Afghanistan, in a new light

[S-2]

"S-2, if Turkey is at war with Kurds (in future) as a NATO member USA has to come and protect it. Well they ?"

There have been three raids of which I'm aware by the Turkish Army into Iraq since Saddam's overthrow.

The last two raids were facilitated by a U.S. intelligence liasion cell in their operational H.Q.

Make sure that you separate the PPK from the Peshmerga of PUK and KDP.

We'll see over time if the Kurdish Regional Government recognizes the value, like Israel, of a final redoubt for the Kurdish diaspora and whether such is worth endangering in it's present form to permit the pursuit of some dream of a "greater Kurdistan".

I don't see it happening and I'm certain that it holds no place in American diplomatic objectives.

 

[Gin ka Pakistan]

"S-2, if Turkey is at war with Kurds (in future) as a NATO member USA has to come and protect it. Well they ?"

There have been three raids of which I'm aware by the Turkish Army into Iraq since Saddam's overthrow.

The last two raids were facilitated by a U.S. intelligence liasion cell in their operational H.Q.

Make sure that you separate the PPK from the Peshmerga of PUK and KDP.

We'll see over time if the Kurdish Regional Government recognizes the value, like Israel, of a final redoubt for the Kurdish diaspora and whether such is worth endangering in it's present form to permit the pursuit of some dream of a "greater Kurdistan".

I don't see it happening and I'm certain that it holds no place in American diplomatic objectives.

But US in the past has captured Turkish Commandos inside Kurd Area and then realized them later with protest. Which can be seen as taking Kurd side.

 

[Developereo]

I thought Abdullah Abdullah was even more rabidly anti-Pakistan than Karzai. Personally, I thought Ashraf Ghani seemed the most reasonable of the three. But he is an intellectual and probably didn't know how to campaign effectively.

In any case, I don't understand why the Taliban don't try the soft approach to win the hearts and minds of Afghan people instead of intimidating them. They could have fielded a Taliban candidate and probably won handily, seeing as the NATO influence is pretty much limited to the urban areas.

I guess the Taliban are still entrenched in the extremist Wahhabi ideology of anti-democracy, misogyny and fundamentalism. Or they don't want Afghanistan to become stable while NATO is here, because that would constitute a NATO "victory".

 

[Gin ka Pakistan]

I thought Abdullah Abdullah was even more rabidly anti-Pakistan than Karzai. Personally, I thought Ashraf Ghani seemed the most reasonable of the three. But he is an intellectual and probably didn't know how to campaign effectively.

In any case, I don't understand why the Taliban don't try the soft approach to win the hearts and minds of Afghan people instead of intimidating them. They could have fielded a Taliban candidate and probably won handily, seeing as the NATO influence is pretty much limited to the urban areas.

I guess the Taliban are still entrenched in the extremist Wahhabi ideology of anti-democracy, misogyny and fundamentalism. Or they don't want Afghanistan to become stable while NATO is here, because that would constitute a NATO "victory".

Yes they are single minded, hardliner and non flexible people ,if only they knew the power of the vote they have, which they are wasting to show their majority

 

[S-2]

"But US in the past has captured Turkish Commandos inside Kurd Area and then realized them later with protest."

Never heard or read of this and can't imagine how as we've next to no troops along the Iraq-Turkish border.

Can you provide a link to such?

Secondly, if true, under what circumstance were Turkish troops in Iraq. Needless to say, there's a problem when not properly coordinated and JUSTIFIED.

Still, a link please that we can affirm this together?

 

[Gin ka Pakistan]

"But US in the past has captured Turkish Commandos inside Kurd Area and then realized them later with protest."

Never heard or read of this and can't imagine how as we've next to no troops along the Iraq-Turkish border.

Can you provide a link to such?

Secondly, if true, under what circumstance were Turkish troops in Iraq. Needless to say, there's a problem when not properly coordinated and JUSTIFIED.

Still, a link please that we can affirm this together?

Here is the link
United States releases Turkish soldiers held in Iraq | Article from AP Worldstream | HighBeam Research

 

[S-2]

It says we released them. Did we capture them also? If so, who's to say that it truly wasn't "protective custody" given what the Kurds or Iraqis might have done to these men.

More to the point, your article is six years old (July, 2003). That's not an issue, by itself, except that it coincides closely with pre-OIF Phase IV Iraq. NATO retained large portions of northern Iraq stemming back to OPERATION PROVIDE COMFORT in 1991. No doubt that included Turkey at the time. All of that has long since changed with the formation of the KRG and a sovereign Iraq after 2003.

Turkey has legitimate issues of self-defense. We fully recognize that fact and SUPPORT their objectives. That should be clear by the forthright manner in which we ASSISTED their raids in Iraq.

Would that the Pakistani government be as helpful with the taliban sanctuaries in the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan.

 

[Watani]

We KNOW that anywhere between 900,000 and 3,000,000 afghanis died in the Afghan-Soviet war. We KNOW that about 200,000 afghanis died in the Afghan civil war. We KNOW that only about 20,000-30,000 afghanis have died in the eight years of this war yet...

Only 30.000? 30.000 Afghan lives only or 30.000 Pashtuns lives only? And USA came for peace right? Then how come 30.000 lives have become only 30.000? In return of 3000 lost lives in New York, in Afghanistan alone we lost only 3000 lives, let alone what happened in Iraq. And by the way, it's Afghans, not Afghani's.

 

[jarnee]

god bless Afghanistan and its people!! suffering for a long time

 

[muse]

Deepening Crisis in Afghanistan
Najmuddin A Shaikh



In my column last week, I had expressed the fear that the allegations of election fraud would further divide Afghanistan rather than give added legitimacy to a re-elected President Karzai. Developments over the last week have only strengthened the basis for this apprehension.

Abdullah Abdullah has been able to bring to Kabul a group of leaders from the Bariz tribe from the Shorabak District of Kandahar province to make the allegation that even while not a polling station opened in the district and not a single vote was cast, the ballot boxes had been stuffed by officials working under the direction of the president’s brother Ahmad Wali Karzai. The results communicated to the Election Commission showed that 23,900 votes had been cast in the district in favour of Karzai with not one vote going to his opponent Abdullah Abdullah, who ten days earlier had received an endorsement from the Bariz tribe — the principal inhabitants of Shorabak District.

These claims may be an exaggeration. Even Karzai’s brother must have known that such results could only be regarded as fraudulent but the large grain of truth that the allegation undoubtedly contains gives a fair indication of how Karzai’s supporters and officials have sought to “make assurance double sure”.

This has also made largely irrelevant the complaints that the Karzai campaign has made about vote rigging and ballot stuffing in Panjshir and other northern districts by Abdullah supporters even thought there is no doubt that this too has happened albeit in a smaller area and with far less effectiveness. The charges against Abdullah are important, however, because they show that Marshal Qasim Fahim, Karzai’s vice-presidential candidate was not able to prevent vote rigging in favour of Abdullah despite his theoretical clout in the Panjshir Valley and other northern districts.

The number of complaints registered has risen from the 650 I talked of last week to more than 2,650, and in place of the 50 that were considered serious enough to affect the election outcome, there are now 650 that are seen in this light. The election commission has now said that it will entertain no more such complaints.

The declaration of results from partial vote counts has also been delayed. The last result, with 60 percent of the vote counted on Tuesday evening put Karzai comfortably ahead with 47.3% to 32.6% for his opponent. It seems however that the election commission will not be in a position to announce the final results by September 17 as originally envisaged because this would require the investigation at the very least of the 650 serious complaints. Even the completion of the vote count by September 7 appears to be in doubt.

Most importantly, Abdullah Abdullah and other contenders have emphatically rejected suggestions that they join a Karzai-led government; something I felt the Americans would work towards. At the same time, while Abdullah Abdullah has said that he will pursue all legal means to contest the alleged fraud; his supporters in Mazar-e-Sharif — hitherto regarded as a Dostum stronghold — have threatened mass demonstrations. This, as also Gen Dostum’s departure from Afghanistan immediately after the conclusion of the elections rather than waiting for the results, showed perhaps that Dostum’s hold on the Uzbek vote has weakened and that Mazar-e-Sharif and Shibergan were no longer areas where he could dictate election outcomes.

The reports of Richard Holbrooke having had a stormy meeting with Karzai have been denied but one thing is clear. Holbrooke did suggest that a runoff between the two principal contenders — required under Afghan law if no candidate emerged with a clear majority — would possibly help quell the concerns about vote rigging etc.

Talking to the press before the meeting of the Afghan envoys in Paris, Holbrooke again said that the United States would have no problem with a runoff election. Is this what is likely to happen? The Afghan Independent Election Commission’s map shows that while the vote count in the North and the West has been between 60% to 90% the vote count from much of the Pashtun dominated South and East of the country is less than 46%. One can assume that unless the Commission starts a massive rejection of votes from this area, Karzai will easily get the 50% + 1 that he needs for a first round victory.

The question then will become whether the examination of the complaints becomes the basis for calling for a runoff, and if so, what will be the consequences.

The difficulty of holding another election will be formidable. The very fact that a runoff is taking place would boost the standing of the Taliban. In a largely oral society, anecdotes of the horrific punishments meted out by those who had dared to vote will ensure that voter turnout is much lower than the 30% reported this time. Most of these votes would be cast in areas that are non-Pashtun and the election would then become unrepresentative. Can this problem be overcome, and if it is, what will happen?

In the August 20 election, Abdullah’s seeking of votes may have been helped by the disillusionment of the people with the corruption and ineptitude of the Karzai administration and hatred for the occupying forces, but the Pashtun had the choice of rejecting Karzai by voting for a host of other Pashtun contenders — most prominently Ashraf Ghani, whose performance has been surprisingly abysmal. The fact that Abdullah Abdullah had a Pashtun father could not detract from the perception that he was the nominee of the Tajiks and an Iran-financed remnant of the Northern Alliance.

The fact that Abdullah Abdullah got an endorsement from an important tribe of a Kandahar district was a singular exception to the rule that votes are cast in Afghanistan on tribal and ethnic lines. It would not be surprising if reports now emerged of large sums of money having been expended by Abdullah Abdullah or his patrons to secure this endorsement

On the other side, Karzai was not totally rejected in the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara areas, only because of his allies — Fahim, Dostum and Khalil — and because of the fairly substantial Pashtun pockets in the North. These allies may still stand with him in a runoff and in that case he is likely to get the majority of votes. As regards the Pashtun vote, to paraphrase an old American foreign policy dictum, the Pashtuns are likely to take the view that “he is a corrupt and inept SOB but at least he is our SOB”.

The elephant in the room however is going to be the problem of ensuring turnout in the Taliban areas, which have grown substantially and where the recent operations such as Operation Panther Claw have not been able to reduce the ability of the Taliban to intimidate and coerce the population.

For the Americans and their NATO allies, the election fiasco has come at a particularly difficult time; more on this in my next column. Despite the developments of the last week, strong misgivings about Karzai, about his reduced legitimacy, about the international ridicule this would invite, and most importantly the prospect of instability, the Americans will opt for using their influence to persuade Abdullah and others to accept the result of what was clearly a very flawed election. This would an imperative to maintain even the dwindling support that President Obama has for what he calls a “war of necessity”.

The writer is a former foreign secretary

 

[muse]

What is victory?? What ought it be?? Only Americans can decide these questions.




Military or moral failure?
Rafia Zakaria



This past week, General Stanley McChrystal, the NATO Commander in Afghanistan, submitted his strategic report on the war in Afghanistan to President Obama. The report, expectedly dismal, laid out the challenges that America, a continuing if shaky superpower, faces in Afghanistan. The bleak forecast offered by Gen McChrystal’s report follows in the footsteps of the Afghan elections, whose contested results gave NATO little to celebrate in terms of Afghanistan’s progress toward self sufficiency.

Much has been said about the new American strategy in Afghanistan. Indeed, ever since President Obama has taken office, pundits have been furiously recasting the Afghan war as Obama’s war; the real conflict borne out of America’s genuine security interests as opposed to Bush’s imperialist agenda in Iraq.

Yet for all the much touted revamping, only a few visible changes have appeared in the US strategy in the region. Notable among these has been a re-application of the “surge” strategy, under which thousands more soldiers are being sent to the south of Afghanistan to aid in the fighting. Other new aspects of the strategy announced by Gen McChyrstal in a directive issued to US troops in the region include “protecting the Afghan people rather than killing and capturing insurgents, build up the Afghan forces, improve the legitimacy of the Government in Kabul and improve the delivery of foreign aid.”

The recasting of the Afghan plan is undoubtedly politically necessary. President Obama faces increasingly dismal economic conditions at home and several polls preceding the Afghan elections have shown decreasing support for the war among the American people. A Washington Post poll released in the last week of August showed that a majority of Americans, fifty-one percent, now believe that the war is “not worth fighting”. Only forty-two percent of Americans now believe that the United States is actually winning the war in Afghanistan with nearly thirty-six percent saying that they think the US is losing.

Commentators have, especially in light of the bungled elections, begun to liken the situation with Vietnam where a similar conglomeration of political constraints and military failures coalesced to produce a debilitating failure for US forces.

The news of American failures in Afghanistan is not surprising in South Asia. Many commentators had made similar pronouncements months and even years ago at the onset of Operation Enduring Freedom. Yet most of these discussions, both in South Asia and more recently in the United States, have focused on the political, military and regional constraints that make the conflict untenable and perhaps unwinnable. These include the inability of US forces to withstand large numbers of military casualties based on their negative impact on support for the war at home, the resource costs of having a large military presence in Afghanistan, and the idealism (recently exposed) of reconstructing Afghanistan into a functioning polity with at least semi-modern institutions. The counter insurgency strategy of protecting the Afghan people, while easy to roll of the tongue, comes again at the cost of vast resource commitments of soldiers and equipment which in turn impose their own losses in terms of long term expenditure.

Yet for all the discussion of the political, military and even spatial challenges facing NATO and American forces in the region, few questions have focused on the material realities of the two countries fighting this war and their impact on the moral estimation of each. Simply put, America is the richest country in the world and Afghanistan undoubtedly one of the poorest. The average American citizen eats too much and the average Afghan citizen cannot find enough to eat. I present these comparisons to highlight not the structural differences between the two sides but rather draw attention to how these structural differences impact the moral estimation of this war.

In a post-colonial world where the ravages of imperialism have been exposed as having been at the root of much of the world’s inequity, what moral stature can a super-power enjoying an admittedly unfair share of the world’s resources amass to fight a conflict against the world’s poorest people? Indeed, it is these very moral dimensions of the conflict, that have been so diabolically exploited by groups like Al Qaeda in painting themselves as valorous avengers of the dispossessed.

This moral dynamic of dispossession and poverty versus affluence and excess colours the moral landscape of the war against terror in a manner that has been unknown in earlier conflicts. Groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been able to hijack the moral veneration afforded to poverty and suffering and use it to fight a war where their own moral turpitude and cruelty is being shrouded by the poverty of the Afghans.

This complexity, of the fact that the Afghans are a third party whose destitution is being appropriated by a transnational group with a global agenda, is often lost amid the rhetoric. In the limited attention spans of the global public, notably those in the global south, the war increasingly appears as a war fought by the rich unwilling to give up their resources and parochially expounding the value of their own way of life while mercilessly pounding the Afghans with bombs in the effort to gain their own security.

It is this central belief found among vast swathes of the non-Western world that morally devalues the efforts of NATO troops in the area even when they may be achieving security or military gains. It is this idea, borne of the post-colonial experience that has gone unaddressed even as the War on Terror enters its eighth year.

It is because of this unaddressed moral dilemma that questions arise about the ethics of a war that is so disparate in terms of resources, it pins the United States in a military and political pigeonhole. Using the kind of force needed to actually defeat the Taliban would lead to a further annihilation of US moral stature. The effort to destroy them is thus couched in an effort to build Afghanistan even while the political commitment for providing the resources to build such structures is not present.

This conundrum posits therefore that even if the United States is able to define military and political victories in achievable terms, its failure to respond to the moral questions imposed on them could ultimately be what determines this war’s outcome.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria***********

 

[muse]

Back to the Future?? Or just an acknowledgment of reality?? America, the power of light will find itself crashing against the powers of darkness?? -- Perhaps the lesson here is that one cannot help those who will not help themselves?





Pakistan, Iran should be involved in Afghan rebuilding: ex-UN envoy

* Says troop surge not enough to control violence, calls for coherent strategy

CERNOBBIO: Pakistan and Iran should be involved in efforts to mend Afghanistan, a veteran diplomat and former UN envoy to the war-torn country said on Friday. Lakhdar Brahimi called last month’s Afghan presidential election “messy” but said it did not necessarily preclude a strong government.

In an interview, he said any troop surge was not enough in itself to quell soaring violence in the country and called for a “coherent strategy” of regional cooperation. “You also need full participation by Pakistan, more than anybody else, and also Iran and India,” he said while attending a gathering of political and business leaders on Italy’s Lake Como. Brahimi acknowledged that involving Pakistan, whose own northwestern areas were troubled and overrun by the Taliban, and Iran, with its controversial presidential election and alleged nuclear weapons programme, was problematic. But, he added, “You can find ways of doing it once you accept that it is essential.”

He insisted the Taliban should have been included in talks, but said, “It is more difficult now than it was four or five years ago.” Violence has soared across much of Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ordered 21,000 US troops to Afghanistan this year, shifting the focus of the US-led war on terror from Iraq to Afghanistan. Last month’s presidential election was marred by allegations of fraud.

Election results are not expected to be finalised until mid- or late September, after officials investigate. But the latest figures show that President Hamid Karzai is moving closer to the 50 percent threshold that would allow him to avoid a run-off. ap

 

[Elmo]

Steve, here are some questions for you: This thread has numerous articles posted that negate all the solutions that the US is currently opting for... When there is so much criticism of the practices employed by the US, both at home and abroad, why is the US insisting on following through them? Has the US learnt anything from its invasion of Afghanistan? What changes can be seen in its policies in the country to support the same?

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Steve, here are some questions for you: This thread has numerous articles posted that negate all the solutions that the US is currently opting for... When there is so much criticism of the practices employed by the US, both at home and abroad, why is the US insisting on following through them? Has the US learnt anything from its invasion of Afghanistan? What changes can be seen in its policies in the country to support the same?

I think its their strategic requirement to win in Afghanistan(Pipelanistan and Caspian Oil) thats why they are willing to push through it despite all the odds. But i doubt that there is enough support left in America to continue with this never ending war with such a high casualty rate .Even people in key institutions are divided that weather to go ahead with it or accept defeat and withdraw.

 

[Watani]

Personally, I thought Ashraf Ghani seemed the most reasonable of the three. But he is an intellectual and probably didn't know how to campaign effectively.

Agreed. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Ramazan Bashardost were only candidates who truly love Afghans and Afghanistan, but do you really think West would promote pro-Afghans over pro-Westerns? Think again.

By the way, Abdullah Abdullah is no Pashtun. That bastard just lied about his ethnic in order to be accepted by Pashtuns as well.