A lesson for Afghanistan?

[fatman17]

A lesson for Afghanistan?

Pakistani drive may be a lesson for Afghanistan?

By WALTER PINCUS

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Pakistan's military offensive in Waziristan, and the negotiations that preceded it, may be a paradigm for the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan as well as for the fight against al-Qaeda and other extreme Islamist groups in the Afghan-Pakistani border area.

That view emerged from a presentation on the fighting in Waziristan last Tuesday by Frederick Kagan and colleagues Reza Jan and Charlie Szrom at the American Enterprise Institute. Kagan was among those who promoted the idea of "surging" troops into Iraq, and in July he was one of the civilian experts who put together recommendations for Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.

The 37-page analysis of the Waziristan operation provides important background for those following Pakistan's long-awaited move against the Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

The TTP is a collection of more than a dozen Pakistani factions, organized by Beitullah Mehsud in 2006. A member of the Pashtun Mehsud tribe whose branches populate much of South Waziristan, Mehsud sought to destabilize the Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, which Mehsud said was under U.S. control. According to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's army chief of staff, Mehsud was responsible for 1,200 civilian deaths, including the December 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

After the Pakistani army's 2008 military offensive against Taliban elements in Bajaur, and its April 2009 move into Swat, Pakistan President Ali Asif Zardari announced in May that there would be an operation in Waziristan.

Some preparatory activities were already underway, according to the analysis by Kagan and his associates. With the paramilitary Frontier Corps in support, the Pakistani military gained control of some major road segments in the area, setting up blockades intended to separate Mehsud's Taliban in South Waziristan from its allies in North Waziristan and to block transfer of arms into the south. Aided by U.S. intelligence and Predator drones, air and ground artillery attacks also began on Taliban targets.

On Aug. 5, Mehsud was killed by a missile from a Predator while he and his wife were at the home of his father-in-law. That operation was attributed to intelligence arising from the blockaded road checkpoints and the increasingly close cooperation between U.S. and Pakistan intelligence and security forces. It resulted in tracking Mehsud's father-in-law to the house in the Zangar area of South Waziristan where the Taliban leader was found.


Negotiations with surrounding tribal groups went on for months. Efforts were aimed at either getting support for the move against the traditional Mehsud area, where the TTP was strongest, or having groups agree to refrain from joining the fight on the Taliban side. The military plan was to approach the targeted Mehsud area from three sides. In the southeast, the Pakistanis worked with Turkistan Bhittani, a pro-government leader whose tribal fighters at least a year before had driven Mehsud Taliban elements from their territory.

Maulvi Nazir Ahmad, once considered the second-most popular militant leader in South Waziristan to Mehsud, was concerned in the past about U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Early last year, he had formed an alliance with Mehsud, according to the Kagan analysis. Since then, U.S. drones had attacked his area at least nine times this year, according to the analysis.

However, over the summer, Pakistani officers, who had years earlier formed an alliance with Nazir Ahmad, bought off his support by guaranteeing that the U.S. drone attacks on his territory would halt, the analysis said. The result: Pakistani army forces gained use of the town of Wana in Nazir Ahmad's territory for their forces moving up from the southwest.

In the north, the deal was struck with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, considered the supreme commander of the North Waziristan Taliban, who has had an on-again, off-again peace deal with the Pakistani government. He agreed to remain neutral, allowing Razmak to be the supply point for troops coming down from the north. The agreement with him was that Pakistani army units could "transit his territory in exchange for fewer bombings and patrols" in his area, according to the analysis.

The Pakistani military's invasion of the Mehsud tribal heartland -- about 40,000 soldiers supported by helicopters and fighter bombers coming from three areas -- has progressed deliberately. Kotkai, the home town of Beitullah Mehsud's successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, and his top lieutenant, Qari Hussain, has been taken and their respective homes destroyed.

Kagan said he thinks the Pakistani military has learned lessons from its earlier efforts to defeat Afghan Taliban groups and is applying them to the current effort. If the Waziristan military campaign is successful, it must be followed by some troops remaining to hold the territory with Islamabad to support economic rebuilding. The positive effect of that could go beyond that immediate territory, he said, perhaps even to Afghanistan.

for my near and dear friend S-2!!!

 

[ejaz007]

US diplomat resigns over Afghan war
Updated at: 1050 PST, Tuesday, October 27, 2009


WASHINGTON: A State Department diplomat disillusioned with US involvement in Afghanistan has become the first US official known to resign in protest over the eight-year war, The Washington Post said Tuesday.

Matthew Hoh, 36, was the senior State Department official in Afghanistan's Zabul province, a hotbed for Taliban militants, until he resigned last month.

In a September 10 letter to the State Department's personnel chief, Hoh wrote: "I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan.

"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," added the former Marine Corps captain, according to comments carried by the Post.

The resignation, the newspaper said, "sent ripples all the way to the White House," and government officials scrambled to convince Hoh to stay, concerned that he could become a prominent critic of the fledgling administration's Afghanistan policy.

US diplomat resigns over Afghan war

 

[fatman17]

SWA ops cannot fail - everything is riding on the success of this operation - it has become too high-profile for it not to succeed!

Pak Armed Forces Zindabad
Pakistan Zindabad
People of Pakistan Zindabad

 

[ejaz007]

11 US soldiers killed as three Nato helicopters crash in Afghanistan
Tuesday, October 27, 2009


KABUL: A helicopter crash and separate collision involving two other choppers killed 14 Americans on Monday in one of the deadliest days for the US troops in the war in Afghanistan, the US military said.

In the first crash, a helicopter went down in the west of the country after leaving the scene of a firefight with insurgents, killing 10 Americans —seven troops and three civilians working for the government. Eleven American troops, one US civilian and 14 Afghans were also injured. In a separate incident in the south, two other US helicopters collided while in flight, killing four American troops and wounding two more, the military said.

US authorities have ruled out a hostile fire in the collision but have not given a cause for the other fatal crash in the west. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP the Islamists had “shot down” the helicopter in Badghis and that 24 foreign soldiers were killed.

It was impossible to verify the claim and unclear if he was referring to the same incident. The US forces also reported the death of two other American troops a day earlier: one in a bomb attack in the east, and another who died of wounds sustained in an insurgent attack in the same region.

11 US soldiers killed as three Nato helicopters crash in Afghanistan

 

[ejaz007]

‘Like the Soviets we continue to bolster a failing state’
US diplomat resigns over Afghan war
Wednesday, October 28, 2009


WASHINGTON: A diplomat disillusioned with US involvement in Afghanistan has become the first US official known to have resigned in protest over the eight-year war, The Washington Post said on Tuesday.

Matthew Hoh, 36, was the senior State Department official in Afghanistan’s Zabul province, a hotbed for Taliban militants, until he resigned last month.

His background in both civil and military fields may have seemed the perfect fit for President Barack Obama’s administration as it steps up its counterinsurgency efforts in the war-torn country.

But in a September 10 letter to the State Department’s personnel chief, Hoh wrote: “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan.

“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,” added the former Marine Corps captain, according to comments carried by the Post.

The resignation, the newspaper said, “sent ripples all the way to the White House,” and government officials scrambled to convince Hoh to stay, concerned that he could become a prominent critic of the fledgling administration’s Afghanistan policy.

Hoh was offered a senior staff-level job at the US embassy in Kabul, which he turned down, and was flown to Washington to meet one-on-one with the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

“We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer,” Holbrooke said in an interview with the daily. Holbrooke initially convinced Hoh — who had also served in uniform at the Pentagon and as a civilian in Iraq — that by remaining in government, he could more effectively change US policy in Afghanistan.

But the diplomat changed his mind a week later and again tended his resignation, which became final on Wednesday. Staying on “wasn’t the right thing to do,” he told the Post.

As Obama weighs a decision to potentially dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to the Afghanistan cauldron, Hoh said he decided to speak out to influence public opinion.

“I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love,” he said. “I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, ‘Listen, I don’t think this is right.’”

Hoh, a former Marine who fought in Iraq, wrote in his letter that many Afghans take up arms against US forces because of their presence in the country, and Washington’s backing of the national government that is widely seen as corrupt. If readying to stay in the country, Hoh called for a reduction in US troop numbers.

“We want to have some kind of governance there, and we have some obligation for it not to be a bloodbath,” Hoh told the Post. “But you have to draw the line somewhere, and say this is their problem to solve.”

In his resignation letter — posted online at washingtonpost.com — Hoh noted that next year “the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan.

“Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people,” he wrote.

‘Like the Soviets we continue to bolster a failing state’