The Afghan war

[Righteous_Fire]

The AfPak War​

The term is controversial for us in Pakistan, because of its sidelining our sacrifices and our victories, however, call it whatever you want, there is a war going on, right now, and the Pakistani people, the Govt. and the Pakistan Army have sacrificed and succeeded so much, it must not go without praise.

We the people and the Govt. of Pakistan have sacrificed and contributed the most in this WoT, and the victories gained by our Army are far more numerous and glorious than any other, yet, they are all played down, neglected and sidelined.

This thread is about the so called AfPak War, remembering our victories and our losses and what the future holds in terms of Strategic and Geo Political Issues related to it.
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McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'​

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document's five-page Commander's Summary on a note of muted optimism: "While the situation is serious, success is still achievable."

But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

McChrystal's assessment is one of several options the White House is considering. His plan could intensify a national debate in which leading Democratic lawmakers have expressed reluctance about committing more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. Obama said last week that he will not decide whether to send more troops until he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be."

The commander has prepared a separate detailed request for additional troops and other resources, but defense officials have said he is awaiting instructions before sending it to the Pentagon.

Senior administration officials asked The Post over the weekend to withhold brief portions of the assessment that they said could compromise future operations.

McChrystal makes clear that his call for more forces is predicated on the adoption of a strategy in which troops emphasize protecting Afghans rather than killing insurgents or controlling territory. Most starkly, he says: "nadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced."
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'Widespread Corruption'​

The assessment offers an unsparing critique of the failings of the Afghan government, contending that official corruption is as much of a threat as the insurgency to the mission of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition is widely known.

"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal says.

The result has been a "crisis of confidence among Afghans," he writes. "Further, a perception that our resolve is uncertain makes Afghans reluctant to align with us against the insurgents."

McChrystal is equally critical of the command he has led since June 15. The key weakness of ISAF, he says, is that it is not aggressively defending the Afghan population. "Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us -- physically and psychologically -- from the people we seek to protect. . . . The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves."

McChrystal continues: "Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population."

Coalition intelligence-gathering has focused on how to attack insurgents, hindering "ISAF's comprehension of the critical aspects of Afghan society."

In a four-page annex on detainee operations, McChrystal warns that the Afghan prison system has become "a sanctuary and base to conduct lethal operations" against the government and coalition forces. He cites as examples an apparent prison connection to the 2008 bombing of the Serena Hotel in Kabul and other attacks. "Unchecked, Taliban/Al Qaeda leaders patiently coordinate and plan, unconcerned with interference from prison personnel or the military."

The assessment says that Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents "represent more than 2,500 of the 14,500 inmates in the increasingly overcrowded Afghan Corrections System," in which "[h]ardened, committed Islamists are indiscriminately mixed with petty criminals and sex offenders, and they are using the opportunity to radicalize and indoctrinate them."

Noting that the United States "came to Afghanistan vowing to deny these same enemies safe haven in 2001," he says they now operate with relative impunity in the prisons. "There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan," his assessment says.

McChrystal outlines a plan to build up the Afghan government's ability to manage its detention facilities and eventually put all such operations under Afghan control, including the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, which the United States runs.

For now, because of a lack of capacity, "productive interrogations and detainee intelligence collection have been reduced" at Bagram. "As a result, hundreds are held without charge or without a defined way-ahead. This allows the enemy to radicalize them far beyond their pre-capture orientation. The problem can no longer be ignored."
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McChrystal's Plan​

The general says his command is "not adequately executing the basics" of counterinsurgency by putting the Afghan people first. "ISAF personnel must be seen as guests of the Afghan people and their government, not an occupying army," he writes. "Key personnel in ISAF must receive training in local languages."

He also says that coalition forces will change their operational culture, in part by spending "as little time as possible in armored vehicles or behind the walls of forward operating bases." Strengthening Afghans' sense of security will require troops to take greater risks, but the coalition "cannot succeed if it is unwilling to share risk, at least equally, with the people."

McChrystal warns that in the short run, it "is realistic to expect that Afghan and coalition casualties will increase."

He proposes speeding the growth of Afghan security forces. The existing goal is to expand the army from 92,000 to 134,000 by December 2011. McChrystal seeks to move that deadline to October 2010.

Overall, McChrystal wants the Afghan army to grow to 240,000 and the police to 160,000 for a total security force of 400,000, but he does not specify when those numbers could be reached.

He also calls for "radically more integrated and partnered" work with Afghan units.

McChrystal says the military must play an active role in reconciliation, winning over less committed insurgent fighters. The coalition "requires a credible program to offer eligible insurgents reasonable incentives to stop fighting and return to normalcy, possibly including the provision of employment and protection," he writes.

Coalition forces will have to learn that "there are now three outcomes instead of two" for enemy fighters: not only capture or death, but also "reintegration."

Again and again, McChrystal makes the case that his command must be bolstered if failure is to be averted. "ISAF requires more forces," he states, citing "previously validated, yet un-sourced, requirements" -- an apparent reference to a request for 10,000 more troops originally made by McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan.
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A Three-Headed Insurgency​

McChrystal identifies three main insurgent groups "in order of their threat to the mission" and provides significant details about their command structures and objectives.

The first is the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) headed by Mullah Omar, who fled Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and operates from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

"At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Omar announces his guidance and intent for the coming year," according to the assessment.

Mullah Omar's insurgency has established an elaborate alternative government known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, McChrystal writes, which is capitalizing on the Afghan government's weaknesses. "They appoint shadow governors for most provinces, review their performance, and replace them periodically. They established a body to receive complaints against their own 'officials' and to act on them. They install 'shari'a' [Islamic law] courts to deliver swift and enforced justice in contested and controlled areas. They levy taxes and conscript fighters and laborers. They claim to provide security against a corrupt government, ISAF forces, criminality, and local power brokers. They also claim to protect Afghan and Muslim identity against foreign encroachment."

"The QST has been working to control Kandahar and its approaches for several years and there are indications that their influence over the city and neighboring districts is significant and growing," McChrystal writes.

The second main insurgency group is the Haqqani network (HQN), which is active in southeastern Afghanistan and draws money and manpower "principally from Pakistan, Gulf Arab networks, and from its close association with al Qaeda and other Pakistan-based insurgent groups." At another point in the assessment, McChrystal says, "Al Qaeda's links with HQN have grown, suggesting that expanded HQN control could create a favorable environment" for associated extremist movements "to re-establish safe-havens in Afghanistan."

The third is the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgency, which maintains bases in three Afghan provinces "as well as Pakistan," the assessment says. This network, led by the former mujaheddin commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, "aims to negotiate a major role in a future Taliban government. He does not currently have geographical objectives as is the case with the other groups," though he "seeks control of mineral wealth and smuggling routes in the east."

Overall, McChrystal provides this conclusion about the enemy: "The insurgents control or contest a significant portion of the country, although it is difficult to assess precisely how much due to a lack of ISAF presence. . . . "

The insurgents make money from the production and sale of opium and other narcotics, but the assessment says that "eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits -- even if possible, and while disruptive -- would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact."

While the insurgency is predominantly Afghan, McChrystal writes that it "is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan's ISI," which is its intelligence service. Al-Qaeda and other extremist movements "based in Pakistan channel foreign fighters, suicide bombers, and technical assistance into Afghanistan, and offer ideological motivation, training, and financial support."

Toward the end of his report, McChrystal revisits his central theme: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."​

AFPAK at NYT

 

[Righteous_Fire]

Afghanistan Troop Request Splits Advisers to Obama​

As President Obama weighs sending more troops to Afghanistan, one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, he has discovered that the military is not monolithic in support of the plan and that some of the civilian advisers he respects most have deep reservations.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s troop request, which was submitted to the Pentagon on Friday, has reignited a longstanding debate within the military about the virtues of the counterinsurgency strategy popularized by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq and now embraced by General McChrystal, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

General McChrystal is expected to ask for as many as 40,000 additional troops for the eight-year-old war, a number that has generated concern among top officers like Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, who worry about the capacity to provide more soldiers at a time of stress on the force, officials said.

The competing advice and concerns fuel a pivotal struggle to shape the president’s thinking about a war that he inherited but may come to define his tenure. Among the most important outside voices has been that of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired four-star Army general, who visited Mr. Obama in the Oval Office this month and expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success. According to people briefed on the discussion, Mr. Powell reminded the president of his longstanding view that military missions should be clearly defined.

Mr. Powell is one of the three people outside the administration, along with Senator John F. Kerry and Senator Jack Reed, considered by White House aides to be most influential in this current debate. All have expressed varying degrees of doubt about the wisdom of sending more forces to Afghanistan.

Mr. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has warned of repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, where he served, and has floated the idea of a more limited counterterrorist mission. Mr. Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and an Army veteran, has not ruled out supporting more troops but said “the burden of proof” was on commanders to justify it.

In the West Wing, beyond Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has advocated an alternative strategy to the troop buildup, other presidential advisers sound dubious about more troops, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, and Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, according to people who have spoken with them. At the same time, Mr. Obama is also hearing from more hawkish figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

General McChrystal’s troop request, which has not been made public, was given to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the general in a meeting in Germany on Friday. Admiral Mullen arrived back in Washington on Friday night with one paper copy for himself and one for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Mr. Gates has not endorsed General McChrystal’s request yet, viewing the situation as “complicated,” said one person who has spoken with him. But Mr. Gates, who will be an influential voice in Mr. Obama’s decision, has also left open the door for more troops and warned of the consequences of failure in Afghanistan.

Although Mr. Obama has called Afghanistan a war of necessity, he has left members of both parties uncertain about the degree of his commitment to a large and sustained military presence. Even some advisers said they thought Mr. Obama’s support for the war as a senator and presidential candidate was at least partly a way of contrasting it with what he saw as a reckless war in Iraq.

His decision to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan early this year, which will bring the number of American troops there to 68,000 this fall, was made hurriedly within weeks of coming into office to stanch the tactical erosion on the ground and provide security during Afghan elections.

But with those elections now marred by fraud allegations, the latest troop request is forcing Mr. Obama to decide whether he wants to fully engage in Afghanistan for the rest of his term or make a drastic change of course. Some advisers said the varying views reflected the complicated nature of a debate. The troop request follows the strategy unveiled by Mr. Obama in March to focus more on protecting the Afghan population, building infrastructure and improving governance, rather than just hunting the Taliban. On Friday, a United Nations report said that from January to August, 1,500 civilians were killed, about two-thirds of them by militants.

Admiral Mullen has endorsed the idea of more troops and will be at the table representing the military. General McChrystal and ambassadors from the region will get a chance to participate in meetings with the president through a secure video hookup.

Other officers, who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and say they admire General McChrystal nonetheless, have privately expressed doubt that additional troops will make a difference. Others question the broader impact of such a buildup on the overall armed forces.

“If a request for more forces comes to the Army, we’ll have to assess what that will do in terms of stress on the force,” said an Army official, who asked not to be identified because General McChrystal’s troop request had not been made public.

General Casey, whose institutional role as Army chief is to protect his force, has a goal to increase by 2012 a soldier’s time at home, to two years at home for every year served, from the current one year for every year of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Advisers who have Mr. Obama’s ear have raised other questions. Mr. Powell spoke with Mr. Obama about a variety of topics, but his remarks on Afghanistan resonated in the White House. “The question the president has to answer is, ‘What will more troops do?’ ” Mr. Powell told reporters before a speech in California last week. “You have to not just add troops. You need a clear definition of your mission and then you can determine whether you need more troops or other resources.”

In an interview, Senator Kerry, who met with Admiral Mullen last week, said that he had not made up his mind about the troop buildup, but that in Vietnam, “the underlying assumptions were flawed, and the number of troops weren’t going to make a difference.”

Senator Reed, who met with Mr. Biden, was more measured, but said the president needed to look at the capacity of Afghan forces and the prospects of reconciliation with moderate Taliban members. “You want to make sure you have the best operational plan to carry out the strategy,” he said.
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Split over Troops

 

[Righteous_Fire]

No Deadline Set for Decision on Troops​

President Obama has not set a deadline for determining a new strategy or for committing more troops to the war in Afghanistan, despite an urgent request from his top commander, his national security adviser said Saturday.

In a lengthy telephone interview, retired Gen. James L. Jones outlined Obama's plans for reassessing the war effort. Jones noted that although the administration has seen some progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it remains uncertain about the outcome of President Hamid Karzai's contentious bid for reelection.

Obama has scheduled at least five meetings with his national security team over the next weeks to reexamine the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Tuesday marks the start of five scheduled intensive discussions with the National Security Council, as well as field commanders and regional ambassadors, on Afghanistan," Jones said.

He said he expects two of the meetings to be held the next week but stressed that there is no target date to complete the review. "I don't have a deadline in my mind. I think the most important thing is to do it right. But it is going to have a high priority in the administration to do this pretty relentlessly. We have a lot of other things on the table as well."

In his Aug. 30 classified assessment, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and International Security Assistance Force commander, said he urgently needs more troops within the next year or his mission will "likely result in failure." McChrystal advocated a full counterinsurgency strategy in which the military aggressively and systematically protects the Afghan population, and will request 10,000 to 40,000 more troops to carry out his counterinsurgency mission, according to sources.

The upcoming meetings will begin with the assumption that the McChrystal strategy is correct, Jones said, adding that the president will "encourage free-wheeling discussion" and that "nothing is off the table."

Asked why al-Qaeda, which is comparatively safe in its current sanctuaries in Pakistan, would want to return to Afghanistan, where more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops are stationed, Jones said, "That's a good question. . . . This is certainly one of the questions that we will be discussing. This is one of the questions, for example, that one could come back at with General McChrystal."

Jones said it remains possible that, after a decision on strategy by the president, McChrystal might change his mind about the need for more troops. "We will ask General McChrystal, and say, 'Okay, now that you've heard what our strategy is, does this affect your thinking in terms of your resources and, if so, how?' " Jones said.

Other advisers have pushed markedly different approaches to the conflict. Vice President Biden has urged Obama to adopt a traditional counterterrorism strategy focusing on military strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Taliban in Afghanistan. This would presumably require fewer troops, possibly fewer than the 68,000 U.S. forces the president has already authorized.

Obama's calculations about how to proceed in Afghanistan are occurring as the war is presenting a political challenge at home. Congressional Democrats have become increasingly skeptical about the war; Republicans voice support for McChrystal's assessment and the likely troop request.

Jones stressed that the president and his advisers will spend the coming weeks focusing on strategy before addressing any troop request.

"The bumper sticker here is strategy before resources," said Jones, adding: "This isn't just about more troops."

Jones said the Aug. 20 Afghan election, rife with allegations of ballot stuffing and other fraud, caused the administration to pause. The president wants "to make sure this comes out as a legitimate election."

As of Saturday, Jones said, "It is hard to predict whether the results will be that Karzai will be declared a winner or there will be a runoff. . . . We don't know how it's going to turn out."

The administration hopes that there will be a resolution to the election by early October and that any possible runoff election would be carried out before winter.

On the positive front, Jones said the Pakistani military has been "proactive" and "pulled troops off their Indian border" to launch successful operations against the Taliban in Pakistan.

When Obama announced the current Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy on March 27, he also planned to review the effectiveness of the strategy after the Afghan election, Jones said.

"I don't think anybody in the allied effort seriously thinks that Afghanistan is about to fall to the Taliban," Jones said. He added that two-thirds of Afghans live in areas that are "completely under government and local control, and are doing reasonably well."

Though Obama is conducting a broad strategic review, Jones said, "Some things have already been decided. We know we're going to build the Afghan army at a faster rate. We know we're going to do the same for the police."

Jones said the challenges Obama faces in the Afghan war are more "complex" and "bigger than the surge" decision President George W. Bush faced in Iraq three years ago.

In early 2007, Bush ordered the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq as a "surge" to assist in the counterinsurgency strategy of protecting Iraqis. The surge is now regarded as one of several factors that helped stabilize Iraq and reduce violence there.

"This is bigger than the surge," Jones said. "This is more complex. There are more moving parts."

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No decision Troops

 

[Righteous_Fire]

Diverse Sources Fund Insurgency In Afghanistan​

The Taliban-led insurgency has built a fundraising juggernaut that generates cash from such an array of criminal rackets, donations, taxes, shakedowns and other schemes that U.S. and Afghan officials say it may be impossible to choke off the movement's money supply.

Obama administration officials say the single largest source of cash for the Taliban, once thought to rely mostly on Afghanistan's booming opium trade to finance its operations, is not drugs but foreign donations. The CIA recently estimated that Taliban leaders and their allies received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan.

For the past decade, the U.S. Treasury and the U.N. Security Council have maintained financial blacklists of suspected donors to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The U.N. list, originally designed to pressure the Taliban to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, requires all U.N. members to freeze the assets of designated Taliban officials and their supporters.

The U.N. and Treasury blacklists were greatly expanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since 2005, however, only a handful of alleged Taliban benefactors have been added to the lists.

Some American and Afghan officials said the U.S. government, which had been a leading nominator of names for the U.N. blacklist, paid less attention to Taliban donors after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Until recently, they said, Washington had also been preoccupied with preparing sanctions against individuals and companies doing business with the Iranian government.

Richard Barrett, the coordinator of the United Nations' Taliban and al-Qaeda Monitoring Team, said Taliban sympathizers are much more skillful today at masking their donations and ensuring that the money cannot be traced back to them.

"It's been very, very difficult to identify these people," Barrett said. "You can track the money flow and say this money came from the Gulf, but it's a lot more difficult to confirm the source."

In July, Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Taliban was reaping the bulk of its revenue from donors abroad, especially from the Persian Gulf.

Other U.S. officials have noted that the Taliban received substantial financial help from Gulf countries during the 1990s, when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- along with Pakistan -- were the only nations that gave diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government.

U.S. officials said there is no evidence today that the Saudi, UAE or other Gulf governments are giving official aid to the Taliban. They said they suspect that Pakistani military and intelligence operatives are continuing to fund the Afghan insurgency, although the Islamabad government denies this.

As the insurgency has grown in strength, the Taliban and its affiliates have embraced a strategy favored by multinational corporations: diversification. With money pouring in from so many sources, the Taliban has been able to expand the insurgency across the country with relative ease, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

In an Aug. 30 report assessing the overall state of the war, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said the Taliban's range of financial resources made it difficult to weaken the movement.


"Eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits -- even if possible, and while disruptive -- would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact," McChrystal wrote.

U.S. officials said reliable estimates of the Taliban's overall cash flow are difficult to calculate because the insurgency is a decentralized movement comprising many factions and commanders. But annual revenue is thought to total hundreds of millions of dollars.

Money skimmed from the narcotics business -- Afghanistan is the world's top opium producer -- still offers crucial support to Taliban operations, particularly in the southern provinces where opium-producing poppies grow in abundance, officials said.

The U.S. military has estimated that the Taliban collects $70 million annually from poppy farmers and narcotics traffickers. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, which monitors opium production, earlier projected that the Taliban and its affiliates earned as much as $400 million a year from the drug trade. The agency later revised the figure sharply downward, to about $100 million a year.

"The international community and the Americans have been deceiving themselves for the past seven years, saying the Taliban has been getting all of their money from drugs," said Waheed Mojda, who served as a Foreign Ministry official for the Taliban before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Increasingly, Taliban commanders are paying for their operations through a variety of extortion schemes, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Many insurgent leaders impose a "tax" on local Afghans or take a cut from gemstone, timber or antiquity smugglers. Ransoms from kidnappings in Afghanistan and Pakistan also have proven lucrative.

Another rich source of revenue: extortion payments from Afghan and Western subcontractors forced to cough up "protection money" to safeguard redevelopment projects, according to U.S and Afghan officials.

"The Taliban know they cannot rely on just one source of money," said Hekmat Karzai, director of the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul. "Any of these sources could potentially evaporate."

This year, the U.S. government created a special investigative unit called the Afghan Threat Finance Cell. Modeled after a similar U.S. unit in Iraq, it gathers financial information about the Taliban for law-enforcement and intelligence purposes.

The cell has about two-dozen members drawn from the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Central Command, the Treasury Department and the CIA. The FBI is expected to join soon.

Kirk E. Meyer, a DEA official who directs the cell's operations in Afghanistan, said the mission is to understand how the Taliban-led insurgency is financing its operations, as well as to find ways to put pressure on its money supply.

"I think it's possible to have an impact on certain areas," he said. "It is not going to be the silver bullet, but if it's integrated with what everybody else is doing, like DEA and the military, it's got to have an impact."

Afghanistan, which has only a handful of banks, lacks a modern financial system. Tools commonly used to combat money laundering, such as freezing bank accounts or monitoring electronic wire transfers, are largely useless, U.S. officials said.


Most money transfers in Afghanistan are made under the hawala system, an informal network of money brokers who traditionally keep few, if any, records about their customers. With help from U.S. officials, the Afghan government has begun to regulate its hawala brokers for the first time. Brokers in seven provinces are now registered with the government and are required to report all transactions each month to the central bank, which conducts audits to ensure compliance.

Some hawala brokers have become informants, notifying authorities of suspicious or unusually large transfers. Accustomed to the traditional anonymity of hawala networks, Taliban supporters sometimes fill out their customer slips by plainly stating that the payment is for "heroin" or "five vehicles for Taliban commander so-and-so," said a senior U.S. law-enforcement official.

"Right now, they're at the point where they're not used to having anybody harass them," the official said. "I think we'll start to see more coded-type documents. It will start to say, 'For the Boy Scouts' or something."

The Taliban and its affiliates also move large amounts of cash via human couriers, both domestically and internationally, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Foreign recruits who travel to Pakistan to train in Taliban-sponsored camps are regularly asked to bring $10,000 in cash with them, the U.S. law-enforcement official said.

In Washington, the U.S. government recently established a group to devise an overall strategy for restricting the flow of money to the Taliban. The Illicit Finance Task Force is directed by the U.S. Treasury but draws on personnel from different agencies.

"We're going after this with a great deal of urgency and a huge amount of effort to even more effectively disrupt the networks that fund the Taliban," said David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for terrorist financing.
​

Funding

 

[Righteous_Fire]

McChrystal Says Insurgents Are Winning Communications Battle​

The United States and its allies in Afghanistan must "wrest the information initiative" from the Taliban and other insurgent groups that have undermined the credibility of the Kabul government and its international backers, according to the top U.S. and NATO commander in the country.

"The information domain is a battlespace," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal wrote in an assessment made public on Monday, adding that the allies need to "take aggressive actions to win the important battle of perception."

As an initial step, McChrystal wants to change the goal of public relations efforts in Afghanistan from a "struggle for the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan population to one of giving them 'trust and confidence' " in themselves and their government. At the same time, he said, more effort should be made to "discredit and diminish insurgents and their extremist allies' capability to influence attitudes and behavior in Afghanistan."

One way to accomplish that, McChrystal wrote, is to target insurgent networks "to disrupt and degrade" their effectiveness. Another is to expose what he calls the insurgents' "flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran," including indiscriminate use of violence and terrorism, and attacks on schools and development projects.

McChrystal's approach mirrors one that U.S. intelligence operatives are taking covertly, with some success, in the Middle East, where direct and indirect support is being given to Islamic leaders who speak out against terrorists. Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said last year that the goal is to show "that it is al-Qaeda, not the West, that is truly at war with Islam."

Echoing that idea, McChrystal recognized in his report that Afghans traditionally communicate by word of mouth. He called for better exploitation of those "more orthodox methods" -- getting "authoritative figures" such as religious leaders and tribal elders to deliver the messages "so that they are credible."

One of the main changes from the current approach should be creating "opportunities for Afghans to communicate as opposed to attempting to always control the message," McChrystal wrote.

Another element he wants changed is the military's public responsiveness to incidents involving U.S. or allied forces that result in Afghan civilian deaths. Overreliance on firepower that kills civilians and destroys homes "severely damaged" the coalition's legitimacy in the eyes of Afghans, he noted, saying the Taliban publicized such incidents.

New procedures must be developed for sharing information about such events, he wrote, so that when they happen, "we are first with the truth."

McChrystal's recommended expansion of the Afghan strategic communications program followed public calls for such a step by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and by Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the region. Holbrooke has repeatedly complained that the Taliban has communicated more effectively than the United States, and he told a House subcommittee in June that there was a need to refine the coalition's message and use new ways to reach Afghans, suggesting cellphones, radio and other means.

Mullen, in a recent issue of Joint Force Quarterly, emphasized that the problem with communicating with people rested on "policy and execution." He added, "To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate."

McChrystal wants new emphasis put on improving the Afghan government's capacity in the information field, including better partnerships with the spokesmen of the Defense and Interior ministries. A proposed contract for 275 contractors to work in the Defense Ministry says two are to be assigned to the public affairs office to develop an "effective" media relations program.

McChrystal also called in his assessment for the coalition to develop its own print, radio and television systems, and to take steps to "partner more effectively with the Afghan commercial sector."

In addition, McChrystal lists as a goal making public relations efforts beyond Afghanistan more effective. There has already been a step-up in press material sent to U.S. journalists. On Friday, seven releases were sent to The Washington Post, including one with four photos. The caption of one photo reads: "An Afghan commando team advances toward practice targets at a Kandahar training facility Sept. 24. Afghan National Army and police training is overseen by ISAF military mentors, with a goal that the Afghans will one day independently foster peace and stability in Afghanistan."

Congress, however, has expressed concern about the rapid growth of the military's involvement in an area once under the purview of the State Department. In July, the House Appropriations Committee, in approving the fiscal 2010 defense funding bill, said it had identified 10 strategic communications programs that boosted costs from $9 million in fiscal 2005 to a "staggering $988 million request for fiscal 2010." The committee said many of the costlier programs appear as "alarmingly non-military propaganda, public relations, and behavioral modification messaging."

In Iraq, the U.S. military spent more than $500 million over six years developing a public relations campaign run mainly by American contractors. Starting with nearly $100 million for a U.S. contractor to run the newspaper, radio and television networks owned by one of Saddam Hussein's sons, the strategic communications program was expanded to include billboards, pamphlets, radio and TV spots, and programs to place articles in Iraqi newspapers and magazines.

In June, The Post's Ernesto Londo?o reported from Baghdad that the multimillion-dollar campaign ultimately did not help burnish the U.S. military's image, marginalize extremists, promote democracy or foster reconciliation.

By way of example, Londo?o quoted Ziyad al-Aajeely, director of Iraq's nonprofit Journalistic Freedom Observatory, as saying while he flipped through an issue of the U.S.-subsidized newspaper Baghdad Now: "The millions spent on this is wasted money. Nobody reads this."​

The Media War

 

[mjnaushad]

8 Years away from home is a long time. They should really wrap it up As soon as Possible.

 

[Righteous_Fire]

U.S. Service Member Killed in Afghanistan Car Bombing​

A United States service member was killed when a suicide car bomber struck a military convoy Wednesday morning in eastern Afghanistan, according to allied officials and the provincial authorities.

Lt. Tommy Groves, a Navy spokesman in Kabul for the United States military, confirmed the service member’s death in a telephone interview.

The attack took place about 8 a.m. on a highway just a few miles south of Khost, said Yaqoob Khan, the security chief for Khost Province.

“All we know is one of their armored vehicles was destroyed in the attack,” Colonel Khan said. No civilians or Afghan security forces were wounded, he added.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.

NATO forces drove the Taliban from power in 2001, but in recent years the group has mounted a deadly insurgency, particularly in the south, against Afghanistan’s weak national government.
​

NYT

 

[Righteous_Fire]

From McChrystal’s Mouth to Obama’s Ear​

When President Obama looks at the screen in the Situation Room on Wednesday, he will find a face he has not seen lately except in newspapers. There, via secure video from Kabul, will be Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, his commander in Afghanistan, explaining directly to the president for the first time why more troops are needed.

General McChrystal has not spoken with Mr. Obama since submitting his grim assessment of the war a month ago and has spoken with him only once in the 100 days since he took command of all American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The lack of direct communication has generated criticism and fueled suspicions of strains between the White House and Kabul.

Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, made a point of speaking with his Iraq commander roughly once a week at the height of the war there, a habit that forged a close working relationship between them even if it effectively bypassed the normal chain of command. Mr. Obama’s aides said he relied on General McChrystal’s advice but did not feel the need to duplicate Mr. Bush’s personal engagement with battlefield generals.

Instead, they said, he receives weekly memos from General McChrystal and meets weekly with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Aides said the president had thoroughly studied the general’s report, and they noted that it was Mr. Obama who approved firing the last commander and replacing him with General McChrystal.

“The president signed off on putting General McChrystal where he is,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday.

Does he regret it?

“No,” Mr. Gibbs said, “not at all.”

He later added, “Obviously the president has enormous respect for his service and values his opinion.”

General McChrystal has denied any rift with the White House, though his request for up to 40,000 more troops has created a political problem for a president whose liberal base is increasingly speaking out against the war. In an interview last week, General McChrystal emphasized that he had been given complete freedom to conduct his strategic review and troop request.

“It’s very important to have a serious debate on this,” he said.

The president and the commander do not know each other well. It was Mr. Gates who decided to change commanders and picked General McChrystal. Aides said Mr. Obama relied on Mr. Gates’s recommendation and did not interview General McChrystal before approving the appointment, but he did meet with him in the Oval Office over the summer.

On Wednesday in the video conference, the general will get to explain to Mr. Obama the ground conditions justifying his troop request. Among those with the president will be Mr. Gates, Admiral Mullen, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the Middle East commander.

The meeting, one of five scheduled for coming weeks, will review the situation on the ground, with new information presented in response to questions posed at Mr. Obama’s last session on Afghanistan, on Sept. 13. Later meetings will explore options, ranging from General McChrystal’s all-in approach to Mr. Biden’s scaled-back strategy focused on drone strikes and Special Forces operations.

To prepare, Mr. Obama met Tuesday with the new NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. General McChrystal’s troop request would require more forces from NATO, but Mr. Rasmussen was noncommittal.

“I agree with President Obama in his approach — strategy first, then resources,” Mr. Rasmussen told reporters in the Oval Office. “The first thing is not numbers. It is to find and fine-tune the right approach to implement the strategy already laid down.”

Mr. Obama, who has had little luck persuading the Europeans to deploy more combat forces, emphasized common ground. “We both agree that it is absolutely critical that we are successful in dismantling, disrupting, destroying the Al Qaeda network,” Mr. Obama said.

Questions about Mr. Obama’s relationship with General McChrystal have percolated for weeks, following reports that the administration delayed his troop request and kept him from testifying before Congress. “Someone has to explain what the strategy is,” said Frederick W. Kagan, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “I think it’s important for the American people to hear from the commander.”

Administration officials said they wanted to rethink the Afghanistan strategy before addressing troop levels and maintained it would be premature for the general to testify. Nonetheless, Mr. Gates, worried about the criticism, told General McChrystal last week to send him the troop request to take the heat off the commander.

Still, questions arose again after the general, responding to a reporter’s question, said on the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sunday that he had talked with the president once since assuming command in June.

Some supporters of the war said Mr. Obama had made a mistake not to consult more directly with his commander.

“I don’t think I can defend him for being out of touch with his commander,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. “He has other people who advise him. But there’s no one else with the feel on the ground that McChrystal has.”
​

NYT

 

[Righteous_Fire]

The Distance Between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’​

Over the next few weeks, Barack Obama must make the most difficult decision of his presidency to date: whether or not to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, as his commanding general there, Stanley McChrystal, has reportedly proposed.


This summer, Mr. Obama described the effort in Afghanistan as “a war of necessity.” In such a war, you do whatever you need to do to win. But now, as criticism mounts from those who argue that the war in Afghanistan cannot, in fact, be won with more troops and a better strategy, the President is having second thoughts.

A war of necessity is presumably one that is “fundamental to the defense of our people,” as Mr. Obama has said about Afghanistan. But if such a war is unwinnable, then perhaps you must reconsider your sense of its necessity and choose a more modest policy instead.

The conservative pundit George Will suggested as much in a recent column in which he argued for a reduced, rather than enhanced, American presence in Afghanistan. Mr. Will cited the testimony of George Kennan, the diplomat and scholar, to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Vietnam in 1966: “Our country should not be asked, and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country. ... This is not only not our business, but I don’t think we can do it successfully.”

Mr. Kennan’s astringent counsel has become piercingly relevant today, as Americans discover, time and again, their inability to shape the world as they would wish. Indeed, George W. Bush’s tenure looks in retrospect like an inadvertent proof of the wisdom of restraint, for his ambitious policy to transform the Middle East through regime change and democracy promotion largely ended in failure. The irony is that Mr. Obama, who as a candidate reassured conservative critics that he had read and absorbed the wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr, Mr. Kennan and other “realists,” is now himself accused of ignoring the limits of American power, like Mr. Bush or Lyndon Johnson, in his pursuit of victory in an unwinnable war.

The idea that American foreign policy must be founded upon a prudent recognition of the country’s capacities and limits, rather than its hopes and wishes, gained currency after World War II, possibly the last unequivocally necessary war in American history. At the war’s end, of course, the global pre-eminence of the United States was beyond question. But Mr. Kennan, Mr. Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau and others tried to imbue their sometimes-grandiose fellow-citizens with a rueful awareness of the intransigence of things.

“The problems of this world are deeper, more involved, and more stubborn than many of us realize,” Mr. Kennan said in a 1949 speech to the Academy of Political Science. “It is imperative, therefore, that we economize with our limited resources and that we apply them where we feel that we will do the most good.”

The realists won that debate. Mr. Kennan argued that a policy of confrontation with Stalin’s Russia, advocated by the more fervent anti-Communists, would be neither effective nor necessary; the Soviets, rather, could be checked by “intelligent long-range policies” designed to counter — to contain — their ambitions. Of course he lost in Vietnam, where the nation-building dreams of a generation of cold war liberals came to grief. The neoconservatives who came to power with George W. Bush were just as dismissive of the cautionary spirit of realism as the liberals of an earlier generation had been, and thought of themselves as conservative heirs of the idealistic tradition of Woodrow Wilson.

Now, as Americans debate whether or not to double down in Afghanistan, it’s striking how opinion is divided not according to left and right, or hawk and dove, but rather by the difference between the Wilsonian “what we must do” and the Kennanite “what we can do.”

Stephen Holmes, a left-leaning law professor at New York University, recently wrote a critique of General McChrystal’s plan that almost exactly echoed Will/Kennan: “Turning an illegitimate government into a legitimate one is simply beyond the capacities of foreigners, however wealthy or militarily unmatched.”

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a hawkish Democrat, has reportedly urged the president to devote less of the country’s energies to Afghanistan in order to apply them where they will do the most good — Pakistan. On the other hand, advocates of the proposed new strategy, like Peter Bergen, an expert on Islamic terrorism, invoke America’s “obligation” to the Afghan people and the strategic catastrophe that would come of ceding the country to the Taliban. One side reasons from the means, the other from the ends.

In the real world, of course, the distinction between these two very different dispositions is a fluid one. After all, in a true war of necessity, like World War II, a state and a people summon the capacity to do what must be done, no matter how difficult. So the objective question at the heart of the current debate is whether the battle for Afghanistan represents such a war, or whether — like those for Vietnam or Iraq — the problem that it presents can be solved by less bloody and costly means.

Americans broadly agree that their government must at all costs prevent major attacks on American soil by Al Qaeda. But there the consensus ends, and their questions begin: Do we need to sustain the rickety Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai in order to achieve that objective? If so, will a combination of overwhelming military force and an accompanying civilian surge not only repel the Taliban but make Afghanistan self-sustaining over the long term?

The leaked McChrystal plan argues both that we must and that we can, and that a more modest effort “will likely result in failure.” Critics like the military analyst Andrew Bacevich insist, by contrast, that we cannot and that we need not — that Americans can contain the threat of jihad through such measures as enhanced homeland defense. Others have argued for a middle course involving a smaller troop increase and less nation-building.

George Kennan was right about the cold war. But the question now is whether “containment” is also the right metaphor for Afghanistan, and for the threat of Islamic extremism. Containment (Mr. Kennan also used the imagery of chess and the pruning and pinning of trees) is a metaphor of geographical contiguity. Soviet ambitions could be checked here, conceded there. America’s adversary was not, Mr. Kennan insisted, a global force called Communism; it was Russia, an expansionist but conservative power. By that logic, the United States could lose in Vietnam with no lasting harm to itself.

But Al Qaeda, and jihadism generally, is a global force that seeks control of territory chiefly as a means to carry out its global strategy. It has no borders at which to be checked; its success or failure is measured in ideological rather than territorial terms — like Communism without Russia. Mr. Kennan often suggested that America’s own example of democratic prosperity was one of its most powerful weapons during the cold war; and plainly that is so today as well. That is one weapon with which the threat of Islamic extremism must be challenged; but it is only one.

The question boils down to this: How grave a price would Americans pay if Afghanistan were lost to the Taliban? Would this be a disaster, or merely, as with Vietnam, a terrible misfortune for which the United States could compensate through a contemporary version of Mr. Kennan’s “intelligent long-range policies”? If the latter, then how can Americans justify the immense cost in money and manpower, and the inevitable loss of life, attendant upon General McChrystal’s plan? How can they gamble so much on the corrupt, enfeebled and barely legitimate government of President Karzai? Why insist on seeking to do that which in all probability can not be done?

But what if it’s the former? What if the fall of Kabul would constitute not only an American abandonment of the Afghan people, but a major strategic and psychological triumph for Al Qaeda, and a recruiting tool of unparalleled value? Then the Kennanite calculus would no longer apply, and the fact that nobody can be completely confident that General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy will work would not be reason enough to forsake it.

In that case — and perhaps only in that case — Afghanistan really would be a war of necessity.
​

NYT

 

[Righteous_Fire]

Pakistan has forces, equipment for Taliban assault: U.S.​

Pakistan has mobilized enough forces and equipment to launch a long awaited ground offensive against Taliban militants in their South Waziristan stronghold near the Afghan border, U.S. defense officials said on Sunday.

Washington sees a concerted push by Pakistan to eliminate Taliban and al Qaeda "sanctuaries" in its territory as the key to turning around a faltering U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has cited shortages of helicopters, armored vehicles and precision weapons in putting off a Waziristan assault, but U.S. officials said they believed the army was sufficiently equipped to act.

"We would assess that they have plenty of force to do the job right now," said one of the officials, who has been closely monitoring Pakistani preparations for the offensive.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussing Pakistani military planning.

Pakistan has amassed troops around Waziristan, imposing a blockade to try to choke off Taliban supplies. Before an anticipated ground assault, the army has increased artillery fire.

Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said two divisions, of up to 28,000 soldiers, were in place, enough to take on an estimated 10,000 Taliban.

While declining to discuss force levels, a U.S. defense official described the Waziristan deployment as "significant" and said he did not expect any additional reinforcements.

"You might see some troops moving but they would probably be rotating. I think they're going to maintain about the same strength that they have there now," the official said.

Washington believes the Pakistanis will have to "clear and hold" the rugged, mountainous territory to crush militants loyal to the late Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Intelligence agencies believe his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, may have been killed soon thereafter in a firefight with rivals, leaving the Taliban in disarray.

Allied with al Qaeda, Mehsud's group has been fighting against Pakistani forces.

Appearing on CNN, White House National Security Adviser James Jones pointed to al Qaeda "sanctuaries" in Pakistan as "the problem, the next step" in the fight against the group.

Washington hopes expanding U.S.-Pakistani military ties "will lead to a campaign against all insurgents on that side of the border," Jones told CBS's "Face the Nation." He said such a "strategic shift ... will spill over into Afghanistan."

"I think they're determined to not make the mistake of withdrawing (from Swat) before the government forces are able to come in and backfill, and do the hold and build functions of counter-insurgency," the official said.

Jones said Washington was working closely with the Pakistani army "to try to help them get rid of the insurgency problem on their side of the border. If that happens, that's a strategic shift in the region."

U.S. officials acknowledge Pakistani troops need more armored vehicles and night-vision devises to protect themselves against improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the most lethal weapon used by the Taliban.

"But the lack of that equipment does not mean they cannot conduct successful military operations. It might mean that it would be a little more difficult, that the logistics would be a little trickier. But it doesn't mean they can't pull the trigger if they want," one of the defense officials said.

A U.S. military official said an assault by ground forces in Waziristan "can still be effective" despite some shortages, adding that the Pentagon was trying to free up helicopters and other equipment for Pakistan "as soon as possible".

The Pentagon has sought permission from Congress to transfer used U.S. military hardware from Iraq to the Pakistani army but U.S. lawmakers have so far balked at the request, citing concerns Islamabad could use the equipment against India.

Washington is also securing some equipment through third governments but the effort is moving slowly, officials said.
​

Reuters