From The New York Times:
KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.
NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.
The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.
The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.
Many in the Taliban leadership, which is largely made up of barely literate clerics from the countryside, had not been seen in person by American, NATO or Afghan officials.
American officials say they were skeptical from the start about the identity of the man who claimed to be Mullah Mansour — who by some accounts is the second-ranking official in the Taliban, behind only the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Serious doubts arose after the third meeting with Afghan officials, held in the southern city of Kandahar. A man who had known Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him. “He said he didn’t recognize him,” said an Afghan leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Western diplomat said the Afghan man was initially given a sizable sum of money to take part in the talks — and to help persuade him to return.
While the Afghan official said he still harbored hopes that the man would return for another round of talks, American and other Western officials said they had concluded that the man in question was not Mr. Mansour. Just how the Americans reached such a definitive conclusion — whether, for instance, they were able to positively establish his identity through fingerprints or some other means — is unknown.
As recently as last month, American and Afghan officials held high hopes for the talks. Senior American officials, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the talks indicated that Taliban leaders, whose rank-and-file fighters are under extraordinary pressure from the American-led offensive, were at least willing to discuss an end to the war.
The American officials said they and officials of other NATO governments were helping to facilitate the discussions, by providing air transport and securing roadways for Taliban leaders coming from Pakistan.
Last month, White House officials asked The New York Times to withhold Mr. Mansour’s name from an article about the peace talks, expressing concern that the talks would be jeopardized — and Mr. Mansour’s life put at risk — if his involvement were publicized. The Times agreed to withhold Mr. Mansour’s name, along with the names of two other Taliban leaders said to be involved in the discussions. The status of the other two Taliban leaders said to be involved is not clear.
Since the last round of discussions, which took place within the past few weeks, Afghan and American officials have been puzzling over who the man was. Some officials say the man may simply have been a freelance fraud, posing as a Taliban leader in order to enrich himself.
Others say the man may have been a Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case. “They are playing games.”
Others suspect that the fake Taliban leader, whose identity is not known, may have been dispatched by the Pakistani intelligence service, known by its initials, the ISI. Elements within the ISI have long played a “double-game” in Afghanistan, reassuring United States officials that they are pursuing the Taliban while at the same time providing support for the insurgents.
Publicly, the Taliban leadership is sticking to the line that there are no talks at all. In a recent message to his followers, Mullah Omar denied that there were any talks unfolding at any level.
The cunning enemy which has occupied our country, is trying, on the one hand, to expand its military operations on the basis of its double-standard policy and, on the other hand, wants to throw dust into the eyes of the people by spreading the rumors of negotiation,” his message said.
Despite such statements, some senior leaders of the Taliban did show a willingness to talk peace with representatives of the Afghan government as recently as January.
At that time, Abdul Ghani Baradar, then the deputy commander of the Taliban, was arrested in a joint C.I.A.-ISI raid in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. Although officials from both countries hailed the arrest as a hallmark of American-Pakistani cooperation, Pakistani officials have since indicated that they orchestrated Mr. Baradar’s arrest because he was engaging in peace discussions without the ISI’s permission.
Afghan leaders have confirmed this account.
Neither American nor Afghan leaders confronted the fake Mullah Mansour with their doubts. Indeed, some Afghan leaders are still holding out hopes that the man really is or at least represents Mr. Mansour — and that he will come back soon.
“Questions have been raised about him, but it’s still possible that it’s him,” said the Afghan leader who declined to be identified.
The Afghan leader said negotiators had urged the man claiming to be Mr. Mansour to return with colleagues, including other Taliban leaders whose identities they might also be able to verify.
The meetings were arranged by an Afghan with ties to both the Afghan government and the Taliban, officials said.
The Afghan leader said both the Americans and the Afghan leadership were initially cautious of the Afghan man’s identity and motives. But after the first meeting, both were reasonably satisfied that the man they were talking to was Mr. Mansour. Several steps were taken to establish the man’s real identity; after the first meeting, photos of him were shown to Taliban detainees who were believed to know Mr. Mansour. They signed off, the Afghan leader said.
Whatever the Afghan man’s identity, the talks that unfolded between the Americans and the man claiming to be Mr. Mansour seemed substantive, the Afghan leader said. The man claiming to be representing the Taliban laid down several surprisingly moderate conditions for a peace settlement: that the Taliban leadership be allowed to safely return to Afghanistan, that Taliban soldiers be offered jobs, and that prisoners be released.
The Afghan man did not demand, as the Taliban have in the past, a withdrawal of foreign forces or a Taliban share of the government.
Sayed Amir Muhammad Agha, a onetime Taliban commander who says he has left the Taliban but who acted as a go-between with the movement in the past, said in an interview that he did not know the tale of the impostor.
But he said the Taliban leadership had given no indications of a willingness to enter talks.
“Someone like me could come forward and say, ‘I am a Talib and a powerful person,’ ” he said. “But I can tell you, nothing is going on.”
“Whenever I talk to the Taliban, they never accept peace and they want to keep on fighting,” he said. “They are not tired.”
November 22, 2010
Obama Resorts to Shock and Awe in Afghanistan
Judging by his own behavior U.S. President Barack Obama isn’t comfortable explaining foreign policy - war policy in particular. Aware of his shortcomings going into the 2008 election, Obama stood his ground on non-proliferation and the small patch of reason he had cultivated to counter Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton. One a war veteran and the other considered “worldly,” both voted in favor of the Iraq war.Obama ran so hard on his no vote (to his credit one of few) that when the effects surrounding George Bush’s surge began to push the country back from civil war, he had no choice except to continue doubting an offensive designed by his future general, David Petraeus. Perhaps he should have kept that line of thinking in sight until the present day, but once in office Obama flipped Iraq’s stability and the withdrawal it enabled into his own achievement, sparking a turf battle with former VP Dick Cheney.
As violence spiked around the August 30th deadline, Baghdad’s fragile government still two months away, Obama spent half of his “Iraq speech” on economic policy.
Now, sensitive to the 60% disapproval of his Afghan strategy and slim margin for error, Obama has locked himself away between war reviews, rarely addressing the public and never in detail. Only recently did he emerge in the friendly confines of NATO's summit, and it’s looking like the U.S., NATO, Afghan, and Pakistanis publics will receive no more than scraps come December. The White House and Pentagon started chanting “no major changes” months before Obama himself took the lead in cheerleading.
“It's a testament to the confidence we have in Gen. Petraeus's plans,” he said from Lisbon, “and the fact that we are much more unified and clear... that we are going to achieve the end state."
Rather than confront the reality that his surge is headed for a wall beyond 2012, loopholes are being blasted into Obama's strategic outline by the very commanders who assured him of July 2011 - before immediately grinding his 18-month dead-line into a nub. Few explanations will be given. In fact, the blame may be dumped on those who believe America and NATO are sinking deeper into Afghanistan without an exit. As if they "don't get it."
“There’s not really any change,” said one senior administration who downplayed the downplaying of July 2011, “but what we’re trying to do is to get past that July 2011 obsession so that people can see what the president’s strategy really entails.”
Yet many accounts outside of Washington believe U.S. policy-makers still fail to understand Afghanistan. On the ground U.S. counterinsurgency has devolved into shock and awe against the Taliban, only the target isn’t limited to them. The American people also stand in the White House and Pentagon’s line of bombardment: success in Marjah and Kandahar, insurgent shortages of bullets and cash, mounting Taliban casualties, low morale, and a fracturing leadership. All sold with the qualifier, “It’s early but signs are very encouraging.”
Would the Pentagon admit the war had stalled even if it did?
Some of Afghanistan’s latest snapshots appear decent enough. Despite major setbacks in their time-tables, operations in Marjah and Kandahar have shown indications that Afghans are willing to fight back against the Taliban. The Afghan National Army continues its steady pursuit of a 240,000-strong fighting force. And the Taliban have been rocked by drones, U.S. Special Forces, and CIA-trained Afghans, killing off thousands of foot soldiers and hundreds of commanders.
Now M1 Abrams tanks and their mile range have rolled into Helmand and Kandahar, and US officials aren’t hiding their intention. "The tanks bring awe, shock and firepower," said one senior officer. "It's pretty significant."
Unfortunately Afghanistan’s long-term exposure remains blurred and covered in dark splotches. Because of the White House and Pentagon’s prior emphasis on political development, their current emphasis on military progress highlights the lack of corresponding political reform that much more. President Hamid Karzai, already unpopular with many Afghans after last year’s election, has clashed with Washington over corruption cases, private military contractors (PMC), night-raids, and negotiations with the Taliban.
Karzai’s comments regarding night-raids particularly angered Petraeus, who believes he earned the “moral authority” in Iraq to step up air-strikes and tank patrols.
Meanwhile September’s parliamentary election has yet to be sorted out and development projects are creeping along under the potential departure of 20,000+ PMCs. The Afghan army is behind 900 trainers, slipping on attrition rates, and remains a largely Tajik force, with only 5 to 10% estimated to hail from the Pashtun south. Afghanistan’s unpopular police is largely unprepared for their role in local counterinsurgency.
And in the same breathe that they praise Islamabad, US officials threaten Pakistan to move into North Waziristan before they do.
Never-mind that North Waziristan’s commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who holds a tenuous ceasefire with Islamabad and avoids attacking Pakistani cities, threatened “endless war" in the event of invasion. Now Islamabad has denied Washington an expanded area for drone operations in light of intelligence that the Haqqanis have relocated to Kurram agency.
Afghanistan’s political and economic growth has failed to produce enough currency to sell the war’s continuation. That’s left a massive bombardment as the only expedient option to convince the Taliban, along with the US and NATO publics, that America is “succeeding.” Few should be awed by this quick fix or shocked by its breakdown. Because withdrawal remains “conditions based,” Washington has turned its success into a reason to stay longer - when the same argument would have been employed against deteriorating conditions.
The White House and Pentagon appear most concerned with dodging their present review, while NATO commanders say a real assessment can’t be made until after next summer. Now 2011 is out and 2014 is in.
“The old message was, we’re looking to July 2011 to begin a transition,” said one White House official. “Now we’re telling people what happens beyond 2011, and I don’t think that represents a shift. We’re bringing some clarity to the policy of our future in Afghanistan.”
This new message has been transmitted by all major US officials - Obama, Petraeus, Secretaries Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton, Joint Chief of Staff Michael Mullen - and through the latest NATO conference. Initially set by Karzai in 2009, the goal calls for full transfer of Afghanistan’s provinces. But it quickly becomes apparent that transferring sovereignty remains semi-independent from troop levels, and that 2014 isn’t the real date to watch as a final exit. Washington has crafted a dual-use policy to withdraw thousands of troops per year and still maintain high troop levels going into 2015.
Last week Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, firmly stated, “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy.”
Then, on the eve of NATO’s summit in Lisbon, Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters, "So, 2014 has been out there for quite some time as an aspirational goal for us to meet in terms of ultimately putting the Afghan security forces in the lead, having primary responsibility for the security of their country.”
Washington and NATO remain either undecided or disingenuous on 2011 and 2014. While Gates has repeatedly downplayed Obama's July 2011 withdrawal date, he also claimed only a “fraction” of U.S. forces are “likely” to remain in Afghanistan as trainers. This makes no sense - 50,000 U.S. troops stayed in Iraq after the January 2009 handover - and NATO chairman Anders Fogh Rasmussen blurted out what the Pentagon is really thinking: “We will stay as long as it takes to finish our job."
Logically, why would 2014 hold when Marjah and Kandahar have tripled their own time-lines? Karzai himself has mused with 2020, the same date Iraqi generals believe U.S. forces should stay until.
Multiple factors hold the potential to bring the Obama administration's fairy tale to an abrupt and bloody end. Americans and Afghans know that killing Taliban is the easy part, that Washington still has no answer for Karzai, his brother Wali, corruption in general, a distrusted police force, or Pakistan’s strategic dilemma. U.S. operations currently enjoy the upswing, as they should after an injection of 35,000 troops, hundreds of billions of dollars, and the Pentagon’s absolute focus. Something would have gone abnormally terrible were no positive impressions created.
What happens, though, when the cyclical Taliban regain the initiative?
Having already proclaimed their momentum broken, U.S. commanders are basically hoping that doesn’t happen. But why wouldn’t the Taliban return in force in 2011? Because they’re scared? Washington has relapsed into the fatally-flawed theory of shock and awe - the belief that an enemy can be bombed into submission. This was disproved after the fall of Baghdad. Scorched by drones, kill teams, and new precision rockets, NATO has issued press releases of demoralized Taliban wishing to escape the battlefield. Although it’s true that large-scale air strikes "shock" the rank and file Taliban, this rarely make them quit the fight.
Present circumstances shadow the post-9/11 invasion, when U.S. forces inflicted mass casualties on “demoralized” Taliban and al-Qaeda soldiers only for them to regroup in Pakistan and renew the insurgency.
Washington's problem also assumes a mathematical dimension. US and NATO intelligence estimates that the Taliban grew its ranks between 2009 and 2010, to over 30,000. Even if 5,000 Taliban were killed since Obama’s surge in December 2009, the group's strength remains somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 full and part-time fighters. The endless list of "commanders," also questioned by independent sources, is rumored to be in the thousands. No amount of causalities will prove decisive without the necessary political and economic progress still lagging in Afghanistan.
In the absence of a full-fledged reintegration campaign, Washington lacks the means to remove 25,000 soldiers and their arms from the battlefield. Except, of course, for negotiations with the Taliban, but this avenue isn’t being considered with the seriousness portrayed in public. Despite reports that NATO allowed free movement to senior Taliban leaders negotiating in Kabul, Ahmed Rashid offers a more accurate reading.
“The real game-changer in the region can only come, however, when the United States gives its full support to negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban,” the Pakistani author wrote in Foreign Policy. “Merely facilitating talks is not good enough - only the United States has the power to enforce a deal - but U.S. generals are resisting deeper involvement. The Taliban have to be weakened first, the generals argue. The danger is that this strategy, if it even works, will bring to the surface a much more bitter, radicalized Taliban leadership with closer ties to al Qaeda, making negotiations next to impossible.”
The White House and Pentagon have bet all their chips on frightening the Taliban into submission by “breaking its momentum,” even though the Taliban have lost momentum before only to regain it. Washington's decision stems in part from the false belief that most Taliban fight simply for money and not ideology, leading to reliance on brute force. But the Taliban aren’t going to quit, a reality U.S. officials have tacitly acknowledged by prolonging Afghanistan’s time-line.
Gates likes to threaten the Taliban that they, “will be very surprised come August, September, October and November, when most American forces are still there, and still coming after them.”
The taunt goes both ways; Taliban leader Mullah Omar doesn’t sound like he expects the U.S. occupation to end any time soon. In a five point address to his soldiers, Omar ordered them to, "entangle the enemy in an exhausting war of attrition and wear it away like the former Soviet Union. This will force it (to) face disintegration after dealing a crushing and decisive blow at it that it would not be able to hold itself thereafter.”
America and NATO find themselves in a precarious strategic trap. Harboring no intention of major withdrawals in 2011 or 2012, at the least, a military bubble is being used to create space for non-military progress. Obama declared, "We are in a better place now than we were a year ago," yet this argument is easy to make compared to the disaster of 2009. Military achievements seem to be the only success story, fostering doubt in their ultimate benefit. Despite believing they did so in Lisbon, Washington and NATO have failed to clarify their strategy or convince a skeptical audience.
With neither the West nor the Taliban likely to knock the other out or compromise, Obama will remove a symbolic number of troops as the Taliban's cycle continues into 2012, 2013, and beyond. Nearly 60 years ago, Viet Minh general Vo Nguyen Giap was finishing up the French when he articulated the exact situation America would soon enter - and currently finds itself in.
“The enemy will pass slowly from the offensive to the defensive,” he predicted. “The blitzkrieg will transform itself into a war of long duration. Thus, the enemy will be caught in the dilemma: he has to drag out the war in order to win it and does not possess, on the other hand, the psychological and political means to fight a long drawn-out war.”
Giap had been quoted by Bernard Fall’s prescient Street Without Joy, a book that languished in the shadows during Obama’s last review. Maybe he’ll have time to go through it during December 2011, when the war appears as it did in 2010.
Or his 2013 review, if he lasts that long.
November 21, 2010
Obama’s Version of Afghanistan
Our version next. From The Washington Post:
President Obama said Saturday he was confident that a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in July and that "the objective assessment is that we have made progress" in the war effort.
"We are in a better place now than we were a year ago," Obama said in anticipation of next month's promised White House review of the surge strategy he announced last December. He said Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S.-led coalition, had begun "planning and mapping" areas where security conditions would allow a drawdown.
Obama spoke at the end of a two-day NATO summit at which the coalition agreed to start turning parts of Afghanistan over to Afghan security control this spring, in a transition to be completed by the end of 2014, and secured Russia's promise to cooperate in a Europe-based missile-defense program.
NATO and Afghan President Hamid Karzai also signed a long-term agreement guaranteeing the alliance's indefinite cooperation on security. "As Afghans stand up and take the lead" for their own security, Obama said at a news conference, "they will not stand alone."
But Obama responded sharply to Karzai's recent criticism of some U.S. military actions in Afghanistan. Partnership, he said, was a "two-way street," adding of Karzai: "We have to listen and learn. But he's got to listen to us, as well."
Overall, the NATO gathering seemed to serve as a tonic for Obama, who returned from a 10-day trip to Asia earlier this month with a number of his goals unmet, only to face Republican foot-dragging on approval of the U.S.-Russia nuclear weapons treaty.
In addition to the Afghan and missile-defense agreements, NATO approved its first mission statement in more than a decade, designed to cut costs, improve cooperation and face new 21st-century threats. Obama cited the achievements as administration successes resulting from "the work that we've done over the last two years."
Alliance unity, he said, was "a direct result of American efforts and American sacrifice."
Obama has been criticized in the past for neglecting Europe as he sought new partnerships in Asia and elsewhere. In Lisbon, he went out of his way to affirm that relations with Europe were "the cornerstone of our engagement with the world."
Before his departure for Washington, he held a separate economic "summit" late Saturday with European Union officials, designed to smooth over differences between the administration's focus on job creation and stimulus and Europe's move toward sharp spending cuts and deep structural reform.
Several European leaders, including from NATO's newest members in Eastern Europe, pledged their support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, calling it vital to their own security and issuing what Obama called "umprompted" public urgings for early Senate ratification.
In a bilateral meeting here with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whom he saw two weeks ago at the Group of 20 gathering in Seoul, Obama again said he would make ratification a top priority. Failure "would be very unpleasant," Medvedev later told reporters, adding that he remained confident that "common sense will prevail."
Emphasis on transition
Both the administration and the Europeans hope that the four-year transition plan will reduce public opposition to the nine-year war. NATO members moving away from a combat role, Obama said, were becoming less reluctant to provide the military trainers needed to ensure Afghan troops were ready to take over.
Canada, which has said it will bring its combat troops home this year, announced last week that it would provide 950 trainers, and a senior U.S. official said that other commitments for about 500 more that would meet the coalition's current needs.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the transition process was underway, with Afghan forces taking the lead from coalition partners in some areas. Initial transition areas are to be decided by NATO, then approved and announced early next year by Karzai.
Officials emphasized that transition did not mean withdrawal, because coalition forces taken out of one area of Afghanistan would be transferred elsewhere inside the country. Each nation makes its own decision on when to withdraw troops.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan now number about 100,000 - compared to about 40,000 from other NATO members and an additional 20 non-NATO countries - and Obama has pledged an initial withdrawal in July. He has said the size and pace of the U.S. drawdown would be determined by "conditions on the ground."
Asked whether he saw a need for any American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Obama responded indirectly. "My first and most important job . . . is to keep the American people safe, so I'll do what's necessary," he said. "That will be true as long as I'm president of the United States . . . and maybe that will be the case in 2014," he said with a smiling reference to his reelection prospects.
"Our every intention is that Afghans are in the lead and we're partnering with them the way we partner with countries around the world" to whom the United States provides security assistance, he said.
The administration is negotiating a long-term bilateral agreement with Afghanistan, slated for completion early next year, that will promise indefinite U.S. security, economic, cultural and development support. That accord is separate from the NATO-Afghan agreement signed Saturday, which officials said was intended to guarantee continued training and equipment for Afghan security forces after 2014.
The 2014 deadline
Obama said he was "pretty confident" that a U.S. counterterrorism capability would be maintained in Afghanistan after the 2014 deadline, "until we have confidence that al-Qaeda is no longer operating and no longer a threat . . . We don't want to find ourselves in a situation where they've waited us out and they have re-consolidated," he said.
But, he said, "it's a testament to the confidence we have in Gen. Petraeus's plans and the fact that we are much more unified and clear . . . that we are going to achieve the end state."
Petraeus, who presented an update of the war at Saturday's three-hour meeting on Afghanistan, said that momentum had shifted from the Taliban to the coalition. Special Operations "night raids" against Taliban commanders were particularly successful, he said, and had killed or captured more than 370 insurgent leaders in recent months.
In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Karzai sharply criticized the raids, which he said were part of an excessive foreign military presence in Afghan towns and villages that disturbed the population and violated cultural norms. Among other things, he has also objected to the coalition's employing private security contractors to guard development aid sites and supply convoys, and said that coalition operations cause unnecessary civilian casualties.
Karzai, who attended the Saturday meeting, repeated his concerns to the coalition leaders and again in a half-hour session later with Obama.
"We're happy to see an understanding on Afghan demands," Karzai said in a news conference Saturday after signing a partnership agreement with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "I hope that as we move forward that many of these difficulties will go away."
Objectives 'aligned'
Asked about their meeting, Obama recalled that Karzai had initially set the 2014 date for transition and that their objectives were now "aligned."
On Karzai's complaints, he said that "we have to be sensitive to his concerns and the concerns of the Afghan people. We can't simply tell them what's good for them . . . We have to listen and learn."
"On the other hand," he said, "If we're putting in big resources, if we're ponying up billions of dollars, if we're expecting that our troops are going to be there and to help secure the countryside and ensure that President Karzai can continue to build and develop his country, he's got to listen to us, as well."
"I don't fault President Karzai for raising those issues," Obama said. But "he's got to understand that I've got a bunch of young men and women from small towns and big cities all across America who are in a foreign country being shot at. . . . If we're setting things up where they're just sitting ducks for the Taliban, that's not an acceptable issue, either."
"I don't think that's unreasonable, and I don't think he thinks that's unreasonable," Obama said of Karzai, adding that the important thing was to keep talking to each other. "Sometimes," he said, "those conversations are very blunt."
President Obama said Saturday he was confident that a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in July and that "the objective assessment is that we have made progress" in the war effort.
"We are in a better place now than we were a year ago," Obama said in anticipation of next month's promised White House review of the surge strategy he announced last December. He said Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S.-led coalition, had begun "planning and mapping" areas where security conditions would allow a drawdown.
Obama spoke at the end of a two-day NATO summit at which the coalition agreed to start turning parts of Afghanistan over to Afghan security control this spring, in a transition to be completed by the end of 2014, and secured Russia's promise to cooperate in a Europe-based missile-defense program.
NATO and Afghan President Hamid Karzai also signed a long-term agreement guaranteeing the alliance's indefinite cooperation on security. "As Afghans stand up and take the lead" for their own security, Obama said at a news conference, "they will not stand alone."
But Obama responded sharply to Karzai's recent criticism of some U.S. military actions in Afghanistan. Partnership, he said, was a "two-way street," adding of Karzai: "We have to listen and learn. But he's got to listen to us, as well."
Overall, the NATO gathering seemed to serve as a tonic for Obama, who returned from a 10-day trip to Asia earlier this month with a number of his goals unmet, only to face Republican foot-dragging on approval of the U.S.-Russia nuclear weapons treaty.
In addition to the Afghan and missile-defense agreements, NATO approved its first mission statement in more than a decade, designed to cut costs, improve cooperation and face new 21st-century threats. Obama cited the achievements as administration successes resulting from "the work that we've done over the last two years."
Alliance unity, he said, was "a direct result of American efforts and American sacrifice."
Obama has been criticized in the past for neglecting Europe as he sought new partnerships in Asia and elsewhere. In Lisbon, he went out of his way to affirm that relations with Europe were "the cornerstone of our engagement with the world."
Before his departure for Washington, he held a separate economic "summit" late Saturday with European Union officials, designed to smooth over differences between the administration's focus on job creation and stimulus and Europe's move toward sharp spending cuts and deep structural reform.
Several European leaders, including from NATO's newest members in Eastern Europe, pledged their support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, calling it vital to their own security and issuing what Obama called "umprompted" public urgings for early Senate ratification.
In a bilateral meeting here with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whom he saw two weeks ago at the Group of 20 gathering in Seoul, Obama again said he would make ratification a top priority. Failure "would be very unpleasant," Medvedev later told reporters, adding that he remained confident that "common sense will prevail."
Emphasis on transition
Both the administration and the Europeans hope that the four-year transition plan will reduce public opposition to the nine-year war. NATO members moving away from a combat role, Obama said, were becoming less reluctant to provide the military trainers needed to ensure Afghan troops were ready to take over.
Canada, which has said it will bring its combat troops home this year, announced last week that it would provide 950 trainers, and a senior U.S. official said that other commitments for about 500 more that would meet the coalition's current needs.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the transition process was underway, with Afghan forces taking the lead from coalition partners in some areas. Initial transition areas are to be decided by NATO, then approved and announced early next year by Karzai.
Officials emphasized that transition did not mean withdrawal, because coalition forces taken out of one area of Afghanistan would be transferred elsewhere inside the country. Each nation makes its own decision on when to withdraw troops.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan now number about 100,000 - compared to about 40,000 from other NATO members and an additional 20 non-NATO countries - and Obama has pledged an initial withdrawal in July. He has said the size and pace of the U.S. drawdown would be determined by "conditions on the ground."
Asked whether he saw a need for any American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Obama responded indirectly. "My first and most important job . . . is to keep the American people safe, so I'll do what's necessary," he said. "That will be true as long as I'm president of the United States . . . and maybe that will be the case in 2014," he said with a smiling reference to his reelection prospects.
"Our every intention is that Afghans are in the lead and we're partnering with them the way we partner with countries around the world" to whom the United States provides security assistance, he said.
The administration is negotiating a long-term bilateral agreement with Afghanistan, slated for completion early next year, that will promise indefinite U.S. security, economic, cultural and development support. That accord is separate from the NATO-Afghan agreement signed Saturday, which officials said was intended to guarantee continued training and equipment for Afghan security forces after 2014.
The 2014 deadline
Obama said he was "pretty confident" that a U.S. counterterrorism capability would be maintained in Afghanistan after the 2014 deadline, "until we have confidence that al-Qaeda is no longer operating and no longer a threat . . . We don't want to find ourselves in a situation where they've waited us out and they have re-consolidated," he said.
But, he said, "it's a testament to the confidence we have in Gen. Petraeus's plans and the fact that we are much more unified and clear . . . that we are going to achieve the end state."
Petraeus, who presented an update of the war at Saturday's three-hour meeting on Afghanistan, said that momentum had shifted from the Taliban to the coalition. Special Operations "night raids" against Taliban commanders were particularly successful, he said, and had killed or captured more than 370 insurgent leaders in recent months.
In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Karzai sharply criticized the raids, which he said were part of an excessive foreign military presence in Afghan towns and villages that disturbed the population and violated cultural norms. Among other things, he has also objected to the coalition's employing private security contractors to guard development aid sites and supply convoys, and said that coalition operations cause unnecessary civilian casualties.
Karzai, who attended the Saturday meeting, repeated his concerns to the coalition leaders and again in a half-hour session later with Obama.
"We're happy to see an understanding on Afghan demands," Karzai said in a news conference Saturday after signing a partnership agreement with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "I hope that as we move forward that many of these difficulties will go away."
Objectives 'aligned'
Asked about their meeting, Obama recalled that Karzai had initially set the 2014 date for transition and that their objectives were now "aligned."
On Karzai's complaints, he said that "we have to be sensitive to his concerns and the concerns of the Afghan people. We can't simply tell them what's good for them . . . We have to listen and learn."
"On the other hand," he said, "If we're putting in big resources, if we're ponying up billions of dollars, if we're expecting that our troops are going to be there and to help secure the countryside and ensure that President Karzai can continue to build and develop his country, he's got to listen to us, as well."
"I don't fault President Karzai for raising those issues," Obama said. But "he's got to understand that I've got a bunch of young men and women from small towns and big cities all across America who are in a foreign country being shot at. . . . If we're setting things up where they're just sitting ducks for the Taliban, that's not an acceptable issue, either."
"I don't think that's unreasonable, and I don't think he thinks that's unreasonable," Obama said of Karzai, adding that the important thing was to keep talking to each other. "Sometimes," he said, "those conversations are very blunt."
November 20, 2010
Mirwaiz Refutes Maoist Link as Geelani Vows Action
As we documented earlier today, India’s apparent strategy to blur Muslim-Kashmiris and Naxalites inside India was doomed to fail. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) didn’t let 24 hours pass before Mirwaiz Umar Farooq denounced and mocked the words of Omar Abdullah, chief minister in Jammu and Kashmir."We reject the statement of the Government of India and especially, that of the Chief Minister,” Farooq said today. “It is an unfortunate attempt to malign the indigenous movement of people of Jammu and Kashmir by linking it to outside forces... All those children killed by the forces in broad daylight in June this year that led to present uprising were schoolchildren. Our struggle is indigenous and we have time and again showed it.”
He added for effect, "I will not be surprised if Omar in near future says that the boys, who were protesting over the summer, had links with al-Qaeda.”
The smear has naturally left Kashmiri leaders with more bitter aftertaste in their mouths. Most leaders would be after witnessing children shot to death, only to hear them accused of terrorist links. And New Delhi will pay for Omar’s remarks. The Mirwaiz extended his gratification to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his message to Haj pilgrims, in which he appealed for Muslim elite to support Muslim-Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination. Iran has issued such calls before, with India responding by lodging protests at the Iranian embassy, but the timing has boosted the APHC’s spirits and is being wielded appropriately.
Farooq appreciated, “the statements of China, the United States and Iran about Kashmir and for referring Kashmir as a dispute.”
Or as Pakistan’s The Nation put it, “The ray of hope, however, is that despite the American guilty silence, other international voices and states are bravely stepping forward in support of Kashmiris.”
Along with the APHC chairman, hard-line leader Syed Geelani issued remarks suggesting the next cycle of protests may be at hand. With India managing to quiet US President Barack Obama during his tour, broken only by the obvious fire burning in Kashmir, the APHC continues to demonstrate an acute understanding of fourth-generation warfare. To succeed they must keep Kashmir’s struggle active in the streets and in the international media, two symbiotic tasks.
Farooq claims he will travel throughout India next week to “mold public opinion in favor of our genuine struggle." As for Geelani, who remains under house arrest, "In case India doesn't halt the human rights violations and releases the detainees, we will launch an agitation this time, the consequences of which India cannot imagine.”
The ultimate result aims for international recognition at the political level, which appears to be snowballing.
India would be wise to stop scapegoating Muslim-Kashmiris and sincerely engage them to permanently end the dispute. New Delhi can’t expect Islamabad to move on the Mumbai terror attack while it refuses to move on Kashmir. This is where America should come in: get both sides to reach out and facilitate a double apology. Farooq reaffirmed his demand for tripartite negotiations, saying talks between New Delhi and Srinagar have and will continue to produce no results.
At some point India must accept this reality. Though it holds the advantage today, New Delhi is slowly bleeding its control over Kashmir. There’s no telling how the situation will look in a year or three, and it would be foolish to wait until then to find out. Two years ago New Delhi thought stability had returned to Jammu and Kashmir through a peaceful election.
Look at it now.
The Tribulations of the Tuareg
Analysis by regional observer Jeremy Keenen, published on Al Jazeera:
Are the Tuareg tribesmen of the Sahara, as many media reports are now intimating, allied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)?
Are the Tuareg tribesmen of the Sahara, as many media reports are now intimating, allied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)?
This question has become especially pertinent since the abduction of seven employees of two French companies from their living quarters in Arlit, northern Niger, in September.
The immediate reports on the hostage taking, for which AQIM has claimed responsibility, said that the kidnappers were heard to speak Arabic and Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg. This information subsequently appeared to be contradicted by a Tuareg guard who, having himself been attacked by the assailants, said that he heard them speaking Arabic and Hausa. He made no mention of Tamashek, but his evidence seems to have been ignored on the presumption that he would be unlikely to incriminate his own people.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of media articles and broadcasts have followed the leads given by the Niger government, Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), the president of Mali, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, and Brice Hortefeux, the French interior minister, whose statements suggested that AQIM 'subcontracted' the abduction to the Tuareg.
Media hot seat
The Tuareg are the indigenous population of much of the Central Sahara and Sahel.
Today, their largest concentrations are in northern Niger and northern Mali where they comprise approximately 10 per cent of the national populations, numbering around 1 million in Niger and perhaps a fraction less in Mali.
Other Tuareg populations are in southern Algeria and south west Libya, where they comprise small minorities of around 50,000 or less in each country, with perhaps 25,000 to 50,000 in Burkina Faso and a small scattering in Mauritania.
It is among these larger communities, notably northern Mali and to a lesser extent Niger, that AQIM has embedded itself.
The following points go some way to answering this question:
• Although AQIM has claimed responsibility for the Arlit abduction, we do not yet know for certain the individuals involved in the raid. Individual Tuareg may or may not have been involved.
• Although the Tuareg 'communities' have always denied taking part in such criminal activities, most of their leaders and spokespersons recognise that 'black sheep' are to be found among all peoples. Among the Tuareg, especially in Niger and Mali where the recent (2007-2009) Tuareg rebellions have stuttered to unsatisfactory and perhaps only temporary states of 'peace', a not inconsiderable number of young 'ex-rebel' fighters have turned to banditry and 'criminality' as a means of economic survival. Some of this 'opportunism' is undoubtedly associated with AQIM's activities. Indeed, many of the young, former rebels of Niger who have taken to banditry now live in and around Tamanrasset, the capital of Algeria's extreme south, and might therefore well presume that their banditry in northern Niger is being sanctioned by the Algerian state.
• As Nicolas Roux remarked recently in addressing this subject in People with Voices: "If a French national were involved in a terrorist organization, no one would declare 'The French' to be part of such activities."
• In a similar vein, Boutali Tchewiren, the president of the Alhak-Nakal (Right to Land) Association and former spokesman of the Niger Tuaregs' rebel MNJ (Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice Mouvement), responded immediately to the accusatory comments from Niamey and Paris. "Just because some of the kidnappers spoke Tamashek, the whole Tuareg community should not be accused," he told AFP. Tchewiren also rebuked Kouchner, who said that: "Those who took these men and women could be Tuaregs working to order. They will sell them to the terrorists, who are not themselves very numerous." "That," Tchewiren said, "is a serious accusation. It's too gross and ridiculous to accuse the Tuareg people in this way. The Tuareg community is not responsible for the actions of a few individuals, even if they're members of this community."
• Similar objections came from Mali's Tuaregs. On September 20, two Mali MPs, Alghabasse Ag Intalla and Bajan Ag Hamatou, who are both representatives of the Tuareg community, sent a strongly written protest to the French ambassador to Mali about the way in which the Tuareg were being stigmatized. They wrote: "You know, Excellency, that there has not been a single day, since a certain time, when 'The Tuaregs' have not been put in the hot seat by a press article, radio or other form of communication in regard to their supposed involvement in this or that infamy perpetrated in their region."
'Putative terrorists'
The point of what I have to say goes far beyond the mere question of whether some Tuareg may have been implicated in the Arlit heist. It is directed to the overall situation of the Tuareg since 2003, when the Americans launched the new Saharan-Sahelian front in the so-called 'global war on terror' (GWOT).
It is often argued that extreme Islamist movements find their support not only among ideologues but also - through their promise of a better 'social alternative' - from among the socially deprived, repressed and marginalized. In the Sahara-Sahel, especially since 2003, that has been the Tuareg. Indeed, the impact of the GWOT on the Tuareg peoples has been nothing short of catastrophic.
On the above premise, and when we consider what the Tuareg have endured at the hands of Washington and their own governments during the GWOT, not to mention the exploitation of their lands by foreign mining and oil companies, we might well ask why the Tuareg, instead of condemning AQIM, are not queuing up to join it ranks.
In fact, the reality of the GWOT in the Sahara-Sahel has not been about fighting 'terrorists', but about how the local governments, linked into the GWOT through Washington's Pan Sahel (PSI) and Trans-Sahara Counter-terrorism initiatives of 2004 and 2005 respectively, have been provoking the Tuareg into taking up arms so that they might be categorized as 'terrorists' or, as one US state department analyst argued rather quaintly in the context of the assumed link between terrorism and trafficking, 'putative terrorists'.
What the Tuareg have had to endure in the so-called GWOT is both shocking and shameful. Let me summarize:
The kidnapping of 32 European hostages in the Algerian Sahara in 2003, under the direction of Algeria's intelligence and security services, the DRS, brought the immediate collapse of one of the main pillars of the Tuareg economy in southern Algeria. The loss of some 10,000 tourists in southern Algeria alone, spending an estimated $750 each, meant an annual loss of approximately $7.5mn, most of which found its way into the local Tuareg community.
Many of these Tuareg, faced with penury, were forced into shadowy and sometimes even 'criminal' activities, such as working for the various trans-Saharan trafficking businesses, either as fuel suppliers, drivers or guides.
From 2004 onwards, the governments of Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania all used the pretext of the GWOT to crack down on legitimate opposition, civil society and 'troublesome' ethnic minorities such as the Tuareg. Tuareg communities throughout the region were constantly being provoked by their governments into rebellious behavior, with the purpose of demonstrating to Washington the potential threat of terrorism within the Sahara-Sahel region. The pay-off for local governments was the financial and military largesse that comes with the blessing of Washington.
'Explosion of anger'
The US-Algerian plan to create 'false-flag' terrorism incidents in the Sahara-Sahel was formulated in September 2002, with the first (botched) effort at kidnapping European tourists taking place in October that year. Tuareg in the region were aware of this incident and the following month wrote to the Algerian prime minister accusing the government of 'sabotage'. The same Tuareg, in the name of the 'citizens of Tamanrasset', had already written to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the Algerian president, warning him that unless the government ceased its harassment of local people "there was likely to be an explosion of local anger, the outcome of which could not be predicted."
In July 2005, that anger exploded into two days of rioting during which some 40 of Tamanrasset's commercial and government buildings were set on fire. Some 150 Tuareg youths were detained, with 64 jailed and the remainder fined. When their cases eventually came to court, it was revealed that the riots had been led by the secret police, acting as agents provocateurs. One prominent local citizen expressed the views of many when he said: "Now that they [the Algerian authorities] have the Americans behind them, they have become even bigger bullies."
In 2004, four weeks after the arrival of US PSI special forces in the Sahel, Niger's government provoked the Tuareg into taking up arms by imprisoning a leading Tuareg politician on trumped up accusations of murder. He was released after 13 months without any charges brought against him.
In May 2006, Algeria's DRS, accompanied by some 100 US special forces, supported and orchestrated a Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali. Four months later, the DRS, with the complicity of the US, paid the same Tuareg substantial sums of money to attack the renowned Algerian 'outlaw' Mokhtar ben Mokhtar in northern Mali in order to give the impression to the outside world that there really was 'terrorism' in the Sahara. At least five Tuareg were killed.
In early 2007, a major Tuareg uprising, again provoked by the Niger government, but with Algeria's DRS believed to have been involved, broke out in northern Niger and lasted for almost three years. As in Mali, where an equally protracted rebellion began a few months later, a conclusive peace agreement is still awaited.
Disenfranchised
The main cause of the Niger rebellion was the Tuaregs' demand for a share in the benefits of the exploitation and development of their region's natural resources, notably the massive uranium mining operations being undertaken by international companies.
In Mali, the underlying cause of the rebellion was the perceived disenfranchisement and marginalization of the Tuareg and the failure of the government to fulfill the commitments of a peace agreement ensuing from an earlier rebellion during the 1990s.
In both countries, fighting became gruesome, especially in Niger where the regime of the now deposed President Mamadou Tandja adopted the genocidal strategy of attacking and killing Tuareg civilians, especially old men, women and children. The UN failed to acknowledge written notification of Niger's genocide, let alone act on it, while the UN secretary general's special envoy subsequently failed abjectly to even make meaningful contact with the rebels before himself being taken hostage by AQIM.
In February 2008, Malian forces swept through Mali's north east region, ransacking and looting the border garrison town of Tin Zaouatene and driving the entire civilian population into the desert. Although no one was reported killed, the action provoked revenge attacks against the Malian army by Tuareg rebels and an escalation of the overall conflict.
The number of Tuareg killed in these and related incidents is not known precisely, but can be estimated at around 500.
As for their economy and livelihoods, tourism, reduced to near zero in southern Algeria after the 2003 hostage-takings, has gone the same way, but in bigger numbers, in Niger and Mali. Recently, Point Afrique, the main charter flight operator into the region, curtailed flights to Tamanrasset, Djanet and Timimoun in southern Algeria; Agades in Niger; Atar in Mauritania and Gao in Mali. Estimated tourist numbers across the region have fallen from close to 100,000 a year to almost zero, an estimated loss of perhaps $50mn to $75mn.
With the Niger army killing Tuareg livestock and AQIM's circumscription of nomadic movement in Mali, pastoralism, along with most other commercial activities (other than banditry and drug trafficking), has also been decimated. Not surprisingly, most NGOs have also left the region.
'Terror zone'
Two new sets of maps of the Sahara-Sahel epitomise the anger of the Tuareg towards their own governments, Washington and foreign mining and oil companies.
One, produced by the Pentagon in 2003, just after it fabricated its new Sahara-Sahelian front in the GWOT, portrays the Tuareg domain as a 'Terror Zone'.
The second, produced by the regions' governments, shows the same Tuareg domain as a chequer-board of mining and oil prospecting concessions licensed to hundreds of foreign oil and mining companies.
The first map reflects Washington's self-fulfilling prophecy. The US' original act of 'state terrorism' in the Sahara-Sahel, implemented by Algeria's DRS, is finally taking on a life and momentum of its own and threatening to change the face of north west Africa for good.
The second reflects how the Tuareg are being dispossessed of their lands without a word of consultation and in contravention of a raft of international conventions and protocols relating to the rights of indigenous peoples.
Marginalized by their governments; ignored by the international community and deprived by the GWOT of their livelihoods, but still skilled fighters, the question now being asked is whether the Tuareg, especially in Mali, where the AQIM presence is greatest, will attempt to take matters into their own hands.
Maoists Can't Save India From Kashmir
At a recent seminar organized by the India Today Group, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah issued one of the clearest internal analyses yet on the "State of States in India.”"In Jammu and Kashmir,” he told his audience, “there has been a gradual shift in traditional insurgency involving violence with guns, bombs and things like that to a new dimension that emerged over the last three years starting in 2008, which is a more orchestrated civil protest sort of system.”
The simplicity of fourth-generation warfare (4GW) has deceived India, who initially met these low-intensity protests with suppressive force - exactly the reaction to avoid. New Delhi’s disproportionate response would fan the very international incident it tried so hard to keep under wraps. So does Abdullah’s admission warrant the embattled minister any leeway or is this observation too little, too late?
Or is it worse than that?
If only Abdullah had limited his scope to Kashmir’s evolution. Instead he dispersed this fleeting insight with fear-mongering, contradicting 4GW by obscuring the truth in his message. His real mission, apparently, was to further tarnish Muslim-Kashmiris’ struggle for Azadi (freedom) by linking them to India’s greatest threat - the Naxalites.
"We have no experience with Maoist insurgency even though of late we find efforts being made to build bridges between the Maoists and Naxalites of the rest of India with militants of Kashmir and also some Left-thinking academicians and students in Jammu region as well... There are visible links on public platforms. There are also invisible links that are sought to be built with universities and also the active militants on the ground.”
Seems that Abdullah only isolated the civil disobedience organized by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to smear it in red. He was speaking, among others, of the high-profile author Arundhati Roy.
"We have seen evidence of it,” he continued. “A lot more effort to build a sort of interaction. A lot of movement of known Maoist sympathizers now traveling to Srinagar and organizing seminars and conferences with supporters of militant violence in Jammu and Kashmir as well.”
The chief minister’s remarks are set against a larger background that reveals New Delhi’s designs. Alleged connections between Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Kashmir’s primary separatist group, and the Maoists are nothing new, but most recently voiced by Chhattisgarh Police Director General Vishwa Ranjan. Two LeT agents reportedly observed a spring meeting of the Central Committee (CC) of Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), which Ranjan interpreted as a sign of increased operations. This information surfaced as New Delhi also accused Maoists in Nepal of training Indian-Maoists under LeT supervision.
Given LeT’s connection to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), only a minute passed before the next jump between Islamabad and the Maoists.
But this claim was too much for Indian and US analysts alike. A report by STRATFOR quickly severed a potential link and added another piece of the puzzle by listing those groups connected to the Maoists: United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur (PLA), the National Social Council of Nagaland-Issac Muivah, and Nepalese Maoists operating under the the militant wing of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal. Ties have also been confirmed with the New People's Army (NPA) in the Philippines.
Religion doesn’t unite these groups so much as Indian separatism and political ideology; it would not be surprising, then, if the Maoists have made contact with LeT agents or Kashmiri figures. As much as they fight with each other, insurgent groups also sympathize with common causes and pool resources. Indian separatism provides a denominator. Yet the rapid chain of events between LeT, the Maoists, and now Kashmir’s struggle leaves little room for coincidence.
New Delhi hopes to tie its disputes into the same issue of territorial integrity, a move intended to delegitimize Muslim-Kashmiris’ struggle for independence.
Unfortunately India’s counterinsurgency remains broken and in need of direction. Instead of formulating a new strategy to replace a dying one, New Delhi intends to suppress the pressure building inside and outside the state. Although Pakistan hasn’t severed its connection to LeT, the group was a non-factor during the summer outburst of protests. New Delhi continued to blame Islamabad for organizing stone-throwers despite evidence of spontaneous action, narrow sight that contributed to a delayed reaction.
It’s possible that Islamabad would make Mumbai a priority if Kashmir was finally recognized as a disputed territory, but New Delhi cannot bring itself to do so. LeT remains viable because India continues to legitimize its existence, and because this vacuum enables its “dangerous” social activism.
"Obviously, LeT is a profoundly dangerous group and its support that it derives from doing social services is like Hamas, is like Hezbollah, and is of course of great concern," says Daniel Benjamin, US State Department Coordinator for Counter Terrorism.
Inside the Red Corridor, General Vishwa Ranjan may be right about an increase in operations regardless of the cause. Active as they’ve ever been, Maoists have recently targeted opposing villages, police facilities, and political offices, and the group appears to be strengthening as government forces struggle to organize themselves. With India hesitant to deploy the military, a paramilitary force - the Counter Insurgency Force (CIF) - was set up to combat the Maoists.
Except it’s running low on funds, recruits, officers, and intelligence.
And the Maoists don’t need Pakistan’s help according to STRATFOR. The group’s arsenal consists of AK-47 variations, NATO ammunition, and Israeli-made, Galil 7.62mm sniper rifles, along with the standard repertoire of machine guns, RPGs, and explosives. With arms manufactured in China, Russia, America, India, and Pakistan, it’s believed that no outside source is actually supplying the group. Weapons are supposedly cheaper and easier to acquire locally in India.
Like Kashmir, New Delhi has responded too slowly to the Maoists, failed to commit itself against a sophisticated insurgency, and is trying to blame its disregard and lack of results on Pakistan. Now the Maoists are supposed to extract New Delhi from Kashmir, an impossibility. Both struggles have grown because India tried to ignore them.
While the government’s team of interlocutors is ready for new outreach with Kashmiri officials, AHPC leaders have so far refused to meet until their demands are recognized. But it doesn’t help that Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Geelani face periodic house arrest. Although their protests lost momentum relative to the summer outburst, recent demonstrations should prove to India that the AHPC’s movement isn’t stopping.
New Delhi’s actions are their own admission; Farooq was blocked from leading congregational Friday prayers in Srinagar for the 10th consecutive week. The APHC chairman managed an interview from his house where he explained that, for first time in the 250 years of the Mirwaiz title, authorities have barred Mirwaiz from leading prayers in Srinagar.
One of his spokesmen added that India can’t keep him away from Muslim-Kashmiris forever.
Visibly fearful that Farooq would fire up Muslim-Kashmiris, New Delhi must come to realize that suppressing pressure only makes for a bigger explosion in the end. Counterinsurgency won’t be accomplished by isolating him and Geelani from their followers. Instead this policy will intensify their struggle by hardening their resolve, with the end result being an even lower tolerance for compromise.
And India cannot delegitimize Muslim-Kashmiris’ struggle for independence through the Maoists’ own struggle, which is becoming the larger insurgency and requires extensive resources.
New Delhi still has time to evolve its own strategy, but this means the agonizing decision of recognizing Kashmir as a disputed territory and hearing out the Naxalites’ demands. Such moves are unlikely since harder decisions would follow - the status quo is too massive to let go of. For Abdullah to have the right idea about fourth-generation warfare then make a sharp wrong turn represents Indian policy as a whole: undecided and stagnant.
As the AHPC’s message of self-determination broadcasts loud and clear, New Delhi continues to pump out mixed signals that cloud the environment, whether offering an olive branch with blanket curfews and bullets or infighting over the terms “disputed” and “autonomy.” On a wider scale India's image of a vibrant democracy is being distorted by draconian measures. Though it holds the physical upper hand in many ways, it’s losing the critical war of messages.
And that's weakening India's grip on Jammu and Kashmir.
November 19, 2010
Pakistan denies wider US drone-strike zone
From The Associated Press:
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has rejected a U.S. request to expand the areas where American missiles can target Taliban and al-Qaida operatives, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Saturday.[Here is The Washington Post report. It quotes a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying, "You expect us to open the skies for anything that you can fly. In which country can you do that?"]
The U.S. has sharply increased the attacks by remote-controlled drones in Pakistani territory, launching more than 100 this year. Most have hit North Waziristan, believed to be a hide-out of senior militants who plot attacks against NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan privately tolerates the strikes in militant strongholds near the Afghan border as a "necessary evil" but cannot sanction widening them into more-populated areas, said the official with the Pakistani military Inter Service Intelligence agency, or ISI. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
The missile attacks are rarely officially acknowledged by Washington, and Pakistan officially condemns them as a violation of its sovereignty that threatens to further turn the population against the army and central authorities. The program, which U.S. officials say has killed hundreds of insurgents, has been condemned by critics who say it may constitute illegal assassinations.
The American drones now operate in designated "boxes" inside Pakistan's Federally Administrated Tribal Areas located along the lawless, mountainous border with Afghanistan, the ISI official said. He confirmed that U.S. officials had sought both to enlarge the current boxes and establish new ones outside the tribal zone where senior Taliban and al-Qaida operatives are suspected to be operating.
He would not specify which new areas the American side hoped to target, but an article in the Washington Post identified one as the area around Quetta city in southwestern Pakistan, which is believed to be where Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar operates.
The official said the Pakistani side denied the request because the risk of civilian casualties was too great. The missile strikes already inspire deep outrage among much of the Pakistani populace, he said, and the government cannot afford to inflame more resentment by expanding them into more populated areas.
Quote of the Day
"We refuse to allow the offer of planes be linked in any way to a freeze on settlements. The United States is an ally of Israel and we can not prevent that. But let their aid be carried out far removed from the Palestinian peace negotiations and not be used as a pretext for giving more weaponry to Israel."
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, voicing his skepticism of back-room US-Israeli negotiations
Abbas will call an immediate Arab League session once Israel is done squeezing every last penny out of the White House. Al Jazeera reports that while the Palestinians maintain a relatively neutral stance until the deal is finalized, they’ve “expressed outrage in private over reports of the US offer, saying it was a bribe to get Israel to fulfill basic international obligations.”
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, voicing his skepticism of back-room US-Israeli negotiations
Abbas will call an immediate Arab League session once Israel is done squeezing every last penny out of the White House. Al Jazeera reports that while the Palestinians maintain a relatively neutral stance until the deal is finalized, they’ve “expressed outrage in private over reports of the US offer, saying it was a bribe to get Israel to fulfill basic international obligations.”
November 18, 2010
Only Truth Can Negate Julian Assange
There’s no use guessing the next phase in Julian Assange’s nightmare when everything looks like it will go public eventually. His case stands in the open: two women he allegedly engaged in consensual sex, with the dispute centered on a broken condom. The WikiLeaks founder’s offer to cooperate with Swedish authorities in any way other than returning to the country has been denied. Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, claims his client isn’t running or hiding, but feels unsafe leaving his current location in the UK.Now a wanted man to Sweden and possibly Interpol, depending on Assange’s response, refusing to return to Stockholm could land him in jail. Assagne’s British visa is thought to expire this year and Australia could potentially cooperate with US authorities if he returns to his home country. But the overriding question is whether the political nature of Assange’s circumstances void public relations law: any press is good press.
Will morally blackening Assange cast his political actions in a negative light, or will they continue to shine through?
Given his spearheading of WikiLeaks, CIA conspiracies have inevitably questioned the truth behind Assange’s case. The macho, shadowy organization also happens to be sensitive and takes things personal in the field. When an al-Qaeda agent blew up a CIA base in Afghanistan last December, US officials reacted in indignation and responded with a retaliatory barrage of drone strikes in North Waziristan. It’s always hard for the CIA and Pentagon to believe they’ve been one-upped, and Assange has certainly done that.
Now Assange himself is adopting a more cautious approach than when the rape allegations first became public, when he loudly suspected US involvement after a warning from Australian intelligence.
"That doesn't mean that intelligence agencies are behind this,” he said recently, “nor does it mean they are not behind it, nor does it mean once this has happened, for other reasons, that they are not capitalizing on it.”
Despite a murky situation that points in the CIA’s direction, it’s possible that Assange’s latest description most accurately hits the mark. The whole affair might be a creation of jealousy or spite. According to Stevens, “Both women have declared that they had consensual sexual relations with our client and that they continued to instigate friendly contact well after the alleged incidents. Only after the women became aware of each other's relationships with Mr. Assange did they make their allegations against him."
From there the Western mainstream media, possibly urged by Washington and London, took over to reduce Assange’s credibility.
Whatever the reality actually is, Assange is trapped in a giant ad hominem. On top of rape charges, multiple stories have emerged documenting his “dictatorial leadership style” and resulting internal evacuation. About a dozen members have supposedly quit WikiLeaks in recent months, several after 392,000 classified documents on the Iraq war failed to satisfy their level of redaction.
One lieutenant, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, told Assange: “You are not anyone’s king or god. And you’re not even fulfilling your role as a leader right now. A leader communicates and cultivates trust in himself. You are doing the exact opposite. You behave like some kind of emperor or slave trader.”
He was suspended and soon resigned. The Western media has questioned if Assange’s mind makes him “dangerous.”
Considering that Assange is a public figure, which become role models regardless of their preference, a cleaner image would surely work in his favor to discredit the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Being a rogue doesn’t seem to hurt the cause, but being considered dangerous, not just to governments but to individuals who know him, can’t help. And yet, as of yesterday, Assange sits third in Time’s Person of the Year polling.
Assange may be vilified by Western power-brokers and questioned on his lack of effect within the US and European anti-war movements. Except Assange did contribute to the overall disapproval of the Afghan war, which now runs around 60%, and has altered the debate less than a month before the White House and Pentagon’s latest review. That the majority of Americans remain tuned out, allowing Washington to blow by Assange, isn’t his fault - it would happen to anyone opposing the war.
Furthermore, the internal split within WikiLeaks demonstrates how hard silencing people like Assange actually is. As with al-Qaeda, Assange’s message must be fought with a counter-message and not force, as one whistle-blower replaces another. A collection of former WikiLeaks’ members, led by Domscheit-Berg, claims to be designing new technology to assist whistle-blowers. Even if they came to hate Assange they’ve preserved their hatred for warfare, its potential illegality, and lack of oversight.
Silencing Assange may temporarily quiet the whistle-blowing, but appears insufficient to stop it.
Assange’s enemies, whether they’re orchestrating his legal entrapment or simply reveling, are likely asking themselves at what point he will break. Not literally, given reports of the mental strain taking a toll on him. And any bodily harm or efforts to remove him from society will only draw more attention.
But at what point do people start connecting his personal actions, including those surrounding his political actions, with the kernel of truth that is his ultimate statement? If Assange is found guilty of rape, will people second-guess whether the Afghan and Iraq wars suffer from negligent oversight and gross human rights violations? Some might, but killing the messenger may not significantly affect the message.
If the White House and Pentagon want to permanently “discredit” Assange, they should try improving upon and clarifying their own strategy in Afghanistan, rather than keep everyone in the dark. That’s what gave Assange his platform in the first place.
For AQAP, Targeting U.S. Is Personal
From NPR:
While counterterrorism officials absorb Wednesday's mixed verdict in the first civilian trial of a former Guantanamo detainee, they are focusing on some other, very different, Guantanamo prisoners — those who never stood trial but instead were released to other countries and then left to their own devices.
Many of the detainees who were released back to Yemen and Saudi Arabia have popped up in the ranks of one specific branch of al-Qaida: its arm in Yemen known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. That's the same group that claimed responsibility for last month's package bomb plot and last year's attempted bombing of Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
A Deeper Dislike Of America
Counterterrorism officials are trying to solve the mystery of why AQAP — more than any other arm of al-Qaida — seems to have such a visceral dislike of the United States.
Its focus on America as a target has gone beyond the mantras of al-Qaida's narrative. It is about more than just U.S. soldiers in Muslim lands or America's foreign policy. The enmity seems deeper, more personal.
"It's not that Osama bin Laden or Ayman Zawahiri ever had any great love of the United States, but to them we were just an enemy," says Bruce Hoffman, who heads Georgetown University's security studies program.
"With AQAP the hostility toward the U.S. seems to be different. Individuals in that organization — people who either served time at Guantanamo or lived in the United States — seem to have an almost cathartic approach to their violence," he says.
Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees.
"Osama bin Laden had very philosophical goals with his movement and the original movements of al-Qaida," Nelson says. "He didn't really have a personal grudge against the United States. He held something against U.S. and Western policies."
Nelson adds, "What you are seeing with some of the affiliates — and particularly with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — their operations are based out of personal vendetta more than it is the greater al-Qaida narrative."
Consider the names on AQAP's membership roster. It seems that at least part of the group's anger is rooted in its members' negative and direct connections to America.
The Guantanamo Connection
The organization's leadership reads like a list of former Guantanamo detainees. The brother of AQAP's leader was at Guantanamo. Its second in command, its operations chief and its top theologian — they were all at Guantanamo and were either released to their home countries or to a Saudi Arabian reeducation program that was supposed to convince them to give up their violent jihad.
In addition to ornery former detainees, AQAP also boasts some high-profile American members including the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and an editor and propagandist named Samir Khan. Analysts say the combustible combination of detainees and angry expatriates means the group now sees its battle against America as something visceral.
In an interview with NPR earlier this year, former detainee Moazzam Begg, a British citizen, recited a poem from memory about his experience in Guantanamo. He called it "Indictment USA."
"The last verses are like this," he said in the interview, "'They suffered an atrocity and want us all to pay, but I wish no proximity to such a USA. Vulgarity is not my style, but still I have to say, this occasion causes me to revile, so f—- the USA.'"
Since his release in 2005, Begg has become an activist in Britain and has not been formally linked to AQAP. But al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is filled with people who share Begg's experience and perhaps his anger toward the United States.
Militants Bred In The U.S.
There is a second group influencing al-Qaida's arm in Yemen: its American members.
Awlaki, the radical cleric, left the U.S. in 2002 and was arrested in Yemen four years later. Initially Yemeni officials said he was under arrest for the role he was planning in a local tribal dispute. But a short time later, FBI officials showed up to question him.
"For the first nine months I was in solitary confinement in an underground cell," Awlaki told Begg in a telephone interview in 2007, shortly after he was released from prison. "No interaction with any other prisoner was allowed for the entire nine months."
Awlaki has blamed the U.S. for his incarceration and shortly after he was released he began producing fiery sermons on the Internet calling on followers to join the violent jihad.
When the U.S. revealed that he was on a CIA capture-or-kill list — essentially targeting him for assassination — Awlaki was more explicit: He called on his followers to come to Yemen and fight or to kill Americans.
One of the people who appears to have answered that call is Khan, a 25-year-old American.
Unlike other AQAP recruits, he never spent time in prison. But from his parents' basement in North Carolina, he launched a pro-al-Qaida blog that developed a following.
He boarded a flight to Yemen last October. Six months later al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's English language magazine, Inspire, was published on the Web. Khan is thought to be the editor. (A federal grand jury reconvened this week to decide whether to formally charge Khan with providing material support to a terrorist organization.)
The second issue of Inspire came out in October. Khan has a cover article entitled: "I Am Proud to Be a Traitor to America."
On page 51 of the fall issue is a photograph of the Chicago skyline — with no explanation. Less than a month after Inspire's second issue hit the Web, AQAP sent two explosive-laden packages on cargo planes to the U.S. Their destination: Chicago.
The photo may have been a clue dangled on a string for U.S. intelligence officials to puzzle out: a dig they would understand, after the fact.
More evidence against US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s claim that al-Qaeda is moving into Yemen because of recent US and Pakistani operations in Waziristan. al-Qaeda is “metastasizing” of its own accord.
While counterterrorism officials absorb Wednesday's mixed verdict in the first civilian trial of a former Guantanamo detainee, they are focusing on some other, very different, Guantanamo prisoners — those who never stood trial but instead were released to other countries and then left to their own devices.
Many of the detainees who were released back to Yemen and Saudi Arabia have popped up in the ranks of one specific branch of al-Qaida: its arm in Yemen known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. That's the same group that claimed responsibility for last month's package bomb plot and last year's attempted bombing of Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
A Deeper Dislike Of America
Counterterrorism officials are trying to solve the mystery of why AQAP — more than any other arm of al-Qaida — seems to have such a visceral dislike of the United States.
Its focus on America as a target has gone beyond the mantras of al-Qaida's narrative. It is about more than just U.S. soldiers in Muslim lands or America's foreign policy. The enmity seems deeper, more personal.
"It's not that Osama bin Laden or Ayman Zawahiri ever had any great love of the United States, but to them we were just an enemy," says Bruce Hoffman, who heads Georgetown University's security studies program.
"With AQAP the hostility toward the U.S. seems to be different. Individuals in that organization — people who either served time at Guantanamo or lived in the United States — seem to have an almost cathartic approach to their violence," he says.
Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees.
"Osama bin Laden had very philosophical goals with his movement and the original movements of al-Qaida," Nelson says. "He didn't really have a personal grudge against the United States. He held something against U.S. and Western policies."
Nelson adds, "What you are seeing with some of the affiliates — and particularly with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — their operations are based out of personal vendetta more than it is the greater al-Qaida narrative."
Consider the names on AQAP's membership roster. It seems that at least part of the group's anger is rooted in its members' negative and direct connections to America.
The Guantanamo Connection
The organization's leadership reads like a list of former Guantanamo detainees. The brother of AQAP's leader was at Guantanamo. Its second in command, its operations chief and its top theologian — they were all at Guantanamo and were either released to their home countries or to a Saudi Arabian reeducation program that was supposed to convince them to give up their violent jihad.
In addition to ornery former detainees, AQAP also boasts some high-profile American members including the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and an editor and propagandist named Samir Khan. Analysts say the combustible combination of detainees and angry expatriates means the group now sees its battle against America as something visceral.
In an interview with NPR earlier this year, former detainee Moazzam Begg, a British citizen, recited a poem from memory about his experience in Guantanamo. He called it "Indictment USA."
"The last verses are like this," he said in the interview, "'They suffered an atrocity and want us all to pay, but I wish no proximity to such a USA. Vulgarity is not my style, but still I have to say, this occasion causes me to revile, so f—- the USA.'"
Since his release in 2005, Begg has become an activist in Britain and has not been formally linked to AQAP. But al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is filled with people who share Begg's experience and perhaps his anger toward the United States.
Militants Bred In The U.S.
There is a second group influencing al-Qaida's arm in Yemen: its American members.
Awlaki, the radical cleric, left the U.S. in 2002 and was arrested in Yemen four years later. Initially Yemeni officials said he was under arrest for the role he was planning in a local tribal dispute. But a short time later, FBI officials showed up to question him.
"For the first nine months I was in solitary confinement in an underground cell," Awlaki told Begg in a telephone interview in 2007, shortly after he was released from prison. "No interaction with any other prisoner was allowed for the entire nine months."
Awlaki has blamed the U.S. for his incarceration and shortly after he was released he began producing fiery sermons on the Internet calling on followers to join the violent jihad.
When the U.S. revealed that he was on a CIA capture-or-kill list — essentially targeting him for assassination — Awlaki was more explicit: He called on his followers to come to Yemen and fight or to kill Americans.
One of the people who appears to have answered that call is Khan, a 25-year-old American.
Unlike other AQAP recruits, he never spent time in prison. But from his parents' basement in North Carolina, he launched a pro-al-Qaida blog that developed a following.
He boarded a flight to Yemen last October. Six months later al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's English language magazine, Inspire, was published on the Web. Khan is thought to be the editor. (A federal grand jury reconvened this week to decide whether to formally charge Khan with providing material support to a terrorist organization.)
The second issue of Inspire came out in October. Khan has a cover article entitled: "I Am Proud to Be a Traitor to America."
On page 51 of the fall issue is a photograph of the Chicago skyline — with no explanation. Less than a month after Inspire's second issue hit the Web, AQAP sent two explosive-laden packages on cargo planes to the U.S. Their destination: Chicago.
The photo may have been a clue dangled on a string for U.S. intelligence officials to puzzle out: a dig they would understand, after the fact.
More evidence against US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s claim that al-Qaeda is moving into Yemen because of recent US and Pakistani operations in Waziristan. al-Qaeda is “metastasizing” of its own accord.
November 17, 2010
Petraeus’s Wild Cards: Afghan Militias
The “enemy of my enemy is my friend” isn’t rocket science, yet that level of thinking may be required to navigate Afghanistan’s tribal structure. New US reports are popping up with every local militia (arbakis), a military and propaganda strategy orchestrated by General David Petraeus, commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan. Having employed tribal militias to relative success in Iraq, Petraeus firmly believes that Afghan militias will permanently tip the war against the Taliban - and wrestled with President Hamid Karzai before coercing him to his side.After a series of pilot programs the Afghan Local Police initiative finally launched last summer. Roughly 10,000 villagers have been armed and another 10,000 are in the pipeline, with plans to double the force again, about 25% more than the Taliban army. One senior Pentagon official said Petraeus "wants this to grow as much as possible."
Unfortunately no one is as certain as Petraeus that his plan will succeed. While Sunni tribes did manage exile al-Qaeda from Iraq, allowing the military to strengthen its grip over the country, the group has resurfaced in the middle of a power vacuum that interfered with political and financial connections to the government. Some disenchanted Sunnis have fallen back into al-Qaeda’s ranks.
Local militias will always be harder to control and sustain than they appear.
Many US officials acknowledge this dilemma and chalk it up to expediency. Some do better to frame it as a local solution and thus the only solution. None have an answer to what could go wrong, other than they’ll deal with it when it happens. In Marjah 150 tribesmen have banded together to expel the Taliban, a positive sign of restoring the government’s writ to the area. However disagreement exists on how to fund them.
Dawoud Ahmadi, spokesman of Helmand governor Gulabuddin Mangal, told reporters, "It is true that people in Marjah have taken up arms to bring security to their neighborhood so they can live in peace. These are not tribal arbaaki (militias) neither has the government helped them in any way nor has the government allocated them wages. The reason they have taken up arms is because they were fed up with the atrocities of the Taliban."
The group itself claims to be fighting against both the Taliban and NATO's presence.
And while Mangal’s words sound inspiring, funding is a historic problem for these operations. 80 miles north in Sangin, the "new" Taliban stronghold in Helmand province, US forces have assumed command from UK forces to clear what could be more vital territory than Marjah. Sangin took down over 100 British soldiers, more than any other district under their control, and is a real opium hub. Too aware of the area’s lethality, US Marines consider local militias on par with Afghan forces and hope to boost their operations.
"Local defense forces are something we will try to implement throughout Sangin district, especially in the Upper Sangin Valley," said Lt. Col. Jason Morris, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which assumed responsibility last month for Sangin.
The Upper Sangin Valley has some precedence to build on. Three years ago the Alikozai tribe, the dominant tribe in the area, rose up with the government’s approval only to be abandoned. They were crushed by the Taliban and the Alizai, a rival tribe. Phil Weatherill, a British government adviser who has worked closely with the Alikozai, believes, “The Alikozai have always wanted to come back to government. Unfortunately, NATO has very little credibility up there, and that's what we have to work on and prove we can actually support them."
But as good a theory as local militias are, the multitude of variances tend to overload the system, especially one as frail and chaotic as Afghanistan. Tribes opposed to the Taliban don’t necessarily favor the government and funding uncoordinated tribes, save for their link to NATO, has already led to sporadic conflict.
Haji Abdul Karim, an elder from the Noorzai tribe who claims to be an old acquaintance of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, explained, "One man says he likes the Taliban. One man says he likes the government. But the majority hate both."
Some militias even follow ex-Taliban commanders who, in exchange for their help, demand the withdrawal of foreign forces. There’s no telling whose side they’re actually on or how long they'll stay there.
Regardless of the means, the general fear of increased lawlessness remains a constant threat. Whether arming tribes neutral or opposed to the government, rival tribes, former Taliban commanders, or self-interested warlords, a comprehensive system has yet to be established to prevent the many situations that can go wrong. This won’t be a tightly-organized Sunni Awakening, and most groups aren’t fighting for their nation. But desperate times call for desperate measures, US officials admit (in other words), and local tribes give off the feeling of playing with fire.
One overt example is Colonel Abdul Razzik, the infamous chief of Spin Boldak’s border crossing who US officials used to label a “malignant actor.” Now one of their best friends, US officials have reversed their tune into flowery poetry. "He's become a folk hero," says U.S. Army Col. Jeffrey Martindale, commander of the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. "Afghans see him as the Afghan solution to their problems."
That’s the way US commanders see it anyway.
Razzik certainly has his benefits. Low on familial and tribal ties, US officials believe he can operate in a fairly neutral manner. The Taliban fear his fighters (estimated in the hundreds), which the Pentagon must love, and Razzik has impressed his US counterparts with his tactical knowledge. His firm grip on the vital crossing, roughly 50 miles from Kandahar and Quetta, has made him indispensable to the US fight.
But doubts plague Razzik's benefit to counterinsurgency and Afghanistan as a whole, and US officials barely deny the unflattering “rumors” surrounding him.
Resentment over Razzik’s militia is one reason why the Taliban’s influence remains strong around Spin Boldak. Here too tribal tensions have played their destructive role; coalition officials cited a feud between Razzik’s Achakzai tribe and the Noorzai after his fighters raided the Panjway district in 2006. His men are said to shoot first and ask questions later, and US officials considered him a warlord before his services were needed. While he may be better than the Taliban, holding him below the government and NATO’s standards makes for futile counterinsurgency.
Lt. Col. Hayes, a Special Forces officer, claims he tries to make Razzik change: "I told him - if you want to be on the national scene, you have to learn how to read and write, and you've got to cut all the bad things you've been doing in Spin Boldak."
Razzik "kind of nodded, and didn't give an answer."
US officials are doing what they can but Razzik knows he holds all the cards between Kandahar and Quetta - including heroin, allegedly. And who else would Razzik be linked to besides Wali, Hamid Karzai’s brother? They share the same story. According to The Wall Street Journal, “after a brief effort earlier this year to get President Karzai to remove his brother from Kandahar, and to curb Col. Razzik, coalition commanders say they have concluded that such men are their only significant allies in the south.”
One military official in Kabul tried to explain, "What's the alternative?. These power-brokers will remain a fixture regardless of what we do. Whether they will modify their malignant activities over time remain to be seen - but you really have to work with them."
Local militias may provide a quick fix for Washington's strategy, yet none of this sounds like it will contribute to Afghanistan's long-term stability. Though lacking an end-game, US officials appear confident of managing the risk involved with local militias, despite regression in Iraq. Whether the Afghan government, not just US forces, can work in military and financial harmony with these tribes will be the main test.
They’re going to multiply. But will they multiple Afghanistan’s instability?
November 16, 2010
Gates Fits Silencer on Yemen's War
Maybe he thought he could squeeze by through a technicality.Today at a press conference organized by The Wall Street Journal, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates employed his usual doublespeak to circumvent the pressures surrounding Yemen. Gates has reportedly set a “red line” for President Barack Obama in regards to Iran, then publicly rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the same threat. He’s praised the withdrawal from Iraq while hinting at an extension to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and blueprinting US bases. Reaffirmed July 2011 in Afghanistan while downplaying its significance.
And in Yemen, where US operations continue to escalate, Gates claims, “We don’t need another war.”
Instead, he believes America’s best bet to neutralize al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is cooperation with, and the arming of, Yemeni forces. This may be true, but it doesn’t negate the reality that America has launched a war in Yemen. A small war still counts as war.
And this one is growing.
Gates hadn’t spoken randomly at The WSJ’s press briefing - he came specifically to challenge its latest report documenting the newest phase in US operations. According to one senior official in the Obama administration, limited U.S. intelligence experience in Yemen has created "a window of vulnerability" that Washington is "working fast to address.” With current measures such as training Yemeni counter-terrorist units and providing them with technology (and drones) still insufficient, the next logical step is underway: forward operating bases (FOB).
The possibility of US forces entering Yemeni combat zones remains a key fear of the Yemeni people and President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose low popularity becomes all the more combustible when mixed with anti-American sentiment. Gates tried to impress upon his audience, “Our biggest tools particularly with respect to Yemen are the partnership capacity of the Yemenis themselves and enabling them to go after these guys.”
But who sharpens these tools? US Special Forces and CIA, of course.
The WSJ reports, “In the rush to build up capabilities, the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies are moving in equipment and personnel from other areas, and over the past year have expanded the size of teams in the U.S. analyzing intelligence on AQAP. The emphasis now is on expanding the number of intelligence operatives and analysts in the field.”
Although the plan remains in its formative stage and continues to be shopped around Washington for approval, US operations are already moving in this direction. Supporters of establishing FOBs claim they would expand the Yemeni government’s control into contested tribal territory while Special-Ops and CIA “advisers” could “get out of the capital region and into the field.”
The general idea is for specialized Yemeni commando units to work closer with US “hunter-killer” teams, a prospect still resisted by the Yemeni government. But considering America’s rapid expansion and the possibility of future AQAP attacks, which Washington uses to further leverage Saleh, it may be only a matter of time before these FOBs are operating under CIA/Special-Forces guidance. From there they can quietly transition to direct participation.
Ultimately these bases are designed to gather intelligence to call in Yemeni and US air-strikes, further solidifying America’s military role in the country. No, this isn't another war.
Despite the interchange between a “small war” and counterinsurgency, US policy fails to embody a true COIN operation. America has many ways of killing al-Qaeda fighters (when they find them), but few means of preventing future recruits. With pure counter-terrorism representing the bulk of operations, al-Qaeda is likely to increase its numbers and support in the absence of non-military operations. Unfortunately no long-term strategy is being set to combat AQAP’s ideology when this should be the first area established.
Perhaps Obama and the State Department intend to fill the political/economic/social void once US military operations are up to speed, yet this wouldn't excuse the lack of publicity given to non-military operations. The likelier scenario is that no holistic framework exists.
Day after day Yemenis read of US threats, never their own lives improving. They hear US officials praise Saleh and wonder why. For instance, elite counter-terrorism units trained by US Special Forces are mostly commanded by his sons and nephews, increasing the specter of autocracy. Sources in Yemen, according to The WSJ, also claim that Washington has lost track of how many units are actually fighting AQAP because Saleh hasn't confirmed where they’re deployed.
Concerns are mounting that personnel has been deployed to counter Houthi rebels in the north and secessionists in the south, a claim the secessionists in particular would verify. Washington has given no attention, relatively speaking, to Saleh’s weak political support and Yemen’s economic crisis, only revealing concerns in private where they do little to soothe the average Yemeni or educate Americans.
The most they get is Gates’s acknowledgment that Saleh faces "a tribal management challenge he has to deal with.” As if America doesn't.
America has yet to formulate a message that would compel Yemenis to oppose AQAP. Some believe, including various government officials, that Washington has cooked up the group to justify military expansion, or at the minimum exaggerates its threat. Others simply fear becoming the next Afghanistan. For now America only offers weapons and the inevitable discord they spawn. Yemen has enough of that.
Most reports of Yemen include a buried line mentioning something about the “debate within the Obama administration and Pentagon about how best to ramp up the fight against AQAP.” These lines appear cheap throwaways designed to give the impression of caution. Reality does the talking.
"The truth,” Gates claims, “is what we have seen is as we've brought pressure on al Qaeda in (Pakistan's) North Waziristan, the terrorist movement has metastasized in many ways. So now we see them in Somalia, Yemen and North Africa, in the Maghreb."
The truth is that al-Qaeda spread to Somalia, Yemen, and North Africa before 2007, when America’s drone campaign began in earnest, and has since amplified its regional operations to undermine the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several commanders in Somalia were killed in 2008 and 2009, before Waziristan was flushed out, only to be replaced. al-Qaeda is “running” to failed states in order to fulfill its grand strategy of provoking US intervention within the Muslim world. And Washington, preoccupied with immediate attacks and long-term imperialism, is falling into al-Qaeda’s trap.
Either Obama is driving the American war machine or he can’t stop it.
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