(Adds incident in Zabul province, Taliban website and identity of attacker, background)

KABUL, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in south Afghanistan that was claimed by the Taliban, NATO said on Friday.

The attack happened late on Thursday afternoon beside a busy market in Maywand district, Kandahar province, about 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Kabul.

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link to related News story:

Report KBR officials knew of toxins months before soldiers in Iraq

From the Los Angeles Times

A Times writer joins Taliban fighters in an especially dangerous part of Afghanistan. The men appear to have no fear of troops, and prove to be gracious hosts.By Paul Watson

January 11, 2009

Reporting from Ghazni, Afghanistan — The main highway is "enemy territory" for the Taliban, a busy two-lane road where U.S. troops race down the middle, trying to steer clear of suicide bombers. The guerrillas drive it like they own it.

Grinning with contempt at a convoy of Polish troops trying to plow its way through traffic the other day, three Taliban fighters with guns and long knives concealed under their heavy woolen cloaks calmly eased into the other lane and beat the jam.

When they reached the edge of this provincial capital just an hour and a half south of Kabul, the driver pulled onto a dirt track into the desert, coaxing the creaking old van over a speed bump and past a nervous-looking Afghan army sentry. The fighters flashed him a dirty look.

Just 30 yards from the American-built highway, we were entering Taliban country.

The speed bump presumably makes it easier for soldiers or police to stop vehicles and search them for guerrillas or weapons. But government troops usually stand back and look the other way as Taliban fighters move in and out of their vast desert stronghold.

"Police and soldiers can never come to our territory," said one of the fighters, a 28-year-old who identified himself only as Ahmadi. "If they do, they won't go back safe and sound."

Seven years after a U.S.-led invasion routed the Taliban regime, hard-line Islamic fighters who had scattered under massive bombardment to their villages and rear bases in Pakistan once again govern large swaths of Afghanistan. Although they are strongest in the south and east, they have launched attacks in all regions of the country -- and are well dug in across regions that surround Kabul, the capital.

The U.S. military says it may need up to 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan by summer, almost doubling the number of American forces there. Commanders say that the number of U.S. deaths, which rose by more than a third last year to 155, according to icasualties.org, is likely to rise.

Despite their increasing strength and confidence, Taliban fighters rarely welcome foreign journalists. The guerrillas are hyper-alert to potential spies.

And, among the Pashtun who dominate the Taliban, an ancient code of honor called pashtunwali demands that a host protect the life of a guest as if it were more important than his own. That's a tall order when the visitor is a foreigner traveling through countryside rife with kidnappers and competing militant factions during an escalating war.

Some Taliban commanders considered The Times' request for safe passage into their territory, only to reject a visit as too risky. But the Ghazni Talibs, eager to show the extent of their control, finally agreed.

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U.S. Marines find Iraq tactics don't work in Afghanistan
By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

Marines newly arrived in Afghanistan are discovering that the tactics they learned in nearly six years of combat in Iraq are of little value in their new war — and may even inhibit their ability to fight their Taliban foes. Mine-resistant vehicles are too slow, body armor is too heavy, and heavily armored Humvees can't take the difficult Afghan terrain.

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Asia Times
By Ann Jones

The first of 20,000 to 30,000 additional United States troops are scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan next month to re-win the war US President George W Bush neglected to finish in his eagerness to start another one. However, "winning" the military campaign against the Taliban is the lesser half of the story.

Going into Afghanistan, the Bush administration called for a political campaign to reconstruct the country and thereby establish the authority of a stable, democratic Afghan central government. It was understood that the two campaigns - military and political/economic - had to go forward together; the success of each depended on the other. But the vision of a reconstructed, peaceful, stable, democratically governed Afghanistan faded fast. Most Afghans now believe that it was nothing but a cover story for the Bush administration's real goal - to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan and occupy the country forever.

Whatever the truth of the matter, in the long run, it's not soldiers but services that count - electricity, water, food, health care, justice, and jobs. Had the US delivered the promised services on time, while employing Afghans to rebuild their own country according to their own priorities and under the supervision of their own government - a mini-Marshall Plan - they would now be in charge of their own defense. The forces on the other side, which we loosely call the Taliban, would also have lost much of their grounds for complaint.

Instead, the Bush administration perpetrated a scam. It used the system it set up to dispense reconstruction aid to both the countries it "liberated", Afghanistan and Iraq, to transfer American taxpayer dollars from the national treasury directly into the pockets of private war profiteers. Think of Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater in Iraq; Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. They're all in it together. So far, the Bush administration has bamboozled Americans about its shady aid program. Nobody talks about it. Yet the aid scam, which would be a scandal if it weren't so profitable for so many, explains far more than does troop strength about why, today, we are on the verge of watching the whole Afghan enterprise go belly up.

What's worse, there's no reason to expect that things will change significantly on president-elect Barack Obama's watch. During the election campaign, he called repeatedly for more troops for "the right war" in Afghanistan (while pledging to draw-down US forces in Iraq), but he has yet to say a significant word about the reconstruction mission. While many aid workers in that country remain full of good intentions, the delivery systems for and uses of US aid have been so thoroughly corrupted that we can only expect more of the same - unless Obama cleans house fast. But given the monumental problems on his plate, how likely is that?

The jolly privateers
It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure of American reconstruction in Afghanistan. While the US has occupied the country - for seven years and counting - and efficiently set up a network of bases and prisons, it has yet to restore to Kabul, the capital, a mud brick city slightly more populous than Houston, a single one of the public services its citizens used to enjoy. When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, they modernized the education system and built power plants, dams, factories, and apartment blocs, still the most coveted in the country. If, in the last seven years, Bush did not get the lights back on in the capital, or the water flowing, or dispose of the sewage or trash, how can we assume Obama will do any better with the corrupt system he's about to inherit?

Between 2002 and 2008, the US pledged $10.4 billion in "development" (reconstruction) aid to Afghanistan, but actually delivered only $5 billion of that amount. Considering that the US is spending $36 billion a year on the war in Afghanistan and about $8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, that $5 billion in development aid looks paltry indeed. But keep in mind that, in a country as poor as Afghanistan, a little well spent money can make a big difference.

The problem is not simply that the Bush administration skimped on aid, but that it handed it over to for-profit contractors. Privatization, as is now abundantly clear, enriches only the privateers and serves only their private interests.

Take one pertinent example. When the inspectors general of the Pentagon and State Department investigated the US program to train the Afghan police in 2006, they found the number of men trained (about 30,000) to be less than half the number reported by the administration (70,000). The training had lasted eight weeks at most, with no in-the-field experience whatsoever. Only about half the equipment assigned to the police - including thousands of trucks - could be accounted for, and the men trained were then deemed "incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work".

The American privateer training the police - DynCorp - went on to win no-bid contracts to train police in Iraq with similar results. The total bill for American taxpayers from 2004 to 2006: $1.6 billion. It's unclear whether that money came from the military or the development budget, but in either case it was wasted. The inspectors general reported that police incompetence contributed directly to increased opium production, the reinvigoration of the Taliban, and government corruption in general, thoroughly subverting much ballyhooed US goals, both military and political.

In the does-no-one-ever-learn category: the latest American victory plan, announced in December, calls for recruiting and rearming local militias to combat the Taliban. Keep in mind that hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly donated by Japan, have already been spent to disarm local militias. A proposal to rearm them was soundly defeated last fall in the Afghan Parliament. Now, it's again the plan du jour, rubber-stamped by Afghan President Hamid Karzai
.

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In one of the world's poorest nations, myriad tales of official corruption

By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
updated 2:04 a.m. CT, Mon., Jan. 12, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan - Across the street from the Evening in Paris wedding hall, a monument to opulence surrounded by neon-lighted fountains and a five-story replica of the Eiffel Tower, is a little colony of tents where 65 families, mostly returnees from Pakistan, huddle against the winter cold and wish they had never come home.

Similar startling contrasts abound across the Afghan capital. Children with pinched faces beg near the mansions of a tiny elite enriched by foreign aid and official corruption. Hundreds of tattered men gather at dawn outside a glittering new office building to compete for 50-cent jobs hauling construction debris.

"I am a farmer with 11 children. Our crops dried up, so I came to the city to find work, but all day I stand here in the cold and no one hires me," said Abdul Ghani, 47. "All the jobs and money go to those who have relatives in power, and corruption is everywhere. How else could they build these big houses? Nobody cares about the poor," he added bitterly. "They just make fun of us."

Seven years after the fall of the Taliban and the establishment of a civilian-led, internationally backed government, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with rates of unemployment, illiteracy, infant mortality and malnutrition on a par with the most impoverished nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Most homes lack light, heat and running water; most babies are born at home and without medical help.

Now, according to U.N. figures, the populace is getting even poorer. A combination of drought, soaring food prices, scarce jobs and meager wages has meant that about 5 million Afghans -- far more than in any recent year -- are slated to receive emergency food aid. Many families spend up to 80 percent of their income on food.

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The Baghdad blogger reports on his return to Iraq here in the Guardian

_{Yes, I can come up with a post-election signature, just... not... yet...}

John Byrne
Published: Friday January 16, 2009

From World War II through Desert Storm, the percentage of American combat deaths reported from friendly-fire during conflict has remained remarkably consistent: 12-14 percent in World War II, 10-14 percent in Vietnam, 13 percent in Granada, 12 percent in Desert Storm (the invasion of Panama is the exception, at 6 percent).

But a new Pentagon report claims that friendly fire deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan -- also known as fratricide -- have dropped to just .78 percent, a figure that seems statistically impossible.

To put it in perspective, the Army claims that fewer Americans were killed by friendly fire in the six years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan than were killed during the 42 days of Operation Desert Storm.

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By KIM GAMEL
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi journalist jailed since throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush got a visit from his brother Friday and a birthday party from his guards as he turned 30.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, who has gained cult status for his bizarre protest, is in good shape but has been denied access to his lawyer, relatives said after his brother Maitham visited him for two hours in his detention cell in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Al-Zeidi has been in custody since the Dec. 14 outburst at Bush's joint news conference with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Thousands demonstrated for al-Zeidi's release and hailed his gesture.

But concern was raised about his welfare after allegations that he had been severely beaten and tortured in detention.

The case's investigating judge has said the journalist was struck about the face and eyes, apparently by security agents who wrestled him to the floor after he hurled his shoes, forcing Bush to duck for cover.

Maitham al-Zeidi was not available to comment on the visit, but another brother, Dhargham, told The Associated Press that he was told the wounds had healed.

"Muntadhar was in a good shape ... and his morale was high. Yesterday was his birthday and some patriotic officers there organized a party for him and brought birthday cake," Dhargham al-Zeidi said.

The case became a focus for Iraqis and others in the Muslim world who resent the U.S. invasion and occupation. But it also embarrassed al-Maliki, who was standing next to Bush at the time. Neither leader was injured.

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by US/ISAF, as he issues YET ANOTHER plea to mind the civilians, please, when Western militaries launch operations in the provinces:

New Afghan civilian deaths probe

The US military in Afghanistan is investigating reports that up to 25 civilians were killed in an operation north of Kabul this week.

The US had said a Taleban commander and 18 militants died in Kapisa province.

US Central Command chief Gen David Petraeus has been meeting President Hamid Karzai, who has urged Western troops to reduce civilian casualties.

New US President Barack Obama has backed a 30,000-strong troop surge for Afghanistan this year.

His inauguration has been generally welcomed on the streets of Kabul, although a top Taleban spokesman has again reportedly warned Western troops to leave the country.

Separately, violence continued on Wednesday when a suicide car bomb attack on an Afghan military convoy left two soldiers dead in the west of the country.

'Popular support'

The US military had said Tuesday's operation in Kapisa, 50km (30 miles) north of Kabul, killed a key Taleban commander, Mullah Patang.

On Wednesday, US spokesman Col Greg Julian said the coalition would investigate villagers' claims that 25 civilians had been killed.

A senior government source told the BBC that Mullah Patang had been killed along with three bodyguards, but added that a number of other locals had also died in the operation.

He said Mullah Patang had been dining with local people in the village of Inzeray in Tagab district when the house he was visiting was struck. According to the official, US special forces had been dropped from helicopters, before calling in air support.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says Kapisa is a strategically important province, near Bagram air base and close to the Kabul-Jalalabad highway.

Afghan officials say the district is frequently used by militants as a stopover on their way to carry out attacks in the capital.

Deputy police chief for Kapisa, Naimatullah Hakimi had earlier said meetings were held with elders to find out who died and he insisted that "no civilians were killed".

The news of the investigation comes only a day after Mr Karzai addressed the Afghan parliament and once again urged US-led and Nato troops to do more to reduce civilian casualties.

Mr Karzai, who is due to face a presidential election this year, said the fight against militants could not be won without popular support from Afghans.

"We don't accept civilian casualties in our land in the war on terrorism," he told parliament.
...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7841491.stm

"We don't accept civilian casualties in our land in the war on terrorism,". No, I suppose not, but you will continue to count the deaths as long as US/Nato "rules of engagement" remain as they currently are. The most vexing part of all this is that Karzai remains the West's hope, but the military tactics do everything to destroy local support for what is at best a tenuous central government. So, why do the deaths persist? Now, Karzai is trying to push through a draft "agreement" that calls for "consultations" with and "approval" from the Afghan government before US/Nato launches operations:

Afghanistan seeks control over NATO deployments

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Afghan government has sent NATO headquarters a draft agreement that would give Afghanistan more control over future NATO deployments in the country — including the positioning of some U.S. troops, officials said Tuesday.

The draft technical agreement would put into place rules of conduct for NATO-led troops in Afghanistan and the number of additional NATO troops and their location would have to be approved by the Afghan government.

The agreement — an attempt by Afghanistan to gain more control over international military operations — would also prohibit NATO troops from conducting any searches of Afghan homes, according to a copy of the draft obtained by The Associated Press.
...
http://tinyurl.com/at6ymk

With the promise of at least 30K more US troops in the fray shortly, Obama has some tough decisions ahead: business as usual, with Petraeus basically running things; or, a significant game-change, with new objectives and new parameters. Any wagers?

Al Jazeera, January 24

A claim by US forces in Afghanistan that they killed 15 Taliban fighters in the eastern province of Laghman, has been disputed by village elders.

A US statement said on Saturday that soldiers killed the fighters after coming under fire from opposition fighters.

But the elders say all those who died were civilians.

"The operation in Mehtar Lam District, approximately 60km northeast of Kabul City, targeted a Taliban commander believed to conduct terrorist activities throughout the Kabul, Laghman and Kapisa provinces," a US military statement said.

The Washington Post, By Aziz Alwan, January 24

BAGHDAD -- Assailants detonated a booby-trapped vehicle by remote control Saturday near a police convoy in western Iraq, killing five policeman and wounding 11. It was the most lethal attack on a violent day as the country prepares to hold provincial elections in a week.

The blue van exploded after a weekly meeting at a police station in Garma, a town about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad that was once an insurgent stronghold, police Maj. Khudr al-Assawi said. Two senior officers -- a lieutenant colonel and major -- were among the killed. Of the wounded, nine were policeman and two were civilians, he said.

Western Iraq was once one of the country's most violent areas. A battle between insurgents and tribal supporters known as the Sons of Iraq, backed and financed by the U.S. military, largely quieted the fighting last year. But attacks are not uncommon, and residents anecdotally speak of violence worsening, particularly in Baghdad and areas west like Garma, as well as Diyala Province to the north.

Many fear the violence -- assassinations and bombings -- may escalate as the country nears Saturday's vote to choose governments in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Two candidates have been killed since last month. Another candidate, Mohammed al-Dulaimi, an independent, escaped an attempt Friday in a region south of Baghdad.

Al Jazeera, January 24

The Iraqi government will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month under the name of Baghdad Central Prison, a senior justice official has said.

The announcement came as the US military began handing over detainees in its custody to the Iraqis under a new security agreement.

Busho Ibrahim, Iraq's deputy justice minister, said on Saturday the Abu Ghraib prison had been renovated to meet international standards.

"We have named it Baghdad Central Prison because of its bad reputation as Abu Ghraib prison, not just because of what the Americans did there but also because of what the regime of Saddam has done," he said.

as the Obama/Petraeus team signal "disappointment" with Karzai:

Obama ready to cut Karzai adrift
As support for Afghan leader wanes, rivals go to Washington for meeting with new President

By Jerome Starkey and Kim Sengupta in Kabul

Barack Obama's arrival in the White House and the wind of change sweeping through Washington could lead to the ousting from power of Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, The Independent has learnt.

International support for Mr Karzai, who was once the darling of the West, has waned spectacularly, amid worsening violence, endemic corruption and weak leadership. But until very recently, diplomats insisted there were no viable alternatives even as fighting has intensified and the Taliban insurgency in the south has grown. But four key figures believed to be challenging Mr Karzai have arrived in Washington for meetings with Obama administration officials this week. There is now talk of a "dream ticket" that would see the main challengers run together to unite the country's various ethnic groups and wrest control away from Mr Karzai.
...
(more...)
http://tinyurl.com/afux4t

Will Karzai "co-operate" in his own demise?

Patrick Cockburn: Bush's 'puppet in Kabul' will not go quietly

Hamid Karzai is fighting for his political life. He has often been written off as "the mayor of Kabul", but he does not intend to go quietly just because the Pentagon has increasingly seen him as an obstacle to its plans for a "surge" or increase in US troop strength by 20,000 or 30,000 to try to turn the corner in the Afghan war.

Karzai's weaknesses are well known. He did not have his own party and is dependent on the US. His younger brother is believed to be one of the leading figures in the drug business. In the early years of his presidency, the US cultivated the Afghan warlords as allies, ignoring the fact that popular hostility to the warlords had been one of the causes of the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. No doubt Karzai has been ineffectual, but would anybody else do any better?

In response to what he deems to be moves to replace him or make sure that he does not stand again for the presidency in elections later this year, Karzai has been burnishing his nationalist credentials. At the opening session of the Afghan parliament, he criticised the US-led coalition for its conduct of the war, disregard for Afghan casualties of air strikes, its bypassing of the government, links to warlords and tolerance of drug traffickers. All this is strange behaviour for a man seen by many Afghans as a puppet of the US.
(more...)
(Note: Karzai has resisted mightily the US pressure to bring a "Plan Colombia" approach to the Afghan poppy fields, as an immediate loss of income of thousands of people dependent upon opium production without concomitant aid or conversion into other (legal) cash-cropping
would have severe effects upon local economies)

http://tinyurl.com/c8pn6e

However, Karzai has drawn closer to India, as both Delhi and Karzai each have an oar in the water re: pressure on Pakistan, and India has been extremely active in economic and diplomatic support of the Karzai "government":

Karzai pledges support to India
Seema Guha
Monday, January 12, 2009 18:49 IST

New Delhi: Much of the conversation between prime minister Manmohan Singh and visiting Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Monday revolved round terror attacks emanating from Pakistan and how best to deal with a country where the army continues to call the shots.
In a joint statement, the two sides said: "The leaders called for full compliance with bilateral, multilateral and international obligations of states to prevent terrorism in any manner originating from territories under their control since terrorism emanates from the sanctuaries and training camps and the sustenance and support received by terrorist groups."
...
India too has no problems with the civilian government but realises that the democratic government does not call the shots in Pakistan. Both Manmohan and Karzai realise that the growing cooperation between India and Afghanistan is something that the Pakistan army cannot digest.
...
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1220955

And from the Times of India:

Karzai arrives to show 'solidarity' with India
NEW DELHI: India's post-Mumbai diplomacy also travels through Kabul as Afghan President Hamid Karzai dropped in on Sunday evening on a
"surprise" visit.

Like others before him, Karzai's intention is to show "solidarity" with India in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. Particularly as Afghanistan is wracked by terrorism from the same sanctuaries in Pakistan that target India.
...
India and Afghanistan have forged close links in the past seven years as India is one of the biggest donors to the reconstruction programme in the war-torn country. It is also one of the biggest headaches for Pakistan which has complained bitterly about India setting up "13 consulates" in Afghanistan (India has 4). In fact, Karzai has asked India to train some Afghan security services personnel, which has been objected to by Pakistan.

Pakistan maintains that India's presence in Afghanistan is undermining its interests there. This has gained traction in the US through analysts like Ahmed Rashid who has recommended that the solution to Afghanistan will come after Pakistan feels secure with a peace deal with India. It's an explanation incoming US president Barack Obama has supposedly bought and the coming days will show whether there is any nuancing of the US position.
...
http://tinyurl.com/b7o7zl

Delhi has been reported as lobbying strenuously (and apparently successfully) in limiting Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke's remit to only Pakistan and Afghanistan, with Kashmir off the table (though how any progress can be made in reducing regional tensions through international mediation without including Kashmir is perplexing, except to India, which maintains that Kashmir can only be settled through bilateral negotiations with Pakistan). India is making its own policies in South Asia, and orientating Afghanistan toward its interests also places Pakistan in a difficult position, almost guaranteeing continued Pakistan support for Taliban/Pashtun insurgent groups within Afghanistan, without any sort of region-wide accommodations to all parties' "national interests" and security.

Tactically, the entire question of a US-led military "surge" in Afghanistan seemingly is all but certain, as does continued Predator-based missile strikes at "high-value targets" in FATA across the border in Pakistan territory. However, the merits of such moves remains problematic, as noted in this article:

Surging into a perfect storm?

The British Independent’s report Friday that new President Obama may be about to cut Afghan president Karzai adrift ought to be enough to make any informed observer physically ill - not because Karzai has been any great shakes as a leader (rampant corruption, plus a brother up to his neck in the Afghan narco-trade), but because it provides evidence of yet one more piece of a huge train-wreck - or maybe a perfect storm - that is slowly but surely approaching. And it has the potential to make the debacle in Iraq pale in comparison.

Consider:

* Obama and Petraeus are putting together what looks to be, for all intents and purposes, a new “Surge” - but they’re moving ahead with a US military exhausted and overstretched by almost six years of war and occupation in Iraq and even more time in Afghanistan; a US Treasury likewise exhausted and overstretched by the Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan, and other of Mr. Bush’s follies; and an American public exhausted by war and recession, and in no mood to see a “surge” of American men and women sent home dead or maimed.
* They will be sending those troops into a battlefield significantly larger than the one in Iraq, with much more difficult terrain and a population arguably much more divided by ethnic differences and tribal affiliations.
* Much of that population is already enraged by years of the US military inflicting collateral damage on mostly innocent villagers (including wedding parties) - or, sometimes, Afghan forces or police - via Stealth bombers, Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones, or US ground forces. Moreover, much of that population depends on profits from opium cultivation to be able to support itself; they now face the prospect of a US troop surge disrupting that, both by making their fields into a war zone or by disrupting commercial activity that the narco-trade itself entails. Perhaps in time these villagers will be willing to be weaned off opium growing and onto other cultivation - let’s hope so - but in the foreseeable future, that’s not too likely. Bottom line: more reason to be enraged by a US troop presence.
* The US military are already helping to organize and arm local tribal militias and enlist them in the fight against the Taliban - evidently trying to re-use the template of the Sunni Awakening model in Iraq, which indeed was at least partly responsible for any of the “success” commonly (but, in the eyes of many experts, inappropriately) attributed to the “Surge” in Iraq. But in Iraq, the central government in the capital was beginning to take shape and reassert itself around the same time. That prospect is much more problematic in Afghanistan. (More on that in a bit.) The potentially much more worrisome problem is that by arming these militias, the US is buying trouble down the line, in the shape of civil war among local tribal and ethnic factions, of the kind that devastated Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and eventually led to the rise of the Taliban. Even if US forces can somehow achieve “victory” against the Taliban, will they be expected to then disarm and control these militias?
* The Taliban forces that the US “Surge” is intended to defeat have a handy option that the “insurgents” in Iraq didn’t have - or at least, not to the same degree: the option of escape to, refuge in, resupply in, and even reinforcement (in the form of well-organized ethnic Pashtun compatriots) from the territory of a neighboring, sovereign state - Pakistan. Yes, Pakistan is supposedly an ally of the US against the Taliban; and, yes, the new political leadership under Mr. Zardari is essentially turning the other way when the US sends airstrikes and special ground missions into Pakistani territory; and, yes, the leadership has sent Pakistani forces to take on the Taliban and allied forces in the Northwest Tribal Territories. But those forces have had limited success and have taken some heavy losses. The winked-at air-strikes are not being ignored by the wider Pakistani public, who are not pleased to see their country’s sovereignty violated with such impunity. And Mr. Zardari’s government has yet to assert its writ over its own intelligence service, the ISI, which has long nurtured the Taliban in Afghanistan as an asset and ally against Pakistan’s traditional enemy and existential threat, India.
(more...)

http://tinyurl.com/d3tnos

Once again, the dangers remain for the incoming Obama administration - as it did for its predecessor - that conflation of military aims against the Afghan insurgency and "GWOT" objectives re: "high-value targets" in Pakistan territories - however nicely-packaged by his military advisors - will divert assets and political capital from pursuance of rational diplomatic approaches to solving multifaceted and knotty regional issues. It is a given that Petraeus/Mullen will trade upon "success in Iraq" in selling the "surge" in Afghanistan to Obama, and that a "knockout blow" can be delivered to anti-government forces by commitment of additional tens of thousands of US combat troops in a relatively short time-frame, thence on with "nation-building". Unfortunately, the appearance of other major actors in what in late 2001 was a purely localised "regime change/anti-terrorism" minimum-force US military action has now evolved into a combustible mix of competing interests inside as well as outside the borders of Afghanistan, and has vastly complicated any meaningful resolution of the base problem: how to bring a stable, representative government to Kabul that enjoys a country-wide writ of authority and peace with its neighbours.

Graeme Smith | January 26

The Globe and Mail - Taliban fighters are increasingly hitting their targets directly instead of relying on bombs, according to a year-end statistical review that contradicts a key NATO message about the war in Afghanistan.

Public statements from Canadian and other foreign troops have repeatedly emphasized the idea that the insurgents are losing momentum because they can only detonate explosives, failing to confront their opponents in combat.

But an analysis of almost 13,000 violent incidents in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, prepared by security consultant Sami Kovanen and provided to The Globe and Mail, shows a clear trend toward open warfare.

By far the most common type of incident, in Mr. Kovanen's analysis, is the so-called “complex attack,” meaning ambushes or other kinds of battle using more than one type of weapon. The analyst counted 2,555 such attacks in 2008, up 117 per cent from the previous year.

[snip]

The insurgents appear to have refined their strategy last summer, Mr. Kovanen said, as his database started to show the Taliban using more bombs against foreign troops and saving their guerrilla fighters for strikes on easier targets such as the Afghan army and police. That may explain why the pattern of attacks was different in Kandahar, with its concentration of international forces.

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“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

January 26

NYT - Barack Obama has said that his priority in the war on terrorism is Afghanistan, and is poised to increase troop levels there, perhaps by as many as 30,000. How should the United States deal with growing strength of the Taliban? Is increasing troop levels enough? We asked some analysts for their thoughts on military and political strategy in the region.

* Kori Schake, former national security adviser
* Andrew Exum, former United States Army officer
* Bruce Riedel, former C.I.A. officer
* John Nagl, former United States Army officer
* Parag Khanna, senior research fellow at the New America Foundation

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[Comment: Yeah, it's editorial and in the newswire. Me naughty. ~ 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

Jan 27, 2009

By M K Bhadrakumar

Precise, quick, deadly - the skills of a soldier are modest. But then, US Central Command chief General David Petraeus is more than a soldier. The world is getting used to him as somewhere more than halfway down the road to becoming a statesman. Sure, there may be warfare's seduction over him still, but he is expected to be aware of the political realities of the two wars he conducts, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That is why he tripped last Tuesday when he said while on a visit to Pakistan that the American military had secured agreements to move supplies to Afghanistan from the north, easing the heavy reliance on the transit route through Pakistan. "There have been agreements reached, and there are transit lines now and transit agreements for commercial goods and services in particular that include several countries in the Central Asian states and Russia," Petraeus said.

He was needlessly precise - like a soldier. Maybe he needed to impress on the tough Pakistani generals that they wouldn't hold the US forces in Afghanistan by their jugular veins for long. Or, he felt simply exasperated about the doublespeak of Janus-faced southwest Asian generals.

The shocking intelligence assessment shared by Moscow reveals that almost half of the US supplies passing through Pakistan is pilfered by motley groups of Taliban militants, petty traders and plain thieves. The US Army is getting burgled in broad daylight and can't do much about it. Almost 80% of all supplies for Afghanistan pass through Pakistan. The Peshawar bazaar is doing a roaring business hawking stolen US military ware, as in the 1980s during the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. This volume of business will register a quantum jump following the doubling of the US troop level in Afghanistan to 60,000. Wars are essentially tragedies, but can be comical, too.

Moscow disclaims transit route
At any rate, within a day of Petraeus' remark, Moscow corrected him. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Maslov told Itar-Tass, “No official documents were submitted to Russia's permanent mission in NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] certifying that Russia had authorized the United States and NATO to transport military supplies across the country."

A day later, Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, added from Brussels, "We know nothing of Russia's alleged agreement of military transit of Americans or NATO at large. There had been suggestions of the sort, but they were not formalized." And, with a touch of irony, Rogozin insisted Russia wanted the military alliance to succeed in Afghanistan.

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(via Frontline [India])

Drift will end

VIJAY PRASHAD

The Obama team wants to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy.

“Don’t try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire! Don’t wash a wound with blood!”

– Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th century

ON January 13, 2009, Senator John Kerry, Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, leaned into his microphone and said of the United States’ war in Afghanistan, “I think we’re on the wrong track.” A former presidential candidate who not only served in Vietnam but also became one of that war’s most powerful critics, Kerry now cautioned, “Unless we rethink [the Afghan policy] very, very carefully, we could raise the stakes, investing America’s reputation in a greater way as well as our treasure, and wind up pursuing a policy that is frankly unachievable.”

Sitting before Kerry’s committee, Senator Hillary Clinton, who was later confirmed as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, said, “I think that your cautions are extremely well taken.” The Afghan policy was not to be taken lightly. It was going to be thoroughly reconsidered. The U.S. does not have “a set of discrete goals”. This is what has to be clarified. “My awareness of the history going back to Alexander the Great, certainly the imperial British military, and Rudyard Kipling’s memorable poems about Afghanistan, the Soviet Union which put in more troops than we’re thinking about putting in – I mean, it calls for a large dose of humility about what it is we are trying to accomplish,” she said.

No longer the brave statements about “getting Bin Laden”, of installing a liberal democracy, of freeing women, of ridding the region of the Taliban. Realism is the order of the day. Currently, there are 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with an additional detachment of 8,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops (from 47 countries). During his election campaign, Obama promised to double the U.S. number, and to make Afghanistan the “central front on terror”. By all indications, the troops will arrive in Kabul by mid-March. What they will do is another question.
...
In March 2008, the Atlantic Council, a major policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., released a report entitled “Saving Afghanistan: An Appeal and Plan for Urgent Action”. The co-author of the report was Major General (retired) James L. Jones, who commanded NATO’s European forces from 2003 to 2006. The first line of the report is blunt: “Make no mistake, the international community is not winning in Afghanistan.”

The Taliban and the NATO-U.S. forces are at a military stalemate, the report admits. An increase in the NATO-U.S. troops will allow them to take the fight against the Taliban to the less populated, largely rural areas. But this is simply not going to end the conflict. The future of Afghanistan is not going to be fought in its countryside but it will be “determined by progress or failure in the civil sector”.

The NATO-U.S. effort fails in this aspect. The funds for civil development are limited, and even here, “to add insult to injury, of every dollar of aid spent on Afghanistan, less than 10 per cent goes directly to Afghans”. The NGO (non-governmental organisation) economy is top-heavy, catering to international aid brokers who have inflamed Kabul’s housing market. In addition, the Atlantic Council, in a remarkable departure from the George Bush policy, called for “a regional approach and regional solutions”.

The NATO-U.S. alliance and the Hamid Karzai government need to bring “in interested parties and neighbours”, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (which includes the Central Asian states, China and Russia), India, Iran and, of course, Pakistan. None of this can be done without a comprehensive reconsideration of U.S.-NATO strategy in Afghanistan.
...
Shortly after the Atlantic Council made its report, the Bush White House created its own review of Afghan policy.Lt. General Douglas Lute, the White House’s “war czar”, headed the review, which reported back to Bush in December 2008. Lute laid out three proposals: (1) that aid to Pakistan should be conditional on its commitment to the battle in the border regions of Afghanistan; (2) that the U.S. government must take a regional view, including India, Pakistan and other states into the discussion on insurgency; (3) that the U.S. government must broaden its strategy to emphasise development and governance rather than military power.This was an in-house rebuke of the Bush policy. It went largely unnoticed.
(NB: "War tzar Lute" maintains his position at the NSC in the Obama administration, and is on track for reporting yet another policy review on the Afghanistan situation)
...
For several months, Admiral Mullen has complained that the U.S. military cannot do the job alone. It has been reduced to the cities and bases, with occasional forays into the countryside (mainly from the air). The isolation of the U.S.-NATO soldiers, despite the attempt to reach out to ordinary Afghans through the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, has come to resemble the Red Army’s isolation in the last years before it exited the country. Russia’s Ambassador to Kabul, Zamir Kabulov, was once the KGB’s man there, and now points out that the U.S. has not only copied all the Soviet errors but made some of its own. At least, he said, the Soviets had a modernisation strategy, spending billions in the 1980s on education, women’s empowerment and infrastructure. “Where, I ask, are the big American projects to match these,” he told The New York Times’ John Burns in October 2008. “I’ll tell you. There aren’t any.”
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Meanwhile, the U.S. Army continues to build military infrastructure across Afghanistan. Military training centres, new airfields, and bases: all these amount to hardware that belies the idea that the military aspect will be whittled down.

The Washington Post (January 13) reports that the U.S. might end up spending an additional $4 billion to build these military outposts, which of course “signals a long-term U.S. military commitment at a time when the incoming Obama administration’s policy for the Afghan war is unclear”. If the new Obama policy is not crystal clear, the new military hardware will begin to drive the strategy on the ground.
...
To speak of Kipling and Alexander and not of Mahmud Tarzi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, of Anahita Ratebzad and Malalai Joya is to indicate a preference for Afghanistan’s imperial history to its history of reform and freedom. This failure to see the country from Afghan eyes is going to make any review Americo-centric.

The Obama administration will certainly send in more troops, and in April it will possibly reveal its new strategy at the NATO summit in France.

Between now and then, perhaps Hillary Clinton and Obama will digest the lesson of the Atlantic Council, of people such as Amy Frumin, and of a wounded President Hamid Karzai.

http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20090213260306100.htm

It's certainly not the case that Obama is only hearing one side - the military view - on a breakout strategy for Aghanistan and South Asian policy as a whole. Not only from foreign-based observers but from "progressives" in the US, as detailed here by Spencer Ackerman:

Progressives Launch Attack on Afghanistan
Group of Liberals Question Ramping Up Forces
http://washingtonindependent.com/27073/progressives-on-afghanistan

Barack Obama prides himself on hearing countervailing opinions, a robust give-and-take process before making a decision; if there is any one early decision he must make that will have enormous significance for his administration going forward, Afghanistan (and Pakistan) clearly stand out.