From the Guardian

"The dimensions of the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan are becoming bigger and more daunting by the day. Once-staunch defenders of the "good war" are starting to break ranks. "

"Flanked by two vice-presidents, including a notorious warlord that Mr Karzai accepted as a running mate, Mr Karzai vowed yesterday to tackle corruption. This was rather like a cat promising abstinence on the subject of mice."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/04/afghanistan-political-failure-kim-howells

Emprire building and occupation are such messy tasks. If Gibbon were alive he could have writted the Decline and Fall of the British, French, Portugese, and American Empires in my lifetime.

Nov 4

Rogue Afghan officer kills five British soldiers

The Taliban claimed responsibility today for the killing of five British soldiers by a rogue Afghan policeman.

The servicemen, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, died when the officer turned his gun on them at a checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali in Helmand Province yesterday.

Another six British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were wounded in the shooting, which sent shockwaves through the coalition mission in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the killings.

** Former Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has said Hamid Karzai's re-election is "illegal".

More bomb blasts rock Baghdad

Separate explosions in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad injured at least 16 people Wednesday, Iraqi police say.

Five people were injured when a car bomb exploded near a checkpoint in the al-Athamiyah neighborhood while at least seven others suffered injuries in an explosion in the al-Eskan neighborhood, KUNA, the Kuwait News Agency, reports.

Police said four more Iraqis were injured in a third explosion on a highway in the northern part of the capital.

** Whatever Happened To Iraqi Oil?

please check comments for more articles and updates

Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

Nov 1

BBC -

UPDATE NOV 3: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pledged to lead an "effective, clean" government, a day after winning a new five-year term. ~ No, really

UPDATE NOV 2: Karzai declared Afghan president, run-off cancelled

President Hamid Karzai's rival in the second round of the Afghan presidential election has announced in Kabul that he is withdrawing from the poll.

Abdullah Abdullah had set out conditions he wanted to be met for the contest to be considered fair.

But Mr Karzai rejected his demand that election officials who presided over the first round should be dismissed.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a pull-out would not invalidate the legitimacy of the vote.

"We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward," Mrs Clinton told reporters in the United Arab Emirates.

But the BBC's Andrew North, in Kabul, says Dr Abdullah's withdrawal means this is uncharted territory, and it is unclear what will happen next.

There has been much speculation that there could be some kind of deal which would see Dr Abdullah pull out - and possibly the emergence of a national unity government, our correspondent says.

** Afghan leader Karzai to go ahead with run-off
** The new Afghan election, just like the old Afghan election ~ Peter Galbraith
** Sacked UN official Peter Galbraith accuses Karzai of running second poll fraud
** SNAP ANALYSIS-Afghan leader Karzai's legitimacy under cloud

more articles and updates in comments

Amid the ongoing debate on escalating the war in Afghanistan come warnings of what will happen should the US not wage the war successfully.  Among these warnings are: the Taliban will re-conquer the country; al Qaeda will regain the freedom of movement and training camps it had prior to 2001; and terrorism will spread more rapidly throughout the world.  None of this is likely and that must be made clear to policy makers and the American public.   

Insurgent Forces in Crisis

Many if not most of the fighters operating against US and NATO forces are not motivated by lofty ideals, religious fervor, or geopolitics.  They are not seeking to reestablish a caliphate or even to establish an Islamist heartland in Central Asia.  They seek, paradoxically enough to westerners who see themselves as avatars of impartial development, to oust foreign forces from their country whom they believe to be trying to dominate it in alliance with northern, non-Pashtun people.  

Salon October 28

Some House republicans apparently have calendars that have not changed since the Reagan years and seem to be possessed by a time-warp. They recently invited notorious, (almost ex-convict) and private citizen, Oliver North to give them advice on Afghanistan.

It seems that they think the guy who worked for the Gipper, and lied about the Iran-Contra arms deal is a stand-up guy when it comes to informing them about the best solutions to the US involvement in Afghanistan.

Kabul | October 27

The Onion -
According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever.

In fact, many government officials now believe that the United States and its allies could be as little as six months away from their ultimate goal: the total quagmirification of Afghanistan.
"We've spent a lot of time and money fostering the turmoil and despair necessary to make this a sustaining quagmire, and we're not going to stop now," President Barack Obama said in a national address Monday night. "It won't be easy, but with enough tactical errors on the ground, shortsighted political strategies, and continued ignorance of our vast cultural differences, we could have a horrific, full-fledged quagmire by 2012." more

Unfortunately, all too true...

M K Bhadrakumar | Oct 30

Asia Times - The worsening Afghan war has brought some good news for Uzbekistan. On Tuesday, the European Union announced it was lifting a four-year old arms embargo against Uzbekistan. The EU imposed wide-ranging sanctions in 2005 after Uzbek troops fired on civilians during an uprising in the city of Andizhan in Ferghana Valley, and Tashkent rejected calls by Western countries for an international inquiry into those killings.

Tuesday's decision completes an incremental process stretched over the past year or so on the EU's part to kiss and make up with Tashkent. The EU officials justified their decision with Tashkent's recently release of some political prisoners and abolishment of the death penalty. Amnesty International has promptly contradicted the claim with facts and figures.

Aside from the veracity of the EU claim, the reality is that Europe not only blinked first, it also bent its knees while doing so. Brussels kept a straight face, though, assuring the world audience that it would "closely and continuously observe the human-rights situation in Uzbekistan … [and] assess progress made by the Uzbek authorities."

All the same, the EU decision is a good thing. It underscores a new degree of realism often lacking in Western policy towards the strategic Central Asian region. The West has been far too prescriptive towards a region whose civilization dates back several centuries further than Europe's. Besides, the dogma regarding democracy and "regime change" was alien to the steppes and somewhat irrelevant at this point in time.

Are we seeing the end of the "regime change" ideology? The signals are tentative. Statements made by United States Vice President Joseph Biden during his tour this month of Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, hark back to the former president George W Bush era. But then, Biden was grandstanding in front of people upset over President Barack Obama's reversal on the Anti-Ballistic Missile system deployment in Central Europe.

....The fact that EU was making an exception that it isn't ready to contemplate yet for China should drive home the fact that the Afghan war is hitting the European capitals where it hurts.

Paul Richter | Washington DC | October 30

LA Times - On a fence-mending visit, the secretary of State turns blunt, saying she finds it 'hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to.'

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, visiting Pakistan on a fence-mending tour, turned unusually blunt Thursday, accusing the government of failing to do all it could to track down Al Qaeda.

Clinton told a group of journalists in Lahore that she found it "hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to." Al Qaeda, she said, "has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002."

Clinton's three-day visit is her first to Pakistan since she became secretary of State, and its principal goal is to improve strained relations. On the first day of her visit, in Islamabad, she declared that she wanted to "turn a page" in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

But on the second day, frustration seemed to surface as Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York, confronted the long-standing strains between the countries.

Discussing Al Qaeda, she raised the issue of Pakistan's powerful military intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which has been accused of secretly supporting militant groups in Afghanistan.

"There are issues that, not just the U.S., but others have with your government and with your military security establishment," she said.

Early today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjnTpdMFYx0

Steve Hynd writes on the growing violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, here.

There is great news from Afghanistan today:

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

As Steve asks in a tweet:

[What will happen] when the population we’re trying to win over from the Taliban realizes that the person who stole their votes was on the CIA payroll?

Really, does the CIA ever really think through its actions? As I noted while I was in Nicaragua, some of the things people imagine the CIA is getting up to usually are not true at all. But that's not the point. The point is that they believe it and in a place like Afghanistan where conspiracy theories are the rule, rather than the exception this cannot be good news.

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

NYT - Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

_{** U.S. defense bill would pay Taliban to switch sides
** Karzai's Narco-Trafficking Brother Is On CIA's Payroll ~ Newshoggers
** UN staff killed in Kabul attack
** Obama meets with Joint Chiefs on Friday over Afghanistan
** Brit bullets too small to beat high on opium Taliban militants ~ anyone seen this report?
** United Against Afghanistan Escalation}

Iraq goes nuclear with plans for new reactor programme

Iraq has started lobbying for approval to again become a nuclear player, almost 19 years after British and American war planes destroyed Saddam Hussein's last two reactors, the Guardian has learned.

The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war. The government has also contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and United Nations to seek ways around resolutions that ban Iraq's re-entry into the nuclear field.

_{** ‘Occupation’ captures inner battles of war
** USDA-funded project helping revitalize Iraq’s agriculture
** Baghdad provincial Council demands resign two top security officials
** Fate of oil-rich Kirkuk stalls Iraq election law}

Please check comments for updates and related articles, previous updates after the jump

It is a testament to the strength of our commitment to democracy that we Americans believe elections will solve the problems of a country – any country. This is a nice civics lesson but the lessons of history are otherwise. And it is not a sound principle of foreign policy. Elections in Afghanistan are unlikely to solve the country’s problems; they may even worsen things. In any event, other political processes are more important – we just haven’t realized it yet.

President Hamid Karzai, amid numerous allegations of fraud in August’s elections, has accepted a second-round runoff with Abdullah Abdullah. Domestic pressure for a second round was significant but it was pressure from the US and western bodies that forced Karzai to accede. Coming amid the Obama administration's debate on sending more troops, one might suspect a deal: Karzai sits for a second election in exchange for more US troops. Any such deal would be a bad one. Escalation should be assessed on its own merits, not on short-term gain. Furthermore, a deal paves the way for more deals: additional troop increases in exchange for what the Afghan government should be doing anyway – acting responsibly.

Dan Bell | October 24

BBC - As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, thousands of people have gathered in central London to protest against what they say is a futile and unwinnable conflict. The organisers of the march say the protest reflects a sea change not only in public opinion, but in the views of military rank and file, who now want UK troops brought home, they claim.

62-year-old Joan Humphreys from Dundee said quietly: "My grandson was killed 54 days ago on 31 August in Afghanistan. "Nothing's going to be achieved. I've read back from 1840 to now, all the different conflicts [in Afghanistan] until now - and there have been a lot - and everyone has left without anything improving."

A YouGov survey for Channel 4 News that found 62% of those questioned wanted British troops withdrawn in the coming year at the latest. However, despite the survey evidence, the demonstration had only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people that turned out to protest against the invasion of Iraq.

The Italian government has vehemently denied a report in “The Times” that it paid off Afghan warlords and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of 10 French soldiers in an ambush last year. The paper says US communication intercepts discovered the Italian secret service made payments of tens of thousands of euros to warlords, in an area then under Italian control.

Euronews

When the command in the area was transferred to the French, Italy didn't bother to mention that they had paid bribes to Taleban to keep them peaceful.

Roxana Tiron | Washington D.C. | 10/15/09

The Hill - The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.

The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate.

The top field commander of al-Qaeda, in an exclusive interview with Asia Times Online, proves he is alive and well after repeated drone attacks and delineates in broad strokes al-Qaeda's strategy. The Afghanistan trap, baited on September 11, 2001, has been sprung, says formidable guerrilla leader Ilyas Kashmiri, and events from Gaza to Mumbai should not be seen in isolation but as part of the master plan to bloody the United States and its proxies. - Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Exclusive

A critical debate is underway to determine whether or not the US will send up to forty thousand more troops to Afghanistan. The debate is said to include a wide-range of opinion, but even at the top political and military levels, there isn’t profound understanding of insurgencies in general or the particular dynamics of the Afghan one.

The Afghan insurgency, we are repeatedly told, is based on intimidation and violence. This is true in parts of the country, but dubious in others. Indeed, seeing any insurgency as resting mainly on force is wrong and it will lead to wrong responses. Insurgencies develop when a non-government group builds rapport with at least parts of the populace. This was the case in Malaya, the Philippines, Algeria, and South Vietnam. And it is the case in Afghanistan.

Peter Graff & Sayed Salahuddin | Kabul | Oct 12

Reuters - Afghanistan's election watchdog changed its fraud-tallying rules for the second time in less than a week on Monday, switching back to a formula that lowers the chance of overturning President Hamid Karzai's first-round win.

In a further sign of disarray, one of only two Afghans on the five-member Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) abruptly resigned. The member, seen by diplomats as a supporter of Karzai, said the commissioners had been subject to foreign interference.

The ECC announced the change in its rules just days before it is due to present the results of its fraud probe, which will determine whether Karzai wins in the first round or needs to face his former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, in a run-off.

Under the new rules the commission will not take into account which candidate it finds benefitted most from any fraud.

The change effectively reverts to initial rules announced last week, which were changed mid-week after being criticised for potentially shielding Karzai.
...
Under the new rules, the commission could find more than a million fake votes and Karzai would still win squeak through. Under the rules from last Wednesday, Karzai could have faced a recount with as few as 520,000 fraudulent ballots rejected.
...
In a blow for the body's credibility, one of the Afghans, Mustafa Barakzai, said he was quitting because he believed foreigners were exerting influence over the body.

"When it was proven to me that there was interference, I decided to leave. If there was no interference (the final result) would not have been delayed," Barakzai told reporters, echoing a criticism Karzai has made that foreigners slowed the process.
...
The ECC is the final arbiter of fraud in the election, and Western governments are counting on it to come up with a result that Afghans will accept as fair, after it found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud".

Three of its five members were appointed by the United Nations, while the other two are Afghans.

Ain't democracy grand!

Oct 7

U.N. Data Show Discrepancies in Afghan Vote

Voter turnout data kept confidential by the United Nations' chief envoy in Kabul after Afghanistan's disputed August presidential election show that in some provinces the official vote count exceeded the estimated number of voters by 100,000 or more, providing further indication that the contest was marred by fraud.

In southern Helmand province -- where 134,804 votes were recorded, 112,873 of them for President Hamid Karzai -- the United Nations estimated that just 38,000 people voted, and possibly as few as 5,000, according to a U.N. spreadsheet obtained by The Washington Post.

The disclosure of the data seems likely to worsen a credibility crisis for the U.N. special envoy, Kai Eide, who is already facing allegations that he sided with Karzai. In the past week, two U.N. political officers in Kabul have resigned because of a lack of confidence in Eide's leadership, according to U.N. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

The departures were triggered by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's decision last week to fire Eide's American deputy, Peter W. Galbraith, after he accused his boss of failing to provide Afghan and international officials with evidence of fraud, primarily by Karzai's supporters.

** Afghan Taliban say they pose no threat to the West

Scuffle With Security Contractors Highlights Iraqis' New Clout in Green Zone

In a dramatic illustration of shifting authority in the Green Zone, once an American preserve here, Iraqi soldiers confronted a security detail contracted by the U.S. government, detained four of the guards and beat them in a standoff last week that lasted at least two hours, according to Iraqi officials, the company and the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. military negotiated the guards' release several hours later, the U.S. Embassy said, and the four men were flown out of Iraq, for fear that charges might be filed against them.

Please check comments for updated and new stories

Peter W. Galbraith | Oct 4

WaPo - Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press. In effect, I was being told to remain a team player after being thrown off the team. Nonetheless, I agreed.

As my differences with my boss, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, had already been well publicized (through no fault of either of us), I asked only that the statement announcing my dismissal reflect the real reasons. Alain LeRoy, the head of U.N. peacekeeping and my immediate superior in New York, proposed that the United Nations say I was being recalled over a "disagreement as to how the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) would respond to electoral fraud." Although this was not entirely accurate -- the dispute was really about whether the U.N. mission would respond to the massive electoral fraud -- I agreed.

Instead, the United Nations announced my recall as occurring "in the best interests of the mission," and U.N. press officials told reporters on background that my firing was necessitated by a "personality clash" with Eide, a friend of 15 years who had introduced me to my future wife.

I might have tolerated even this last act of dishonesty in a dispute dating back many months if the stakes were not so high. For weeks, Eide had been denying or playing down the fraud in Afghanistan's recent presidential election, telling me he was concerned that even discussing the fraud might inflame tensions in the country. But in my view, the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai.

US envoy removed from Afghan post

Mr Galbraith had been critical of the Afghan election commission

A senior UN official in Afghanistan has been removed from his post following a row about how to handle the country's disputed election, the BBC has learned.

Peter Galbraith had angered Afghan President Hamid Karzai by criticising the country's election commission.

Mr Galbraith, from the US, was said to have called for a complete recount.

AFP - The United States and NATO countries with forces in Afghanistan have told the government of President Hamid Karzai they believes he will be re-elected despite problems with the August 20 vote, the Washington Post reported Monday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers reached "consensus" that Karzai would probably "continue to be president" at a Friday meeting in New York with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, a US official told the newspaper.

** UN gives fraud a pass
** White House Embraces Fraudulent Win, Calls for 'Reconciliation'
** Afghan government must earn people's trust: Clinton

Turkey seeks to extend mandate to fight rebels in Iraq

Turkey's government said on Tuesday it would ask parliament to extend for one year a mandate that allows its military to attack Kurdish rebels in north Iraq.

The government's move follows pledges by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to address decades-old Kurdish grievances and find an end to the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has claimed some 40,000 lives since 1984.

previous updates after the jump, please check comments for updated and current articles

Hamid Karzai is well on his way to winning over fifty percent of the vote, guaranteeing him a second term as president of Afghanistan. Though captious rivals are crying foul, several prominent Americans gave the elections a hearty thumbs-up at a recent gathering in a posh Kabul bunker.

Katherine Harris began the evening by certifying the election. “Everything was on the up-and-up,” she announced as she stood next to President Harzai. “It was as fair and honest as any election we’ve had in Florida!” she exclaimed pridefully. When asked why Patrick Buchanan had done so well in several districts of Paktia and Wardak, she replied, “Irish candidates always do well there.”