The Agonist - Afghanistan

Canadian diplomat alleges troops in Afghanistan were complicit in torture

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:01:08 -0800

Julian Borger | Halifax | Nov 20

The Guardian - The Canadian government was fending off calls for a public inquiry on torture today after allegations from one of its senior diplomats that Canada was complicit in the torture of Afghan detainees.

Richard Colvin, who was second in command at Canada's Kabul embassy in 2006 and 2007, said that Afghans swept up in security sweeps by Canadian troops during that time were routinely handed over to the Afghan intelligence services.

"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured," Colvin told Canada's parliament. "For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure.

"In other words, we detained, and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people."

Colvin said his frequent memos about the abuse were ignored and that senior officials attempted to cover up Canada's complicity until prisoner transfer procedures were changed in 2007, partly as a result of his complaints.

Karzai sworn in as Afghan leader; vows to fight graft

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:52:53 -0800

Yara Bayoumy and Peter Graff | Kabul | Nov 19

Reuters - Veteran Afghan leader Hamid Karzai was sworn in as president on Thursday, pledging to fight graft and take control of his country's security before his five-year term ends, after a fraud-marred election left his image in ruins.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari were among dignitaries attending the ceremony in an ornate hall in Karzai's sprawling Kabul palace.

Outside, the capital was all but a ghost town, with police shutting down all streets and ordering citizens to stay home.

In the south, where the Taliban-led insurgency is at its deadliest since the war began eight years ago, a suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 10 civilians in a crowded market and a car bomb killed two U.S. soldiers.

Karzai, 51, called for reconciliation with enemies and proposed a "loya jirga", a traditional grand assembly, which under Afghanistan's constitution can take precedence over all government institutions, including the presidency itself.

"We welcome those who are not affiliated with any terrorist organisations and whose hands are not red with Afghans' blood," he said. He described corruption as a menace to the state, and promised measures to fight it.

hmmm, what about greedy relatives, crony's and druglords? ahhh the administration two-step

'Afghan quagmire negates US-Iran war'

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:08:37 -0800

Nov 19

Jerusalem Post - The US is too bogged down in Afghanistan to engage Iran militarily over its nuclear program, an ex-CIA South Asia expert and current adviser to US President Barack Obama said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute and Saban Center fellow for political transitions in the Middle East and South Asia, addressed scholars and journalists at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.

He warned that the US was fighting a losing battle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, and that Washington would soon have to make difficult choices on beefing up troop levels there.

"Israelis need to understand that there's going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital, and that will have implications," Riedel told The Jerusalem Post before his talk.

He acknowledged that those implications would primarily affect the Iran question.

During his address, Riedel referred to the US's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said, "We've got two wars. You've got to be bold to say, let's start a war against a third party, particularly when the third party can hit you in the first two fronts."
The US has learned that it "can't fight two medium-sized wars simultaneously," he said (h/t Bernhard)

All Afghan detainees likely tortured: diplomat

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:52:45 -0800

November 18

CBC - All detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured by Afghan officials and many of the prisoners were innocent, says a former senior diplomat with Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

Appearing before a House of Commons committee Wednesday, Richard Colvin blasted the detainees policies of Canada and compared them with the policies of the British and the Netherlands.

The detainees were captured by Canadian soldiers then handed over to the Afghan intelligence service, called the NDS.

Iraq & Afghanistan Update/ Nov 17

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:25:23 -0800

Nov 17

Gordon Brown hopes to fix Afghan pullout date

Gordon Brown tonight raised the prospect of agreeing a timetable for international withdrawal from Afghanistan, in a speech in which he claimed that almost half of al-Qaida's leadership had now been killed. Brown said he hoped a UN- sponsored London conference in the new year would set a timetable for a transition to Afghan security forces taking charge of their own country.

Delivering the traditional prime minister's foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in the City of London, Brown said the damage already inflicted on al-Qaida gave international forces the chance to set a timetable for pulling out.

His speech came amid growing anxiety over strategy in the region. At the same time, there are signs of fracturing support within Westminster over Britain's involvement and the civilian and military casualties sustained.

_{** Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Afghanistan as a Patronage Machine

** Taliban on motorcycles prove no match for U.S. helicopters

** US Military Deaths in Afghanistan Region at 839

** In Bed with the Rapists in Afghanistan

** UK's Brown Wants NATO Summit For Afghan Exit Timetable}

War-torn nations 'most corrupt'

War-torn nations remain the world's most corrupt, Transparency International (TI) has said.

Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are the lowest-ranked countries in TI's annual global survey. They were all at the bottom of the list last year as well.

"When essential institutions are weak or non-existent, corruption spirals out of control," TI said.

_{** US military deaths in Iraq war at 4363

** Sunni politician, 12 others killed in Iraq

** Baghdad's once ravaged zoo comes back to life

** The day that all hell broke loose in Basra}

Please check comments for more related news and updated stories

Claim: US funding Taliban

In 'grotesque carnival,' contractors pay insurgents to protect supply lines.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents. ~ The Nation

US envoy warns against troop surge in Afghanistan

Eikenberry claims extra US troops 'not a good idea' until Karzai government shows willingness to tackle corruption, says report. YaY!

American Adviser to Kurds Stands to Reap Oil Profits

Peter W. Galbraith, an influential former American ambassador, is a powerful voice on Iraq who helped shape the views of policy makers like Joseph R. Biden Jr. and John Kerry. In the summer of 2005, he was also an adviser to the Kurdish regional government as Iraq wrote its Constitution — tough and sensitive talks not least because of issues like how Iraq would divide its vast oil wealth.

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

Charges Prompt Iraqis to Look Into Blackwater

A senior Iraqi official said Wednesday that he had ordered an investigation into whether top officials of Blackwater Worldwide approved of bribes to Iraqi government officials after shootings by Blackwater guards in 2007 left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Pretzel Politics

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:54:22 -0800

Lex has a great post on the pretzel politics of Afghanistan:

Mikhail Sergeyevich applies the idiomatic phrase “…… vydelyvnet Krendelya” to Karmal. We could use it do describe Karzai, Obama, Clinton, McChrystal, et. al.. It translates literally as “….. is walking like a pretzel.” The figurative meaning is that someone is staggering and weaving like a drunk; that is, not being straight-forward.

The Soviets had the exact same problem with Afghan government legitimacy that the US is having now. They had the same problem with the Pakistan-Afghan border land that we have now. They had a better Afghan Army to work with and still had the problems we’re having. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes and in this case we’re merely looking at history translated from Russian to English.

As I have said, over and over again: Afghanistan is easy to conquer but impossible to hold.

And Chuck Spinney chimes in with some observations about this news story at the Times of London:

More after the break.

The Afghan debacle is becoming a case study of how political debate in Versailles drips in a naturally self-organizing way to protect the dysfunctional status quo.

As I indicated yesterday and in September, the fundamental flaw that set the stage for the current policy making fiasco was the unexamined analytical hole in General McChrystal's escalation strategy -- namely, its dependence of the rapid expansion of the corrupt and ineffective Afghan national security forces. McChrystal did not analyze this corruption/ineffectiveness issue, but that crucial omission was ignored the hoorah accompanying the immediate leaking of report by his allies buried somewhere in the Versailles apparat. The only alternative that surfaced during cacophony of the ensuing months, the so-called Biden plan, was equally reckless, because it also glossed over this analytical hole by advocating that we substitute a greater reliance on robotic drones for boots on the ground (drones create their own problems) and further accelerate training of the Afghan forces. With Versailles leaking like a sieve, the debate became a ridiculous fact-free exercise in macho venting. Now, it is beginning to look like Ambassador Eikenberry (a former Army general and possibly an adult to boot) has moved to pull everyone's fat out of the fire by blaming the chaos in the escalation debate on corruption by the Karzai government (true enough), but not surprisingly, this blame is being treated implicitly in Versailles as if were a new development that has arisen suddenly since McChrystal's supporters leaked his fatally flawed report. In this "new" rush of developments, the attached report in the Times [UK] can be forgiven if it inadvertently helps to reinforce the collective amnesia, because it does not connect the dots to link the obvious flaws in the original McChrystal strategy and the cynical leaking of that report which together put the whole dripping circus into motion.

Mr. Obama is in a no win situation, and the time to cut his losses is past due. Hopefully, he has learned a lesson and heads will roll. But I fear the more likely outcome will be double down with some form of mushy middle course, possibly adorned with Mr. Karzai's carcass twisting slowly in the wind, that protects everyone in Versailles, if only in the short term.

How we got to Zero: General Eikenberry's Hail Mary

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:11:13 -0800

Michael Collins

U.S. Afghan Envoy Urges Caution on Troop Increase

"WASHINGTON -- The United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country, three senior American officials said Wednesday.

"The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops. New York Times, Nov. 11

This isn't just any envoy. General Karl Eikenberry has served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, the second as head of the Combined Forces Command. After the second Afghan tour, Eikenberry was Chairman of the NATO Joint Military Committee. He's a West Point graduate with advanced degrees from Harvard and Stanford and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

General McChrystal has asked for 50,000 troops in early October. By October 28, the president was said to favor a "McChrystal light" number as low as 15,000. On Nov. 7, just four days before Eikenberry's statement, McClatchy Newspapers put Obama's preferred number at 30,000. At this moment, the president is reported have rejected all of the troop increases on the table, according to Associated Press at 12:02 am EDT, today, November 12.

How did we get from McChrystal's request for 50,000 troops in early October to Eikenberry's "written reservations about deploying additional troops" just days before President Obama's planned decision?

The only thing we know for sure is that Eikenberry's statement was no accident. Clearly, there is dissent in the Pentagon and White House as evidenced by this publicly reported assessment by a serving ambassador and distinguished officer. Of interest, on troop levels, the Eikenberry statement agrees with the much criticized assessment of Vice President Joe Biden on made after a trip to Afghanistan

Two Paths - Obama's Hedge

When General Stanley McChrystal was appointed to command combined forces in Afghanistan, he put together his own team for the long haul:

"General McChrystal is assembling a corps of 400 officers and soldiers who will rotate between the United States and Afghanistan for a minimum of three years. That kind of commitment to one theater of combat is unknown in the military today outside Special Operations, but reflects an approach being imported by General McChrystal, who spent five years in charge of secret commando teams in Iraq and Afghanistan." New York Times, June 10

Little was know of the five year of secret commando work in the two nations until a Seymour Hersh gave a speech at the University of Minnesota on U.S. Intelligence policies. Hersh said:

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on." MinnesotaPost.Com March 11

According to Time Magazine, from 2003 through 2008, McChrystal "led the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)."

The March 11 description of Joint Special Operations Command, and its leader, General McCrystal, was seemingly contradicted by Hersh on May 19 (See analysis) but the cat was out of the bag on the general's tactics. Unless Hersh was referring to some other Joint Special Operations Command that McChrystal ran, we have a special type of general in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

A report in March validated the problems with the JSOC mission of commando actions eliminating enemies of the state: "The commander of a secretive branch of America’s Special Operations forces last month ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower are jeopardizing broader goals there" New York Times, March 9. In the same article, Iraq commander General David Petraeus was said to have "supported the decision to suspend the Special Operations missions."

Despite his record or, perhaps, because of it, General McChrystal was appointed to the Afghanistan command after these statements and controversies over JSOC.

Just two weeks later, President Obama appointed General Eikenberry as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. In addition to his career achievements, Eikenberry's good relationships with the Karzai government and NATO were mentioned prominently.

Eikenberry was a logical choice as ambassador to Afghanistan given the ongoing military missions and his emphasis on improvements in living conditions for citizens. He'd held high level and top level command in the country for a total of thirty six months. During that time, he had concentrated on a multi level approach with an emphasis on building a strong civil base of for a government and military run by the people.

In testimony before Congress in February, 2007, Eikenberry outlined progress in the military effort and civic governance and the largest threat to success:

"The long-term threat to campaign success, though, is the potential irretrievable loss of legitimacy of the Government of Afghanistan. If the Afghan Government is unable to counter popular frustration with the lack of progress in reform and national development, the Afghan people may lose confidence in the nature of their political system." Congress, Feb. 17, 2007

Eikenberry listed progress in public education, infrastructure, and training efforts for Afghan police and military but stressed the need for more support for civilians in the forgotten war. He stressed the stakes for NATO in the largest ever non European military effort. While not "make or break," the stakes were high. He also made this highly significant point: "Pakistan’s military and security forces have taken significant casualties against the same enemy that we in Afghanistan face" Feb. 17, 2007

Eleven months into the new administration, we have radically different choices for policy in Afghanistan advanced by diametrically opposed military professionals appointed by the same president.

Why the Radical Split in Advice and Why Now

It seems that General McChrystal is on a special mission based a specific philosophy of warfare and that General Eikenberry is performing his duty according to his current assignment with an ongoing evaluation of the various players and facts at hand. McCrystal job has been killing what Seymour Hersh called "enemies of the state" in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's not finished. They're still out there. He made commitments to the 400 officers and soldiers that he hand picked. He doesn't want to let them down.

Given his history and assignments before his command role, everything he's done suggests that he would want to finish the job. Why wouldn't he push for as many more troops as he can get?

But the real questions are: does finishing that job make any sense and will more troops help finish the job?

Eikenberry's position has evolved over time. He once got along with Karzai but, as ambassador, during the recent presidential campaign, he appeared with the opposition candidates who accused Karzai of election fraud in the first election and pushed Karzai to overturn the initial disputed results that would have ruled out a runoff election.

Can you recall any U.S. ambassador ever showing up at a press conference with opposition candidates challenging the legitimacy of an election?

Eikenberry was interviewed on NPR just two days after he testified before Congress in 2007. He said, "The Taliban military forces remain a much weaker enemy. Whenever the Taliban masses on the battlefield, those Taliban forces are defeated, always in very short order." He went on to offer this: "… the challenge has been building the state of Afghanistan, extending the writ of governance. That has been a very steady growth of progress that we've had with the government of Afghanistan over the last six years" NPR Feb. 13, 2007.

Two and a half years later, General Eikenberry has "expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country" just at the point when President Obama was said to be announcing some level of troop increases. The key to success, as outlined by the general previously, was real progress in responsive and trustworthy civil governance that delivers for the people.

In his congressional testimony, Eikenberry quoted a poll in which, "almost 90% of the Afghan people consider reconstruction and economic development the most important requirement to improve their quality of life."

It is fair to assume that the illegitimate election played a major role in Eikenberry's questions about the future of the Afghanistan military mission. His recommendations represent a huge step given the stakes for the NATO military effort and the larger concerns about the nation. Other factors may have included the McChrystal emphasis killing "bad guys" and the inevitable deaths of innocents paired with lackluster U.S. financial support for Afghan rebuilding and development.

General Eikenberry is both a soldier and scholar of history and political science. He knows the history of occupations that fail to deliver for the populace and he's telling us right now that the U.S. can't succeed with more military forces in a nation run by an illegitimate president who has been exposed for election fraud. More troops are not the solution. In his view, success requires stronger governance and real democracy which means transparent elections free of fraud.

Had the attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden been just that, he'd have been captured or found dead and the United States would not be in this dilemma. But that begs the question. Of the choices this administration will make, which do not include immediate withdrawal, General Eikenberry's is the most clearly reasoned position and has the strongest immediate and historical basis by far, in my opinion.

But what kind of ongoing evaluation can we expect from an administration that split the policy difference in the first place by appointing General McChrystal as military commander and General Eikenberry as Ambassador? That's too much of a difference to split.

The White House's rapid downward trend in troop commitment from, 40,000 to zero for the moment indicates that an alarm bell is ringing. If they just face the truth, they'll announce that we've "hit bottom" and, as a result, we can't afford any more of this because we're flat broke. If they just listen to the people through public polling, they'll come up with something palliative that will allow the president to stay above 50% approval, at least until the next banking crisis. That something was to rely on the advice of General Eikenberry, at least for now.

This is almost the same process President Obama put the military through just after his inauguration when General Petraeus tried his push for more troops in Iraq (see analysis).. Obama's a very good poker player. Let's hope that we move beyond gaming to a foreign policy based on recognizing our limitations and inserting fundamental respect for the lives and well being of all citizens wherever they might be.

It would be helpful to review this 2007 testimony and apply the democratic principles at home as well as abroad:

"In closing, allow me to emphasize that we are now at a critical point where a strategic investment in capabilities is needed to accelerate the progress toward the desired goal of helping establish a moderate, stable, and representative Government of Afghanistan." General Karl M. Eikenberry, Congress, Feb 11, 2007.

That's what the general did. He tried to "help establish" a "representative government" by insisting on fair elections. When he discovered they weren't fair, he stood with the opposition in protest and used his influence to get another vote. When the "winner" of that runoff won because the process was so crooked, Eikenberry then advised there was no point in providing more troops since more troops were not the answer. The first step in the answer requires an honest election. He's right. The citizens of Afghanistan have the same needs and rights and deserve the same respect we deserve, the same that all people deserve. What a refreshing philosophy. It's almost cause for "hope."

END

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3 Top Obama Advisers Favor Adding Troops in Afghanistan

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:09:51 -0800

ELISABETH BUMILLER and DAVID E. SANGER | Washington | November 11

NY Times -
— Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals — including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control — and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

Mr. Gates, a Republican who served as President George W. Bush’s last defense secretary, and who commands considerable respect from the president, is expected to be pivotal in Mr. Obama’s decision. But administration officials cautioned that Mr. Obama had not yet made up his mind, and that other top advisers, among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, remained skeptical of the value of a buildup.

In the Situation Room meetings and other sessions, some officials have expressed deep reservations about President Hamid Karzai, who emerged the victor of a disputed Afghan election. They said there was no evidence that Mr. Karzai would carry through on promises to crack down on corruption or the drug trade or that his government was capable of training enough reliable Afghan troops and police officers for Mr. Obama to describe a credible exit strategy.

Officials said that although the president had no doubt about what large numbers of United States troops could achieve on their own in Afghanistan, he repeatedly asked questions during recent meetings on Afghanistan about whether a sizable American force might undercut the urgency of the preparations of the Afghan forces who are learning to stand up on their own.

“He’s simply not convinced yet that you can do a lasting counterinsurgency strategy if there is no one to hand it off to,” one participant said.

Mr. Obama, officials said, has expressed similar concerns about Pakistan’s willingness to attack Taliban leaders who are operating out of the Pakistani city of Quetta and commanding forces that are mounting attacks across the border in Afghanistan. While Pakistan has mounted military operations against some Taliban groups in recent weeks, one official noted, “it’s been focused on the Taliban who are targeting the Pakistani government, but not those who are running operations in Afghanistan.”

Mr. Obama himself seems to be hedging his bets, particularly on the performance of Mr. Karzai, who is considered by American officials to be an unreliable partner and is now widely derided in the White House. Mr. Obama told ABC News during an interview on Monday that given the weakness of the Karzai government in Kabul, his administration was seeking “provincial government actors that have legitimacy in the right now.”

Officials said that while Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton were generally in sync with Mr. Gates in supporting an option of about 30,000 troops, there were variations in their positions and they were not working in lock step. Admiral Mullen’s spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, said that the admiral was providing his advice to the president in private and would not comment. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, would not comment on Mr. Gates’s position.

A focus of Mr. Obama’s meeting on Wednesday with his national security advisers, officials said, will be to discuss some of their differences as well as those of the president’s other advisers. Officials also said there was a possibility that Mr. Obama might choose to phase in additional troops over time, with a schedule that depended on the timing of the arrival of any additional NATO troops and on how soon Afghan security forces would be able to do more on their own.

Officials said that no decision was expected from Mr. Obama on Wednesday, but that he would mull over the discussions at the meeting during a trip to Asia that begins Thursday. Mr. Obama is not due back in Washington until next Thursday. Officials said that it was possible that he could announce his decision in the three days before Thanksgiving, which is on Nov. 26, but that an announcement in the first week of December seemed more likely.

Should Mr. Obama choose to send about 30,000 troops, a military official said, brigades would most likely be sent from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. In addition, 4,000 troops would be sent as trainers for the Afghan security forces, the military official said. A brigade is about 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers.

Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat who has been an influential adviser in the Afghanistan debate, said that one of the most difficult issues was determining the effects of a large American troop presence on the country.

“It’s more about, hey, are we creating such a large footprint that it’s easier for the Afghans to walk way from their responsibility?” Mr. Reed said. “I don’t think that’s one that can be resolved. You’re making a judgment about that one, and not one you can solve with arithmetic.”

Peter Baker, Eric Schmitt and Mark Landler contributed reporting.

Remembrance Sunday: 'At least we knew what we were fighting for in 1944'

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:04:54 -0800

Cahal Milmo | Nov 9

The Independent - In a quiet corner of Westminster Abbey, away from the crowd gathered at the Cenotaph, Arthur Bright's voice cracked as the 11am tolling of Big Ben approached. Stood in front of rows of small wooden crosses marking the British dead from Afghanistan, the D-Day veteran said: "There was a time not so very long ago when this day was a history lesson. Not today. Young men are getting killed again. And I'm not sure why."

The 85-year-old former infantryman, with a row of five medals glistening on his chest, was one of dozens yesterday whose Remembrance Sunday route through central London to participate in two minutes of silence in Whitehall included a detour to the neat rank of rain-streaked crosses, each adorned with a photograph of one of the 231 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

Music from military bands was relayed across Parliament Square via loudspeakers while tourists mixed with grey-haired veterans and uniformed servicemen and women. But beneath the sombre dignity and pomp of the state occasion, it was not difficult to find the raw emotion caused by the steady stream of British deaths and casualties from Helmand.

Mr Bright, from Chatham, Kent, whose closest friend was killed inches from him during the Normandy landings, said: "When you see something like all these [crosses], it brings it home that there are lots of mothers, brothers and daughters waiting for terrible news again. Seeing this brings back what it was like to be at war. At least we knew what we were fighting for in 1944. We knew if we didn't win, our country would be destroyed. In Afghanistan, these boys are fighting for people who don't even want them there. That must be hard. That's the thing about war, you've got to believe the deaths of your mates are worth it somehow."

Prospect of More U.S. Troops Worries Afghan Public

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:41:58 -0800

Alissa Rubin | Charikar, Afghanistan — | November 7

NY Times - As Americans, including President Obama’s top advisers, tensely debate whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, Afghans themselves are having a similar discussion and voicing serious doubts.

In bazaars and university corridors across the country, eight years of war have left people exhausted and impatient. They are increasingly skeptical that the Taliban can be defeated. Nearly everyone agrees that the Afghan government must negotiate with the insurgents. If more American forces do arrive, many here say, they should come to train Afghans to take over the fight, so the foreigners can leave.

“What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?”

Such sentiments were repeated in conversation after conversation with more than 30 Afghans in Kabul and nearby rural areas and with local officials in outlying provinces. The comments point to the difficulties that American and Afghan officials face if they choose to add more foreign troops.

If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here.

The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.

The grass-roots view among Afghans is at odds with those of top Afghan officials, as well as many American military commanders, who strongly endorse a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy, including a large troop increase.

The aim of sending more troops would be to help secure Afghanistan’s biggest cities and towns to make the population feel safe and in doing so to show that the foreign presence can bring benefits.

At the same time, the Americans support the idea of negotiating with moderate members of the Taliban, but would prefer to do so once the insurgency has been weakened. And, that, in turn, may also require more troops.

Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said he was in “full agreement” with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander of forces in Afghanistan, that a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy was necessary, including more forces.

“One piece of that strategy is a troop increase as a stopgap measure that will create an environment in which Afghan security forces can continue to grow and people will be protected against insurgents,” he said.

The mood on the street is darker and more wary. Mr. Wasay and several friends visiting his pharmacy were discussing the Taliban’s killing of a police chief in a rural part of the province. The rumor was that Taliban fighters had severed his head and delivered it to his son, according to one of Mr. Wasay’s friends.

True or not, the anecdote was part of a growing mythology of Taliban power and a general perception that neither the Afghan government nor American troops were protecting Afghans.

Daily life continues to be so precarious for many people interviewed, especially those outside Kabul, that they have come to believe that the United States must want the fighting to go on.

“In the first days of the war, the Americans defeated the Taliban in just a few days,” said Mohammed Shefi, a graduate student in the pharmacy school at Kabul University. “Now they have more than 60,000 forces and they cannot defeat them.”

Alex Thier, an analyst at the United States Institute of Peace, who has spent years working in Afghanistan, said the country’s mood was shifting. “What’s changed fairly recently was the confidence of the population as to whether we can actually achieve the job, even with more resources,” he said.

These doubts do not tally with some surveys, like the poll taken by the International Republican Institute, in which a majority of Afghans appeared to be positive about Americans and said they thought that the country was going in the right direction. However, the security environment in Afghanistan makes it a difficult place in which to conduct polls, and the survey by the institute, a pro-democracy group affiliated with the Republican Party and financed by the American government, was taken in July before the rampant fraud in the presidential election.

Zia Ahmet, a seller of tea kettles and pots just down the street from Mr. Wasay, was positive about the current international presence, but dubious about increasing it. “Instead of increasing foreign troops, it’s better to equip the Afghan National Army and the Afghan police,” he said, a view that was shared by almost everyone interviewed. “The local army are known in the villages, and they are more useful than foreign troops.”

A tribal elder in Balkh Province, in the remote north, said the insurgency had disrupted life for farmers and herders, and he repeated one of a growing number of conspiracy theories about the Americans’ intentions. In his version, the Americans were transporting Taliban fighters to the north and dropping them from helicopters at night, on the theory that the Americans wanted more fighting so they could stay in the country. Other versions have the British transporting the insurgents.

There is no truth to the accounts, according to American military officials in Kabul.

Graduate students at Kabul University were no less suspicious. “Those countries that are working with the U.S. and are friends of theirs are Saudi and Pakistan and those are the same countries the insurgents are coming from,” said Abdullah, a graduate student in the Faculty of Islamic Law who, like many Afghans, has only one name.

While the notions may seem absurd to Americans, they have added to an increasingly volatile public mood here. A story that American forces burned a Koran in Wardak Province brought hundreds of young people into the streets last month to protest the American presence, even though the story was roundly disputed by Afghan and American officials.

With less certainty about America’s continued commitment, there is a growing sense that the only sure way to peace is through negotiations with the Taliban. “They are the sons of this country, it is right to negotiate with the Taliban,” said Mohammed Younnis, a shopkeeper in Charikar who sells tea, sugar and grains.

“This government is Afghan, and the Taliban are Afghan; they should build the country together,” he said.

Afganistan Debacle

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:31:12 -0800

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.

Will the US as a continential empire survive its collapse? I thinj it could not, I live in the wet, in CA. There is little east of Nevada (Las Vegas) that is of interest, and little that we buy that comes from the east. Taxes flow east, money better used at home.

We have little need for a dozen aircraft carriers, foreign advertures, for our needs are more fundamental. Water.

The hounds of heaven

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:32:16 -0800

Iraq & Afghanistan Update/ Nov 4

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:17:05 -0800

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

Who is seeing the real Afghanistan?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:20:48 -0800

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,

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditure of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war…. The United States presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

Matthew Hoh has served his country bravely in combat and he has responded to a policy with which he disagreed by making the honorable choice to resign. His observations about the situation in Zabul province merit serious consideration. I wish that many others in the previous administration who had serious misgivings about policy but waited to reveal them until after leaving office had, instead, followed Hoh’s example.

Several days later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Washington Post from Benjamin Joseloff, an American serving as a fellow at the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. This initiative, started by Stanford Law students, is devoted to a helping Afghan universities improve the quality of their legal education. Joseloff writes....

continue reading Brian Vogt's post at http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/11/03/who-is-seeing-the-real-afghanistan/

Abdullah pulls out of Afghan vote

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:01:50 -0800

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