasn't their idea, then or now. We didn't let girls go to school because of lack of security. There was a war on. But now in Pakistan, Taliban girls go to school and university. My son is a doctor and I want him to marry a lady doctor. I've got three daughters. During the Taliban time they were in Pakistan and all studied there."He goes on to tell an incredible story. "When I was deputy minister of higher education, people came to me and said they had girls who had finished school and wanted to study medicine. I consulted Mullah Omar and he authorised us to set up rooms in a central Kabul hospital, now called Daoud Khan hospital, where women could study to become doctors. Around 1,200 graduated, and if you track them down you'll see my signature on their degree certificates," he says.
I have no time to follow his advice but I do locate Shukria Barakzai, an independent woman MP who stayed in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet occupation, the four-year rule by mujahideen warlords, and the Taliban period. She confirms the senator's story.
Like many educated Kabulis, she criticises the warlords as strongly as the Taliban (during the warlords' clashes she lost a son and daughter). She too favours talks with the Taliban. "I changed my view three years ago when I realised Afghanistan is on its own. It's not that the international community doesn't support us. They just don't understand us. Everybody has been trying to kill the Taliban but they're still there, stronger than ever. They are part of our population. They have different ideas but as democrats we have to accept that. Every war has to end with talks and negotiations. Afghans need peace like oxygen. People want to keep their villages free of violence and suicide bombers."Her relaxed attitude to the Taliban stems, in part, from confidence that they cannot win again. "They no longer have the support and reputation they had back then. Taliban is an ideology. It's no longer a united force," she says.
If Afghan women now overwhelmingly want talks with the Taliban, the same is true of many of the country's male politicians, particularly the Pashtun. They want "a rebalancing of forces" in Afghan society, as a former minister who wanted to remain anonymous put it. The US invasion in 2001 put the warlords of the so-called Northern Alliance in power, but failed to produce stability. "In October 2001 the Taliban controlled 90% of Afghanistan, while the Northern Alliance had 10%. After December 2001 the Northern Alliance had 70% and the country's majority group, the Pashtun, were marginalised. Now this needs to change. There's an Afghan consensus on that," he says.
[...]
The trouble, as diplomats see it, is that Obama has not even authorised the CIA to put out feelers to the Taliban leadership on a "deniable" basis, a common way of initiating contacts. Nor has he begun to prepare the American public for the notion that the Taliban may not be demons but necessary negotiating partners. It would be as massive a U-turn in US policy as it was for the British government to talk to the IRA.[...]
Steele finds from his interviews and various reports that there is serious consideration now being given from the Karzai government, Afghan woman leaders, overwhelmingly by the Afghan people as a whole, and even the British, a key US ally, for and end to the war and talks with the Taliban. The Taliban are reported to be willing to end hostilities in return for the opportunity to share power in the national government. The chief reason for this widespread change in views among the Afghan is the disillusion with the war and with the notion that the US-led occupation will lead to improvements in the material conditions of the Afghans and an increase in security.
Steele also reports that the Taliban have become less intolerant toward the idea of girls and women going to school and working in the larger economy (e.g., as doctors). While a harsh patriarchy is pervasive in the rural areas of Afghanistan, this is a cultural fact that has existed for generations. Afghan women overwhelmingly want talks to occur with the Taliban leaders.
In short, the Afghan people want an end to war and are willing to take risks that the Taliban is less rigid and intolerant of other beliefs than before. On an encouraging note, Steele also points out that the Taliban in Pakistan send their girls to school and accept them in professions and work outside the home.
Steele says nothing about whether the Taliban still insist that talks be preconditioned on the departure of foreign troops from the country.
The Obama administration has not yet shown a willinging to become a part of, initiate, or even encourage talks with the Taliban.
--------------------------------
From Just Foreign Policy: Excerpts from Jonathan Steele's article.
Afghanistan: is it time to talk to the Taliban?Until recently it seemed an absurd idea. But now, eight years after its overthrow, is negotiating with the Taliban the only realistic way forward?Jonathan Steele, Guardian, Tuesday 4 May 2010 21.00 Thttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban
Eight years after they were overthrown by US air power, a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favour of talking to the Taliban, the country's once-hated former rulers. An idea that used to seem absurd, if not defeatist, is coming to be seen as the only credible way to end an ever-widening war. Moreover, the proposed agenda of negotiations is not a Taliban surrender, but an offer to share power in Kabul.President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan politicians support the idea. So too do a growing number of foreign governments, including Britain's - at least tentatively - now that British troops are being killed at twice the rate they were in early 2009.
Perhaps most surprisingly, even among Afghanistan's small but determined group of woman professionals, the notion of making a deal with the ultra-conservative men who forced them into burkas and denied them the right to work outside the home is no longer anathema. A desperate desire for peace is trumping concern over human rights.
[...]
I was one of the few journalists in Kabul as the Taliban swept up from Kandahar to take control of the Afghan capital in 1996, prompting the mujahideen warlords to abandon resistance and flee. The sudden shift left everyone stunned, but the crowds that came out to watch the Taliban's pick-up trucks roaring around the streets were mainly supportive. The bearded young Islamists with their promise of social justice seemed to offer an end to the fighting between rival mujahideen leaders that had devastated large parts of the city and forced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps abroad.
[...]
Young Taliban gunmen ran into hospitals, ordering male doctors to grow beards and female doctors to go home. Burkas, once worn only by poorer women in the bazaar, became compulsory for all women. Taliban thugs flayed the ankles of anyone who showed even an inch of bare skin below the regulation new hemlines. But even as repression grew women could still be heard saying that their family's new-found safety from the civil war's shells and rocket-fire made it worth it.A similar calculus of security-versus-rights is re-emerging now. Three years ago, when I was last in Kabul and the Taliban were only just starting their comeback on the battlefield, defeating them was the watchword of the day. There has been a tectonic shift in Afghanistan's public mood since then. It is prompted by a host of factors: growing disappointment with western governments and the ineffectiveness of billions of dollars in aid that seems to go nowhere except into the bank accounts of foreign consultants or local politicians; a sense that there can be no military solution to the new civil war and that outsiders are deliberately prolonging it; grief and despair over the mounting toll of civilian casualties, many caused by US airstrikes; rising nationalist anger and a feeling of humiliation; and a desire to return to an Afghan consensus in which Afghans create their own space and find their own solutions. Karzai's recent outbursts against the Americans and other foreigners are no aberration. They reflect a widely held mood.
[...]
Anders Fänge, the country director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, a large aid agency, has spent around 20 years in the country, also working as a journalist and a UN official. The Taliban should never have been portrayed in the black-and-white terms that Bush and Blair used, he says. During their period in power they often turned a blind eye to the discreet "home schools" where teachers taught girls in people's flats or family compounds. "In 1998 the Taliban governor of [the central Afghan city] Ghazni told me, 'We know you have these girls' schools, but just don't tell me about them.' A Taliban minister even approached me and said, 'I have two daughters. Can you get them in?'" he recalls.
Similar attitudes exist today, he says. In Wardak, a province close to Kabul that is heavily contested by Taliban and Nato forces, "we don't have much problem with the Taliban," says Fänge. "They accept girls' schools and women doctors. They just ask for two hours of Islamic education in schools, that teachers grow beards and not spread propaganda against the Taliban."The difficulty comes from foreign Taliban, the Pakistanis and Arabs, or Taliban from other provinces. "At the local level, it's a patchwork, a mosaic of local commanders, who may recognise Mullah Omar as their spiritual leader but are not under his control," he adds.
Fänge's points support the case, rarely mentioned by western politicians, that Taliban conservatism differs from the rest of the country in degree, not in kind. Afghanistan is a largely rural society where the oppression of women runs deep. Even in villages populated by Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek, Afghan women are routinely banned by husbands or fathers from leaving the family compounds, and girls are kept out of school, according to Afghan women reporters.
[...]
Arsalan Rahmani was deputy minister of higher education and later minister of Islamic affairs in the Taliban government. Four years ago Karzai invited him back to Kabul and made him a senator. He accepts the Taliban made a string of mistakes. "They didn't have good management, they were young, they had no experts, doctors, and couldn't run ministries. My boss was a boy of 25, who couldn't even sign an official letter."He describes reports of restrictions on girls' education and women being denied the chance to work as false. "That wasn't their idea, then or now. We didn't let girls go to school because of lack of security. There was a war on. But now in Pakistan, Taliban girls go to school and university. My son is a doctor and I want him to marry a lady doctor. I've got three daughters. During the Taliban time they were in Pakistan and all studied there."He goes on to tell an incredible story. "When I was deputy minister of higher education, people came to me and said they had girls who had finished school and wanted to study medicine. I consulted Mullah Omar and he authorised us to set up rooms in a central Kabul hospital, now called Daoud Khan hospital, where women could study to become doctors. Around 1,200 graduated, and if you track them down you'll see my signature on their degree certificates," he says.
I have no time to follow his advice but I do locate Shukria Barakzai, an independent woman MP who stayed in Afghanistan throughout the Soviet occupation, the four-year rule by mujahideen warlords, and the Taliban period. She confirms the senator's story.
Like many educated Kabulis, she criticises the warlords as strongly as the Taliban (during the warlords' clashes she lost a son and daughter). She too favours talks with the Taliban. "I changed my view three years ago when I realised Afghanistan is on its own. It's not that the international community doesn't support us. They just don't understand us. Everybody has been trying to kill the Taliban but they're still there, stronger than ever. They are part of our population. They have different ideas but as democrats we have to accept that. Every war has to end with talks and negotiations. Afghans need peace like oxygen. People want to keep their villages free of violence and suicide bombers."Her relaxed attitude to the Taliban stems, in part, from confidence that they cannot win again. "They no longer have the support and reputation they had back then. Taliban is an ideology. It's no longer a united force," she says.
If Afghan women now overwhelmingly want talks with the Taliban, the same is true of many of the country's male politicians, particularly the Pashtun. They want "a rebalancing of forces" in Afghan society, as a former minister who wanted to remain anonymous put it. The US invasion in 2001 put the warlords of the so-called Northern Alliance in power, but failed to produce stability. "In October 2001 the Taliban controlled 90% of Afghanistan, while the Northern Alliance had 10%. After December 2001 the Northern Alliance had 70% and the country's majority group, the Pashtun, were marginalised. Now this needs to change. There's an Afghan consensus on that," he says.
[...]
The trouble, as diplomats see it, is that Obama has not even authorised the CIA to put out feelers to the Taliban leadership on a "deniable" basis, a common way of initiating contacts. Nor has he begun to prepare the American public for the notion that the Taliban may not be demons but necessary negotiating partners. It would be as massive a U-turn in US policy as it was for the British government to talk to the IRA.[...]
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