The Agonist - Afghanistan

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

Leaving Afghanistan

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:29:54 -0800

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.

This is the repeated claim not only of the Taliban, but also of various other insurgent groups such as the ones led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani – both of whom worked with American intelligence in the war to oust the Soviets, both of whom are nationalist politicians not internationalist dreamers.

Insurgent forces have been successful in negotiating with local tribes, presenting themselves as defenders of Pashtun and Afghan independence, and convincing tribal elders to attach local men to fight alongside them. Insurgent recruitment of locals has been especially successful in the last few years as western claims of being in Afghanistan only temporarily have, unsurprisingly, become unconvincing.

Should US and NATO forces leave Afghanistan, the effect would be problematic if not calamitous for insurgent leaders, as it was for mujahidin leaders once Soviet troops abandoned certain provinces and eventually withdrew from the country altogether. Motivated to fight to rid their land of foreign troops, many mujahidin fighters saw their job done when Soviet forces withdrew, and chose to return to their homes. Large-scale desertions would almost assuredly recur today if western forces withdrew from the country, or at least from the Pashtun South and East where the insurgency is strongest.

Mujahidin leaders faced a further and perhaps more serious problem once the Soviet forces left. United by little if anything but opposition to foreign presence, leaders soon had to resolve political conflicts. This of course led initially to wars for local authority. The war against the Soviet leviathan was replaced by a war of all against all – and that too would likely recur.

Some factions won, others lost, still others remained neutral. Meanwhile the government in Kabul found itself in a far better bargaining position. Local leaders (political and military), facing interminable local fighting, opted to forge deals with the government in Kabul, exchanging regional autonomy for sizable payments. An array of such deals was promising until Soviet subsidies to Kabul ended with the fall of communism, and the Kabul government soon collapsed. Western coffers are fuller and their governments more stable. Iranian, Russian, and Indian support for Kabul will also be strong.

Insurgent forces today have serious fissures that would worsen without the unifying presence of foreign troops. A few Taliban commanders have been reportedly been killed after rival commanders gave western intelligence their whereabouts. Many other commanders resent the Taliban’s Kandahar elite, which relegates outsiders to subordinate roles, and recall that when the Taliban took control of most of the country in 1996, the Kandahar elite pushed them to the background.

Haqqani and Hekmatyar are important and ambitious men who are unlikely to fit in personally or ideologically with the more powerful Taliban leadership. Hekmatyar stands atop a political party (Hizb-i Islami) he has organized along Leninist lines with the intention of seizing power someday from an Afghan Kerensky. During the Soviet war, he murdered rivals in refugee camps. After the war, he conspired with Pakistani intelligence and launched an ill-starred coup. Beneath the political leadership, and even beneath the five regional commanders of the Taliban, are scores of local commanders – some eager to return home, some eager to gain more power after western forces are gone.

Finally, should the Taliban come to control the South and East after a withdrawal of western forces and despite widespread desertions, it would have to make a difficult political transformation. The Taliban would have to cease being an insurgency, which can keep support through assurances and limited services, to a government, which must provide far more. Failing that, it may itself face an insurgency.

A New and Perhaps Limited Conflict

The departure of western forces will not bring peace and unity. Rather it will bring about a new form of conflict, though not necessarily open war, between the Pashtun South and various peoples in the North – a conflict with no clear adverse potential for American national security. The Pashtun South will be adamantly opposed by Northern Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples led by veteran commanders who have wisely kept forces in being in the event of a resurgent Taliban. Behind the Northern forces stand India, Iran, and Russia who are loth to see the spread of Islamist militancy and who in order to prevent this, will fight to the last Afghan.

Several things suggest that this new form of conflict will not erupt into full-scale civil war. First, war-weariness is pronounced among many Afghans and any enthusiasm felt by the Taliban will be weakened by desertions and the immediate prospect of more war. Second, the departure of US and NATO forces will facilitate a return of warfare governed by tribal custom, not by passion to free the country from foreign troops.

Westerners have seen tribal customs regarding war in practice, usually to their dismay. Northern Alliance forces parleyed with fighters at Tora Bora in late 2001 and allowed bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to escape into Pakistan; Afghan army units today are known to negotiate separate peaces with insurgent forces. Afghan soldiers approach war with less vision of glory found in many foreign forces. Indeed, mujahidin fighters were put off and even appalled by the intensity of that vision in foreign-born jihadists, who were unsettlingly eager to die in the great cause. Afghan fighters wanted to live, saw the jihadists as obstacles to that goal, and were reluctant to go into battle alongside fighters so reckless and foolhardy.

Making deals with an enemy makes no sense to western observers, especially in a country in which “unconditional surrender” is an abiding national myth and expectation. But dealing with enemies makes eminently good sense in a country divided along scores of tribal and ethnic lines in which consideration of survival must prevail over ideas of one group’s total victory. Judicious restraint learned from hard experience triumphs over notions of glory and revenge and empire.

A war between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun people would be bloody and interminable, and this is clear to all sides. Facing stalemate, most will see the obvious advantages of negotiating power-sharing arrangements and regional autonomy – a state of affairs that has worked well for Afghanistan in the past, including periods of national greatness.

The Future of al Qaeda

The most often heard argument for continuing the US effort in Afghanistan is that al Qaeda will re-establish its training camps there, from which it will direct terrorist operations around the world. Concern over al Qaeda bases is understandably strong in the United States, but they are highly unlikely. The Taliban have stated that they seek to rid their country of foreigners and will not allow foreign extremists to return – an obvious reference to al Qaeda. Now, of course there is no reason to take their word on the matter, but there are compelling reasons to doubt an al Qaeda return to Afghanistan.

The Taliban have historically been insular and generally uninterested in the bold internationalist schemes of al Qaeda. Some interpreters of the movement claim that the Taliban adopted al Qaeda’s internationalist position after western powers invaded in 2001 and drove them into Pakistan, but there is little evidence of this. Other analysts say the opposite, that the Taliban have maintained their insularity, blame al Qaeda for being driven out of their country, and want nothing to do with conquering the region let alone establishing a caliphate. A caliphate, of course, would entail a loss of Afghan sovereignty. And in that sovereignty is something Afghans have long cherished and fought for, they are not going to allow Arabs to run their affairs.

Though bin Laden’s forces served alongside the Taliban’s for many years, there has long been tension between foreign jihadists and indigenous fighters dating back to the Soviet war. In addition to the jihadists’ reckless zealotry, they also displayed a condescension toward the locals’ uncultured ways and religious impurities. Whatever superiority they might have, al Qaeda is blamed for the ouster of the Taliban, who were content with Islamism in one country and hardly hostile to the West, including the US, as the Kazakhstan-Pakistan pipeline negotiations indicate.

Over the last few years, al Qaeda’s importance in the region has dropped significantly. They are presently far behind the numbers and skills of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Hizb-i Islami, and the Haqqani bands. Those groups no longer rely on al Qaeda for training or funding, perhaps as a result of distancing themselves from the haughty and reckless Arab guests.

Another cause for doubting an al Qaeda return to Afghanistan is that they cannot rebuild their bases or otherwise operate openly. American and to some extent Pakistani intelligence are hunting the al Qaeda leadership in the tribal agencies and have been successful in killing many second-tier leaders. Regardless of the government in Kabul, al Qaeda cannot operate openly. It is far safer where it is, in the tribal agencies.

The forces of al Qaeda would do well to remain in hiding in Pakistan, or better to leave the region. The US army reports that al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has been negligible for the last year. The Arab jihadists might well be leaving the region for Yemen, Somalia, Algeria, and Morocco, where their role will not be as small as it is now along the Af-Pak frontier.

Warnings of dire consequences following a US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan are not convincing. Indeed, the US will benefit from leaving. An Afghan pullout, along with the already mandated one from Iraq, would ease anti-western sentiment in the Islamic world and greatly weaken support for al Qaeda and kindred Islamist terrorist groups that thrive on the presence of foreign troops in the region. As paradoxical as it might appear to political leaders and to believers in the universal utility of might, a lower profile in the Islamic world would serve American interests and improve their national security. And of course Americans would benefit from suffering far fewer casualties in a distant and probably un-winnable war.

Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

House Republicans ask Oliver North for advice on Afghanistan

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:26:17 -0700

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.

North's answer? More troops.

Really? A guy who sold arms, diverted funds and lied about it is the guy to advise Congress on US troop policy Afghanistan?

Representative Mike Pence of Indiana (R) and Buck McKeon (R) of California, who is also the top-dog Republican on the Armed Services Committee, issued the joint invitation to Ollie.

Said the dynamic duo: “Col. North is someone who enjoys the very broad respect of the House Republican Conference.”

No, this is NOT and Onion article!

You'll recall this dude "in the 1980s was convicted of three counts of trying to cover up an administration scheme to sell arms to Iran and divert the profits to the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries known as the Contras."

If they send Ollie on a fact finder to Afghanistan, hopefully nobody introduces him to Karzai's brother.

U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort In Afghanistan

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:19:24 -0700

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...

Europe stoops to conquer the Uzbeks

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:17:11 -0700

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.

As one Moscow commentator put it, Biden's mission was to "provide comfort to the distressed ... to heal the wounds of upset allies", by explaining "that the US would abandon neither its defense commitments ... nor the strong friendship … there will just be a political order in which Russia's interests hold more weight than under the Bush administration".

Indeed, the first detailed articulation of the Obama administration's Central Asia policy, as available from the major speech made by the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns in Washington, DC, a fortnight ago, all but threw the "Great Central Asia strategy" that the Bush administration proclaimed out of the window. Burns's speech almost made Tuesday's decision on Uzbekistan at Brussels inevitable.

Burns paid no attention to "regime change" or democratization and instead the emphasis was on "a focus on mutual interests" with the Central Asian states "in a spirit of mutual respect, which means that we [the US] won't pretend to have a monopoly on wisdom, or seek to impose our system or to preach or patronize".

He explained this "blend of mutual interest and mutual respect" in terms of energy cooperation, increased trade and security ties and "practical cooperation" was based on the recognition that the countries of the region are "unique, independent, sovereign states, each with its own distinctive national cultures, experiences, people and economies".

All the same, Burns stressed the high priority the Obama administration attaches to the region and revealed that Washington has initiated "an effort to construct high-level mechanisms with each Central Asian country, featuring a structured, annual dialogue." True, he sidestepped Biden's combative tone toward Russia but then he implicitly suggested that the Obama administration wouldn't accept the thesis of "sphere of influence". Burns made not a single reference to Russia in his entire speech.

Arguably, therefore, the EU's decision on Uzbekistan has been taken in a holistic spirit taking into account many factors such as the Obama administration's new approach to the region, the promise of "reseting" US-Russia relations, energy security, trade and investment, and China's surge in Central Asia.

All the same, it should be traced first and foremost to the imperatives of the Afghan war, and only reminds us how far the war has transformed as a "bleeding wound" - to borrow former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's unforgiving words.

... as Afghan war beckons

Hillary Clinton tells Pakistan it's doing too little against Al Qaeda

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:36:09 -0700

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.

Her comments came on a day when she took questions from students at Government College University in Lahore who made it clear that they are deeply suspicious of the United States' intentions in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Speaking to a group of business executives, Clinton also criticized Pakistan for its low rate of tax collection, which reflects rampant tax evasion and, critics say, undermines the country's efforts to address poverty.

"At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal investment in your public services and your business opportunities," she told the executives. The U.S. government taxes "everything that moves and everything that doesn't, and that's not what we see in Pakistan."

The U.S.-Pakistani relationship has recently been under strain. Many Pakistanis believe U.S. strikes by drone aircraft in the western tribal areas are an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty, and there has been an outcry over U.S. legislation providing $7.5 billion in new aid, which many Pakistanis see as American meddling in their government.

A U.S. official said Clinton's comments about Al Qaeda were not part of a prepared message she had intended to deliver, but reflected her own heartfelt views.

"She has very deeply held views about Al Qaeda," said the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "You've got to remember, she was a senator from New York on 9/11."

Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations said he was surprised that Clinton would raise the issue of Pakistan's efforts on Al Qaeda, given the current fragility of the civilian government.

"It seems like an odd time to come in and send this one across the bow," said Markey, a former State Department official just returned from a trip to Pakistan. "It's a little bit surprising."

Clinton's comments on Al Qaeda could ruffle feathers in Pakistan, where the army is engaged in a ground offensive in the militant haven of South Waziristan, begun at the strong urging of the United States.

A Pakistani official predicted that Clinton's comments would make some people in Pakistan angry, "some perhaps violently so." But he said that in his view, Clinton's candor was a sign that the relationship was maturing.

Clinton has earned a reputation for sometimes speaking with candor more closely associated with senators than chief diplomats.

On her first trip to Asia, early this year, she upset human rights advocates by saying China's intransigence on human rights should not affect the Washington-Beijing relationship on other issues.

Last spring, when insurgents invaded Pakistan's Swat Valley and appeared headed for the capital, Islamabad, she bluntly warned leaders that they might be risking the country's existence by failing to act against the insurgents.

Pakistani media have been skeptical about the earnestness of Clinton's trip. This morning, an editorial in the Nation newspaper called the visit "a PR exercise aimed at winning over hearts and minds. But with what? A few sanitized meetings with selected media people, students and the 'right' civil society members?"

Raw Video:Obama Honors Return of Fallen Soldiers

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:36:48 -0700

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

Patterns of Violence

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:03:28 -0700

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

Great News From Afghanistan

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:36:32 -0700

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.

Iraq & Afghanistan Update/ Oct 28

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:27 -0700

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

Oct 27

U.S. official resigns over war in Afghanistan

Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting war, which he believes simply fueled insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter(PDF)(HTML) to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

_{** Karzai rebuffs calls for vote chief's sacking

** Afghanistan: Bilateral agreement gives microcredit to Afghans

** Afghan Army MIA

** Runoff splits Afghanistan in three}

Gulf Air starts flights to Northern Iraq

Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain, has commenced services to Erbil in Northern Iraq, its third destination in the country.

The airline had earlier launched services to Baghdad and Najaf in September.

The airline will operate three flights per week to Erbil, which is the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq and one of the fastest growing commercial cities in Iraq.

_{** Extremist group claims responsibility for Baghdad bombs

** Washington worried by Iraqi electoral dispute

** Auditor Faults Work on U.S. Embassy in Iraq}

Oct 26

US: 14 Americans killed in 2 helicopter crashes

A U.S. statement says seven U.S. troopers and three U.S. civilians working for the government died when their helicopter went down early Monday in western Afghanistan. Twelve Americans and 14 Afghans were injured.(Taliban claims responsibility)

Also Monday, two U.S. helicopters collided in southern Afghanistan, killing four American troops and wounding two others.
140 killed, 700 wounded in Baghdad bombings

The death toll of Baghdad bombings which occurred on Sunday targeting the Ministry of Justice and Baghdad provincial council increased to 140 dead and more than 700 wounded most of them in critical conditions.

Oct 25

Double explosions in Baghdad kill four

Two powerful explosions rocked central Baghdad killing four people on Sunday, the interior ministry has said.

One of the blasts severely damaged the justice ministry while the second struck near the governor's office, an AFP correspondent said.

The first blast at 9.30 am (0630 GMT) caused massive damage to the justice ministry and minutes later the second blast struck the building housing the offices of the Baghdad governor. (136 dead - AP)

_{** The Kirkuk conundrum

** CSI, Iraq: Old treasures' new storyline

** Some troops in Iraq look longingly to Afghanistan}

Afghans oppose U.S. hit list of drug traffickers

A U.S. military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops.

The U.S. military and NATO officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of NATO's new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban. The list is thought to include people with close ties to the Afghan government and others who have served as intelligence assets for the CIA and the U.S. military, according to current and former U.S. and Afghan officials.

Afghan counternarcotics officials expressed frustration that U.S. and NATO military leaders have refused to divulge the names on the list, a decision that they said could undercut joint operations to hunt down opium traffickers.

_{** Protests: desecration of the Koran by foreign troops

** UN Election Body Head Admits Afghan Runoff Will Be Just As Fraud-Filled

** NATO approves US troop surge, but not one of their own?

** President Obama’s Lonely Walk to the Situation Room

** Afghan vote: Questions over how free, safe can be

** Did The Fat Lady Just Sing In Afghanistan?}

Karzai Agrees to Run-Off Election in Afghanistan

Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, and agreed to hold a runoff election with his top challenger on Nov. 7

Flanked at a news conference in Kabul by Senator John Kerry, the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said he would accept the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly one third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

** Afghan vote runner-up pushes for interim gov't
** Karzai to accept final vote result: spokesman
** US troop move may come without Afghan 'legitimacy': Gates
** U.S. counts on some insurgents in Afghanistan to switch sides
** Bomb kills four Fort Carson engineers in Afghanistan

NATO "a corpse" fumes former Canada military boss

The splits inside NATO over the Afghan war have turned the alliance into a rotting corpse that will be virtually impossible to revive, says the former head of Canada's armed forces.

General Rick Hillier also said the 28-member alliance was "dominated by jealousies and small, vicious political battles" and bemoaned its "lack of cohesion, clarity and professionalism" at the start of the Afghan mission.

Thousands of poor Iraqis queue for oil jobs

With a clutch of deals between Iraq and global oil majors in the pipeline, unemployed Iraqis hope to finally benefit from their country's oil wealth.

Thousands have been queuing this month to apply for 1,670 new jobs at Iraq's South Oil Company (SOC), which oversees most of Iraqi oil exports and is gearing up to work with some of the world's biggest oil firms.

Overnight lines, angry crowds and scuffles with police are a taster of what Britain's BP (BP.L), China's CNPC, Italy's ENI (ENI.MI) and others may face when they start work in Iraq, which has seen little foreign investment since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

As part of contracts to rehabilitate Iraq's crumbling oil sector, foreign oil majors must employ Iraqis wherever possible, and set aside $5 million for training.

** Iraqi Campus Is Under Gang’s Sway
** Unique program brings injured vets back to Iraq -- to heal