There are mixed results over the last two weeks, including the first days of the new year, regarding the US-dominated/NATO occupation and war in Afghanistan. There is some good news, but, sadly, the bad news remains greatly ascendant.
First the good news. Jason Ditz reports on Antiwar.com (12/30/10) that the newest CNN/Opinion Research poll finds that “63 percent of the American public opposed to the war, the largest opposition yet from the regular poll.” Another question posed by the pollsters finds that “56 percent of Americans believe the war is going either ‘moderately badly’ or ‘very badly.” Ditz notes that this poll was taken after the president’s December 16 speech on Afghanistan, indicating that Obama’s upbeat message did not resonate well with most of the American public.
While such poll findings may be momentarily uplifting for those of us who have opposed the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from the beginning, going back to 2001 or even before, public opinion does not much affect US Afghan policies. A positive note is that such polls may reflect a growing awareness among an increasing number of Americans that the war is too costly financially and much too injurious (or lethal) for American troops and their families. One implication is that there is a growing sentiment that we need to direct our attention to the serious domestic problems in America of unemployment and underemployment, the continuing housing crisis, a pressing need to channel more support to public education through college, the overall debt-ridden American government, economy, and society, research and technology on green energy, and so forth. On this score, Tom Engelhardt comments in one of the paragraphs from his much longer article on Antiwar.com, “The Urge to Surge,” January 4, 2011:
"The U.S. economy looks increasingly sclerotic; moneys for an aging and rotting infrastructure are long gone; state and city governments are laying off teachers, police, even firefighters; Americans are unemployed in near record numbers; global oil prices (for a country that has in no way begun to wean itself from its dependence on foreign oil) are ominously on the rise; and yet taxpayer money continues to pour into the military and into our foreign wars. It has recently been estimated, for instance, that after spending $11.6 billion in 2011 on the training, supply, and support of the Afghan army and police, the U.S. will continue to spend an average of $6.2 billion a year at least through 2015 (and undoubtedly into an unknown future) – and that’s but one expense in the estimated $120 billion to $160 billion a year being spent at present on the Afghan War, what can only be described as part of America’s war stimulus package abroad." (http://original/antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/01/04/the-urge-to-surge-4)
However, the increasingly plutocratic nature of the US political system, the power of the military-industrial complex, the foreign policy based on force as always a viable, if not preferred, option, the continuing and increasing dependence on foreign oil - all represent some of the dominant influences with respect to foreign policy generally and to Afghanistan specifically. Public opinion appears little more than a passing annoyance to the decision-makers, especially when there is yet no strong anti-Afghan war movement.
Among the other bad news items, Jason Ditz’s Antiwar.com column on January 6, 2011 offers the following example, reporting that “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has approved yet another escalation of the war in Afghanistan, this time approving another 1,400 Marines who are expected to be sent to Afghanistan within a matter of weeks.”
How many US troops are already in Afghanistan? According to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), there were 90,000 US troops in Afghanistan near the end of 2010, along with 39,215 troops with allied countries, ranging from no troops from Jordan and Tonga to 9,500 troops from the UK. http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Placeats/14DEC%202010%20Placemat.pdf
Other reports have indicated the US troop level closer to 100,000. With the additional 1,400 US troops, the total number now rises to 91,400 or to above 100,000.
The numbers don’t end there. There are an unknown number of CIA operatives and US Special Forces, plus US-connected contractors. Further, according to Wikipedia, there were in 2010 138,200 Afghan National Army troops and 120,500 Afghan National Police officers. There are regular reports that indicate many of the Afghan troops and police officers are not well trained, not reliable, and/or infiltrated by people who are sympathetic to the Taliban.
Despite the growing number of US and other troops and police in Afghanistan, the situation there appears to be getting worse. The Dailykos.com website quotes from Agence France-Presse, December 27, 2010, on two confidential UN maps showing “a clear deterioration in security in parts of Afghanistan.” Quoting Kieran Dwyer, “communications director of the UN mission in Afghanistan, “There are parts of the country that have become increasingly difficult to operate in during 2010 due to insecurity.” The article notes further, “Violence in the north has steadily worsened over the last two years despite the Taliban insurgency having its powerbase in the south.” (http://www.kailykos.com/story/2010/12/28/931769/-Open-thread-for-night-owls:-Insecurity-rises-in-Afghanistan
Juan Cole identifies the “top ten myths about Afghanistan,” including this one on the deteriorating security environment in the country. (“Top Ten Myths About Afghanistan,” Informed Comment, December 27, 2010.) First the myth, then the fact.
Myth: “There has been significant progress in tamping down the insurgency in Afghanistan.”
Fact: A recent National Intelligence Estimate by 16 intelligence agencies found no progress. It warned that large swathes of the country were at risk of falling to the Taliban and that they still had safe havens in Pakistan, with the Pakistani government complicit. The UN says there were over 6000 civilian casualties of war in Afghanistan in the first 10 months of 2010, a 20% increase over the same period in 2009. Also, 701 US and NATO troops have been killed this year, compared to 521 last year, a 25% increase. There were typically over 1000 insurgent attacks per month in Afghanistan this year, often twice as many per month as in 2009, recalling the guerrilla war in Iraq in 2005.
US Afghanistan policy has a pronounced surreal quality about it. Tom Engelhardt captures some of this when he compares the recent surge in US troops to how Soviet generals were thinking back in the 1980s about the future progress of their occupation. Both the Soviet generals and the US decision-makers are caught up in pipedreams, though with lots of destructive consequences. Engelhardt writes:
“As 2011 begins, what could be eerier than reading secret Soviet documents from the USSR’s Afghan debacle of the 1980s? It gives you chills to run across Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at a Politburo meeting in October 1985, almost six years after Soviet troops first flooded into Afghanistan, reading letters aloud to his colleagues from embittered Soviet citizens (‘The Politburo had made a mistake and must correct it as soon as possible – every day precious lives are lost’); or, in November 1986, insisting to those same colleagues that the Afghan war must be ended in a year, ‘at maximum, two.’ Yet, with the gut-wrenching sureness history offers, you can’t help but know that, even two years later, even with a strong desire to leave (which has yet to surface among the Washington elite a decade into our own Afghan adventure), imperial pride and fear of loss of ‘credibility’ would keep the Soviets fighting on to 1989.” (http://original/antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/01/04/the-urge-to-surge-4)
Showing posts with label surge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surge. Show all posts
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Obama's rhetoric conflicts with facts on ground in Afghanistan
Under the Radar: Afghanistan in Ruins – Evidence on the Ground Contradicts Obama’s Promises to Defeat Terrorists and Promote Stability
Posted on July 13, 2010 by Media-ocracy (Anthony Dimaggio)
A Media-ocracy News Report, http://media-ocracy.com
Violence in Afghanistan spiked in 2010 in light of the U.S. “surge,” its targeting of the Taliban, and growing attacks on Afghan civilians. Attacks reached an all time high since the U.S. invaded in 2001, according to the group Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM). ARM estimates that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year, with another 1,500 injured, while the Taliban “has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly.”
The U.S. is said to be responsible for approximately one third of all the civilian deaths, although Taliban forces were found to have incited more than 60 percent of all deaths. The recent ARM report from this month represents an important admission from those on the ground that the U.S. promise to help “stabilize” Afghanistan and reduce violence and terrorism remain more rhetoric than reality. The 140,000 troops the U.S. has added to Afghanistan appear to have increased the threat to Afghans by causing an escalation of violence to the point where the country is further spiraling out of control.
Recent social indicators from the United Nations indicate that Afghanistan remains one of the worst off countries in the world. Life expectancy is at a pitiful 44 years, as the country ranks the second lowest in this area (behind only Niger) in all countries throughout the globe. The 2009 UN Human Development Index finds that Afghanistan remains in the bottom 10 percent of countries in terms of its Gross Domestic Product, in the bottom 20 percent in terms of literacy, in the bottom four percent in life expectancy, and in the bottom 30 percent in child malnutrition. Afghanistan excels in one area, however: outmigration. Afghanistan actually finishes in the top 30 percent of countries in terms of people leaving the country, a damning indication of the dangers civilians face throughout the U.S.-NATO occupation.
The Afghan war’s popularity is at a historic low as of mid 2010. Americans appear to be recognizing that the situation in the country is not improving, but in fact worsening in terms of Afghan civilian and U.S. soldiers’ lives lost. Growing public opposition is a testament to the weakness of Obama’s rhetorical defense of the war, which is becoming less convincing each day. According to Newsweek polling, the percent of Americans opposing Obama’s handling of the war increased by a whopping 26 percent from just 27 percent of Americans in February to 55 percent in June. According to Washington Post-ABC polling, while 52 percent of Americans thought the war was “worth fighting” immediately following Obama’s December 2009 speech, that figure fell to 44 percent by early June 2010. General opposition to the war as not “worth” it reached a majority of Americans by April of this year.
The Afghan War, Up Close and Personal
U.S. casualties throughout 2010 have been the worst in the war’s history. They averaged 32 per month, compared to the average of 26 per month in 2009 and 13 deaths per month in 2009. U.S. casualty rates have actually increased steadily every year since 2001, a sign of the increasing toll the war is exacting on the American people. The story of growing U.S. deaths, however, has remained largely under the radar in the American press, which has rarely featured any stories about the historical levels casualties since it first emphasized the topic in late 2009. It appears that journalists have learned well the lesson not to “rock the boat” for a war in which both parties are strongly supportive, despite the growing public rebellion.
Posted on July 13, 2010 by Media-ocracy (Anthony Dimaggio)
A Media-ocracy News Report, http://media-ocracy.com
Violence in Afghanistan spiked in 2010 in light of the U.S. “surge,” its targeting of the Taliban, and growing attacks on Afghan civilians. Attacks reached an all time high since the U.S. invaded in 2001, according to the group Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM). ARM estimates that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year, with another 1,500 injured, while the Taliban “has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly.”
The U.S. is said to be responsible for approximately one third of all the civilian deaths, although Taliban forces were found to have incited more than 60 percent of all deaths. The recent ARM report from this month represents an important admission from those on the ground that the U.S. promise to help “stabilize” Afghanistan and reduce violence and terrorism remain more rhetoric than reality. The 140,000 troops the U.S. has added to Afghanistan appear to have increased the threat to Afghans by causing an escalation of violence to the point where the country is further spiraling out of control.
Recent social indicators from the United Nations indicate that Afghanistan remains one of the worst off countries in the world. Life expectancy is at a pitiful 44 years, as the country ranks the second lowest in this area (behind only Niger) in all countries throughout the globe. The 2009 UN Human Development Index finds that Afghanistan remains in the bottom 10 percent of countries in terms of its Gross Domestic Product, in the bottom 20 percent in terms of literacy, in the bottom four percent in life expectancy, and in the bottom 30 percent in child malnutrition. Afghanistan excels in one area, however: outmigration. Afghanistan actually finishes in the top 30 percent of countries in terms of people leaving the country, a damning indication of the dangers civilians face throughout the U.S.-NATO occupation.
The Afghan war’s popularity is at a historic low as of mid 2010. Americans appear to be recognizing that the situation in the country is not improving, but in fact worsening in terms of Afghan civilian and U.S. soldiers’ lives lost. Growing public opposition is a testament to the weakness of Obama’s rhetorical defense of the war, which is becoming less convincing each day. According to Newsweek polling, the percent of Americans opposing Obama’s handling of the war increased by a whopping 26 percent from just 27 percent of Americans in February to 55 percent in June. According to Washington Post-ABC polling, while 52 percent of Americans thought the war was “worth fighting” immediately following Obama’s December 2009 speech, that figure fell to 44 percent by early June 2010. General opposition to the war as not “worth” it reached a majority of Americans by April of this year.
The Afghan War, Up Close and Personal
U.S. casualties throughout 2010 have been the worst in the war’s history. They averaged 32 per month, compared to the average of 26 per month in 2009 and 13 deaths per month in 2009. U.S. casualty rates have actually increased steadily every year since 2001, a sign of the increasing toll the war is exacting on the American people. The story of growing U.S. deaths, however, has remained largely under the radar in the American press, which has rarely featured any stories about the historical levels casualties since it first emphasized the topic in late 2009. It appears that journalists have learned well the lesson not to “rock the boat” for a war in which both parties are strongly supportive, despite the growing public rebellion.
Monday, June 14, 2010
US offenses in Marja and Kandahar are failing
In the following article by Gareth Porter, I quote from and comment on the article.
McChrystal Faces Massive Failure in Afghanistan in Next Few Months
By Gareth Porter, IPS NewsPosted on June 13, 2010, Printed on June 14,
2010http://www.alternet.org/story/147190/
Gareth Porter compiles evidence to document and further confirm that the US-led offenses in Afghanistan are not going well. Porter examines the recent attack on Marja in Helmand Province and the planned attack on Khandahar, which has already led to some US military incursions or probes. In both cases, Porter writes, the failures stem from the lack of support from the populations and leadership. Their attitudes, in turn, reflect the continuing strength and influence of the Taliban (or certain groups of Taliban) to remain an intimidating presence in both provinces.
Porter writes: On Thursday, McChrystal's message that his strategy will weaken the Taliban in its heartland took its worst beating thus far, when he admitted that the planned offensive in Kandahar City and surrounding districts is being delayed until September at the earliest, because it does not have the support of the Kandahar population and leadership.
The evidence is troubling in Marja as well. Equally damaging to the credibility of McChrystal's strategy was the Washington Post report published Thursday documenting in depth the failure of February's offensive in Marja.
Porter thinks that such failures are likely to be repeated over and over again in media coverage in the coming months.
The basic premise of the US Kandahar operation is unconfirmed, namely that the populations of Marja and Kandahar would welcome US-led forces and cooperate with them in identifying the Taliban insurgents in their respective areas. But it is now clear that McChrystal has understood for weeks that the most basic premise of the operation turned out to be false.
"When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them," said McChrystal, who was in London for a NATO conference.
He didn't have to spell out the obvious implication: the people of Kandahar don't want the protection of foreign troops.
Afghan President Karzai has not helped to facilitate the US-led operations, which focus on driving the Taliban out of the two provinces. Why? because Karzai has made no secret of his preference for a negotiated settlement rather than continued efforts to weaken the Taliban by occupying key Taliban strongholds.
A recent detailed report by the National Editor of the Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides the first detailed evidence of the systematic non-cooperation of the population of the district-sized area called Marja with U.S. troops.
Chandrasekaran reported that female U.S. Marines tried to get Afghan women to come to a meeting last week, but that not a single woman showed up. And despite a NATO offer to hire as many as 10,000 residents for labor projects on irrigation projects, only about 1,200 have signed up.
The Taliban have killed about a dozen people in Marja for collaborating with occupation forces,
and many more have been warned to stop, according to Chandrasekaran's report.
....Chandrasekaran also reported that representatives of rural development and education projects came to Marja initially and then retreated to the province centre. They appear to be as convinced as the population that the Taliban will continue to be a powerful presence in the region.
Taliban influence continues despite the deployment of nearly 15,000 U.S., British and Afghan troops to control Marja's population, representing a ratio of one occupying soldier for every two members of the population....The fact that the U.S.-NATO forces could not clear the Taliban from Marja despite such an unusually heavy concentration of troops is devastating evidence that the McChrystal strategy has failed.
Porter thinks that the continuing lack of progress could well lead to the swift unraveling of political support for the war on the part of the elected and unelected political elite, as occurred in the Iraq War in the second half of 2006. The collapse of elite political support for the Iraq War followed months of coverage of sectarian violence showing the U.S. military had lost control of the war.
The US generals think that more time (and perhaps more troops) will solve the problem
and change the attitudes of the population in Helmand and Kandahar. General McChrstal and CENTCOM chief Gen. David Patraeus may now be counting on pressure from the Republican Party to force President Barack Obama to reverse his present position that withdrawal of U.S. troops will begin next year.
That was the view expressed Thursday by retired Army lieutenant colonel and former Petraeus aide John Nagl, a leading specialist on counterinsurgency who is now president of the Centre for a New American Security.
Porter assumes that political considerations of the Obama administration will lead it to go along with what the Generals want. After the organization's annual conference, Nagle told IPS that Obama will have to shift policy next year to give more time to McChrystal, because he would otherwise be too vulnerable to Republican attacks on his Afghanistan policy going into the 2012 election campaign.
© 2010 IPS News All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147190/
McChrystal Faces Massive Failure in Afghanistan in Next Few Months
By Gareth Porter, IPS NewsPosted on June 13, 2010, Printed on June 14,
2010http://www.alternet.org/story/147190/
Gareth Porter compiles evidence to document and further confirm that the US-led offenses in Afghanistan are not going well. Porter examines the recent attack on Marja in Helmand Province and the planned attack on Khandahar, which has already led to some US military incursions or probes. In both cases, Porter writes, the failures stem from the lack of support from the populations and leadership. Their attitudes, in turn, reflect the continuing strength and influence of the Taliban (or certain groups of Taliban) to remain an intimidating presence in both provinces.
Porter writes: On Thursday, McChrystal's message that his strategy will weaken the Taliban in its heartland took its worst beating thus far, when he admitted that the planned offensive in Kandahar City and surrounding districts is being delayed until September at the earliest, because it does not have the support of the Kandahar population and leadership.
The evidence is troubling in Marja as well. Equally damaging to the credibility of McChrystal's strategy was the Washington Post report published Thursday documenting in depth the failure of February's offensive in Marja.
Porter thinks that such failures are likely to be repeated over and over again in media coverage in the coming months.
The basic premise of the US Kandahar operation is unconfirmed, namely that the populations of Marja and Kandahar would welcome US-led forces and cooperate with them in identifying the Taliban insurgents in their respective areas. But it is now clear that McChrystal has understood for weeks that the most basic premise of the operation turned out to be false.
"When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them," said McChrystal, who was in London for a NATO conference.
He didn't have to spell out the obvious implication: the people of Kandahar don't want the protection of foreign troops.
Afghan President Karzai has not helped to facilitate the US-led operations, which focus on driving the Taliban out of the two provinces. Why? because Karzai has made no secret of his preference for a negotiated settlement rather than continued efforts to weaken the Taliban by occupying key Taliban strongholds.
A recent detailed report by the National Editor of the Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides the first detailed evidence of the systematic non-cooperation of the population of the district-sized area called Marja with U.S. troops.
Chandrasekaran reported that female U.S. Marines tried to get Afghan women to come to a meeting last week, but that not a single woman showed up. And despite a NATO offer to hire as many as 10,000 residents for labor projects on irrigation projects, only about 1,200 have signed up.
The Taliban have killed about a dozen people in Marja for collaborating with occupation forces,
and many more have been warned to stop, according to Chandrasekaran's report.
....Chandrasekaran also reported that representatives of rural development and education projects came to Marja initially and then retreated to the province centre. They appear to be as convinced as the population that the Taliban will continue to be a powerful presence in the region.
Taliban influence continues despite the deployment of nearly 15,000 U.S., British and Afghan troops to control Marja's population, representing a ratio of one occupying soldier for every two members of the population....The fact that the U.S.-NATO forces could not clear the Taliban from Marja despite such an unusually heavy concentration of troops is devastating evidence that the McChrystal strategy has failed.
Porter thinks that the continuing lack of progress could well lead to the swift unraveling of political support for the war on the part of the elected and unelected political elite, as occurred in the Iraq War in the second half of 2006. The collapse of elite political support for the Iraq War followed months of coverage of sectarian violence showing the U.S. military had lost control of the war.
The US generals think that more time (and perhaps more troops) will solve the problem
and change the attitudes of the population in Helmand and Kandahar. General McChrstal and CENTCOM chief Gen. David Patraeus may now be counting on pressure from the Republican Party to force President Barack Obama to reverse his present position that withdrawal of U.S. troops will begin next year.
That was the view expressed Thursday by retired Army lieutenant colonel and former Petraeus aide John Nagl, a leading specialist on counterinsurgency who is now president of the Centre for a New American Security.
Porter assumes that political considerations of the Obama administration will lead it to go along with what the Generals want. After the organization's annual conference, Nagle told IPS that Obama will have to shift policy next year to give more time to McChrystal, because he would otherwise be too vulnerable to Republican attacks on his Afghanistan policy going into the 2012 election campaign.
If Porter is correct, then the Afghan war and occupation will continue to require a major investment of US dollars, along with deaths, injuries, destruction of towns and infrastructure, corruption at all levels of government, the need to bribe Taliban to protect trucks carrying supplies to US troops, and the consequent self-defeating alienation from the occupation.
© 2010 IPS News All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147190/
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Poll finds Afghans in war zones more negative toward US and NATO than toward Taliban
In the following segment of his Informed Comment blog, historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole reviews highlights of a poll done with Aghan citizens in war zones and draws some implications. The poll finds that the majority of respondents are more negative toward US and NATO than toward the Taliban. One implication is that the recent surge in US troops and the adoption of a "counterinsurgency" strategy by US generals are not yielding the hopeful results that were expected in Pashtun areas of Helman Province and Qandahar. Cole fears that the US-led offenses will end up strengthening the position of Taliban insurgents, perceived as the lesser of evils. The majority of Afghans interviewed want security, but believe that US military offenses have led and will lead to more killing, refugees, and destruction, without permanently dislodging the Taliban.
--------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Consent, May 4, 2010
Opinion polling in war zones is fraught with difficulties, but the results of a new poll by the International Council on Security and Development carried out among over 400 male respondents in parts of Helmand Province and Qandahar, Afghanistan, in March, 2010, are extremely troubling. (Executive summary here in html, the whole report is here in pdf format.) I conclude from this sounding that the planned US invasion of Qandahar city is likely to be a disaster that turns millions of Western Pashtuns against the US and NATO. The Eastern Pashtuns are already regularly demonstrating and demanding that the foreign troops depart their provinces.
The Marjah campaign this winter involved US and British troops coming into a rural part of Helmand province in the Pashtun southwest of Afghanistan that had been dominated by the Taliban. The farms in this region specialize in poppy growing, and there are reputedly many makeshift heroin labs there. Some observers estimate that 40 % of drug profits overall flow to the Afghanistan insurgent groups, so presumably the US wanted to damage a profit center of the enemy.
But what you’d like to hear from the people of Marjah and nearby Lashkargah, and from Qandahar (the next US target) is that they are sick and tired of the Taliban, felt oppressed by them, and are really glad to see NATO and Afghanistan national army troops show up. Such anti-Taliban sentiments appear common, after all, in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, where from all accounts locals were glad that the Pakistani army cleaned the Taliban out last summer, even though they are dissatisfied with the resulting displacements, property damage and slowness in the delivery of reconstruction aid.
But the Pashtuns of southern Helmand and of Qandahar are not talking like the people of Swat Valley. The report finds that “61% of those interviewed feel more negative about NATO forces than before the military offensive. ” We aren’t winning hearts and minds, folks.
In a startling statistic, nearly 80% of these Pashtun men say that they are now often or always angry, a doubling of this response from one year ago. Nearly half are specifically furious at NATO (over “occupation, civilian casualties and night raids”) and over a third are upset at war and instability (likely also blamed on NATO). Only 9 percent say they are angry with the Taliban!
Almost everyone said that the Marjah campaign produced more refugees (ICOS estimates at least 30,000), who are now living in tent cities or makeshift refugee camps.
Nearly 60% of respondents said they believed the Taliban would just return to Marjah, so the US has not in fact succeeded in convincing locals that they are even capable of the “clear” operation in the take, clear, hold and build strategy. Skepticism about holding and building is therefore likely to be even higher. And 95 percent, almost all, believe more young men have joined the Taliban in the aftermath of the Marjah campaign.
Another troubling finding is that slightly over half now believe the angry young men are motivated to join the Taliban by a belief in “jihad,” i.e. a desire to fight to end the foreign military occupation of their country. Other studies have suggested that many Taliban footsoldiers are just in it for the money. If these respondents are correct in their perception, it would be a troubling development– that young Pashtun males are becoming ideologically radicalized against NATO. A majority still feels, however, that if jobs could be provided to the angry young men, it would draw them away from the Taliban.
The report says, “The principal demand expressed by 70% of Afghans interviewed is the immediate provision of help from NATO, the international community and the Afghan government: they expect shelter and food for the refugees, the rebuilding of destroyed property and the clearing of landmines.” They don’t think they are getting a ‘government in a box’ as Gen. McChrystal promised. They don’t think they are getting basic post-campaign aid. No NGOs are operating in Marjah itself and only two in nearby Lashkargah.
Although the respondents do want security and two-thirds do hope NATO will clear insurgents from the road to the capital of Kabul from their region, and even say they would a similar clearing in Qandahar (!), given their other responses I conclude that they want security imposed in a way that does not displace people or kill innocents. I.e. they want better and less intrusive policing, not a military attack on a civilian area.
--------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Consent, May 4, 2010
Opinion polling in war zones is fraught with difficulties, but the results of a new poll by the International Council on Security and Development carried out among over 400 male respondents in parts of Helmand Province and Qandahar, Afghanistan, in March, 2010, are extremely troubling. (Executive summary here in html, the whole report is here in pdf format.) I conclude from this sounding that the planned US invasion of Qandahar city is likely to be a disaster that turns millions of Western Pashtuns against the US and NATO. The Eastern Pashtuns are already regularly demonstrating and demanding that the foreign troops depart their provinces.
The Marjah campaign this winter involved US and British troops coming into a rural part of Helmand province in the Pashtun southwest of Afghanistan that had been dominated by the Taliban. The farms in this region specialize in poppy growing, and there are reputedly many makeshift heroin labs there. Some observers estimate that 40 % of drug profits overall flow to the Afghanistan insurgent groups, so presumably the US wanted to damage a profit center of the enemy.
But what you’d like to hear from the people of Marjah and nearby Lashkargah, and from Qandahar (the next US target) is that they are sick and tired of the Taliban, felt oppressed by them, and are really glad to see NATO and Afghanistan national army troops show up. Such anti-Taliban sentiments appear common, after all, in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, where from all accounts locals were glad that the Pakistani army cleaned the Taliban out last summer, even though they are dissatisfied with the resulting displacements, property damage and slowness in the delivery of reconstruction aid.
But the Pashtuns of southern Helmand and of Qandahar are not talking like the people of Swat Valley. The report finds that “61% of those interviewed feel more negative about NATO forces than before the military offensive. ” We aren’t winning hearts and minds, folks.
In a startling statistic, nearly 80% of these Pashtun men say that they are now often or always angry, a doubling of this response from one year ago. Nearly half are specifically furious at NATO (over “occupation, civilian casualties and night raids”) and over a third are upset at war and instability (likely also blamed on NATO). Only 9 percent say they are angry with the Taliban!
Almost everyone said that the Marjah campaign produced more refugees (ICOS estimates at least 30,000), who are now living in tent cities or makeshift refugee camps.
Nearly 60% of respondents said they believed the Taliban would just return to Marjah, so the US has not in fact succeeded in convincing locals that they are even capable of the “clear” operation in the take, clear, hold and build strategy. Skepticism about holding and building is therefore likely to be even higher. And 95 percent, almost all, believe more young men have joined the Taliban in the aftermath of the Marjah campaign.
Another troubling finding is that slightly over half now believe the angry young men are motivated to join the Taliban by a belief in “jihad,” i.e. a desire to fight to end the foreign military occupation of their country. Other studies have suggested that many Taliban footsoldiers are just in it for the money. If these respondents are correct in their perception, it would be a troubling development– that young Pashtun males are becoming ideologically radicalized against NATO. A majority still feels, however, that if jobs could be provided to the angry young men, it would draw them away from the Taliban.
The report says, “The principal demand expressed by 70% of Afghans interviewed is the immediate provision of help from NATO, the international community and the Afghan government: they expect shelter and food for the refugees, the rebuilding of destroyed property and the clearing of landmines.” They don’t think they are getting a ‘government in a box’ as Gen. McChrystal promised. They don’t think they are getting basic post-campaign aid. No NGOs are operating in Marjah itself and only two in nearby Lashkargah.
Although the respondents do want security and two-thirds do hope NATO will clear insurgents from the road to the capital of Kabul from their region, and even say they would a similar clearing in Qandahar (!), given their other responses I conclude that they want security imposed in a way that does not displace people or kill innocents. I.e. they want better and less intrusive policing, not a military attack on a civilian area.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Headlines on recent developments in Afghanistan
The following four headlines from various media sources were gathered by Just Foreign Policy. Together they point to little progress for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, and growing support for the Taliban/insurgents in southern parts of the country.
Bear in mind, these developments are unfolding after the Obama sanctioned increase to Afghnistan of 30,000 troops this year (bringing US troop levels to about 100,000), along with additional contractors, the ongoing training of Afhan army and police, and including some troops from NATO. The generals in the field now expect that the "need" for the occupation will go on for many years. There are other reports as well indicating that the Pentagon will soon be asking for another 20,000 US soldiers.
As time passes, the US-led occupation seems more and more like a rough re-run of what happened in Vietnam, with its death, destruction of villages and habitat, and lack of support from the indigenous population. In both cases, we were told that the continued escalation of war was necessary to our national security. It all sounds like a broken record. The opportunity costs, or how we might otherwise spend the tens of billions of dollars on the broken economic system of the US itself, are great and increasing.
There are perhaps larger concerns behind the day-to-day reports. While Afghanistan is not rich in fossil fuels, it is geographically situated so that a pipeline could be built through it to transmit the oil from other countries in central Asia. Additionally, Afghanistan figures in the tensions between Pakistan and India. Both countries would like to have a dominating influence in Afghanistan to advance their own perceptions of security and influence in the region. And the US administration and Pentagon apparently want to demonstrate that US hegemonic power is intact. Whatever the larger reasons, Afghanistan appears like a pawn in larger imperialistic plots. The dominos may be falling, but not to advance the interests of the societies that are being directly and indirectly affected.
Bob
---------------------------
Some headlines from Just Foreign Policy, April 30, 2010.
1) Nato's most senior civilian official said US and NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan can expect to be engaged in a combat role for three or four more years, the Guardian reports. Thereafter, they could be expected to remain in Afghanistan, training and mentoring local forces, for a further 10 to 15 years. President Karzai is due to visit Washington on May 10.
3) A U.S. night raid that killed a relative of Afghan parliamentarian Safia Siddiqi was conducted without informing the local police, the Los Angeles Times reports.
4) The most significant revelation in the Pentagon's Afghanistan report this week is that Gen. McChrystal and ISAF acknowledge officially that Taliban insurgents dominate a vast contiguous zone of heavily populated territory across southern Afghanistan that McChrystal regards as the most critical area in the country, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. The report admits that the population in key districts across most southern provinces is sympathetic to or supportive of the insurgents.
5) The Pentagon's report on the last six months in Afghanistan suggests the situation is little better over all than it was six months ago despite enormous expenditures of effort, money and lives by US and international forces, the New York Times reports. The report is mandated by Congress every six months.
Bear in mind, these developments are unfolding after the Obama sanctioned increase to Afghnistan of 30,000 troops this year (bringing US troop levels to about 100,000), along with additional contractors, the ongoing training of Afhan army and police, and including some troops from NATO. The generals in the field now expect that the "need" for the occupation will go on for many years. There are other reports as well indicating that the Pentagon will soon be asking for another 20,000 US soldiers.
As time passes, the US-led occupation seems more and more like a rough re-run of what happened in Vietnam, with its death, destruction of villages and habitat, and lack of support from the indigenous population. In both cases, we were told that the continued escalation of war was necessary to our national security. It all sounds like a broken record. The opportunity costs, or how we might otherwise spend the tens of billions of dollars on the broken economic system of the US itself, are great and increasing.
There are perhaps larger concerns behind the day-to-day reports. While Afghanistan is not rich in fossil fuels, it is geographically situated so that a pipeline could be built through it to transmit the oil from other countries in central Asia. Additionally, Afghanistan figures in the tensions between Pakistan and India. Both countries would like to have a dominating influence in Afghanistan to advance their own perceptions of security and influence in the region. And the US administration and Pentagon apparently want to demonstrate that US hegemonic power is intact. Whatever the larger reasons, Afghanistan appears like a pawn in larger imperialistic plots. The dominos may be falling, but not to advance the interests of the societies that are being directly and indirectly affected.
Bob
---------------------------
Some headlines from Just Foreign Policy, April 30, 2010.
1) Nato's most senior civilian official said US and NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan can expect to be engaged in a combat role for three or four more years, the Guardian reports. Thereafter, they could be expected to remain in Afghanistan, training and mentoring local forces, for a further 10 to 15 years. President Karzai is due to visit Washington on May 10.
3) A U.S. night raid that killed a relative of Afghan parliamentarian Safia Siddiqi was conducted without informing the local police, the Los Angeles Times reports.
4) The most significant revelation in the Pentagon's Afghanistan report this week is that Gen. McChrystal and ISAF acknowledge officially that Taliban insurgents dominate a vast contiguous zone of heavily populated territory across southern Afghanistan that McChrystal regards as the most critical area in the country, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. The report admits that the population in key districts across most southern provinces is sympathetic to or supportive of the insurgents.
5) The Pentagon's report on the last six months in Afghanistan suggests the situation is little better over all than it was six months ago despite enormous expenditures of effort, money and lives by US and international forces, the New York Times reports. The report is mandated by Congress every six months.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
An alternative to the surge in troops to Afghanistan
The following few paragraphs come near the end of a much longer article by Alfred M. McCoy, "The Opium Wars in Afghanistan." You can find the full article at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/31-0
McCoy, a truly outstanding scholar, helps the reader to understand the historical and ongoing role that the US has played in the destruction of Afghanistan's agricultural system, unintentionally perhaps in fostering an economy that revolves largely around the cultivation of poppies, and preserving a system that brings rewards to a few and miserable poverty for the many.
In the paragraphs taken from the article, McCoy offers an "alternative" to the strategy of surging the troops (now in process). McCoy's alternative is succinct, doable, and makes a lot of sense.
-------------------------------
"....Is there any alternative? Even were the cost of rebuilding Afghanistan's rural economy -- with its orchards, flocks, and food crops -- as high as $30 billion or, for that matter, $90 billion dollars, the money is at hand. By conservative estimates, the cost [23] of President Obama's ongoing surge of 30,000 troops alone is $30 billion a year. So just bringing those 30,000 troops home would create ample funds to begin the rebuilding of rural life in Afghanistan, making it possible for young farmers to begin feeding their families without joining the Taliban's army.
"Short of another precipitous withdrawal akin to 1991, Washington has no realistic alternative to the costly, long-term reconstruction of Afghanistan's agriculture. Beneath the gaze of an allied force that now numbers about 120,000 soldiers, opium has fueled the Taliban's growth into an omnipresent shadow government and an effective guerrilla army. The idea that our expanded military presence might soon succeed in driving back that force and handing over pacification to the illiterate [24], drug-addicted Afghan police [25] and army [26] remains, for the time being, a fantasy. Quick fixes like paying poppy farmers not to plant, something British and Americans have both tried, can backfire and end up actually promoting yet more opium cultivation. Rapid drug eradication without alternative employment, something the private contractor DynCorp tried so disastrously [27] under a $150 million contract in 2005, would simply plunge Afghanistan into more misery, stoking mass anger and destabilizing the Kabul government further.
"So the choice is clear enough: we can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome -- for both the United States and the people of Afghanistan. Or we can begin to withdraw American forces while helping renew this ancient, arid land by replanting its orchards, replenishing its flocks, and rebuilding the irrigation systems ruined in decades of war...."
McCoy, a truly outstanding scholar, helps the reader to understand the historical and ongoing role that the US has played in the destruction of Afghanistan's agricultural system, unintentionally perhaps in fostering an economy that revolves largely around the cultivation of poppies, and preserving a system that brings rewards to a few and miserable poverty for the many.
In the paragraphs taken from the article, McCoy offers an "alternative" to the strategy of surging the troops (now in process). McCoy's alternative is succinct, doable, and makes a lot of sense.
-------------------------------
"....Is there any alternative? Even were the cost of rebuilding Afghanistan's rural economy -- with its orchards, flocks, and food crops -- as high as $30 billion or, for that matter, $90 billion dollars, the money is at hand. By conservative estimates, the cost [23] of President Obama's ongoing surge of 30,000 troops alone is $30 billion a year. So just bringing those 30,000 troops home would create ample funds to begin the rebuilding of rural life in Afghanistan, making it possible for young farmers to begin feeding their families without joining the Taliban's army.
"Short of another precipitous withdrawal akin to 1991, Washington has no realistic alternative to the costly, long-term reconstruction of Afghanistan's agriculture. Beneath the gaze of an allied force that now numbers about 120,000 soldiers, opium has fueled the Taliban's growth into an omnipresent shadow government and an effective guerrilla army. The idea that our expanded military presence might soon succeed in driving back that force and handing over pacification to the illiterate [24], drug-addicted Afghan police [25] and army [26] remains, for the time being, a fantasy. Quick fixes like paying poppy farmers not to plant, something British and Americans have both tried, can backfire and end up actually promoting yet more opium cultivation. Rapid drug eradication without alternative employment, something the private contractor DynCorp tried so disastrously [27] under a $150 million contract in 2005, would simply plunge Afghanistan into more misery, stoking mass anger and destabilizing the Kabul government further.
"So the choice is clear enough: we can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome -- for both the United States and the people of Afghanistan. Or we can begin to withdraw American forces while helping renew this ancient, arid land by replanting its orchards, replenishing its flocks, and rebuilding the irrigation systems ruined in decades of war...."
Monday, February 22, 2010
Juan Cole, five arguments against US-led surge in Afghanistan
Juan Cole offers a five-point argument for why the "surge" of US and allied troops in Afghanistan is unlikely to work and therefore, implicitly, why an alternative plan of withdrawal would make better sense. But, unfortunately, the US generals and civilians in charge of this occupation want to remain in the country for many years to come. Obama seems to be going along. They tell us that this is a counterinsurgency policy that is aimed at "protecting the Afghan people" and will prove to be a successful approach. But, they add, it will require many years to take back the cities and thousands of villages using this counterinsurgency method.
The policy is currently being employed in the southern Afghan city of Marja, as Cole notes. At some point, they say, the Afghan army will take over the responsibility of bringing some sort of "security" to the country. There is no persuasive evidence yet that this has happened.
Some of you have viewed the DVD, Rethinking Afghanistan, which advances an argument against the US-led occupation. For a broader view of the Afghan situation from an Afghan woman, I recommend a book by Malalai Joya, A Woman Among Warlords. In addition, Joya's appearances on programs like Democracy Now and her speeches to audiences in America and Canada are readily available on the Internet. For now, here is Cole's sophisticated position.
Bob
----------------------------
Monday, February 22, 2010
Juan Cole, Informed CommentFive Questions for the Afghan Surge; Or, Getting Past the Hype Gen. David Petraeus, a straight shooter, admitted on Meet the Press Sunday that the Afghanistan War will take years and incur high casualties.. His implicit defense of President Obama from Dick Cheney on the issues of torture and closing Guantanamo will make bigger headlines, but sooner or later the American public will notice the admission. The country is now evenly divided between those who think the US can and should restore a modicum of stability before getting out, and those who want a quick withdrawal. The Marjah Campaign, the centerpiece of the new counter-insurgency strategy, is over a week old, and some assessment of this new, visible push by the US military in violent Helmand Province is in order.
There was never any doubt that the US and NATO would win militarily, fairly easily occupying Marjah and nearby Nad Ali. Marjah at 85,000 or so is a city smaller than Ann Arbor, Michigan. The campaign is only significant in a larger social and political context. The questions are:
1. Can the stategy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, of taking, clearing, holding and building be extended deep into the Pashtun regions? Marjah is only a stepping stone to the key southern city of Qandahar, which has a population of a million, more the size of Detroit.
This outcome has yet to be seen. But for rural Pashtuns to come to love foreign occupiers is an unlikely proposition. Even the WSJ admits that in Marjah, the Marines are not exactly feeling the love from the civilians they have supposedly just liberated. Since the Taliban are typically not as corrupt as the warlords, in fact, to any extent that the US and NATO re-install corrupt warlord types in power, they may alienate the locals. And keeping civilian casualties low so as to win hearts and minds is key here. That task will become more difficult as the US inserts itself more deeply into Pashtun territory, since insurgent villages will have to be defeated. The Soviet occupation produced 5 million externally displaced and 2 million internally displaced, along with hundreds of thousands dead. A campaign in Qandahar could easily displace half a million people, and they might mind. Meanwhile, on Monday, the governor of Dai Kundi asserted that a US airstrike killed 27 persons, mostly civilians. There is also the question, raised by Tom Englehardt, of whether the US is capable of good governance in Afghanistan when it is not in Washington, DC.
2. Can the demonstration of vitality and of a sense of progress mollify NATO publics long enough to fight a prolonged war and do intensive training of troops and police over several years?
No. Over the weekend, the center-right government of the Netherlands fell over whether to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war is universally unpopular in continental Europe, and governments have troops there mostly in the teeth of popular opposition, because NATO invoked article 5 of its charter, 'an attack on one is an attack on all' with regard to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks. It may take months after the next elections this spring for the Dutch to form a new government, in part because of the surging popularity of the far-right populist anti-Muslim 'Freedom Party' of Islamophobe Geert Wilders-- a smelly party the others will probably not want in their coalition. Holland's 2000 troops are likely to be withdrawn by late summer. Canada's military is also departing Afghanistan. Are these one-off situations, or are they the beginning of a NATO withdrawal over-all, which will leave Obama in the lurch? Australia is already refusing to take up the Dutch slack, and its government is under public pressure to get out, itself. While it is entirely possible that scandal-plagued rightwing billionaire Silvio Berlusconi will survive the next elections in Italy, it is also possible that he will not, and his successor may well want out of the unpopular Afghanistan quagmire. Moreover, the Pashtun insurgents may smell blood in the water with the Dutch withdrawal from Uruzgan (the home province of Mullah Omar), and target the smaller NATO contingents (the deaths of 6 Italian troops last fall raised public ire against the war).
There are about 45,000 NATO and other allied troops in Afghanistan, and 74,000 American. Obama wanted to increase the European contingent by 10,000, but NATO generally declined that offer, and now the NATO contingent may begin to shrink just when more trainers in particular are desperatedly needed. The Afghanistan National Army is supposedly nearly 100,000 strong, but many critics say the true number is half that, and that even that half is mostly illiterate, poorly trained, and often suffers from uncertain loyalties, drug use, or other debilitating considerations.
3. Can an Afghan army be stood up in short order that has the capacity to patrol independently and keep order after the US and NATO troops withdraw?
Unlikely. The answer to the question about Afghan military preparedness-- after nearly a decade of training and an investment of $1 billion that Afghan troops are not ready for prime time. In the Marjah campaign, they showed no initiative, no ability to fight independently. They are poorly served by their junior field officers, and they are 90% illiterate. (The NYT reporter expected to see them with maps out planning approaches!) The ethnic make-up of the particular Afghanistan National Army units sent into Marjah is also not clear. Almost no ANA troops hail from Helmand Province, and Tajiks (native speakers of Dari Persian, often from towns and cities) are vastly over-represented in the army. There is often bad blood between Tajiks and Pashtuns, the group that predominates in Marjah. The same skill set of the ANA most prized by the US Marines during the assault-- the ability to sniff out which households are Taliban-- may be a liability in the holding and building phase, since it stems from a decade and a half of Tajik Northern Alliance battles against the Taliban.
4. Can the Afghan public, which includes many groups (Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks) deeply harmed by Taliban rule, accept reconciliation, as well?
Unlikely. Former Northern Alliance leader popular among Tajiks, Abdullah Abdullah, warned Karzai against reconciling with the Taliban this weekend. Abdullah dropped out of last fall's presidential contest in protest against alleged ballot fraud in Karzai's favor. There is general hostility toward reconciliation with the Taliban among the parties representing northern, non-Pashtun ethnic groups.
5. Can so much pressure be put on the Taliban that at least their middle and lower ranks will accept reconciliation with the Karzai government? So far, there is no sign that the Taliban leadership still at large is interested in negotiations. A Taliban spokesman replied to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's call for reconciliation with Kabul over the weekend with a resounding 'No!'. Qari Muhammad Yusuf Ahmadi told the Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto that the Taliban would cease fighting when there were not further foreign troops in his country. He said, according to the translation in The News:
"The entire world knows that foreign forces have invaded Afghanistan and occupied this country. They have also started the fighting. Taliban will neither lay down weapons nor will hold talks with Karzai administration even in the presence of a single foreign soldier in Afghanistan. . ."
"The ongoing war in Afghanistan is between Afghans and foreigners. The responsibility of the war lies on the foreigners and their slaves. They continue fighting in the populated areas and have sent 15000 troops to small area like Marja; and are killing civilians and trying to impose infidels on Afghans."
"Karzai himself has no power. The foreigners control everything and the nation is fighting against them."
Commenting on the deaths of 12 civilians in Marjah, Qari Muhammad said: "Karzai should have said who martyred the people. In fact neither Taliban kill the people and nor destroy their houses. These are foreigners who are bombing the houses and killing civilians everywhere as they have brought miseries to the people of Marja."
On the other hand, those members of the Taliban shadow government now in Pakistani custody may be less categorical. A third Taliban commander, Maulvi Kabir (the shadow governor of Nangarhar Province) has been captured by the Pakistani military, allegedly based on information provided by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar, the military chief of staff for the Old Taliban of Mullah Omar, was picked up recently in Karachi in a joint operation of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and US intelligence, which picked up signals from Baradar. Serious inroads are being made by these arrests into the Taliban 'shadow government' of officials who plan out roadside bombings and other attacks in specific provinces of Afghanistan while hiding out in Pakistan.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Riza Yusuf Gilani, and the military chief of state, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, appear to believe that capturing these high Afghan Taliban leaders will give Islamabad leverage in a negotiated settlement of the contest between the Karzai government and the Pashtun religious far right, which is in insurgency. Obama's Afghanistan escalation among the sullen Pashtuns is a desperate policy, as dangerous as attempting to build a series of sand castles on the beach at high tide. Ironically, his bigger success has come in Pakistan, where he appears to have convinced the Pakistani elite to intervene decisively against their own, Pakistani Taliban, and also now to begin arresting the Old Taliban shadow government that is hiding out on Pakistani soil. If he can go further and convince Islamabad that its support of the Afghan Taliban was all a long a key strategic error that has blown back on Pakistan proper, he will thereby come closer to victory than he could by any military measures inside Afghanistan itself. End/ (Not Continued)
The policy is currently being employed in the southern Afghan city of Marja, as Cole notes. At some point, they say, the Afghan army will take over the responsibility of bringing some sort of "security" to the country. There is no persuasive evidence yet that this has happened.
Some of you have viewed the DVD, Rethinking Afghanistan, which advances an argument against the US-led occupation. For a broader view of the Afghan situation from an Afghan woman, I recommend a book by Malalai Joya, A Woman Among Warlords. In addition, Joya's appearances on programs like Democracy Now and her speeches to audiences in America and Canada are readily available on the Internet. For now, here is Cole's sophisticated position.
Bob
----------------------------
Monday, February 22, 2010
Juan Cole, Informed CommentFive Questions for the Afghan Surge; Or, Getting Past the Hype Gen. David Petraeus, a straight shooter, admitted on Meet the Press Sunday that the Afghanistan War will take years and incur high casualties.. His implicit defense of President Obama from Dick Cheney on the issues of torture and closing Guantanamo will make bigger headlines, but sooner or later the American public will notice the admission. The country is now evenly divided between those who think the US can and should restore a modicum of stability before getting out, and those who want a quick withdrawal. The Marjah Campaign, the centerpiece of the new counter-insurgency strategy, is over a week old, and some assessment of this new, visible push by the US military in violent Helmand Province is in order.
There was never any doubt that the US and NATO would win militarily, fairly easily occupying Marjah and nearby Nad Ali. Marjah at 85,000 or so is a city smaller than Ann Arbor, Michigan. The campaign is only significant in a larger social and political context. The questions are:
1. Can the stategy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, of taking, clearing, holding and building be extended deep into the Pashtun regions? Marjah is only a stepping stone to the key southern city of Qandahar, which has a population of a million, more the size of Detroit.
This outcome has yet to be seen. But for rural Pashtuns to come to love foreign occupiers is an unlikely proposition. Even the WSJ admits that in Marjah, the Marines are not exactly feeling the love from the civilians they have supposedly just liberated. Since the Taliban are typically not as corrupt as the warlords, in fact, to any extent that the US and NATO re-install corrupt warlord types in power, they may alienate the locals. And keeping civilian casualties low so as to win hearts and minds is key here. That task will become more difficult as the US inserts itself more deeply into Pashtun territory, since insurgent villages will have to be defeated. The Soviet occupation produced 5 million externally displaced and 2 million internally displaced, along with hundreds of thousands dead. A campaign in Qandahar could easily displace half a million people, and they might mind. Meanwhile, on Monday, the governor of Dai Kundi asserted that a US airstrike killed 27 persons, mostly civilians. There is also the question, raised by Tom Englehardt, of whether the US is capable of good governance in Afghanistan when it is not in Washington, DC.
2. Can the demonstration of vitality and of a sense of progress mollify NATO publics long enough to fight a prolonged war and do intensive training of troops and police over several years?
No. Over the weekend, the center-right government of the Netherlands fell over whether to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war is universally unpopular in continental Europe, and governments have troops there mostly in the teeth of popular opposition, because NATO invoked article 5 of its charter, 'an attack on one is an attack on all' with regard to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks. It may take months after the next elections this spring for the Dutch to form a new government, in part because of the surging popularity of the far-right populist anti-Muslim 'Freedom Party' of Islamophobe Geert Wilders-- a smelly party the others will probably not want in their coalition. Holland's 2000 troops are likely to be withdrawn by late summer. Canada's military is also departing Afghanistan. Are these one-off situations, or are they the beginning of a NATO withdrawal over-all, which will leave Obama in the lurch? Australia is already refusing to take up the Dutch slack, and its government is under public pressure to get out, itself. While it is entirely possible that scandal-plagued rightwing billionaire Silvio Berlusconi will survive the next elections in Italy, it is also possible that he will not, and his successor may well want out of the unpopular Afghanistan quagmire. Moreover, the Pashtun insurgents may smell blood in the water with the Dutch withdrawal from Uruzgan (the home province of Mullah Omar), and target the smaller NATO contingents (the deaths of 6 Italian troops last fall raised public ire against the war).
There are about 45,000 NATO and other allied troops in Afghanistan, and 74,000 American. Obama wanted to increase the European contingent by 10,000, but NATO generally declined that offer, and now the NATO contingent may begin to shrink just when more trainers in particular are desperatedly needed. The Afghanistan National Army is supposedly nearly 100,000 strong, but many critics say the true number is half that, and that even that half is mostly illiterate, poorly trained, and often suffers from uncertain loyalties, drug use, or other debilitating considerations.
3. Can an Afghan army be stood up in short order that has the capacity to patrol independently and keep order after the US and NATO troops withdraw?
Unlikely. The answer to the question about Afghan military preparedness-- after nearly a decade of training and an investment of $1 billion that Afghan troops are not ready for prime time. In the Marjah campaign, they showed no initiative, no ability to fight independently. They are poorly served by their junior field officers, and they are 90% illiterate. (The NYT reporter expected to see them with maps out planning approaches!) The ethnic make-up of the particular Afghanistan National Army units sent into Marjah is also not clear. Almost no ANA troops hail from Helmand Province, and Tajiks (native speakers of Dari Persian, often from towns and cities) are vastly over-represented in the army. There is often bad blood between Tajiks and Pashtuns, the group that predominates in Marjah. The same skill set of the ANA most prized by the US Marines during the assault-- the ability to sniff out which households are Taliban-- may be a liability in the holding and building phase, since it stems from a decade and a half of Tajik Northern Alliance battles against the Taliban.
4. Can the Afghan public, which includes many groups (Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks) deeply harmed by Taliban rule, accept reconciliation, as well?
Unlikely. Former Northern Alliance leader popular among Tajiks, Abdullah Abdullah, warned Karzai against reconciling with the Taliban this weekend. Abdullah dropped out of last fall's presidential contest in protest against alleged ballot fraud in Karzai's favor. There is general hostility toward reconciliation with the Taliban among the parties representing northern, non-Pashtun ethnic groups.
5. Can so much pressure be put on the Taliban that at least their middle and lower ranks will accept reconciliation with the Karzai government? So far, there is no sign that the Taliban leadership still at large is interested in negotiations. A Taliban spokesman replied to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's call for reconciliation with Kabul over the weekend with a resounding 'No!'. Qari Muhammad Yusuf Ahmadi told the Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto that the Taliban would cease fighting when there were not further foreign troops in his country. He said, according to the translation in The News:
"The entire world knows that foreign forces have invaded Afghanistan and occupied this country. They have also started the fighting. Taliban will neither lay down weapons nor will hold talks with Karzai administration even in the presence of a single foreign soldier in Afghanistan. . ."
"The ongoing war in Afghanistan is between Afghans and foreigners. The responsibility of the war lies on the foreigners and their slaves. They continue fighting in the populated areas and have sent 15000 troops to small area like Marja; and are killing civilians and trying to impose infidels on Afghans."
"Karzai himself has no power. The foreigners control everything and the nation is fighting against them."
Commenting on the deaths of 12 civilians in Marjah, Qari Muhammad said: "Karzai should have said who martyred the people. In fact neither Taliban kill the people and nor destroy their houses. These are foreigners who are bombing the houses and killing civilians everywhere as they have brought miseries to the people of Marja."
On the other hand, those members of the Taliban shadow government now in Pakistani custody may be less categorical. A third Taliban commander, Maulvi Kabir (the shadow governor of Nangarhar Province) has been captured by the Pakistani military, allegedly based on information provided by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar, the military chief of staff for the Old Taliban of Mullah Omar, was picked up recently in Karachi in a joint operation of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and US intelligence, which picked up signals from Baradar. Serious inroads are being made by these arrests into the Taliban 'shadow government' of officials who plan out roadside bombings and other attacks in specific provinces of Afghanistan while hiding out in Pakistan.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Riza Yusuf Gilani, and the military chief of state, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, appear to believe that capturing these high Afghan Taliban leaders will give Islamabad leverage in a negotiated settlement of the contest between the Karzai government and the Pashtun religious far right, which is in insurgency. Obama's Afghanistan escalation among the sullen Pashtuns is a desperate policy, as dangerous as attempting to build a series of sand castles on the beach at high tide. Ironically, his bigger success has come in Pakistan, where he appears to have convinced the Pakistani elite to intervene decisively against their own, Pakistani Taliban, and also now to begin arresting the Old Taliban shadow government that is hiding out on Pakistani soil. If he can go further and convince Islamabad that its support of the Afghan Taliban was all a long a key strategic error that has blown back on Pakistan proper, he will thereby come closer to victory than he could by any military measures inside Afghanistan itself. End/ (Not Continued)
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
US imperialism and Afghanistan
William Blum, an outstanding scholar of U.S. imperialism, comments in the following essay on the implications of President Obama's foreign policy, principally for Afghanistan. One of his chief points is that there are many indications that negotiations with the Taliban are possible, especially if the US is willing to agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops.
Like his predecessors in the White House, Obama demonizes the Afghan enemy as "extremists" who act from "irrational" motives, as "bad guys" who only understand military force, and as "an implacable and monolithic enemy." While the focus is on this abstractly characterized and evil force, no attention is paid in White House discourse and little in the press as to why Afghanistan is of interest to US policy- and war-makers. Blum refers to the geo-political and oil-related considerations that make Afghanistan such an important target. And, additionally, the interests in justifying an ever-growing military-industrial complex. Forget the rhetoric on democracy and reconstruction and "freedom." They are all distractions from the real interests. Most of us, here and there, are, unfortunately, lost in these grand schemes.
Bob
-----------------------------------------
The Anti-Empire Report
December 9th, 2009by William Blumhttp://www.killinghope.org/
http://killinghope/org/bblum6/aer76.html
Yeswecanistan
All the crying from the left about how Obama "the peace candidate" has now become "a war president" ... Whatever are they talking about? Here's what I wrote in this report in August 2008, during the election campaign:
We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state.
Why should anyone be surprised at Obama's foreign policy in the White House? He has not even banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. If further evidence were needed, we have the November 28 report in the Washington Post: "Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban." This is but the latest example of the continuance of torture under the new administration.
But the shortcomings of Barack Obama and the naiveté of his fans is not the important issue. The important issue is the continuation and escalation of the American war in Afghanistan, based on the myth that the individuals we label "Taliban" are indistinguishable from those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, whom we usually label "al Qaeda". "I am convinced," the president said in his speech at the United States Military Academy (West Point) on December 1, "that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak."
Obama used one form or another of the word "extremist" eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America's never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are "extremists", that "extremists" are by definition bad guys, that "extremists" are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we — quintessential non-extremists, peace-loving moderates — are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings.
And the bad guys attacked the US "from here", Afghanistan. That's why the United States is "there", Afghanistan. But in fact the 9-11 attack was planned in Germany, Spain and the United States as much as in Afghanistan. It could have been planned in a single small room in Panama City, Taiwan, or Bucharest. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? And the attack was carried out entirely in the United States. But Barack Obama has to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan was, and is, vital and indispensable to any attack on the United States, past or future. That gives him the right to occupy the country and kill the citizens as he sees fit. Robert Baer, former CIA officer with long involvement in that part of the world has noted: "The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we're foreigners, and they're rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters." 1
The pretenses extend further. US leaders have fed the public a certain image of the insurgents (all labeled together under the name "Taliban") and of the conflict to cover the true imperialistic motivation behind the war. The predominant image at the headlines/TV news level and beyond is that of the Taliban as an implacable and monolithic "enemy" which must be militarily defeated at all costs for America's security, with a negotiated settlement or compromise not being an option. However, consider the following which have been reported at various times during the past two years about the actual behavior of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan vis-Ã -vis the Taliban, which can raise questions about Obama's latest escalation: 2
The US military in Afghanistan has long been considering paying Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul, as the United States has done with Iraqi insurgents.
President Obama has floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban. 3
US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said last month that the United States would support any role Saudi Arabia chose to pursue in trying to engage Taliban officials. 4
Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban in various ways.
A top European Union official and a United Nations staff member were ordered by the Kabul government to leave the country after allegations that they had met Taliban insurgents without the administration's knowledge. And two senior diplomats for the United Nations were expelled from the country, accused by the Afghan government of unauthorized dealings with insurgents. However, the Afghanistan government itself has had a series of secret talks with "moderate Taliban" since 2003 and President Hamid Karzai has called for peace talks with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar.
Organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as the United Nations have become increasingly open about their contacts with the Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups.
Gestures of openness are common practice among some of Washington's allies in Afghanistan, notably the Dutch, who make negotiating with the Taliban an explicit part of their military policy.
The German government is officially against negotiations, but some members of the governing coalition have suggested Berlin host talks with the Taliban.
MI-6, Britain's external security service, has held secret talks with the Taliban up to half a dozen times. At the local level, the British cut a deal, appointing a former Taliban leader as a district chief in Helmand province in exchange for security guarantees.
Senior British officers involved with the Afghan mission have confirmed that direct contact with the Taliban has led to insurgents changing sides as well as rivals in the Taliban movement providing intelligence which has led to leaders being killed or captured.
British authorities hold that there are distinct differences between different "tiers" of the Taliban and that it is essential to try to separate the doctrinaire extremists from others who are fighting for money or because they resent the presence of foreign forces in their country.
British contacts with the Taliban have occurred despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly ruling out such talks; on one occasion he told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."
For months there have been repeated reports of "good Taliban" forces being airlifted by Western helicopters from one part of Afghanistan to another to protect them from Afghan or Pakistani military forces. At an October 11 news conference in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai himself claimed that "some unidentified helicopters dropped armed men in the northern provinces at night." 5
On November 2, IslamOnline.net (Qatar) reported: "The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed. 'US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast ... America wants eight army and air force bases in different parts of Afghanistan in order to tackle the possible regrouping of [the] Al-Qaeda network,' a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net." 6
There has been no confirmation of this from American officials, but the New York Times on October 28 listed six provinces that were being considered to receive priority protection from the US military, five of which are amongst the eight mentioned in the IslamOnline report as being planned for US military bases, although no mention is made in the Times of the above-mentioned offer. The next day, Asia Times reported: "The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan [or Nooristan], on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles." Nuristan, where earlier in the month eight US soldiers were killed and three Apache helicopters hit by hostile fire, is one of the six provinces offered to the Taliban as reported in the IslamOnline.net story.
The part about al-Qaeda is ambiguous and questionable, not only because the term has long been loosely used as a catch-all for any group or individual in opposition to US foreign policy in this part of the world, but also because the president's own national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, stated in early October: "I don't foresee the return of the Taliban. Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies." 7
Shortly after Jones's remarks, we could read in the Wall Street Journal: "Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al-Qaida is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. ... For Arab youths who are al-Qaida's primary recruits, 'it's not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,' said a senior U.S. official in South Asia." 8
From all of the above is it not reasonable to conclude that the United States is willing and able to live with the Taliban, as repulsive as their social philosophy is? Perhaps even a Taliban state which would go across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has been talked about in some quarters. What then is Washington fighting for? What moves the president of the United States to sacrifice so much American blood and treasure? In past years, US leaders have spoken of bringing democracy to Afghanistan, liberating Afghan women, or modernizing a backward country. President Obama made no mention of any of these previous supposed vital goals in his December 1 speech. He spoke only of the attacks of September 11, al Qaeda, the Taliban, terrorists, extremists, and such, symbols guaranteed to fire up an American audience. Yet, the president himself declared at one point: "Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border." Ah yes, the terrorist danger ... always, everywhere, forever, particularly when it seems the weakest.
How many of the West Point cadets, how many Americans, give thought to the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by the immense oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions? Or that Afghanistan is ideally situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of Europe and south Asia, lines that can deliberately bypass non-allies of the empire, Iran and Russia? If only the Taliban will not attack the lines. "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south ...", said Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in 2007. 9
Afghanistan would also serve as the home of American military bases, the better to watch and pressure next-door Iran and the rest of Eurasia. And NATO ... struggling to find a raison d'être since the end of the Cold War. If the alliance is forced to pull out of Afghanistan without clear accomplishments after eight years will its future be even more in doubt?
So, for the present at least, the American War on Terror in Afghanistan continues and regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists, as it has done in Iraq. This is not in dispute even at the Pentagon or the CIA. God Bless America.
Although the "surge" failed as policy, it succeeded as propaganda.
They don't always use the word "surge", but that's what they mean. Our admirable leaders and our mainstream media that love to interview them would like us to believe that escalation of the war in Afghanistan is in effect a "surge", like the one in Iraq which, they believe, has proven so successful. But the reality of the surge in Iraq was nothing like its promotional campaign. To the extent that there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq (now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation), we must keep in mind the following summary of how and why it "succeeded":
Thanks to America's lovely little war, there are many millions of Iraqis either dead, wounded, crippled, homebound or otherwise physically limited, internally displaced, in foreign exile, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. Many others have been so traumatized that they are concerned simply for their own survival. Thus, a huge number of potential victims and killers has been markedly reduced.
Extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place: Sunnis and Shiites are now living much more than before in their own special enclaves, with entire neighborhoods surrounded by high concrete walls and strict security checkpoints; violence of the sectarian type has accordingly gone down.
In the face of numerous "improvised explosive devices" on the roads, US soldiers venture out a lot less, so the violence against them has been sharply down. It should be kept in mind that insurgent attacks on American forces following the invasion of 2003 is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.
For a long period, the US military was paying insurgents (or "former insurgents") to not attack occupation forces.
The powerful Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire for his militia, including attacks against US troops, that was in effect for an extended period; this was totally unconnected to the surge.
We should never forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their friends, their families, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.
The War against Everything and Everyone, Endlessly
Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded some 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in November reportedly regards the US War on Terror as a war aimed at Muslims. He told colleagues that "the US was battling not against security threats in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Islam itself." 10 Hasan had long been in close contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen, who also called the US War on Terror a "war against Muslims". Many, probably most, Muslims all over the world hold a similar view about American foreign policy.
I believe they're mistaken. For many years, going back to at least the Korean war, it's been fairly common for accusations to be made by activists opposed to US policies, in the United States and abroad, as well as by Muslims, that the United States chooses as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that in 1999 one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns ever — 78 days in a row — was carried out against the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. Indeed, we were told that the bombing was to rescue the people of Kosovo, who are largely Muslim. Earlier, the United States had come to the aid of the Muslims of Bosnia in their struggle against the Serbs. The United States is in fact an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become an American bombing target appear to be: (a) It poses a sufficient obstacle — real, imagined, or, as with Serbia, ideological — to the desires of the empire; (b) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.
Notes
Video on Information Clearinghouse ↩
For the news items which follow if not otherwise sourced, see:
The Independent (London), December 14, 2007
Daily Telegraph (UK) December 26, 2007
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) May 1, 2008
BBC News, October 28, 2009 ↩
New York Times, March 11, 2009 ↩
Kuwait News Agency, November 24, 2009 ↩
Pakistan Observer (Islamabad daily), October 19, 2009; The Jamestown Foundation (conservative Washington, DC think tank), "Karzai claims mystery helicopters ferrying Taliban to north Afghanistan", November 6, 2009; Institute for War and Peace Reporting (London), "Helicopter rumour refuses to die", October 26, 2009 ↩
IslamOnline, "US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases", November 2, 2009↩
Washington Times, October 5, 2009, from a CNN interview ↩
Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2009 ↩
Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007. ↩
Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2009 ↩
–
William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org/
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.
(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
Like his predecessors in the White House, Obama demonizes the Afghan enemy as "extremists" who act from "irrational" motives, as "bad guys" who only understand military force, and as "an implacable and monolithic enemy." While the focus is on this abstractly characterized and evil force, no attention is paid in White House discourse and little in the press as to why Afghanistan is of interest to US policy- and war-makers. Blum refers to the geo-political and oil-related considerations that make Afghanistan such an important target. And, additionally, the interests in justifying an ever-growing military-industrial complex. Forget the rhetoric on democracy and reconstruction and "freedom." They are all distractions from the real interests. Most of us, here and there, are, unfortunately, lost in these grand schemes.
Bob
-----------------------------------------
The Anti-Empire Report
December 9th, 2009by William Blumhttp://www.killinghope.org/
http://killinghope/org/bblum6/aer76.html
Yeswecanistan
All the crying from the left about how Obama "the peace candidate" has now become "a war president" ... Whatever are they talking about? Here's what I wrote in this report in August 2008, during the election campaign:
We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state.
Why should anyone be surprised at Obama's foreign policy in the White House? He has not even banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. If further evidence were needed, we have the November 28 report in the Washington Post: "Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban." This is but the latest example of the continuance of torture under the new administration.
But the shortcomings of Barack Obama and the naiveté of his fans is not the important issue. The important issue is the continuation and escalation of the American war in Afghanistan, based on the myth that the individuals we label "Taliban" are indistinguishable from those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, whom we usually label "al Qaeda". "I am convinced," the president said in his speech at the United States Military Academy (West Point) on December 1, "that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak."
Obama used one form or another of the word "extremist" eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America's never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are "extremists", that "extremists" are by definition bad guys, that "extremists" are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we — quintessential non-extremists, peace-loving moderates — are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings.
And the bad guys attacked the US "from here", Afghanistan. That's why the United States is "there", Afghanistan. But in fact the 9-11 attack was planned in Germany, Spain and the United States as much as in Afghanistan. It could have been planned in a single small room in Panama City, Taiwan, or Bucharest. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? And the attack was carried out entirely in the United States. But Barack Obama has to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan was, and is, vital and indispensable to any attack on the United States, past or future. That gives him the right to occupy the country and kill the citizens as he sees fit. Robert Baer, former CIA officer with long involvement in that part of the world has noted: "The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we're foreigners, and they're rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters." 1
The pretenses extend further. US leaders have fed the public a certain image of the insurgents (all labeled together under the name "Taliban") and of the conflict to cover the true imperialistic motivation behind the war. The predominant image at the headlines/TV news level and beyond is that of the Taliban as an implacable and monolithic "enemy" which must be militarily defeated at all costs for America's security, with a negotiated settlement or compromise not being an option. However, consider the following which have been reported at various times during the past two years about the actual behavior of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan vis-Ã -vis the Taliban, which can raise questions about Obama's latest escalation: 2
The US military in Afghanistan has long been considering paying Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul, as the United States has done with Iraqi insurgents.
President Obama has floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban. 3
US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said last month that the United States would support any role Saudi Arabia chose to pursue in trying to engage Taliban officials. 4
Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban in various ways.
A top European Union official and a United Nations staff member were ordered by the Kabul government to leave the country after allegations that they had met Taliban insurgents without the administration's knowledge. And two senior diplomats for the United Nations were expelled from the country, accused by the Afghan government of unauthorized dealings with insurgents. However, the Afghanistan government itself has had a series of secret talks with "moderate Taliban" since 2003 and President Hamid Karzai has called for peace talks with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar.
Organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as the United Nations have become increasingly open about their contacts with the Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups.
Gestures of openness are common practice among some of Washington's allies in Afghanistan, notably the Dutch, who make negotiating with the Taliban an explicit part of their military policy.
The German government is officially against negotiations, but some members of the governing coalition have suggested Berlin host talks with the Taliban.
MI-6, Britain's external security service, has held secret talks with the Taliban up to half a dozen times. At the local level, the British cut a deal, appointing a former Taliban leader as a district chief in Helmand province in exchange for security guarantees.
Senior British officers involved with the Afghan mission have confirmed that direct contact with the Taliban has led to insurgents changing sides as well as rivals in the Taliban movement providing intelligence which has led to leaders being killed or captured.
British authorities hold that there are distinct differences between different "tiers" of the Taliban and that it is essential to try to separate the doctrinaire extremists from others who are fighting for money or because they resent the presence of foreign forces in their country.
British contacts with the Taliban have occurred despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly ruling out such talks; on one occasion he told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."
For months there have been repeated reports of "good Taliban" forces being airlifted by Western helicopters from one part of Afghanistan to another to protect them from Afghan or Pakistani military forces. At an October 11 news conference in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai himself claimed that "some unidentified helicopters dropped armed men in the northern provinces at night." 5
On November 2, IslamOnline.net (Qatar) reported: "The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed. 'US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast ... America wants eight army and air force bases in different parts of Afghanistan in order to tackle the possible regrouping of [the] Al-Qaeda network,' a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net." 6
There has been no confirmation of this from American officials, but the New York Times on October 28 listed six provinces that were being considered to receive priority protection from the US military, five of which are amongst the eight mentioned in the IslamOnline report as being planned for US military bases, although no mention is made in the Times of the above-mentioned offer. The next day, Asia Times reported: "The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan [or Nooristan], on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles." Nuristan, where earlier in the month eight US soldiers were killed and three Apache helicopters hit by hostile fire, is one of the six provinces offered to the Taliban as reported in the IslamOnline.net story.
The part about al-Qaeda is ambiguous and questionable, not only because the term has long been loosely used as a catch-all for any group or individual in opposition to US foreign policy in this part of the world, but also because the president's own national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, stated in early October: "I don't foresee the return of the Taliban. Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies." 7
Shortly after Jones's remarks, we could read in the Wall Street Journal: "Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al-Qaida is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. ... For Arab youths who are al-Qaida's primary recruits, 'it's not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,' said a senior U.S. official in South Asia." 8
From all of the above is it not reasonable to conclude that the United States is willing and able to live with the Taliban, as repulsive as their social philosophy is? Perhaps even a Taliban state which would go across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has been talked about in some quarters. What then is Washington fighting for? What moves the president of the United States to sacrifice so much American blood and treasure? In past years, US leaders have spoken of bringing democracy to Afghanistan, liberating Afghan women, or modernizing a backward country. President Obama made no mention of any of these previous supposed vital goals in his December 1 speech. He spoke only of the attacks of September 11, al Qaeda, the Taliban, terrorists, extremists, and such, symbols guaranteed to fire up an American audience. Yet, the president himself declared at one point: "Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border." Ah yes, the terrorist danger ... always, everywhere, forever, particularly when it seems the weakest.
How many of the West Point cadets, how many Americans, give thought to the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by the immense oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions? Or that Afghanistan is ideally situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of Europe and south Asia, lines that can deliberately bypass non-allies of the empire, Iran and Russia? If only the Taliban will not attack the lines. "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south ...", said Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in 2007. 9
Afghanistan would also serve as the home of American military bases, the better to watch and pressure next-door Iran and the rest of Eurasia. And NATO ... struggling to find a raison d'être since the end of the Cold War. If the alliance is forced to pull out of Afghanistan without clear accomplishments after eight years will its future be even more in doubt?
So, for the present at least, the American War on Terror in Afghanistan continues and regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists, as it has done in Iraq. This is not in dispute even at the Pentagon or the CIA. God Bless America.
Although the "surge" failed as policy, it succeeded as propaganda.
They don't always use the word "surge", but that's what they mean. Our admirable leaders and our mainstream media that love to interview them would like us to believe that escalation of the war in Afghanistan is in effect a "surge", like the one in Iraq which, they believe, has proven so successful. But the reality of the surge in Iraq was nothing like its promotional campaign. To the extent that there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq (now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation), we must keep in mind the following summary of how and why it "succeeded":
Thanks to America's lovely little war, there are many millions of Iraqis either dead, wounded, crippled, homebound or otherwise physically limited, internally displaced, in foreign exile, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. Many others have been so traumatized that they are concerned simply for their own survival. Thus, a huge number of potential victims and killers has been markedly reduced.
Extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place: Sunnis and Shiites are now living much more than before in their own special enclaves, with entire neighborhoods surrounded by high concrete walls and strict security checkpoints; violence of the sectarian type has accordingly gone down.
In the face of numerous "improvised explosive devices" on the roads, US soldiers venture out a lot less, so the violence against them has been sharply down. It should be kept in mind that insurgent attacks on American forces following the invasion of 2003 is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.
For a long period, the US military was paying insurgents (or "former insurgents") to not attack occupation forces.
The powerful Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire for his militia, including attacks against US troops, that was in effect for an extended period; this was totally unconnected to the surge.
We should never forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their friends, their families, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.
The War against Everything and Everyone, Endlessly
Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded some 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in November reportedly regards the US War on Terror as a war aimed at Muslims. He told colleagues that "the US was battling not against security threats in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Islam itself." 10 Hasan had long been in close contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen, who also called the US War on Terror a "war against Muslims". Many, probably most, Muslims all over the world hold a similar view about American foreign policy.
I believe they're mistaken. For many years, going back to at least the Korean war, it's been fairly common for accusations to be made by activists opposed to US policies, in the United States and abroad, as well as by Muslims, that the United States chooses as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that in 1999 one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns ever — 78 days in a row — was carried out against the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. Indeed, we were told that the bombing was to rescue the people of Kosovo, who are largely Muslim. Earlier, the United States had come to the aid of the Muslims of Bosnia in their struggle against the Serbs. The United States is in fact an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become an American bombing target appear to be: (a) It poses a sufficient obstacle — real, imagined, or, as with Serbia, ideological — to the desires of the empire; (b) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.
Notes
Video on Information Clearinghouse ↩
For the news items which follow if not otherwise sourced, see:
The Independent (London), December 14, 2007
Daily Telegraph (UK) December 26, 2007
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) May 1, 2008
BBC News, October 28, 2009 ↩
New York Times, March 11, 2009 ↩
Kuwait News Agency, November 24, 2009 ↩
Pakistan Observer (Islamabad daily), October 19, 2009; The Jamestown Foundation (conservative Washington, DC think tank), "Karzai claims mystery helicopters ferrying Taliban to north Afghanistan", November 6, 2009; Institute for War and Peace Reporting (London), "Helicopter rumour refuses to die", October 26, 2009 ↩
IslamOnline, "US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases", November 2, 2009↩
Washington Times, October 5, 2009, from a CNN interview ↩
Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2009 ↩
Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007. ↩
Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2009 ↩
–
William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org/
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.
(Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.)
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tribal power dynamics may have changed to weaken roles of traditional Afghan tribal leaders
Thomas L. Day's report for McClatchy Newspapers raises a few questions. (See the report after my comments.) (Also see the sources at the end of Day's article.)
First, the report identifies the oultines of the Afghan tribal structure. He tells us that there are 5 super tribes, with 350 or so sub-tribes variously embedded in them. And, further, there are clans that criss-cross the tribes. However, this description may imply that traditional tribal leaders at the various levels of the tribal structure have power. This idea is challenged by Antonio Giustozzi's analysis in his book, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. On page 40, Giustozzi writes the following.
"In Afghanistan the legitimacy of tribal and village elders was weakened by the war and by the emergence of armed strongmen who often tried to replace the elders, without entirely succeeding. Moreover, the youth who grew up in the Pakistani refugee camps were much less likely to be respectful of the tribal elders. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the disruption caused by Afghan militias, police and foreign troops contributed to further weaken tribal and local elders. At the same time the difficulty of the tribal system (where it still exists) or of the rural economy to cope with war, post-war, large scale-migration and resettlement, together with the uncertainty about the medium- and long-term future, led many families to see a diversifcation of their sources and influence. Hence an increase in the number of children sent to Pakistani religious madreas to become mullahs or to the cities to seek employment, both cases contributing to further weaken the influence of the elders over the youth."
If Guistozzi's analysis is valid, then the US military counterinsurgency strategy, including a focus on winning the support of tribal leaders, tribe or sub-tribe by tribe or sub-tribe, may be based on mistaken assumptions about tribal power arrangements.
Second, it remains questionable as to whether the US occupation/surge forces have the cultural and linguistic resources to establish meaningful relations with whomever holds power.
Third, the US-led occupation itself may contribute to undermining whatever legitimacy traditional tribal leaders and elders have had or to any tribal groups that cooperate with the occupation. Rather than strengthening anti-Taliban and rogue or dissenting groups, the occupation may strengthen them.
Fourth, where are the mullahs in all this?
Bob
-------------------------------
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Thu, Feb. 04, 2010 - http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/v-print/story/83712.html
U.S. plan to win Afghanistan tribe by tribe is risky
Thomas L. Day McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 04, 2010 03:49:06 PM
PAKTIA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — U.S. officials put a lot of hope last year in Haji Rashid, an up-and-coming community leader in the Zormat district of Afghanistan's Paktia province. They considered Rashid a unifying figure who was capable of bringing together about a dozen tribes in the area to work in support of the American-backed Afghan government.
Their hopes collapsed, however, when Rashid was kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered and his groundwork to broker the support of the tribes in Zormat quickly foundered.
Military officials aren't sure who killed Rashid, but their suspicions point to the Taliban. "It's to their benefit to have instability," said Lt. Col. Matthew Smith, a Georgia Army National Guard officer and the commander of about 1,000 U.S. troops in Paktia province.
Rashid's murder illustrates one of the obstacles that American officials and military commanders face as they try to persuade tribal leaders to cooperate with U.S. troops and with one another against the Taliban. Afghanistan's historically weak central governments have shared power with the country's five so-called "super-tribes" and the tribes that compose them, with 350 or so sub-tribes and with local clans, and most of the country's would-be conquerors — including the British and the Soviets — have employed their own tribal strategies.
Now American officials are attending tribal meetings, staying in close touch with tribal leaders and trying to determine which leaders are friendly and which aren't.
In Zormat, U.S. and Afghan officials have turned to tribal leaders as a channel of communication with several small Taliban networks in the region, networks they think could be persuaded to join a peaceful political process. American commanders declined to identify the Taliban commanders with whom they've been communicating.
Those efforts, however, risk feeding traditional tribal rivalries, to the detriment of any plan to undercut the Taliban.
"If you are seen as favoring one tribe over another, you are seen as an enemy to them," said 1st Sgt. Troy Arrowsmith of Odgen, Utah, the top enlisted soldier on the Paktia Provisional Reconstruction Team, a cooperative of about 100 troops and civilians from multiple U.S. agencies.
Unhappy tribes don't have to look far to find outside support.
"In Zormat, the tribes are fractured, and the Taliban are a part of those tribes," Arrowsmith said. "They live with them. They have families there."
American commanders in Paktia keep maps of the province, closely demarcating the tribal areas.
Rivalries among tribes, sub-tribes and families aren't confined to Zormat.
In Paktia's northeast, there's a long-standing animus between the Turi, a Shiite Muslim tribe that extends into Pakistan, and the Bushara, a Sunni Muslim tribe. U.S. officials think the tribes have been at odds over territorial boundaries for about 60 years.
The Bushara "claim that they won't allow them to move freely; the Turi claim that they get threatened when go to Gardez," said Genevieve Libonati, a State Department official who's assigned to Paktia.
The chaotic nature of tribal relations was on display on a recent Sunday, when a panoply of American military, diplomatic and Department of Agriculture officials joined about 100 government and tribal leaders from the region for a "shura," or meeting, near the Pakistani border.
After introductions, no U.S. officials spoke during the shura. They only listened.
What they heard was a cacophony of complaints. As emotions rose, any formalities guiding the shura were quickly abandoned. The only common issue among the tribal leaders involved the failings of the American occupiers.
"I'm glad the PRT commander is here," one Afghan participant told the other tribal leaders, referring to Lt. Col. Carlos Halcomb. "They were going to build a hospital in our district, and it hasn't been provided yet."
The comment brought an uproar of support and dissent.
"If we don't have good security in the area, we're not going to be able to finish the projects," retorted Abdul Rahman Mangal, the deputy governor of Paktia.
For several hours, tribal leaders shouted their concerns, with no one attempting to regulate who had the floor. One continued a harangue even after he'd left the lectern, directly in front of the provincial deputy governor and the U.S. officials seated in the back of the room.
Finally, the local director of the Afghan Intelligence Service approached the lectern and calmly delivered a clear message to the tribal chiefs: "Don't assist (the Taliban). Don't let them stay in your home overnight. Don't give them food. Just tell them to leave."
Turning away the Taliban isn't easy, though, particularly in areas that Taliban fighters call home. American officials think the Taliban even have infiltrated some local political meetings — denouncing the U.S. occupation — and threatened other tribal leaders who attend these shuras.
"Have I been to a shura where there was Taliban infiltration? I'm pretty sure I have," said 1st Lt. Luis Alberto Moreno, a U.S. civil affairs officer who specializes in tribal relations in the border region.
(Day reports for The Telegraph in Macon, Ga.)
ON THE WEB
"A Tribal Strategy for Afghanistan," from the Council on Foreign Relations
"One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan"
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
New Afghan initiative: Convince insurgents to switch sides
U.S. turns to Afghan farmers to uproot insurgency
U.S. troops rely on Afghan police while trying to train them
Few see reason to take rumors of Taliban talks seriously
New U.S. air strategy in Afghanistan: First, do no harm
Afghan legislators hold tentative peace talks with insurgents
Follow Afghanistan news at McClatchy's Checkpoint Kabul
McClatchy Newspapers 2010
First, the report identifies the oultines of the Afghan tribal structure. He tells us that there are 5 super tribes, with 350 or so sub-tribes variously embedded in them. And, further, there are clans that criss-cross the tribes. However, this description may imply that traditional tribal leaders at the various levels of the tribal structure have power. This idea is challenged by Antonio Giustozzi's analysis in his book, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. On page 40, Giustozzi writes the following.
"In Afghanistan the legitimacy of tribal and village elders was weakened by the war and by the emergence of armed strongmen who often tried to replace the elders, without entirely succeeding. Moreover, the youth who grew up in the Pakistani refugee camps were much less likely to be respectful of the tribal elders. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the disruption caused by Afghan militias, police and foreign troops contributed to further weaken tribal and local elders. At the same time the difficulty of the tribal system (where it still exists) or of the rural economy to cope with war, post-war, large scale-migration and resettlement, together with the uncertainty about the medium- and long-term future, led many families to see a diversifcation of their sources and influence. Hence an increase in the number of children sent to Pakistani religious madreas to become mullahs or to the cities to seek employment, both cases contributing to further weaken the influence of the elders over the youth."
If Guistozzi's analysis is valid, then the US military counterinsurgency strategy, including a focus on winning the support of tribal leaders, tribe or sub-tribe by tribe or sub-tribe, may be based on mistaken assumptions about tribal power arrangements.
Second, it remains questionable as to whether the US occupation/surge forces have the cultural and linguistic resources to establish meaningful relations with whomever holds power.
Third, the US-led occupation itself may contribute to undermining whatever legitimacy traditional tribal leaders and elders have had or to any tribal groups that cooperate with the occupation. Rather than strengthening anti-Taliban and rogue or dissenting groups, the occupation may strengthen them.
Fourth, where are the mullahs in all this?
Bob
-------------------------------
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Thu, Feb. 04, 2010 - http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/v-print/story/83712.html
U.S. plan to win Afghanistan tribe by tribe is risky
Thomas L. Day McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 04, 2010 03:49:06 PM
PAKTIA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — U.S. officials put a lot of hope last year in Haji Rashid, an up-and-coming community leader in the Zormat district of Afghanistan's Paktia province. They considered Rashid a unifying figure who was capable of bringing together about a dozen tribes in the area to work in support of the American-backed Afghan government.
Their hopes collapsed, however, when Rashid was kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered and his groundwork to broker the support of the tribes in Zormat quickly foundered.
Military officials aren't sure who killed Rashid, but their suspicions point to the Taliban. "It's to their benefit to have instability," said Lt. Col. Matthew Smith, a Georgia Army National Guard officer and the commander of about 1,000 U.S. troops in Paktia province.
Rashid's murder illustrates one of the obstacles that American officials and military commanders face as they try to persuade tribal leaders to cooperate with U.S. troops and with one another against the Taliban. Afghanistan's historically weak central governments have shared power with the country's five so-called "super-tribes" and the tribes that compose them, with 350 or so sub-tribes and with local clans, and most of the country's would-be conquerors — including the British and the Soviets — have employed their own tribal strategies.
Now American officials are attending tribal meetings, staying in close touch with tribal leaders and trying to determine which leaders are friendly and which aren't.
In Zormat, U.S. and Afghan officials have turned to tribal leaders as a channel of communication with several small Taliban networks in the region, networks they think could be persuaded to join a peaceful political process. American commanders declined to identify the Taliban commanders with whom they've been communicating.
Those efforts, however, risk feeding traditional tribal rivalries, to the detriment of any plan to undercut the Taliban.
"If you are seen as favoring one tribe over another, you are seen as an enemy to them," said 1st Sgt. Troy Arrowsmith of Odgen, Utah, the top enlisted soldier on the Paktia Provisional Reconstruction Team, a cooperative of about 100 troops and civilians from multiple U.S. agencies.
Unhappy tribes don't have to look far to find outside support.
"In Zormat, the tribes are fractured, and the Taliban are a part of those tribes," Arrowsmith said. "They live with them. They have families there."
American commanders in Paktia keep maps of the province, closely demarcating the tribal areas.
Rivalries among tribes, sub-tribes and families aren't confined to Zormat.
In Paktia's northeast, there's a long-standing animus between the Turi, a Shiite Muslim tribe that extends into Pakistan, and the Bushara, a Sunni Muslim tribe. U.S. officials think the tribes have been at odds over territorial boundaries for about 60 years.
The Bushara "claim that they won't allow them to move freely; the Turi claim that they get threatened when go to Gardez," said Genevieve Libonati, a State Department official who's assigned to Paktia.
The chaotic nature of tribal relations was on display on a recent Sunday, when a panoply of American military, diplomatic and Department of Agriculture officials joined about 100 government and tribal leaders from the region for a "shura," or meeting, near the Pakistani border.
After introductions, no U.S. officials spoke during the shura. They only listened.
What they heard was a cacophony of complaints. As emotions rose, any formalities guiding the shura were quickly abandoned. The only common issue among the tribal leaders involved the failings of the American occupiers.
"I'm glad the PRT commander is here," one Afghan participant told the other tribal leaders, referring to Lt. Col. Carlos Halcomb. "They were going to build a hospital in our district, and it hasn't been provided yet."
The comment brought an uproar of support and dissent.
"If we don't have good security in the area, we're not going to be able to finish the projects," retorted Abdul Rahman Mangal, the deputy governor of Paktia.
For several hours, tribal leaders shouted their concerns, with no one attempting to regulate who had the floor. One continued a harangue even after he'd left the lectern, directly in front of the provincial deputy governor and the U.S. officials seated in the back of the room.
Finally, the local director of the Afghan Intelligence Service approached the lectern and calmly delivered a clear message to the tribal chiefs: "Don't assist (the Taliban). Don't let them stay in your home overnight. Don't give them food. Just tell them to leave."
Turning away the Taliban isn't easy, though, particularly in areas that Taliban fighters call home. American officials think the Taliban even have infiltrated some local political meetings — denouncing the U.S. occupation — and threatened other tribal leaders who attend these shuras.
"Have I been to a shura where there was Taliban infiltration? I'm pretty sure I have," said 1st Lt. Luis Alberto Moreno, a U.S. civil affairs officer who specializes in tribal relations in the border region.
(Day reports for The Telegraph in Macon, Ga.)
ON THE WEB
"A Tribal Strategy for Afghanistan," from the Council on Foreign Relations
"One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan"
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
New Afghan initiative: Convince insurgents to switch sides
U.S. turns to Afghan farmers to uproot insurgency
U.S. troops rely on Afghan police while trying to train them
Few see reason to take rumors of Taliban talks seriously
New U.S. air strategy in Afghanistan: First, do no harm
Afghan legislators hold tentative peace talks with insurgents
Follow Afghanistan news at McClatchy's Checkpoint Kabul
McClatchy Newspapers 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Major military offensive in Helmand provice - the effects?
A major test of President Obama’s “surge” policy in Afghanistan is in the offing. The surge, already underway in Helmand province, will add 30,000 additional US troops in Afghanistan, raising the total US troop level to about 100,000. This does not include the additional private contractors who will provide services for the new troops. The principal mission of the additional force, combined with Afghan soldiers and NATO allies, is to find and eliminate the Taliban from areas they control and take measures to keep these areas from falling back into the hands of the Taliban. Once these goals are achieved, so the theory goes, reconstruction and economic development can begin. These are all of the elements of the counterinsurgency strategy that has been adopted by the US generals in Afghanistan and endorsed by the Obama administration.
As reported by Rod Norland in an article for the New York Times today (Feb. 4th), “NATO and the Afghan army are about to launch their biggest joint offensive of the war….” Tony Perry reports for the Los Angeles Times on February 3rd that “US Marines and the Afghan army plan a major assault on Taliban fighters in Marja, the last main community under the militants’ control in what had been a largely lawless [Taliban-controlled] area of the Helmand River Valley….”
According to Wikipedia, “Marjah is a town in the province of Helmand…south-west of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.” Helmand itself is in the southern part of Afghanistan. We also learn that Marja has a population of 85,000 and that there are 1,700 [or so] insurgents in the town.
The Pakistan newspaper, The Nation, reports in its February 4th online issue that “Col. George ‘Slam’ Amland says that the offensive is be a showpiece of the ‘clear, hold, build and transition’ counterinsurgency strategy, in which Taliban fighters are forced out of a region and then a ‘civilian surge’ begins to rebuild war-ravaged community and bolster confidence of Afghan villagers in their provincial and national governments.”
The upcoming attack has been publicized in the hope that the Taliban insurgents in Marja will withdraw without a fight. Nordland’s writes in his New York Times report: “The deliberate publicizing of the offensive – with news conferences, press releases and public pronouncements – is relatively unusual for the military.”
All of this reporting leaves us with serious questions.
If the Taliban fighters leave the city before the US-led offensive begins and the US military can ascertain that they have left, then perhaps Marja and its citizens will be spared the devastation and death that accompanies military battles. But if the US forces face resistance or assume there will be resistance, then the city and its citizens may suffer massive damage. The destruction in 2004 of Fallujah in Iraq is an example of how a city can be laid to waste.
It is also not clear whether the citizens of Marja know about the looming assault. Will they be spared the destruction of an attack or not? Will they flee the city, becoming refugees? Withal, there appears to be no planning for the disruption and harm that may afflict them. The Israelis dropped leaflets in Gaza right before they bombed the strip, but there were no safe places for the Gazans to go.
In his report in the Los Angeles Times, Tony Perry refers to Col. Amland’s optimistic scenario:
“Though the military part of the Marja operation is the most dramatic, the role of US civilian employees, including those from the US Agency for International Development and the Agriculture Department will be even more significant, Amland said. The Afghan government is ready to install local officials to begin reopening schools and clinics and polling residents about what they want their government to do.”
Four points. First, to be more consistent with the evidence, 80% or more of the money spent on the Afghan war – and the Iraq war - has gone to support warfare, not reconstruction and economic development. What such wars do produce are refugees and casualties and more hatred toward the occupiers. Second, the Karzai government has been corrupt and ineffective. Third, insurgents are mobile - and they can withdraw to safer areas and still do harm to occupying forces and unprotected civilian populations. Fourth warlords dominate many of the towns and villages that have long been outside of Taliban control. What about them?
As reported by Rod Norland in an article for the New York Times today (Feb. 4th), “NATO and the Afghan army are about to launch their biggest joint offensive of the war….” Tony Perry reports for the Los Angeles Times on February 3rd that “US Marines and the Afghan army plan a major assault on Taliban fighters in Marja, the last main community under the militants’ control in what had been a largely lawless [Taliban-controlled] area of the Helmand River Valley….”
According to Wikipedia, “Marjah is a town in the province of Helmand…south-west of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.” Helmand itself is in the southern part of Afghanistan. We also learn that Marja has a population of 85,000 and that there are 1,700 [or so] insurgents in the town.
The Pakistan newspaper, The Nation, reports in its February 4th online issue that “Col. George ‘Slam’ Amland says that the offensive is be a showpiece of the ‘clear, hold, build and transition’ counterinsurgency strategy, in which Taliban fighters are forced out of a region and then a ‘civilian surge’ begins to rebuild war-ravaged community and bolster confidence of Afghan villagers in their provincial and national governments.”
The upcoming attack has been publicized in the hope that the Taliban insurgents in Marja will withdraw without a fight. Nordland’s writes in his New York Times report: “The deliberate publicizing of the offensive – with news conferences, press releases and public pronouncements – is relatively unusual for the military.”
All of this reporting leaves us with serious questions.
If the Taliban fighters leave the city before the US-led offensive begins and the US military can ascertain that they have left, then perhaps Marja and its citizens will be spared the devastation and death that accompanies military battles. But if the US forces face resistance or assume there will be resistance, then the city and its citizens may suffer massive damage. The destruction in 2004 of Fallujah in Iraq is an example of how a city can be laid to waste.
It is also not clear whether the citizens of Marja know about the looming assault. Will they be spared the destruction of an attack or not? Will they flee the city, becoming refugees? Withal, there appears to be no planning for the disruption and harm that may afflict them. The Israelis dropped leaflets in Gaza right before they bombed the strip, but there were no safe places for the Gazans to go.
In his report in the Los Angeles Times, Tony Perry refers to Col. Amland’s optimistic scenario:
“Though the military part of the Marja operation is the most dramatic, the role of US civilian employees, including those from the US Agency for International Development and the Agriculture Department will be even more significant, Amland said. The Afghan government is ready to install local officials to begin reopening schools and clinics and polling residents about what they want their government to do.”
Four points. First, to be more consistent with the evidence, 80% or more of the money spent on the Afghan war – and the Iraq war - has gone to support warfare, not reconstruction and economic development. What such wars do produce are refugees and casualties and more hatred toward the occupiers. Second, the Karzai government has been corrupt and ineffective. Third, insurgents are mobile - and they can withdraw to safer areas and still do harm to occupying forces and unprotected civilian populations. Fourth warlords dominate many of the towns and villages that have long been outside of Taliban control. What about them?
Monday, January 11, 2010
Surge in the secret US war in Afghanistan
Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse report on the secret operations in CIA (or black site) bases, including CIA Special Forces, non-CIA uniformed and civilian personnel serving with the Department of Defense, American contractors (often ex-military mercenaries), and privatized Afghan guard forces. The "forward-operating" bases are located in the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan. They operate independently of the military chain-of-command. Members of this shadowy militarized intelligence force are involved in attempts to assassinate high-ranking members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, sometimes making night-raids on homes in villages and on some occassions killing innocent civilians, identify targets for drones, and engage in other "intelligence" gathering activities.
The number of the personnel involved in these covert activities will increase over the next eighteen months. Just the employees of private contractor are expected to rise by 56,000 over this time. The cost of these escalating operations are unknown. One thing is clear, according to Engelhardt and Turse, the personnel at these bases are involved in missions that are the antithesis of the counter-insurgency policy we hear so much about.
They also note that just last week seven of the operatives on one base were blown up by a suicide bomber, suggesting that the intelligence and special operations on the other side can be effective as well. Sad, but not too surprising since they speak the local language, know something about the village social structures, are familiar with the terrain, and perhaps are able to take advantage of the growing sentiment against the US-led occupation.
Bob
Making Sense of the New CIA Battlefield in Afghanistan
Posted By Tom Engelhardt On January 10, 2010 @ 11:00 pm
http://original.antiwar.com/englehardt/2010/01/the-new-cia-battlefield-in-afghanistan
It was a Christmas and New Year’s from hell for American intelligence, that $75 billion labyrinth of at least 16 major agencies and a handful of minor ones. As the old year was preparing to be rung out, so were our intelligence agencies, which managed not to connect every obvious clue to a (literally) seat-of-the-pants al-Qaeda operation. It hardly mattered that the underwear bomber’s case – except for the placement of the bomb material – almost exactly, even outrageously, replicated the infamous, and equally inept, “shoe bomber” plot of eight years ago.
That would have been bad enough, but the New Year brought worse. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, U.S. and NATO forces deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, released a report in which he labeled military intelligence in the war zone – but by implication U.S. intelligence operatives generally – “clueless.” They were, he wrote, “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the power brokers are and how they might be influenced … and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers. … Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy.”
As if to prove the general’s point, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor with a penchant for writing inspirational essays on jihadi Web sites and an “unproven asset” for the CIA, somehow entered a key Agency forward operating base in Afghanistan unsearched, supposedly with information on al-Qaeda’s leadership so crucial that a high-level CIA team was assembled to hear it and Washington was alerted. He proved to be either a double or a triple agent and killed seven CIA operatives, one of whom was the base chief, by detonating a suicide vest bomb, while wounding yet more, including the Agency’s number-two operative in the country. The first suicide bomber to penetrate a U.S. base in Afghanistan, he blew a hole in the CIA’s relatively small cadre of agents knowledgeable on al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
It was an intelligence disaster splayed all over the headlines: “Taliban bomber wrecks CIA’s shadowy war,” “Killings Rock Afghan Strategy,” “Suicide bomber who attacked CIA post was trusted informant from Jordan.” It seemed to sum up the hapless nature of America’s intelligence operations as the CIA, with all the latest technology and every imaginable resource on hand, including the latest in Hellfire-missile-armed drone aircraft, was out-thought and out-maneuvered by low-tech enemies.
No one could say that the deaths and the blow to the American war effort weren’t well covered. There were major TV reports night after night and scores of news stories, many given front-page treatment. And yet lurking behind those deaths and the man who caused them lay a bigger American war story that went largely untold. It was a tale of a new-style battlefield that the American public knows remarkably little about, and that bears little relationship to the Afghan War as we imagine it or as our leaders generally discuss it.
We don’t even have a language to describe it accurately. Think of it as a battlefield filled with muscled-up, militarized intelligence operatives, hired-gun contractors doing military duty, and privatized “native” guard forces. Add in robot assassins in the air 24/7 and kick-down-the-door-style nighttime”intelligence” raids, “surges” you didn’t know were happening, strings of military bases you had no idea were out there, and secretive international collaborations you were unaware the U.S. was involved in. In Afghanistan, the American military is only part of the story. There’s also a polyglot “army” representing the U.S. that wears no uniforms and fights shape-shifting enemies to the death in a murderous war of multiple assassinations and civilian slaughter, all enveloped in a blanket of secrecy.
Black Ops and Black Sites
Secrecy is, of course, a part of war. The surprise attack is only a surprise if secrecy is maintained. In wartime, crucial information must be kept from an enemy capable of using it. But what if, as in our case, wartime never ends, while secrecy becomes endemic, as well as profitable and privitizable, and much of the information available to both sides on our shadowy new battlefield is mainly being kept from the American people? The coverage of the suicide attack on Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman offered a rare, very partial window into that strange war – but only if you were willing to read piles of news reports looking for tiny bits of information that could be pieced together.
We did just that and here’s what we found:
Let’s start with FOB Chapman, where the suicide bombing took place. An old Soviet base near the Pakistani border, it was renamed after a Green Beret who fought beside CIA agents and was the first American to die in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It sits in isolation near the town of Khost, just miles from the larger Camp Salerno, a forward operating base used mainly by U.S. Special Operations troops. Occupied by the CIA since 2001, Chapman is regularly described as “small” or “tiny” and, in one report, as having “a forbidding network of barriers, barbed wire, and watchtowers.” Though a State Department provisional reconstruction team has been stationed there (as well as personnel from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture), and though it “was officially a camp for civilians involved in reconstruction,” FOB Chapman is “well-known locally as a CIA base” – an “open secret,” as another report put it.
The base is guarded by Afghan irregulars, sometimes referred to in news reports as “Afghan contractors,” about whom we know next to nothing. (“CIA officials on Thursday would not discuss what guard service they had at the base.”) Despite the recent suicide bombing, according to Julian Barnes and Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times, a “program to hire Afghans to guard U.S. forward operating bases would not be canceled. Under that program, which is beginning in eastern Afghanistan, Afghans will guard towers, patrol perimeter fences, and man checkpoints.” Also on FOB Chapman were employees of the private security contractor Xe (formerly Blackwater), which has had a close relationship with the CIA in Afghanistan. We know this because of reports that two of the dead “CIA” agents were Xe operatives.
Someone else of interest was at FOB Chapman and so at that fateful meeting with the Jordanian doctor al-Balawi – Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a captain in the Jordanian intelligence service, the eighth person killed in the blast. It turns out that al-Balawi was an agent of Jordanian intelligence, which held (and abused) torture suspects kidnapped and disappeared by the CIA in the years of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror. The service reportedly continues to work closely with the Agency and the captain was evidently running al-Balawi. That’s what we now know about the polyglot group at FOB Chapman on the front lines of the Agency’s black-ops war against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the allied fighters of the Haqqani network in nearby Pakistan. If there were other participants, they weren’t among the bodies.
The Agency Surges
And here’s something that’s far clearer in the wake of the bombing: among our vast network of bases in Afghanistan, the CIA has its own designated bases – as, by the way, do U.S. Special Operations forces and, according to Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill, even private contractor Xe. Without better reporting on the subject, it’s hard to get a picture of these bases, but Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal tells us that a typical CIA base houses no more than 15-20 Agency operatives (which means that al-Balawi’s explosion killed or wounded more than half of the team on FOB Chapman).
And don’t imagine that we’re only talking about a base or two. In the single most substantive post-blast report on the CIA, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times wrote that the Agency has “an archipelago of firebases in southern and eastern Afghanistan,” most built in the last year. An archipelago? Imagine that. And it’s also reported that even more of them are in the works.
With this goes another bit of information that the Wall Street Journal seems to have been the first to drop into its reports. While you’ve heard about President Obama’s surge in American troops and possibly even State Department personnel in Afghanistan, you’ve undoubtedly heard little or nothing about a CIA surge in the region, and yet the Journal’s reporters tell us that Agency personnel will increase by 20-25 percent in the surge months. By the time the CIA is fully bulked up with all its agents, paramilitaries, and private contractors in place, Afghanistan will represent, according to Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest “stations” in Agency history.
This, in turn, implies other surges. There will be a surge in base-building to house those agents, and a surge in “native” guards – at least until another suicide bomber hits a base, thanks to Taliban supporters among them, or one of them turns a weapon on the occupants of a base – and undoubtedly a surge in Blackwater-style mercenaries as well. Keep in mind that the latest figure on private contractors suggests that 56,000 more of them will surge into Afghanistan in the next 18 months, far more than surging U.S. troops, State Department employees, and CIA operatives combined. And don’t forget the thousands of non-CIA “uniformed and civilian intelligence personnel serving with the Defense Department and joint interagency operations in the country,” who will undoubtedly surge as well.
Making War
The efforts of the CIA operatives at Forward Operating Base Chapman were reportedly focused on “collecting information about militant networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plotting missions to kill the networks’ top leaders,” especially those in the Haqqani network in North Waziristan just across the Pakistani border. They were evidently running “informants” into Pakistan to find targets for the Agency’s ongoing drone assassination war. These drone attacks in Pakistan have themselves been on an unparalleled surge course ever since Barack Obama entered office; 44 to 50 (or more) have been launched in the last year, with civilian casualties running into the hundreds. Like local Pashtuns, the Agency essentially doesn’t recognize a border. For them, the Afghan and Pakistani tribal borderlands are a single world.
In this way, as Paul Woodward of the Web site War in Context has pointed out, “Two groups of combatants, neither of whom wear uniforms, are slugging it out on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Each group has identified what it regards as high-value targets and each is using its own available means to hit these targets. The Taliban/Qaeda are using suicide bombers while the CIA is using Hellfire missiles.”
Since the devastating explosion at FOB Chapman, statements of vengeance have been coming out of CIA mouths – of a kind that, when offered, by the Taliban or al-Qaeda, we consider typical of a backward, “tribal” society. In any case, the secret war is evidently becoming a private and personal one. Dr. al-Balawi’s suicide attack essentially took out a major part of the Agency’s targeting information system. As one unnamed NATO official told the New York Times, “These were not people who wrote things down in the computer or in notebooks. It was all in their heads. … [The CIA is] pulling in new people from all over the world, but how long will it take to rebuild the networks, to get up to speed? Lots of it is irrecoverable.” And the Agency was already generally known to be “desperately short of personnel who speak the language or are knowledgeable about the region.” Nonetheless, drone attacks have suddenly escalated – at least five in the week since the suicide bombing, all evidently aimed at “an area believed to be a hideout for militants involved.” These sound like vengeance attacks and are likely to be particularly counterproductive.
To sum up, U.S. intelligence agents, having lost out to enemy “intelligence agents,” even after being transformed into full-time assassins, are now locked in a mortal struggle with an enemy for whom assassination is also a crucial tactic, but whose operatives seem to have better informants and better information.
In this war, drones are not the Agency’s only weapon. The CIA also seems to specialize in running highly controversial, kick-down-the-door “night raids” in conjunction with Afghan paramilitary forces. Such raids, when launched by U.S. Special Operations forces, have led to highly publicized and heavily protested civilian casualties. Sometimes, according to reports, the CIA actually conducts them in conjunction with Special Operations forces. In a recent American-led night raid in Kunar Province, eight young students were, according to Afghan sources, detained, handcuffed, and executed. The leadership of this raid has been attributed, euphemistically, to “other government agencies” (OGAs) or “non-military Americans.” These raids, whether successful in the limited sense or not, don’t fit comfortably with the Obama administration’s “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency strategy.
The Militarization of the Agency
As the identities of some of the fallen CIA operatives at FOB Chapman became known, a pattern began to emerge. There was 37-year-old Harold Brown, Jr., who formerly served in the Army. There was Scott Roberson, a former Navy SEAL, who did several tours of duty in Iraq, where he provided protection to officials considered at high risk. There was Jeremy Wise, 35, an ex-Navy SEAL who left the military last year, signed up with Xe, and ended up working for the CIA. Similarly, 46-year-old Dane Paresi, a retired Special Forces master sergeant turned Xe hired gun, also died in the blast.
For years, Chalmers Johnson, himself a former CIA consultant, has referred to the Agency as “the president’s private army.” Today, that moniker seems truer than ever. While the civilian CIA has always had a paramilitary component, known as the Special Activities Division, the unit was generally relatively small and dormant. Instead, military personnel like the Army’s Special Forces or indigenous troops carried out the majority of the CIA’s combat missions. After the 9/11 attacks, however, President Bush empowered the Agency to hunt down, kidnap, and assassinate suspected al-Qaeda operatives, and the CIA’s traditional specialties of spycraft and intelligence analysis took a distinct back seat to Special Activities Division operations, as its agents set up a global gulag of ghost prisons, conducted interrogations-by-torture, and then added those missile-armed drone and assassination programs.
The military backgrounds of the fallen CIA operatives cast a light on the way the world of “intelligence” is increasingly muscling up and becoming militarized. This past summer, when a former CIA official suggested the agency might be backing away from risky programs, a current official spit back from the shadows: “If anyone thinks the CIA has gotten risk-averse recently, go ask al-Qaeda and the Taliban. … The agency’s still doing cutting-edge stuff in all kinds of dangerous places.” At around the same time, reports were emerging that Blackwater/Xe was providing security, arming drones, and “perform[ing] some of the agency’s most important assignments” at secret bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also emerged that the CIA had paid contractors from Blackwater to take part in a covert assassination program in Afghanistan.
Add this all together and you have the grim face of “intelligence” at war in 2010 – a new micro-brew when it comes to Washington’s conflicts. Today, in Afghanistan, a militarized mix of CIA operatives and ex-military mercenaries as well as native recruits and robot aircraft is fighting a war “in the shadows” (as they used to say in the Cold War era). This is no longer “intelligence” as anyone imagines it, nor is it “military” as military was once defined, not when U.S. operations have gone mercenary and native in such a big way. This is pure “lord of the flies” stuff – beyond oversight, beyond any law, including the laws of war. And worse yet, from all available evidence, despite claims that the drone war is knocking off mid-level enemies, it seems remarkably ineffective. All it may be doing is spreading the war farther and digging it in deeper.
Talk about “counterinsurgency” as much as you want, but this is another kind of battlefield, and “protecting the people” plays no part in it. And of course, this is only what can be gleaned from afar about a semi-secret war that is being poorly reported. Who knows what it costs when you include the U.S. hired guns, the Afghan contractors, the bases, the drones, and the rest of the personnel and infrastructure? Nor do we know what else, or who else, is involved, and what else is being done. Clearly, however, all those billions of “intelligence” dollars are going into the blackest of black holes.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books). His Web site is NickTurse.com.
[Note for Readers: Check out "CIA Takes on Bigger and Riskier Role on Front Lines," the Mark Mazzetti piece in the New York Times mentioned above. It's the only one we've seen in the mainstream that has focused in a clear-eyed way on the militarization of the CIA. In addition, we would especially like to recommend three Web sites that collect, sort, analyze, and frame the onslaught of fragmented news we get on our various wars in the Greater Middle East and Central and South Asia in a way that makes our job possible: Juan Cole's Informed Comment (his analyses have been absolutely on fire of late), the invaluable Antiwar.com, including the useful daily summaries of war news provided by Jason Ditz, and War in Context, which has an eye for the key piece and sharp comment.]
Copyright 2010 Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse
The number of the personnel involved in these covert activities will increase over the next eighteen months. Just the employees of private contractor are expected to rise by 56,000 over this time. The cost of these escalating operations are unknown. One thing is clear, according to Engelhardt and Turse, the personnel at these bases are involved in missions that are the antithesis of the counter-insurgency policy we hear so much about.
They also note that just last week seven of the operatives on one base were blown up by a suicide bomber, suggesting that the intelligence and special operations on the other side can be effective as well. Sad, but not too surprising since they speak the local language, know something about the village social structures, are familiar with the terrain, and perhaps are able to take advantage of the growing sentiment against the US-led occupation.
Bob
Making Sense of the New CIA Battlefield in Afghanistan
Posted By Tom Engelhardt On January 10, 2010 @ 11:00 pm
http://original.antiwar.com/englehardt/2010/01/the-new-cia-battlefield-in-afghanistan
It was a Christmas and New Year’s from hell for American intelligence, that $75 billion labyrinth of at least 16 major agencies and a handful of minor ones. As the old year was preparing to be rung out, so were our intelligence agencies, which managed not to connect every obvious clue to a (literally) seat-of-the-pants al-Qaeda operation. It hardly mattered that the underwear bomber’s case – except for the placement of the bomb material – almost exactly, even outrageously, replicated the infamous, and equally inept, “shoe bomber” plot of eight years ago.
That would have been bad enough, but the New Year brought worse. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, U.S. and NATO forces deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, released a report in which he labeled military intelligence in the war zone – but by implication U.S. intelligence operatives generally – “clueless.” They were, he wrote, “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the power brokers are and how they might be influenced … and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers. … Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy.”
As if to prove the general’s point, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor with a penchant for writing inspirational essays on jihadi Web sites and an “unproven asset” for the CIA, somehow entered a key Agency forward operating base in Afghanistan unsearched, supposedly with information on al-Qaeda’s leadership so crucial that a high-level CIA team was assembled to hear it and Washington was alerted. He proved to be either a double or a triple agent and killed seven CIA operatives, one of whom was the base chief, by detonating a suicide vest bomb, while wounding yet more, including the Agency’s number-two operative in the country. The first suicide bomber to penetrate a U.S. base in Afghanistan, he blew a hole in the CIA’s relatively small cadre of agents knowledgeable on al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
It was an intelligence disaster splayed all over the headlines: “Taliban bomber wrecks CIA’s shadowy war,” “Killings Rock Afghan Strategy,” “Suicide bomber who attacked CIA post was trusted informant from Jordan.” It seemed to sum up the hapless nature of America’s intelligence operations as the CIA, with all the latest technology and every imaginable resource on hand, including the latest in Hellfire-missile-armed drone aircraft, was out-thought and out-maneuvered by low-tech enemies.
No one could say that the deaths and the blow to the American war effort weren’t well covered. There were major TV reports night after night and scores of news stories, many given front-page treatment. And yet lurking behind those deaths and the man who caused them lay a bigger American war story that went largely untold. It was a tale of a new-style battlefield that the American public knows remarkably little about, and that bears little relationship to the Afghan War as we imagine it or as our leaders generally discuss it.
We don’t even have a language to describe it accurately. Think of it as a battlefield filled with muscled-up, militarized intelligence operatives, hired-gun contractors doing military duty, and privatized “native” guard forces. Add in robot assassins in the air 24/7 and kick-down-the-door-style nighttime”intelligence” raids, “surges” you didn’t know were happening, strings of military bases you had no idea were out there, and secretive international collaborations you were unaware the U.S. was involved in. In Afghanistan, the American military is only part of the story. There’s also a polyglot “army” representing the U.S. that wears no uniforms and fights shape-shifting enemies to the death in a murderous war of multiple assassinations and civilian slaughter, all enveloped in a blanket of secrecy.
Black Ops and Black Sites
Secrecy is, of course, a part of war. The surprise attack is only a surprise if secrecy is maintained. In wartime, crucial information must be kept from an enemy capable of using it. But what if, as in our case, wartime never ends, while secrecy becomes endemic, as well as profitable and privitizable, and much of the information available to both sides on our shadowy new battlefield is mainly being kept from the American people? The coverage of the suicide attack on Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman offered a rare, very partial window into that strange war – but only if you were willing to read piles of news reports looking for tiny bits of information that could be pieced together.
We did just that and here’s what we found:
Let’s start with FOB Chapman, where the suicide bombing took place. An old Soviet base near the Pakistani border, it was renamed after a Green Beret who fought beside CIA agents and was the first American to die in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It sits in isolation near the town of Khost, just miles from the larger Camp Salerno, a forward operating base used mainly by U.S. Special Operations troops. Occupied by the CIA since 2001, Chapman is regularly described as “small” or “tiny” and, in one report, as having “a forbidding network of barriers, barbed wire, and watchtowers.” Though a State Department provisional reconstruction team has been stationed there (as well as personnel from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture), and though it “was officially a camp for civilians involved in reconstruction,” FOB Chapman is “well-known locally as a CIA base” – an “open secret,” as another report put it.
The base is guarded by Afghan irregulars, sometimes referred to in news reports as “Afghan contractors,” about whom we know next to nothing. (“CIA officials on Thursday would not discuss what guard service they had at the base.”) Despite the recent suicide bombing, according to Julian Barnes and Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times, a “program to hire Afghans to guard U.S. forward operating bases would not be canceled. Under that program, which is beginning in eastern Afghanistan, Afghans will guard towers, patrol perimeter fences, and man checkpoints.” Also on FOB Chapman were employees of the private security contractor Xe (formerly Blackwater), which has had a close relationship with the CIA in Afghanistan. We know this because of reports that two of the dead “CIA” agents were Xe operatives.
Someone else of interest was at FOB Chapman and so at that fateful meeting with the Jordanian doctor al-Balawi – Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a captain in the Jordanian intelligence service, the eighth person killed in the blast. It turns out that al-Balawi was an agent of Jordanian intelligence, which held (and abused) torture suspects kidnapped and disappeared by the CIA in the years of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror. The service reportedly continues to work closely with the Agency and the captain was evidently running al-Balawi. That’s what we now know about the polyglot group at FOB Chapman on the front lines of the Agency’s black-ops war against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the allied fighters of the Haqqani network in nearby Pakistan. If there were other participants, they weren’t among the bodies.
The Agency Surges
And here’s something that’s far clearer in the wake of the bombing: among our vast network of bases in Afghanistan, the CIA has its own designated bases – as, by the way, do U.S. Special Operations forces and, according to Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill, even private contractor Xe. Without better reporting on the subject, it’s hard to get a picture of these bases, but Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal tells us that a typical CIA base houses no more than 15-20 Agency operatives (which means that al-Balawi’s explosion killed or wounded more than half of the team on FOB Chapman).
And don’t imagine that we’re only talking about a base or two. In the single most substantive post-blast report on the CIA, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times wrote that the Agency has “an archipelago of firebases in southern and eastern Afghanistan,” most built in the last year. An archipelago? Imagine that. And it’s also reported that even more of them are in the works.
With this goes another bit of information that the Wall Street Journal seems to have been the first to drop into its reports. While you’ve heard about President Obama’s surge in American troops and possibly even State Department personnel in Afghanistan, you’ve undoubtedly heard little or nothing about a CIA surge in the region, and yet the Journal’s reporters tell us that Agency personnel will increase by 20-25 percent in the surge months. By the time the CIA is fully bulked up with all its agents, paramilitaries, and private contractors in place, Afghanistan will represent, according to Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest “stations” in Agency history.
This, in turn, implies other surges. There will be a surge in base-building to house those agents, and a surge in “native” guards – at least until another suicide bomber hits a base, thanks to Taliban supporters among them, or one of them turns a weapon on the occupants of a base – and undoubtedly a surge in Blackwater-style mercenaries as well. Keep in mind that the latest figure on private contractors suggests that 56,000 more of them will surge into Afghanistan in the next 18 months, far more than surging U.S. troops, State Department employees, and CIA operatives combined. And don’t forget the thousands of non-CIA “uniformed and civilian intelligence personnel serving with the Defense Department and joint interagency operations in the country,” who will undoubtedly surge as well.
Making War
The efforts of the CIA operatives at Forward Operating Base Chapman were reportedly focused on “collecting information about militant networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plotting missions to kill the networks’ top leaders,” especially those in the Haqqani network in North Waziristan just across the Pakistani border. They were evidently running “informants” into Pakistan to find targets for the Agency’s ongoing drone assassination war. These drone attacks in Pakistan have themselves been on an unparalleled surge course ever since Barack Obama entered office; 44 to 50 (or more) have been launched in the last year, with civilian casualties running into the hundreds. Like local Pashtuns, the Agency essentially doesn’t recognize a border. For them, the Afghan and Pakistani tribal borderlands are a single world.
In this way, as Paul Woodward of the Web site War in Context has pointed out, “Two groups of combatants, neither of whom wear uniforms, are slugging it out on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Each group has identified what it regards as high-value targets and each is using its own available means to hit these targets. The Taliban/Qaeda are using suicide bombers while the CIA is using Hellfire missiles.”
Since the devastating explosion at FOB Chapman, statements of vengeance have been coming out of CIA mouths – of a kind that, when offered, by the Taliban or al-Qaeda, we consider typical of a backward, “tribal” society. In any case, the secret war is evidently becoming a private and personal one. Dr. al-Balawi’s suicide attack essentially took out a major part of the Agency’s targeting information system. As one unnamed NATO official told the New York Times, “These were not people who wrote things down in the computer or in notebooks. It was all in their heads. … [The CIA is] pulling in new people from all over the world, but how long will it take to rebuild the networks, to get up to speed? Lots of it is irrecoverable.” And the Agency was already generally known to be “desperately short of personnel who speak the language or are knowledgeable about the region.” Nonetheless, drone attacks have suddenly escalated – at least five in the week since the suicide bombing, all evidently aimed at “an area believed to be a hideout for militants involved.” These sound like vengeance attacks and are likely to be particularly counterproductive.
To sum up, U.S. intelligence agents, having lost out to enemy “intelligence agents,” even after being transformed into full-time assassins, are now locked in a mortal struggle with an enemy for whom assassination is also a crucial tactic, but whose operatives seem to have better informants and better information.
In this war, drones are not the Agency’s only weapon. The CIA also seems to specialize in running highly controversial, kick-down-the-door “night raids” in conjunction with Afghan paramilitary forces. Such raids, when launched by U.S. Special Operations forces, have led to highly publicized and heavily protested civilian casualties. Sometimes, according to reports, the CIA actually conducts them in conjunction with Special Operations forces. In a recent American-led night raid in Kunar Province, eight young students were, according to Afghan sources, detained, handcuffed, and executed. The leadership of this raid has been attributed, euphemistically, to “other government agencies” (OGAs) or “non-military Americans.” These raids, whether successful in the limited sense or not, don’t fit comfortably with the Obama administration’s “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency strategy.
The Militarization of the Agency
As the identities of some of the fallen CIA operatives at FOB Chapman became known, a pattern began to emerge. There was 37-year-old Harold Brown, Jr., who formerly served in the Army. There was Scott Roberson, a former Navy SEAL, who did several tours of duty in Iraq, where he provided protection to officials considered at high risk. There was Jeremy Wise, 35, an ex-Navy SEAL who left the military last year, signed up with Xe, and ended up working for the CIA. Similarly, 46-year-old Dane Paresi, a retired Special Forces master sergeant turned Xe hired gun, also died in the blast.
For years, Chalmers Johnson, himself a former CIA consultant, has referred to the Agency as “the president’s private army.” Today, that moniker seems truer than ever. While the civilian CIA has always had a paramilitary component, known as the Special Activities Division, the unit was generally relatively small and dormant. Instead, military personnel like the Army’s Special Forces or indigenous troops carried out the majority of the CIA’s combat missions. After the 9/11 attacks, however, President Bush empowered the Agency to hunt down, kidnap, and assassinate suspected al-Qaeda operatives, and the CIA’s traditional specialties of spycraft and intelligence analysis took a distinct back seat to Special Activities Division operations, as its agents set up a global gulag of ghost prisons, conducted interrogations-by-torture, and then added those missile-armed drone and assassination programs.
The military backgrounds of the fallen CIA operatives cast a light on the way the world of “intelligence” is increasingly muscling up and becoming militarized. This past summer, when a former CIA official suggested the agency might be backing away from risky programs, a current official spit back from the shadows: “If anyone thinks the CIA has gotten risk-averse recently, go ask al-Qaeda and the Taliban. … The agency’s still doing cutting-edge stuff in all kinds of dangerous places.” At around the same time, reports were emerging that Blackwater/Xe was providing security, arming drones, and “perform[ing] some of the agency’s most important assignments” at secret bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also emerged that the CIA had paid contractors from Blackwater to take part in a covert assassination program in Afghanistan.
Add this all together and you have the grim face of “intelligence” at war in 2010 – a new micro-brew when it comes to Washington’s conflicts. Today, in Afghanistan, a militarized mix of CIA operatives and ex-military mercenaries as well as native recruits and robot aircraft is fighting a war “in the shadows” (as they used to say in the Cold War era). This is no longer “intelligence” as anyone imagines it, nor is it “military” as military was once defined, not when U.S. operations have gone mercenary and native in such a big way. This is pure “lord of the flies” stuff – beyond oversight, beyond any law, including the laws of war. And worse yet, from all available evidence, despite claims that the drone war is knocking off mid-level enemies, it seems remarkably ineffective. All it may be doing is spreading the war farther and digging it in deeper.
Talk about “counterinsurgency” as much as you want, but this is another kind of battlefield, and “protecting the people” plays no part in it. And of course, this is only what can be gleaned from afar about a semi-secret war that is being poorly reported. Who knows what it costs when you include the U.S. hired guns, the Afghan contractors, the bases, the drones, and the rest of the personnel and infrastructure? Nor do we know what else, or who else, is involved, and what else is being done. Clearly, however, all those billions of “intelligence” dollars are going into the blackest of black holes.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books). His Web site is NickTurse.com.
[Note for Readers: Check out "CIA Takes on Bigger and Riskier Role on Front Lines," the Mark Mazzetti piece in the New York Times mentioned above. It's the only one we've seen in the mainstream that has focused in a clear-eyed way on the militarization of the CIA. In addition, we would especially like to recommend three Web sites that collect, sort, analyze, and frame the onslaught of fragmented news we get on our various wars in the Greater Middle East and Central and South Asia in a way that makes our job possible: Juan Cole's Informed Comment (his analyses have been absolutely on fire of late), the invaluable Antiwar.com, including the useful daily summaries of war news provided by Jason Ditz, and War in Context, which has an eye for the key piece and sharp comment.]
Copyright 2010 Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse
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