Afghanistan, in a new light

[muse]

Abdullah says does not accept Afghan vote preliminary results

Updated at: 2150 PST, Wednesday, September 16, 2009
KABUL: The main challenger for the Afghan presidency said Wednesday he does not accept preliminary results of the troubled election that appear to hand victory to the incumbent Hamid Karzai.

Preliminary results show Karzai leads with 54.6 percent of total ballots cast in the August 20 poll.

Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister, has 27.7 percent of the vote.

The election has been overshadowed by allegations of widespread fraud, with ballots from 2,500 polling stations across the country to be recounted by order of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).

The EU election observer mission said Wednesday that 1.5 million votes -- close to the margin between Adbullah and Karzai -- were suspect. Of those, 1.1 million were cast for Karzai, it said, and 300,000 for Abdullah.

Abdullah's spokesman, Sayed Aqa Fazel Sancharaki, said: "We do not accept these results at all."

"We have announced time and again that as long as all suspicious and fraudulent votes are not addressed and the final findings of the ECC are not announced, any results from the IEC (Independent Election Commission) are not important.

"What is important for us is that the level of fraud and the results of the ECC investigations are announced first -- and then we can judge. Not now," he said.

Sancharaki said he welcomed the announcement by the EU Election Observation Mission to Afghanistan that more than a million votes were suspect.

"We have calculated 1.5 million suspicious votes," said Dimitra Ioannou, the deputy head of the EU observer mission.

Karzai's office retaliated with a statement damning the announcement as "partial, irresponsible and in contradiction with Afghanistan's constitution".

Ioannou said that EU investigations turned up evidence of widespread ballot box stuffing. Sancharaki said: "We consider this a positive step. Suspicious votes or fraudulent votes relating to any candidate must be investigated."

The victor requires 50 percent plus one vote.

The logistics of the investigations are still being hammered out between the IEC and the ECC, an official working with both bodies said, and the investigations could take two to three weeks to complete



Why have the US and the EU been so determined to ensure a runoff election?

 

[muse]

Why the US is afraid of 'Afghanization'
By M K Bhadrakumar

The war in Afghanistan has not been lost yet, although a great deal has gone wrong. Fortunately, a turning point has come, as a new political dispensation is struggling to be born in Kabul.

The weakest link in the United States' Afghan strategy has been its handling of the calculus of power in Kabul. Prima facie, this may appear a matter of cultural mishap. During Zalmay Khalilzad's tenure as the American ambassador in Kabul, he conducted himself as viceroy and Washington made it a point to let it be generally understood that President Hamid Karzai played second fiddle.

However, after Khalilzad's departure in 2005, and as Karzai won his first election as president, he began coming into his own. But then, as the Afghan situation deteriorated in 2006, Washington began casting Karzai as the fall guy responsible for the accumulated failures of the war ranging from the shoddy follow-up on Afghan reconstruction, failure to check poppy cultivation and drug trafficking, widespread corruption and flawed "capacity-building" by Afghan institutions. Allegations against Karzai were carried to an extreme.

So, where is the real Karzai? Who indeed is the real Karzai? How "strong" was he so that he could "fail"? What happens to Karzai now in the aftermath of the tumultuous presidential election? Is toppling Karzai necessarily a part of the US agenda?

From the exhaustive media briefing by the US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on Tuesday, three things emerged as the broad US approach vis-a-vis the messy fallout of the Afghan election. One, Washington estimates that there is scope for avoiding any standoff ensuing from the Western-dominated Election Complaints Commission (ECC) setting aside the decisions by the Afghan-dominated Independent Election Commission (IEC) in Kabul. Kelly said, "everything we're seeing so far is that the process is working ... it needs to be given a chance to work itself out".

Two, "it's not going to be a matter of days or weeks; it could be a matter of months to sort out all of these allegations [about election fraud]."

Three, most important, it's "absolutely" the case that in the meanwhile, the US considers Karzai as "legitimate". "We work with President Karzai every day," Kelly said.

In sum, Washington may be ready to deal with Karzai as president for another 5-year term. But there will be caveats and until Karzai is duly harnessed, the government formation may have to wait. It could indeed be a matter of months. Meanwhile, a caretaker government continues, while General Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry will be in actual command.

Objectively speaking, any US strategy to salvage the war can only work if its central axis consists in a strong, authoritative government in Kabul. That is, "Afghanization" means putting Karzai and his team in the cockpit. Do not try to dictate who should be his co-pilot or his flight steward, as that will be recipe for confusion. There is no scope for a diarchy as that is alien to Afghan culture. Afghans expect a single, identifiable fountainhead of power. But Washington wants to introduce its nominees into Karzai's cabinet.

At the same time, running the state involves dealing with multiple local power centers. Karzai has displayed an extraordinary capacity for coalition-building, as his tie-ups with Gul Agha Sherzai or Ismail Khan or Rashid Dostum testify.

To put matters in perspective, the former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recently voiced the fear that unless the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) very quickly transferred responsibility for the war into Afghan hands, the growing risk was that the Taliban will be viewed as a resistance movement and that will indeed be a crushing defeat for the overall US strategy.

To be sure, the most critical aspect of "Afghanization" ought to be that Karzai is allowed a free hand in reaching out to the Taliban. As an Afghan leader, he is best placed to take advantage of the traditional Afghan political realities. He only would know when to micromanage the point of departure for various local accommodations that are called for in response to the compulsions or characteristics of the ethnic and tribal society. He knows it is far from the case that every Taliban formation has entered into a Faustian deal with al-Qaeda.

However, does the US genuinely want Karzai to press ahead with his plan to engage the Taliban within the first 100 days of his new government?

There is sophistry in the current US debates on Afghanistan. Whereas American commentators are fixated on the dialectics involving domestic political compulsions and any need of further American troop deployments in Afghanistan, the narrative needs to be framed in terms of what constitutes the "Afghanistan" of the war.

The bottom line of the Afghan election is that the very sight of Karzai showing signs of "independence" from the US has gone down well in the Afghan bazaar. But this unnerves Washington.

The entire US approach is to make Karzai learn a hard lesson that he is vulnerable, insecure and dependent on them. The central issue, therefore, boils down to whether the US really wants a credible central government in Kabul, which is bound to act independently, lest that undermine Washington's hidden agenda in the war.

Kelly has been distinctly lukewarm about the German-British-French proposal to the United Nations Secretary General for holding an international conference on Afghanistan. A letter from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said "benchmarks and timelines" should be agreed "to formulate a joint framework for our transition phase in Afghanistan ... to set out expectations of ownership and the clear view to hand over responsibility step-by-step to the Afghans".

Quintessentially, the European leaders called for "Afghanization" within a timeline. Their letter (which was released by Sarkozy's office on Wednesday) suggested that decisions over Afghanistan should not be left solely to the US.

Interestingly, when asked about the letter, Kelly parried that Washington was yet to be seized of its contents. But NATO's new secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave away the mood in Washington. He said, "The public discourse has started to go in the wrong direction ... We must stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary, and we will stay as long as necessary. Let no one think that a run for the exits is an option. It is not."

If Rasmussen is to be believed - and he spoke while actually on a visit to Washington on Wednesday - the NATO's continuance in Afghanistan is an objective in itself. Does that objective assume as much importance as "Afghanization" and a final victory over the Taliban? It seems so.

Washington's priority is that the Taliban are destabilizing Central Asia, the North Caucasus as well as China's Xinjiang province and subverting the eastern regions of Iran. A self-serving security paradigm has developed whereby regional instability is threatened by the war, which, in turn, serves to justify the prolonged, indefinite NATO presence in Afghanistan. Clearly, "Afghanization" doesn't fit into this paradigm.

The US's major NATO allies are beginning to catch up with the paradox, finally, that while the growing risk of the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban becoming a war by foreigners against Afghans must be reduced, "Afghanization" doesn't suit the US objectives.

Old Europeans see no reason why their youth should go and die in the Hindu Kush mountains to subserve the geopolitical agenda regarding NATO expansion. Rasmussen's outburst shows the hour of truth has come.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey

 

[muse]

Obama sets objectives for Pakistan and Afghanistan

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has set itself objectives for countering Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, from boosting Islamabad’s counter-insurgency capabilities to building up Afghanistan’s security forces so dependence on US assistance can be reduced, according to an internal document obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

The Obama administration set out its objectives against Al Qaeda in a draft document titled “Evaluating Progress in Afghanistan-Pakistan”. The first objective calls for disrupting “terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks”.

For Pakistan, the Obama administration’s goal was to limit the military’s involvement in the civilian government, to develop Islamabad’s counter-insurgency capabilities and to have the government take “demonstrable action” against corruption. It also called for more international support for Pakistan from regional powerbrokers China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. reuters

 

[muse]

Aap ko bhi Mubaraak ho


September 21, 2009
Federal Agents Arrest 3 Men in Terror Inquiry

By DAVID JOHNSTON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Federal authorities arrested an airport shuttle bus driver and his father in Colorado and another man in New York City on Saturday night, charging them with lying to investigators about an alleged terrorist plot to detonate an improvised explosive against an unknown target in the United States.

Acting swiftly late Saturday after a week in which investigators worked intensely in New York and Denver to put together a case, F.B.I. agents arrested Najibullah Zazi, 24, his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, who both reside in Aurora, Colo., and Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, who lives in Flushing, Queens.

The arrests indicated the case was rapidly accelerating and provided for the first time — in a sometimes confusing week of events — an explanation of why authorities were investigating the men and provided details about the alleged plot still under investigation in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere.

In a statement issued early Sunday, David Kris, the chief of the Justice Department’s national security division, said: “The arrests carried out tonight are part of an ongoing and fast-paced investigation. It is important to note that we have no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack.”

Affidavits filed in the case said that during a search of the younger Mr. Zazi’s rental car on Sept. 11, agents found a laptop computer that contained an image of nine pages of handwritten notes. The notes, according to affidavit, “contain formulations and instructions regarding the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, explosives detonators and components of a fusing system.”

Last Wednesday, the affidavits said, when agents interviewed Mr. Zazi in Denver, he falsely said he had never seen the handwritten notes and told agents that he had not written the notes.

In two additional interviews on Thursday and Friday, Mr. Zazi told agents that during a 2008 trip to Pakistan, he attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an Al Qaeda training camp in a tribal area.

The affidavits also said that the elder Mr. Zazi and Mr. Afzali, who was said to have been a source for the New York Police Department, also lied to investigators about their conversations concerning the younger Mr. Zazi and their knowledge of his activities.

The father and son were scheduled to make an initial appearance on Monday in Federal District Court in Denver and Mr. Afzali will make his appearance, also on Monday, in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Government officials said the charges, which carry a maximum penalty of eight years in prison, were preliminary and were likely to be followed by an indictment with more detailed accusations as the investigation continues.

The Zazis and Mr. Afzali are from Afghanistan. The elder Mr. Zazi is a naturalized citizen, while Mr. Afzalie and the younger Mr. Zazi are legal immigrants.

Wendy S. Aiello, a spokeswoman for Arthur Folsom, the lawyer representing the Zazis, said both men were arrested late Saturday night.

“Their attorney is with them,” said Ms. Aiello, who declined further comment.

Earlier on Saturday, following three days in which the younger Mr. Zazi had been intensively questioned by the F.B.I., he declined to meet with its agents, as planned, she said.

“He’s at home,” she said earlier in the day, adding that no plea arrangement was being negotiated on Mr. Zazi’s behalf.

At the same time, The Denver Post reported on Saturday that Mr. Zazi said in a telephone interview that he had not admitted any link to Al Qaeda, to participation in insurgency training in Pakistan or to involvement in a terrorist plot.

Government officials briefed on the matter have said that as Mr. Zazi voluntarily answered questions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, he admitted that he had perhaps unwittingly crossed paths in Pakistan with extremists allied with the terrorist organization. There were also indications that Mr. Zazi underwent training in explosives and bomb-making while overseas.

“If it was true, they wouldn’t allow me to leave,” Mr. Zazi told The Denver Post. I don’t think the F.B.I. or the police would allow anyone who admits being a terrorist to go free for one minute.”

In an investigation that went from covert to overt last week, the authorities were moving swiftly to check clues and track the movements of Mr. Zazi and those associated with him — even as they moved in federal court to file affidavits in support of the arrests.

On Monday, the authorities raided four residences connected to Mr. Zazi in Queens, and later executed search warrants his home in Aurora, and the home of his relatives there.

Investigators have copied or mirrored the hard drive of his laptop and are looking for e-mails, downloaded material and any trail of Internet sites that had been visited. The search of the hard drive did yield information about searches of sites connected to public gatherings in New York.

However, investigators have not yet determined what Mr. Zazi’s apparent interest in those sites suggests.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been briefed regularly on the status of the investigation, as has the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and officials at the White House and the Pentagon.

Aside from Mr. Afzali’s arrest, several people in New York have been questioned in the case. Three men at a fifth-floor apartment on 41st Avenue, in Flushing described how they had been interrogated on at least three separate occasions since their home was raided about 2 a.m. Monday.

Naiz Khan, 26, said he was interviewed for eight hours Thursday at what he believed was the Brooklyn offices of the United States attorney for the Eastern District. He said he voluntarily provided his fingerprints, DNA samples and prints of the soles of his shoes. A roommate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he submitted to a similar interrogation.

Each man described how they were repeatedly asked series of questions about Mr. Zazi, who they said had spent the night of Sept. 10 sleeping in their apartment.

As they spoke in their home on Saturday, the men said they were not terrorists. Mr. Khan said he had spoken to Mr. Zazi only occasionally in recent years and the other man said he had yet to meet him. Mr. Khan said he doubted Mr. Zazi was a terrorist and expressed frustration over the fallout from his visit.

“He put us into trouble,” he said. “Why do they have to bother me and my roommates? Why do they have to go to my father’s house?”

A defense lawyer with experience in terrorism cases in New York said that three men that he knew of who had had contact with Mr. Zazi had been questioned and fingerprinted by federal authorities.

Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the United States attorney in Brooklyn, Benton J. Campbell, would neither confirm nor deny the questioning.

Mr. Khan said he had not retained a lawyer.

As he spoke he displayed a several pages of search warrants that agents left with him after the Monday raid. The court papers outlined two pages of items to be seized, specifying that they wanted anything to do with explosives or their building blocks: chemicals, fusing caps, timers or blasting caps, among other things.

But the papers also listed what the authorities left with: cellphones; a laptop computer; papers and notebooks with Arabic writing; tools; 100 tongue depressors; a Con Edison bill; immigration papers and nine backpacks.

New York police officers returned on Tuesday and took a green nylon suitcase from a back bedroom, said Mr. Khan. He said his uncle Faiz Mohammed had packed the backpacks into the green suitcase and was planning to bring them to Karachi, Pakistan, for his children and those of his brother.

Mr. Khan also said the authorities asked him whether he had gone to rent a U-Haul on Sept. 9 in Queens and he emphatically said he did not.

“They said, ‘Did you go to U-Haul?’ and I said, ‘No,’ ” said Mr. Khan. “ ‘Did you pack anything, did you store anything in the U-Haul?’ I said, ‘No.’ ”

Ronald L. Kuby, a lawyer, said that Mr. Afzali, an imam in a mosque in Queens, did not rent any truck from U-Haul, though he, too, was questioned by agents in the recent days.

“He has not been in a U-Haul facility since 2004, when he rented a truck to help move his family,” Mr. Kuby said.

Al Baker and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

 

[muse]

We have pointed on many occasions that the "leaked" and "motivated" pieces that have been printed in Western Media (NYT, telegraph) suggest a intense internal ideological istruggle in the intelligence and security services in the West - but as you will note, there are die hard crazies in these otherwise Intelligence services - we encourage you to read critically.

In Praise of Warlords? try it in Afghanistan and see what the people will do to these warlords:


More power to Afghan warlords
By Richard M Bennett

The current military situation on the ground in Afghanistan is at best a highly unsatisfactory stalemate, at worst the allied forces are actually losing the initiative.

If that were allowed to continue then the Western democracies face being decisively defeated, politically if not militarily, by the Taliban.

There has always been the potential of a political backlash against years of conflict bringing increasing numbers of casualties, but with little sign of a clear victory for all the sacrifices being made.

This fear must now haunt the White House in the United States and Britain's Downing Street.

When the recent crop of moralizing Western leaders once again apparently based foreign policy on outmoded and deeply flawed beliefs - particularly when combating the threat of religious extremists whose beliefs were still based in a medieval world - disaster was assured.

Further complicating the allied response to Islamic extremism is the growing belief among many seasoned observers that the main Western intelligence services have been seriously degraded, despite a vast increase in budgets and a continuing infusion of extra personnel.

With so many of the senior management of the US and British intelligence communities appearing at times to lack even basic competence, with tactics that were unimaginative in the extreme and who are now so obviously steeped in a risk avoidance culture, it seems to many observers that any remaining chance of long-term success in the "war on terror" must have been largely lost by default.

However, it is perfectly arguable that the means of defeating the Taliban has been available throughout the long, bitter and costly campaign waged by the Western allies in Afghanistan.

This opportunity has been ignored and buried under an absurd combination of over-respect for human rights, a respect not reciprocated by either al-Qaeda or the Taliban; the unjustified diplomatic wish to avoid further alienating Iran and Pakistan; as well as a profound reluctance to face reality and accept that current policies have simply failed.

In the months before and more particularly in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack, the Western allies armed and encouraged the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and a loose coalition of tribal warlords to take on and defeat the Taliban.

This they spectacularly succeeded in doing.

Since then, Western governments and particularly those in Washington and London have sought to "Westernize" what is still a largely medieval society, install a democratically elected government in Kabul and defeat the Taliban in the field with a combination of largely ineffective Afghan troops and dangerously overstretched US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces.

Simply put, this policy never stood a serious chance of success as many of the experienced "grey-heads" in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, known as MI6) knew perfectly well.

However, their dissenting voices were soon stifled by forced early retirement, postings out of area and ultimately the denial of promotion.

The senior management of both the CIA and SIS were undermined and sidelined or replaced by political appointees who were quickly used to ensure than the Intelligence services "sang from the same hymn sheet" as their political masters.

Far from producing hard and often uncomfortable intelligence on the true nature of the situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, or for that matter on nuclear proliferation issues in Iran and North Korea, the Intelligence services have often been reduced to supplying information that if not actively supporting current political policy, could not easily be used to argue persuasively against it.

Former US president George W Bush, but perhaps even more so Britain's long-serving prime minister Tony Blair, willfully reduced Western policy towards the nations that support Islamic extremism, as well as the nascent nuclear powers Iran and North Korea, to the same laughable diplomatic tack tried by former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 - appeasement.
History tells us quite clearly that appeasement of a dedicated enemy simply does not work.

Direct confrontation and the moral strength of purpose to do whatever is necessary to achieve at least some semblance of success is the only viable and indeed honest course to take.

An unrealistic level of respect for human rights, the all pervasive corruption of "political correctness" and the unwillingness to accept reality appear to be crippling the Western war effort against extremism and the terrorism it undoubtedly breeds.

Not surprisingly, none of these factors was allowed to influence or interfere with a Western policy that saw the carpet bombing of Hamburg and Dresden or indeed the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

It is proving increasingly difficult not to see the startlingly different standards applied to Germany and Japan in 1945, and those applied to the countries who arm, train and support Islamic terrorism today as nothing short of utter hypocrisy by Western leaders.

There is undoubtedly a war for survival under way. However, the seriousness by which Western leaders appear to be taking it can, in at least some way at least, be gauged by their reluctance to now even refer to it as the "war on terror".

Yet what else is it?

A first step back towards an admittedly uncomfortable reality would be to finally have the political courage to face up to the increasingly dangerous situation in Afghanistan.

Many experienced observers appear to believe that the time is now ripe for the Western allies to remove the political and military shackles and begin to take the necessary actions to avoid an embarrassing defeat.

Those actions which offer the most hope include:

Confront Pakistan. No more financial bailouts; diplomatic support or military aid until the government in Islamabad actually takes on Islamic extremism within the intelligence services, armed forces and throughout the country. Pakistan provides the roots of the Afghan conflict and these must be severed to increase the chances of finally defeating the Taliban.

Re-arm anti-Taliban tribes. Re-equip the old Northern Alliance and the tribal warlords and turn them loose on the Taliban. These war-like groups understand the Taliban and have proved before to be valuable allies of the West in defeating them. It is arguably the best if not the only way to defeat the growing strength of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies.

Accept that President Hamid Karzai has failed. Karzai has been a dismal failure and the removal or marginalization of some of his corrupt government in Kabul is an immediate necessity.

The threat of growing domestic opposition to the war within the US and disquiet over the recent, fraud-tainted re-election of Karzai may now tempt the current administration in Washington to reconsider its support and if this means accepting some form of return to a semi-feudal Afghanistan, then so be it.

There is now increasing evidence that Afghanistan's long-established tribal warlords are prepared to step up their fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda if Washington would only agree to provide them with significant funding and new weapons allowing them to replay the role they had in the original overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001-2002
With obvious impatience, ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum told The Washington Times in an interview at his northern stronghold in late September, "If you support me, I will destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda," adding, "Give me the task and I will do it."

At least 20 other warlords still hold significant power in Afghanistan. They include provincial governors such as Ismail Khan, Atta Mohammed Noor and Gul Agha Sherzai.

Other former mujahideen, or anti-Soviet freedom fighters as they were more popularly known, have openly called for a shift in the current US strategy and indeed a number of these leaders have made similar offers to Washington.

However, seeking or accepting their support does still hold a certain degree of danger for President Barack Obama.

Among the obvious skeletons in the Afghan cupboard, Dostum and his Uzbek forces stand accused of numerous war crimes, including involvement in the reported suffocation of about 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war in vehicle containers.

"He may not be the clean-cut US soldier and true, he has flip-flopped more than once, but he is a fighter and survivor," said a US military official speaking only on the condition of anonymity who has worked closely with Dostum in the past. "We need to count on the Afghan people and tribes much more than we are doing now. Without them this war is lost."

Jason Motlagh and Sara A Carter, reporting in The Washington Times on September 22, quoted a former commander in the Northern Alliance who had fought the Taliban alongside the charismatic mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, when he bluntly stated, "Afghanistan and its people are the only ones who can truly defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

Identified only as "Mohammed", the former commander went on, "We need weapons and resources - more US troops are not necessary, but we would fight alongside them if asked."

Making an impassioned plea for US understanding and support, "Mohammed" told the reporters, "We are not children that need to be watched over - we defeated the Soviets [in the 1980s]."

He added significantly, "We can defeat the Taliban, but we need assistance from the US. Not more troops, but we need the NATO commanders to listen to us, support us. So far, they are not listening and the Afghan people fear they will be abandoned. This is no way to defeat an enemy."

Caught between an unwillingness to either withdraw or alternatively commit sufficient resources to win, the current policies of Washington and London may only result in a cruel stalemate or an ignominious defeat.

Western governments will now have to be both brave and wise to ignore the siren voices of appeasement, of compromise and of an addiction to some of the rather false and misleading values enshrined in human-rights legislation.

Perhaps even braver still to take the necessary, but available military steps to secure some hope of victory.

It is not only the security of the West at stake, but the lives and future of millions of ordinary Afghans and Pakistani's who have no wish to be forced to live in the nightmarish and backward looking world of the Taliban.

Richard M Bennett, intelligence analyst and author

 

[ejaz007]

Nato battles for Taliban ‘jewel’ Kandahar
Wednesday, October 07, 2009


KANDAHAR MILITARY BASE, Afghanistan: The US Army faces a major challenge to win back the Taliban’s historic stronghold of Kandahar — a key battleground in the increasingly bloody fight to control Afghanistan.

“Kandahar city is nationally critical,” said Steve Biddle, from the Centre of Foreign Relations think tank in Washington. “It’s one of the small number of places where a true setback could be a war loser.”

A combat brigade of about 4,000 US soldiers has been sent to the volatile 54,000-square-kilometre southern province. Until their arrival, just 2,800 Canadian troops had spent the last three years trying to ensure security for the province’s 900,000 people.

“Taliban have always viewed Kandahar city as the jewel of the south and as their ultimate goal,” said US intelligence officer Captain Mark Richardson. “They believe that what Kandahar does, all the Afghans will do.”

As the Afghan conflict enters its ninth year, the Taliban in Afghanistan now control most of the 17 districts in the province and have spread into Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city and the movement’s spiritual home.

In a sign of its importance to the Nato coalition, the heavily-guarded military base to the south of the city has grown into the second-biggest behind Bagram, near the capital Kabul.

Originally constructed for 12,000 people, the base now has between 30,000 and 40,000 occupants from all countries participating in Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations — and is getting bigger.

Armoured vehicles stretch as far as the eye can see, as Black Hawk helicopters, F-16 fighter jets and cargo planes take off and land in conveyor-belt succession. The US has deployed the majority of the 21,000 extra soldiers sent by President Barack Obama to Kandahar and the neighbouring province of Helmand, which produces most of the world’s opium.

“Taliban have been very active in the south and I think we ignored them for the most part and concentrated our effort in the east, where al-Qaeda was more active,” a Pentagon military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“We really lost control of areas in the south.” Officials and experts criticise the decision to send most of the reinforcements to Helmand, which is less populous than Kandahar and seen as less influential to the war-torn country’s future.

“If we retake Kandahar, if the people are satisfied and development works, that will spread everywhere in Afghanistan.

Afghans say that change comes from Kandahar,” said a Western official familiar with the situation.

Three months after their arrival, US troops tasked with securing the main supply routes leading to Kabul, maintain they have had some successes.

“We have made incredible progress,” said Richardson, pointing to the Taliban withdrawal from its stronghold in Arghandab district, north of Kandahar.

“Kandahar is a microcosm of the strategic problems of the country,” said Biddle. “There has to be a serious security force presence in the city. And the perception that it’s better if it’d be Afghan is exactly right. However the Afghan government in Kabul has not been particularly supportive.” The Western official added: “The Taliban and others are taking advantage of the debate about troops and saying, ‘the foreigners won’t stay beyond two years’. That has had a negative impact on the population.”

In addition, people here are victims of intimidation and racketeering by the Taliban, who often act with impunity. Several local leaders, fearing for their lives, do not even live in their own districts. International forces accept that they have come up against the problem of corruption of local authorities, which is hampering efforts to win the support of the population.

The underpaid Afghan police are widely seen as corrupt. Many Afghans also accuse the head of the provincial council, Ahmed Wali Karzai whose brother is the Afghan president, of involvement in criminal activities including drug trafficking.

Nato battles for Taliban ‘jewel’ Kandahar