BAGHDAD - The top U.S. commander in Iraq warned his troops Friday to expect subtle changes in combat operations - including having to obtain warrants before searching homes and detaining people - when the newly approved U.S.-Iraq security agreement takes effect Jan. 1.

American troops have already begun implementing some of the changes, such as conducting more joint operations with Iraqi soldiers and getting warrants before raids against suspected insurgents.

more

December 7, 2008 6:53 AM ET

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - In the biggest assault yet on the supply line for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, militants have torched more than 160 vehicles in Pakistan.

The U.S. says its losses in the raid at a transport terminal near Peshawar would only have a "minimal" impact on its operations in Afghanistan.

The terminal manager says armed men flattened the gate before dawn with a rocket-propelled grenade, shot dead a guard and set fire to a total of 106 vehicles, including about 70 Humvees.

At the nearby Faisal depot, manager Shah Iran said 60 vehicles destined for Afghanistan as well as three Pakistani trucks were burned in a similar assault.

Up to 75% of supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan pass through Pakistan. NATO is already looking for an alternative route through Central Asia.

U.S. Plans a Shift to Focus Troops on Kabul Region

The American military command said it had incomplete statistics for the level of violence in those provinces. “Frankly, in Wardak and Logar, we don’t know what we don’t know,” Colonel Nielson-Green said in an e-mail message. “There are few of our forces present in those areas, hence the reason for the incoming brigade there.”

[Comment: Swell. Sounds like Kandahar and Helmand in summer '06 all over again. Not up to speed on what the oppo has been doing there and they may well've been laying extensive groundwork. Funny how my battered copy of The Other Side of the Mountain has not a small number of little dots in those provinces. ~ JPD]

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

David E. Sanger | Washington D.C. | December 6

NYT - The Bush administration is preparing to present President-elect Barack Obama with a lengthy, classified strategy review aimed at reversing the gains that militants have made in destabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The review contains an array of options, including telling Pakistan’s military that billions of dollars in American aid will depend on the military’s being reconfigured to effectively fight militants. That proposal amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that roughly $10 billion in military aid provided to Pakistan as “reimbursements” for its efforts to root out militant groups has largely been wasted.

The payments have been the source of increasing criticism on Capitol Hill and from independent review groups, which have concluded that Pakistan diverted much of the money to build up its forces against India.

Revamping the aid to the military was part of a three-month study of what has gone wrong in the seven-year war along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The study calls for a new and broadly regional approach to insurgencies that move freely across the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

more

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

07 Dec 2008 15:23:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Golnar Motevalli

KABUL, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar urged Western forces on Sunday to take a "golden opportunity" to leave Afghanistan before thousands of their troops were killed in the Islamist group's renewed insurgency.

Omar, believed by Western intelligence to be hiding in the mountainous border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, also said a planned increase in U.S. troops would fail to curb violence and would instead fuel the insurgency.

"I would like to remind the illegal invaders who have invaded our defenceless and oppressed people that it is a golden opportunity for you at present to hammer out an exit strategy for your forces," Omar said on the day of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic festival of sacrifice, in his yearly message.

"The current armed clashes which now number into tens, will spiral up to hundreds of armed clashes. Your current casualties of hundreds will jack up in to the thousands," he added in an emailed statement.

Afghanistan has seen the worst bloodshed this year since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, with at least 4,000 people killed in the first half of 2008, about a third of them civilians, and some 140 Taliban suicide bombs.

Civilian casualties caused by foreign air strikes have become the biggest source of tension between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers. Omar said any increase in civilian deaths would help boost the Taliban's insurgency.

"The more you destroy our people's houses, the more you martyr our people, the more you will face the wrathful reaction of our mujahideen," he said.

Taliban suicide attacks killed at least 200 civilians last year, undermining public faith in the ability of the government and international troops to bring security to a country that has seen more or less continual war for the last 30 years.

more

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 5, 6:27 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Struggling to find enough doctors, nurses and linguists for the war effort, the Pentagon will temporarily recruit foreigners who have been living in the United States on student and work visas, or with refugee or political asylum status.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has authorized the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to recruit certain legal residents whose critical medical and language skills are "vital to the national interest," officials said, using for the first time a law passed three years ago.

Though the military previously has taken recruits with green cards seeking permanent residency, Gates' action enables the services to start a one-year pilot program to find up to 1,000 foreigners who have lived in the states legally for at least two years on certain types of temporary visas.

The new recruits into the armed forces would get accelerated treatment in the process toward becoming U.S. citizens in return for serving in the wartime military in the United States or abroad

more

Posted: 08 December 2008 0408 hrs

BASRA, Iraq - Iraq's independent electoral commission announced plans on Sunday to collect signatures in support of a referendum to transform the oil-rich province of Basra into an autonomous region.

Signatures would be collected from December 15 to January 14 in 34 centres across the predominantly Shiite province, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said in a statement.

According to the IHEC, there are 1,409,393 eligible voters in the province of Basra which includes the city of Basra, Iraq's second port along with Umm al-Qasr and the country's economic nerve centre.

"If after the certification of the signature collection process the signature list reaches the required 10 percent of the 'Final Voters List', a referendum will be held within three months," the statement said.

More than 70 percent of Iraq's oil is produced in Basra and its port is used for 80 percent of crude exports.

The region has been riven with the rivalries among three main Shiite factions -- the former rebel Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), the Mahdi Army of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the smaller Fadhila party.

If the referendum is organised and accepted, it will transform Basra into an autonomous region with the same rights as Kurdistan, the autonomous region in northern Iraq which also enjoys considerable oil wealth.

Pakistani Taliban fighters attacked Nato supply routes for a second consecutive night, torching 50 containers needed to supply troops in Afghanistan during an audacious raid near Peshawar.

Last Updated: 10:47AM GMT 08 Dec 2008

The attack came barely 24 hours after 200 militants destroyed more than 100 lorries in a Nato base barely a mile away. The trucks are needed to ferry vital equipment and supplies through the perilous Khyber Pass - the narrow mountain trail leading from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

"The militants came just past midnight, firing in the air, sprinkled petrol on containers and then set them on fire," said Mohammad Zaman, a security guard at the site quoted by Reuters.

"They told us they would not harm us, but they asked us not to work for the Americans."

The early Monday assault provided new evidence that the Taliban is resurrecting an age-old local strategy of hitting supply routes through the Hindu Kush mountain range.

Two Nato trucks travelling along the Peshawar ring road were also fired upon.

The attacks came as a prominent think tank said the Taliban had established a permanent presence in 72 per cent of Afghanistan - a figure debated by Nato.

"The Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72 per cent of the country," said the International Council, formerly known as the Senlis Council.

more

Troops will begin pullout in March and hand over to US

* Richard Norton-Taylor
* The Guardian, Wednesday December 10 2008

Britain's six-year occupation of south Iraq will begin drawing to a close in March, and the last troops will leave Basra by June, a senior defence source disclosed yesterday.

But instead of handing over to Iraqi authorities, the British will be replaced at their Basra airport base by a large force of US troops, who will set up their own headquarters there, the source revealed.

The withdrawal follows months of planning and security assessments by British and American commanders. The timetable is expected to be confirmed by Gordon Brown early in the new year.

The initial rundown will be relatively modest, with the tempo increasing later, defence officials said. "It'll be very gradual, and then a fairly steep reduction," one said. By the end of June almost all the 4,000 UK troops now stationed at Basra will be gone. About 300 will remain at the request of the Iraqis to help set up colleges for officer cadets and senior staff officers, and to train the Iraqi navy.

Equipment, from tanks to tents, will be "tailored down", officials said, indicating a gradual rundown. Most of it will be transported back to Britain, in what has been named Operation Archive. The exception will be aerial surveillance drones and Merlin helicopters, which will go to Afghanistan for use by Britain's troops there.

Brown and John Hutton, defence secretary, have expressed the hope Britain's mission in Iraq will have been "fundamentally changed" by the middle of 2009.

However, this is the first time defence sources have put flesh on the withdrawal. It is now clear a crucial factor is the agreement by the US to take over Basra airport with several thousand troops. They will support Iraqi forces and protect convoys bringing supplies from Kuwait.

The US deployment reflects Washington's concern for the region's stability. The US base also reflects the Iraqi government's concern for the vulnerability of its security forces, and any possibility of renewed attacks by Iranian-supplied militia.

more

By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The military ignored steps before the invasion of Iraq that could have prevented the staggering number of casualties from roadside bombs, the Pentagon's acting inspector general charged Tuesday.

The IG's report says that the military knew years before the war that mines and homemade bombs, which the military calls "improvised explosive devices," would be a "threat . . . in low-intensity conflicts" and that "mine-resistant vehicles" were available.

"Yet the military did not develop requirements for, fund or acquire" safer vehicles, the report says. The military invaded Iraq in 2003 "without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines."

Even after the war was under way, as the devices began taking a deadly toll and field commanders pressed for vehicles that were better protected from roadside bombs, the Pentagon was slow to act, the report says.

The IG's office is headed by Acting Inspector General Gordon Heddell.

Explosive devices, including roadside bombs and mines, have caused nearly 25,000 deaths and injuries, according to the Pentagon, the top cause of death for U.S. service members in Iraq.

"It appears that some bureaucrats at the Pentagon have much to explain to the families of American troops who were killed or maimed when a lifesaving solution was within reach," said Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican.

Bond and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware — the vice president-elect — have been critical of the Pentagon over the vehicles, known as MRAPS. Pronounced em-wraps, it stands for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected.

For two years the senators have pushed to uncover why efforts to obtain safer vehicles and other protective equipment for combat troops have been ignored or delayed. USA Today first reported about the problems getting MRAPS into combat last year.

The acting inspector general's study dealt specifically with the Marines' use of MRAPS. The report says that the inspector general also will look into how other military branches — presumably the Army — countered the threat of IEDS.

more

AFP
Published: Tuesday December 9, 2008

General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia and credited with boosting security in Iraq, said Tuesday that he has recommended a major troop surge in Afghanistan.

Petraeus said he had "already made recommendations" for an almost doubling of US troops in Afghanistan based on requests from General David McKiernan, the top commander of US and NATO troops in the central Asian country.

Petraeus is widely credited for turning around a Sunni insurgency in western Iraq with a 30,000 troop "surge" to secure Baghdad and its environs during his tenure as commander of the US-led coalition forces in Iraq.

Many hope that Petraeus will bring his counter-insurgency expertise to bear in Afghanistan, which has seen a spike in violence from a resurgent Taliban in the last two years, despite the presence of 70,000 NATO and US troops.

more

A suspected suicide bomber has killed at least 47 people at a restaurant near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police say.

Around 102 people have been injured in the explosion at the Kurdish restaurant, some 5km (three miles) north of Kirkuk, police told the BBC.

The reason for the attack is not yet clear, but Kirkuk is home to a volatile mix of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans.

The blast comes as Muslims celebrate the Eid-al-Adha holiday.

Families were eating lunch in the Abdullah restaurant, located on the main road to Irbil, when the attack happened, police said.

Officials and at least one witness said a suicide bomber activated a booby-trapped belt in the middle of the restaurant, although one interior ministry official was quoted as saying a car bomb was the cause.

There were also unconfirmed reports that Kurdish officials were also in the restaurant having lunch with Arab tribal leaders at the time.

more

A legal time bomb in Iraq

Obama must return US foreign policy to the rule of law - and the mandate for war is about to expire

o Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway
o The Guardian, Friday 12 December 2008

Hillary Clinton's first task as US secretary of state will be to defuse the legal time-bomb that the Bush administration has set up in Iraq. Up to now, the military occupation has been authorised annually by the UN. But now the administration plans to let the UN mandate expire on December 31, and replace it with a new "status of forces agreement" recently approved by the Iraqi parliament.

But the Bush-Maliki agreement only covers American forces. Once the UN mandate expires, there is no longer a legal foundation for troops deployed by Britain and the other remaining allies. While Britain is planning to leave Iraq next year, it is seeking its own bilateral agreement for the interim. But time is running short. Most of the other allies are rushing for the exits, and with good reason. Any soldiers that remain on January 1 will be in the country illegally and will have no protection against prosecution in Iraqi courts. The "coalition of the willing" is coming to an ignoble end.

To top it off, the termination of the UN mandate will leave American troops without authority under US law to engage in ongoing combat. In granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq in 2002, Congress limited it to two purposes: to "defend the national security of the US from the threat posed by Iraq" and to "enforce all relevant UN security council resolutions".

The government of Iraq is no longer a threat to US national security, so the first clause no longer applies. Indeed, the Bush-Maliki agreement proclaims that "the danger posed to international peace and stability by the former Iraqi government is gone now". And once the UN authorisation expires, there will no longer be a relevant security council resolution to enforce. Since neither clause applies, the use of combat troops will become illegal on January 1.

The bilateral agreement with Iraq does not fill this legal hole. Bush has concluded the agreement on his own without giving Congress a chance to vote on it. The agreement is his and his alone. But the president does not have the power to wage war on his own.

more

By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan — Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime.

When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers.

Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.

Earlier this year, bulldozers and backhoes returned to the scene, reportedly exhumed the bones of many of the dead men and removed evidence of the atrocity to sites unknown. In the area where the mass graves once were, there now are gaping pits in the sands of the Dasht-e-Leili desert.

A U.N.-sponsored team of experts first spotted two large excavations on a visit in June, one of them about 100 feet long and more than 9 feet deep in places. A McClatchy reporter visited the site last month and found three additional smaller pits, which apparently had been dug since June.

Faqir Mohammed Jowzjani, a former Dostum ally and the deputy governor of Jowzjan province, where the graves were located, told McClatchy that it's common knowledge that Dostum sent in the bulldozers.

He speculated that Dostum wanted to destroy the evidence because of local political trouble that could have made him more prone to prosecution for the killings.

Last year, Dostum and the then-Jowzjan governor became embroiled in a feud that killed seven people and wounded more than 40. This year, Dostum and his men kidnapped and reportedly beat a rival Afghan leader.

"Maybe General Dostum did it because of a fear of prosecution in the future," Jowzjani said.

Another local Afghan official said that Dostum had begun to worry that the 2001 killings could come back to haunt him. "Everyone in the city (Sheberghan) knows that the evidence has been removed," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of worries about being killed for talking about the subject.

"When the crime happened, (Dostum and his commanders) didn't think they would ever be prosecuted," the official said. "But later they began to worry . . . they have taken all the bones and thrown them into the river" that's about half a mile from the graves.

NATO — which has command authority over a team of troops less than three miles from the grave site — the United Nations and the United States have been silent about the destruction of evidence of Dostum's alleged war crimes.

"The truth is that General Dostum went out with bulldozers and dug up those graves," Jowzjani charged. "I don't know why UNAMA" — the U.N. mission in Afghanistan — "hasn't said anything in this regard . . . maybe because of fears about his power, or maybe they made a deal."

Gen. Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, the commander of Afghanistan's national police in the north, said that he knew that the graves had been emptied. He noted that "the digging was done very professionally" and said that U.N. and NATO-led teams in the area were also aware. (While provincial reconstruction teams are led by individual nations, their military components are under NATO command.)

"I don't understand why they didn't secure the area," Patang said in an interview. Perhaps, he said, Western officials "are nervous" about the power that Dostum has locally and don't want to upset local security by pushing him on the matter.

Dostum was unavailable for comment, and one of his senior aides, Gen. Ghani Karim Zada, declined several interview requests.

The Bush administration, too, has remained silent. U.S. officials claimed that they had no knowledge of the deaths of the prisoners in the convoy until the news media revealed them in 2002, and now the administration has remained silent about Dostum's reported effort to destroy the evidence of them, which also would be a major violation of international law.

American officials say that Dostum's alleged war crimes are a matter for the Afghan authorities. But the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai is weak and depends on American and NATO troops to fight a growing Taliban insurgency that now operates in most of Afghanistan and all but surrounds Kabul, the capital.

However, the fact that U.S. special forces and CIA operatives were working closely with Dostum in late 2001, when the killings took place, has fueled suspicions that the warlord got a free pass.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/57649.html

DPA
South Asia News

Dec 12, 2008, 22:27 GMT

London - Four British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Friday, taking the toll this year alone to 46, the Defence Ministry confirmed.

One soldier died during a routine patrol after his vehicle drove over a roadside bomb. An hour later, three soldiers on foot patrol were killed after a 13-year-old boy approached them with a wheelbarrow in which a bomb was hidden.

The boy also died in the explosion. Officials said it was unclear whether the boy was a suicide bomber or whether the explosive was triggered by someone else with a remote control.

With these deaths, the total number of British troops killed in Afghanistan has increased to 132.

that DOESN'T anticipate an Iraqi "surge" scenario:

Secure Afghanistan
Human security ought to be the goal of any Obama surge in Afghanistan, not defeat of Al Qaeda

During the election campaign, Barack Obama made much of the situation in Afghanistan. Indeed he argued (rather disappointingly since the war in Iraq should be regarded as a terrible mistake regardless of what was happening in Afghanistan) that the reason he was against the war in Iraq was because it diverted attention from Afghanistan and the hunt for Al Qaeda. He has already expressed his commitment to an Afghan ‘surge’ and he plans to send extra combat brigades to the area. He also made it clear that he was ready to continue ‘operations’ in Pakistan.
A surge will, however, be pointless unless it also involves a fundamental change of approach. At present, there is a huge tension between the War on Terror, the goal of militarily defeating America’s enemies, and the goal of stabilisation and protection of the Afghan population. This tension is reflected in the two military commands: the American forces, known as Operation Enduring Freedom, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) - NATO forces authorised by the United Nations. Despite the fact that top officials in the US, NATO, and UN administrations frequently declare – in various communiqués and fora -- that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily and despite the adoption by NATO and the US of a ‘comprehensive’ and ‘whole of government’ approach that brings together civilian and military efforts to address the range of causes of insecurity for ordinary Afghans, the thrust of the international intervention remains within a traditional security narrative that focuses on stabilizing the state militarily and prioritizes the hunt for terrorists and insurgents over the protection of civilians. What is needed is not withdrawal, since this would leave ordinary Afghans to the mercy of the Taliban, warlords and drug runners, but a new human security approach that would prioritise the protection of individuals in Afghanistan as well as in neighbouring states.

The situation in Afghanistan is dire. Over the past three years, the intensified armed conflict between Allied forces and the insurgency has engulfed the civilian population, who are also the main victims of a resurgent Taliban. The combination of light ground forces, supported by overwhelming firepower, in highly kinetic operations has inevitably resulted in significant civilian casualties and so-called ‘collateral damage.’ The heavy reliance on air strikes is because there are not enough forces in this huge country and because force protection takes precedence over the protection of Afghans. It is symptomatic of the priorities of the war that while we know that that there have been some 1011 deaths among coalition forces as of November 2008, there are no official statistics of civilian casualties. These probably number thousands from direct firepower, while many more have died from the indirect effects of the war – disease and homelessness, for example.

In addition to air-strikes, other heavy-handed measures, such as torture, arbitrary searches, and detentions, have also damaged the credibility of the multi-national forces. These tragedies are often compounded when US and NATO officials deny casualty figures, only to have the United Nations or journalists independently confirm them. They then shift the blame to the insurgency, stating that they deliberately mingle with civilian population to evade detection and to increase civilian casualties for the purpose of propaganda. Even if true, and it is an obvious tactic for insurgents to adopt, this attempt to pass the blame makes it appear that international forces are uninterested in protecting the people they supposedly came to liberate. Many reports now indicate that Afghans are starting to question the foreign military presence that they welcomed in 2001, increasingly viewing it as a major source of their daily insecurity.
(much more...)

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/kaldor/secure-afghanistan

"...there are no official statistics of civilian casualties. These probably number thousands from direct firepower, while many more have died from the indirect effects of the war – disease and homelessness, for example."

Aye, there's the rub. And a huge influx of combat troops can only intensify the civilian casualties, with no gain to what is claimed to be the objective: a secure, democratic Aghanistan.

Maliki takes revenge over new mandate

The nation's leader, furious at the UK's 'surrender' to Shia militias, is stalling on a deal for Britain's continuing presence

By Jane Merrick and Raymond Whitaker
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Related Articles

British forces in Iraq are facing a humiliating end to their six-year mission in the country as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, takes his revenge for what he regards as the British surrender of Basra to hardline Shia Muslim militias.

Mr Maliki, incensed by Britain's perceived failure to deal with the Mahdi Army of his bitter Shia rival, Moqtada al-Sadr, is stalling on a deal on Britain's continuing presence in Iraq, barely a fortnight before the current arrangement expires. Frantic diplomatic efforts are under way to secure a legal framework for British forces after 31 December, when the current United Nations mandate expires.

Top-level sources described the situation as "extremely serious". Even if a deal is struck within the next two weeks, the manner in which Iraq has allowed the issue to go right to the wire is a humiliation for Britain's exit strategy. The Defence Secretary, John Hutton, told Parliament early this month that the negotiations with Iraq had made "good progress" and that "we expect to reach an agreement" before the end of 2008. There was no mention of the talks, however, when the Government announced last week that Britain's 4,100 troops in Iraq would begin withdrawing in March, and leave completely by the end of June, apart from 400 troops in training and mentoring roles.

more

who is a former NPR reporter now based in Afghanistan (Kandahar, since 2002), running charities and self-help organisations, working directly with Afghan citizens, whilst avoiding the "NGO merry-go-round" centred upon Kabul.

The Other Front

By Sarah Chayes
Sunday, December 14, 2008

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

Nurallah strode into our workshop shaking with rage. His mood shattered ours. "This is no government," he stormed. "The police are like animals."

The story gushed out of him: There'd been a fender-bender in the Kandahar bazaar, a taxi and a bicycle among wooden-wheeled vegetable carts. Wrenching around to avoid the knot, another cart touched one of the green open-backed trucks the police drive. In seconds, the officers were dragging the man to the chalky dust, beating him -- blow after blow to the head, neck, hips, kidneys. Shopkeepers in the nearby stalls began shouting, "What do you want to do, kill him?" The police slung the man into the back of their truck and roared away.

"So he made a mistake," concluded Nurallah, one of the 13 Afghan men and women who make up my cooperative. "We don't have a traffic court? They had to beat him?"

In the seven years I've lived in this stronghold of the Afghan south -- the erstwhile capital of the Taliban and the focus of their renewed assault on the country -- most of my conversations with locals about what's going wrong have centered on corruption and abuse of power. "More than roads, more than schools or wells or electricity, we need good governance," said Nurallah during yet another discussion a couple of weeks ago.

He had put his finger on the heart of the problem. We and our friends in Kandahar are thunderstruck at recent suggestions that the solution to the hair-raising situation in this country must include a political settlement with "relevant parties" -- read, the Taliban. Negotiating with them wouldn't solve Afghanistan's problems; it would only exacerbate them. Ask any Afghan what's really needed, what would render the Taliban irrelevant, and they'll tell you: improving the behavior of the officials whom the United States and its allies ushered into power after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
(much more...)

http://tinyurl.com/6ooerw

Her thesis basically is that if the Karzai "government" persists in misgoverning, military action alone won't defeat Talibanism, and for the US/ISAF to tolerate corrupt, venal, and thuggish warlords (putting paid to any idea of a "central government" in the first instance), simply is self-defeating.

Face to face with the Taliban
Exclusive report from a Taliban veteran's compound in Afghanistan and on the battlefield

* Ghaith Abdul Ahad in Afghanistan
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 December 2008 19.44 GMT

Qomendan Hemmet sat cross-legged under a window of the mud-walled room. His shoulder, sunk in an old military jacket, rested against the wall and a radio antenna stuck out of his pocket. Next to him sat his deputy, wrapped in a big blanket, silent and sleepy. Around the room sat his men, their faces contorted by years of fighting and poverty, dressed in shalwar kameez and magazine pouches, eyes dark as the kohl lining them. Radios crackled, phones rang non-stop, and more fighters came, drank tea and left with orders.

"Salar is the new Falluja," declared Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. "The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five metres on each side. The rest is our territory."

Salar district in Wardak province is 80km (50 miles) south of Kabul. The ­Kandahar-Kabul road that passes through this district is a major supply line for US and Nato troops. The road is reminiscent of the road from Baghdad to Falluja: littered with IED [improvised explosive devices) holes and the carcasses of burnt-out Nato supply trucks and containers.

The frequency of Taliban attacks is higher this year than at any time since 2001. Four British marines were killed last week, three of them when a 13-year-old boy blew himself up in Helmand province. Meanwhile, the area controlled by the Afghan government is shrinking to the fortified islands of the cities.

A day earlier, I stood with a dozen Afghans, watching the Qomendan and his men in action. A man straining his eyes to watch had declared in an authoritative voice "janghi" ("war") and the sky had echoed with thuds and explosions.

A couple of pick-up trucks packed with rocket launchers and Afghan militiamen, hired to provide security to the supply convoys, sped away from the battle leaving a cloud of dust. Down the road three American armoured trucks filled the air with the crackle of heavy machine guns.

It was the end of an hour-long battle and as the sun sank deep into the horizon, the shooting became more intermittent. A low-flying, dark grey F-16 shot past, leaving behind two columns of smoke in the horizon. The Americans moved towards a village on the side of the road, the Afghan men jumped into their buses and taxis, and the traffic moved on over a carpet of bullet casings.

The road to Hemmet's compound is a single dirt track passing between high mud walls and orchards. A young Taliban scout led us to the compound, his Kalashnikov hidden under a blanket. In the distance the fortification of an Afghan army and police post was visible.

"Yesterday I had only 18 fighters," the Qomendan said, his unwavering gaze fixed on a point somewhere in the middle of the low-ceilinged room. "You saw how many mercenaries and Americans were there. With the blessing of Allah, the fighting is changing. When I started in this area, three years ago, I had six fighters, one RPG and two machine guns like these." He pointed at the BKC machine guns that lay idly on the door. "Now I have more than 500 fighters, 30 machine guns and hundreds of RPGs.

"The Americans have installed hundreds of Afghan policemen, they patrol the street all the time, but they can't control it. Last week they came by helicopters, searching the area because they can't drive their vehicles here. They never come with tanks, the whole area is mined."

more

Asia Times

Taliban militants in the Pakistani city of Peshawar at the weekend destroyed another batch of North Atlantic Treaty Organization containers bound for Afghanistan, bringing the total lost to more than 400 in the past few weeks. Local contractors and drivers are becoming too afraid to do their jobs, while NATO is stepping up efforts to find alternative routes.

Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:11pm IST

By David Brunnstrom

BRUSSELS, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's presidential election next year will be the critical test of the battle against the Taliban, NATO's top military official said on Tuesday, rejecting reports that the militants are gaining a stranglehold on the country.

Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola conceded that the intensity of insurgent activity more than seven years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban government was worrying and unexpected.

"It is true the situation is a situation of concern, because in the end the opposing militant forces ... have demonstrated more resilience than probably one could have thought or imagined," the Italian officer told a news briefing.

"But still the security situation is not as bleak, as doomy and gloomy, as the press depict," he said.

Di Paola rejected a report this month by the International Council on Security and Development think tank that said the Taliban had a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan and were "closing a noose" around the capital Kabul.

If militants planted a roadside bomb it did not mean they controlled the territory on which it was placed, he said.

"Kabul is not strangulated," he said. "I don't want to say it's all rosy ... the Taliban certainly have shown a resilience, but still they are not doing what is reported."

Di Paola said the "critical" test for the international effort in Afghanistan, involving more than 60,000 troops from more than 40 nations, would be the presidential election next year.

"We will see. If the election will be held and will be reasonably secure ... that means they are not strangulating us."

"PIECE OF CAKE"

The process of election registration in the north, east and part of the west had so far been "smooth -- easy as a piece of cake", and the test would be how this went in the provinces bordering Pakistan worst troubled by insurgents.

"It is clear ... if there is one event the other side would like to disrupt, clearly it is the election. It is in the interest of them to disrupt this -- we will see."

With the United States planning a troop surge like that seen in Iraq to boost election security, Di Paola said European allies also needed to commit more forces, both to hold territory and to train Afghan security forces.

"We need to support very much the electoral process."

Di Paola played down recent militant attacks on NATO's main supply route via Pakistan and a statement by that country's main truckers' association that it had stopped sending goods from the country's main port in Karachi.

He said the commander of the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan had said the route was still open and safe. "For the moment the supplies are passing, otherwise, if this should

more

concerning a putative military "surge" in Afghanistan, in an early Obama administration action to buy some (more) time until provincial elections can be organised, as it seems as yet another "purple finger moment" will be offered as "progress toward democracy", whatever. The problems within Afghanistan can only be viewed as soluble within a regional context and a regional framework, as described below by Rubin and Rashid:

From Great Game to Grand Bargain
Ending Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan

By Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid

From Foreign Affairs , November/December 2008

Summary: The crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan is beyond the point where more troops will help. U.S. strategy must be to seek compromise with insurgents while addressing regional rivalries and insecurities

The Great Game is no fun anymore. The term "Great Game" was used by nineteenth-century British imperialists to describe the British-Russian struggle for position on the chessboard of Afghanistan and Central Asia -- a contest with a few players, mostly limited to intelligence forays and short wars fought on horseback with rifles, and with those living on the chessboard largely bystanders or victims. More than a century later, the game continues. But now, the number of players has exploded, those living on the chessboard have become involved, and the intensity of the violence and the threats it produces affect the entire globe. The Great Game can no longer be treated as a sporting event for distant spectators. It is time to agree on some new rules.
(much more...)
http://tinyurl.com/5qvxgv

There are a multitude of actors and stakeholders directly and indirectly involved in the Afghan conflict, each invoking its own "national interest" in seeing a solution playing out to (largely) its own benefit, as each sees both conflict and resolution as a zero-sum game, "Great" or otherwise. Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid offer some intriguing suggestions for how to deconstruct the old paradigms and move forward in a more realistic fashion, taking into account geopolitical aspects that must be placed on the table in a transparent manner by all parties in order for a credible and lasting agreement that would at least begin to lift Afghanistan out of its "failed-state" mode. Well worth revisiting, especially in view of a new regime in Washington about to take office.

From the Los Angeles Times
By Tina Susman

5:48 AM PST, December 17, 2008

Reporting from Baghdad — Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said British forces will cease operations in Iraq by May 31 and leave Iraq by the end of July, leaving the United States as the only foreign military presence in the country.

In Baghdad today, at least nine people died in a pair of bombings in the center of the city. More than 40 people were injured by a car bomb and a roadside bomb timed to explode a few minutes apart.

The British withdrawal of its 4,100 troops had been anticipated. The war, which has killed at least 178 British troops, has been unpopular in Britain and became a liability to the governing Labor Party under Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair. When Brown became prime minister in 2007, he made clear that he planned to reduce greatly the British presence in Iraq. His initial plan, to bring the British troop numbers down to about 2,500 by end of last year and to withdraw completely by the end of 2008, stalled amid soaring militia violence last spring in the southern city of Basra, where the British contingent is based.

But Brown and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, at a news conference today during Brown's surprise visit, said violence has subsided in the south and Iraqi security forces are better equipped to stand on their own.

"We have agreed today that the mission will end no later than the 31st of May next year," Brown said. The movement of all troops and equipment out of the country will take about two months after that, he said.

more

Afghan police must fight crime, not Taliban - ICG
17 Dec 2008 23:00:02 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Jonathon Burch

KABUL, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Systemic corruption among the Afghan police force, too used to fighting the Taliban instead of fighting crime, is fuelling a perception of lawlessness and public discontent, a think-tank said on Thursday.

In many isolated outposts, the police are the only face of the Afghan government and are vulnerable to insurgent attacks. But they are also renowned for milking the populace for bribes.

Endemic corruption in the interior ministry, which runs the police, means promotions are often bought, not earned on merit.

"Too much emphasis has continued to be placed on using the police to fight the insurgency rather than crime. Corruption and political appointments are derailing attempts to professionalise the force," the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.

"While hard to measure given the lack of crime statistics, there is a general perception in Afghanistan that lawlessness is on the rise," it said.

ya think?

more