NDAA Under Attack
Taylor
Published: Sunday 30 December 2012
Without defining terms such as “support” of al-Qaeda or “associated forces,” the law could be used to indefinitely imprison journalist and activists who have had contact with people that the U.S. deems a “terrorist” or a “part of a terrorist organization.”

With backing from civil liberties groups and journalists alike, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed in the Senate about a year ago, has come under attack in federal courts. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and NationofChange contributor, Chris Hedges, and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit challenging the terms of the law stating it “anti-constitutional” and against basic human rights.

 

The NDAA, which was passed in the wake of 9/11, allows the government to arrest and indefinitely detain any person, including U.S. citizens, considered to be a “terrorist” or a “threat” without trial or legal representation eliminating a person’s right of due process. The law also states in Section 1021(b)(2) that “affirmation of authority of the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” It goes on to define a “covered person” as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

 

Without defining terms such as “support” of al-Qaeda or “associated forces,” the law could be used to indefinitely imprison journalist and activists who have had contact with people that the U.S. deems a “terrorist” or a “part of a terrorist organization.” Hedges, who initially filed the lawsuit, and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg are concerned with the terms of the provision.

 

“The ...

Ending the US War in Afghanistan? It Depends on the Meaning of the Word ‘War’
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 30 November 2012
“This past weekend, it was reported that Obama and the generals at the Pentagon are planning on keeping at least 10,000 US troops stationed in Afghanistan indefinitely after that 2014 deadline for ending the war and withdrawing from that war-torn land.”

 

It is amazing to watch politicians trying to weasel their way around their promises. President Obama is providing us with a good illustration of the art.

During the latest presidential campaign and in the final televised debates, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were adamant in asserting that the US would be leaving Afghanistan and ending the war in that country at the end of 2014--a goal most Americans profoundly want. Biden, in a heated debate with his Republican opponent Paul Ryan, said the US would “absolutely” be “out” of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. Obama, a week later, said, “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security."

I’m reminded of President Clinton, a lawyer who, when pressed under oath by a special prosecutor hounding him over the details of whether he had had sex with a young White House intern, said that the answer hinged on “what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

This past weekend, it was reported that Obama and the generals at the Pentagon are planning on keeping at least 10,000 US troops stationed in Afghanistan indefinitely after that 2014 deadline for ending the war and withdrawing from that war-torn land.

Just to make it clear what we’re talking about here, 10,000 troops would represent an army half the size of the entire army of either the Netherlands or Denmark, two countries which currently have troops assigned to the NATO forces posted in Afghanistan as allies in the 12-year-long US war there.

The notion that these 10,000 post-2014 soldiers would just be “training” the Afghan military is simply absurd. Parris Island, the famed boot camp in South Carolina for the US Marine Corps, which boasts what ...

Broadwell Defended Petraeus’ Village Destruction Policy
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 16 November 2012
“The new Petraeus policy guidance allowed the destruction of villages in three districts of Kandahar province if the population did not tell U.S. forces where homemade bombs were hidden.”

 

Paula Broadwell, whose affair with Gen. David Petraeus brought his career to a sudden end last week, had sought to help defend his decision in 2010 to allow village destruction in Afghanistan that not only violated his own previous guidance but the international laws of war.

But her efforts had the opposite effect.

The new Petraeus policy guidance allowed the destruction of villages in three districts of Kandahar province if the population did not tell U.S. forces where homemade bombs were hidden.

In early January 2010, Broadwell went to visit the Combined Task Force I-320th in Kandahar to write a story justifying the decision to destroy the village of Tarok Kaloche and much of three other villages in its area of operations.

Ironically, it was Broadwell who introduced the complete razing of the village of Tarok Kalache in in Kandahar’s Arghandab Valley in October 2010 to the blogosphere. Dramatic photographs of the village before and after it was razed, which she had obtained from U.S. military sources, were published with her article in the military blog Best Defense Jan. 13, 2011.

The pictures and her article brought a highly critical response from blogger Joshua Foust, who is a specialist on Afghanistan.

Tarok Kalache was only one of many villages destroyed or nearly destroyed in an October 2010 offensive by U.S. forces in three districts of Kandahar Province, because the heavy concentrations of IEDs had made clearing the village by conventional forces too costly.

In the late summer and early fall, commanders in those districts had been ordered to clear the villages of Taliban presence, but they had taken heavy casualties from IEDs planted in and around the villages.

As commander of Combined Task Force I-320th, Lt. Col. David Flynn was responsible for several villages in the Arghandab valley, ...

Afghan Retrograde, With No Decisive End Projected
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 27 October 2012
Imran Khan on Drones
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 27 October 2012
The Alliance from Hell
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 19 October 2012
“At the heart of this acerbic relationship, however, is Pakistan’s arsenal of 110 nuclear bombs which, if the country were to disintegrate, could fall into the hands of Islamist militants, possibly from inside its own security establishment.”

 

 

The United States and Pakistan are by now a classic example of a dysfunctional nuclear family (with an emphasis on “nuclear”). While the two governments and their peoples become more suspicious and resentful of each other with every passing month, Washington and Islamabad are still locked in an awkward post-9/11 embrace that, at this juncture, neither can afford to let go of.

Washington is keeping Pakistan, with its collapsing economy and bloated military, afloat but also cripplingly dependent on its handouts and U.S.-sanctioned International Monetary Fund loans.  Meanwhile, CIA drones unilaterally strike its tribal borderlands.  Islamabad returns the favor. It holds Washington hostage over its Afghan War from which the Pentagon won’t be able to exit in an orderly fashion without its help. By blocking U.S. and NATO supply routes into Afghanistan (after a U.S. cross-border air strike had killed 24 Pakistani soldiers) from November 2011 until last July, Islamabad managed to ratchet up the cost of the war while underscoring its indispensability to the Obama administration.

At the heart of this acerbic relationship, however, is Pakistan’s arsenal of 110 nuclear bombs which, if the country were to disintegrate, could fall into the hands of Islamist militants, possibly from inside its own security establishment. As Barack Obama confided to his aides, this remains his worst foreign-policy nightmare, despite the decision of the U.S. Army to

Children under Attack in Pakistan and Afghanistan
Taylor
Published: Thursday 18 October 2012
The American media have been awash in coverage of the attack on the three Pakistani girls, and on the fate of the courageous girl’s education advocate, young Malala.

 

Six children were attacked in Afghanistan and Pakistan this past week. Three of them, teenaged girls on a school bus in Peshawar, in the tribal region of western Pakistan, were shot and gravely wounded by two Taliban gunmen who were after Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who has been bravely demanding the right of girls to an education. After taking a bullet to the head, and facing further death threats, she has been moved to a specialty hospital in Britain. Her two wounded classmates are being treated in Pakistan.

The other three children were not so lucky. They were killed Sunday in an aerial attack by a US aircraft in the the Nawa district of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, not so far from Pakistan. The attack, described by the military as a “precision strike,” was reportedly aimed at several Taliban fighters who were allegedly planting an IED in the road, but the strike also killed three children, Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8, all from one family, who were right nearby collecting dung for fuel.

Initially, as is its standard MO, the US denied that any children had been killed and insisted that the aircraft had targeted three “Taliban” fighters, and had successfully killed them. Only later, as evidence grew indesputable that the three children had also been killed, the US switched to its standard fallback position for atrocities in the Afghanistan War and its other wars: it announced that it was “investigating” the incident and said that it ...

The Maimed
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 9 October 2012
“We do not speak of war. War is captured only in the long, vacant stares, in the silences, in the trembling fingers, in the memories most of us keep buried deep within us, in the tears.”

 

Chris Hedges gave this talk Sunday night in New York City at a protest denouncing the 11th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. The event, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was led by Veterans for Peace.

Many of us who are here carry within us death. The smell of decayed and bloated corpses. The cries of the wounded. The shrieks of children. The sound of gunfire. The deafening blasts. The fear. The stench of cordite. The humiliation that comes when you surrender to terror and beg for life. The loss of comrades and friends. And then the aftermath. The long alienation. The numbness. The nightmares. The lack of sleep. The inability to connect to all living things, even to those we love the most. The regret. The repugnant lies mouthed around us about honor and heroism and glory. The absurdity. The waste. The futility.

It is only the maimed that finally know war. And we are the maimed. We are the broken and the lame. We ask for forgiveness. We seek redemption. We carry on our backs this awful cross of death, for the essence of war is death, and the weight of it digs into our shoulders and eats away at our souls. We drag it through life, up hills and down hills, along the roads, into the most intimate recesses of our lives. It never leaves us. Those who know us best know that there is something unspeakable and evil many of us harbor within us. This evil is intimate. It is personal. We do not speak its name. It is the evil of things done and things left undone. It is the evil of war.

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Today Marks the 11th Year Anniversary for the War in Afghanistan
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 8 October 2012
Vaccines Get Past Taliban, Finally
Taylor
Published: Thursday 27 September 2012
After four years, tens of thousands of children in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are receiving the polio vaccination.

 

Over thirty thousand children in the remote Tirah area of the Khyber Agency, part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Northern Pakistan, have waited four years for protection from polio, a viral disease that is sometimes referred to as ‘infantile paralysis’ due to its crippling effects on children.

A massive government and civil society effort through the month of September finally began to reverse the trend that had kept the children of Tirah, along with hundreds of thousands in the greater FATA area, under the shadow of polio.

Up until this year, children in all seven FATA agencies have been the worst victims of the Taliban’s ban on the oral polio vaccination (OPV), which the organisation claims was a ploy by the United States to render the recipients impotent and infertile, thus strangling the growth of the Muslim population.

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Boykinism
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 26 September 2012
“Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace.”

First came the hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.”  Then there was Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, grabbing headlines as he promoted“International Burn-a-Koran Day.”  Most recently, we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet with all the ensuing turmoil.

Throughout, the official U.S. position has remained fixed: the United States government condemns Islamophobia.  Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace.  Incidents suggesting otherwise are the work of a tiny minority -- whackos, hatemongers, and publicity-seekers.  Among Muslims from Benghazi to Islamabad, the argument has proven to be a tough sell.

And not without reason: although it might be comforting to dismiss anti-Islamic outbursts in the U.S. as the work of a few fanatics, the picture is actually far more complicated.  Those complications in turn help explain why religion, once considered a foreign policy asset, has in recent years become a net liability.

Let’s begin with a brief history lesson.  From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, when Communism provided the overarching ideological rationale for American globalism, religion figured prominently as a theme of U.S. foreign policy.  Communist antipathy toward religion helped invest the Cold War foreign policy consensus with its remarkable durability.  That Communists were godless sufficed to place them beyond the pale.  For many Americans, the Cold War derived its moral clarity from the conviction that here was a contest pitting the God-fearing ...

US Soldiers Found Guilty in Afghan Urination Case
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 25 September 2012
Where Obama and Romney Stand on the War in Afghanistan
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 24 September 2012
“Both candidates basically endorse a 2014 withdrawal, though Romney allows that conditions on the ground could change that.”

 

Despite trading barbs on the campaign trail, President Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney don’t differ that much on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Both candidates basically endorse a 2014 withdrawal, though Romney allows that conditions on the ground could change that. Both emphasize strengthening the Afghan military and governing institutions. Of course, during Obama’s time in office violence in Afghanistan has continued, and turning over more control to the Afghan government has proven difficult. We break down what the candidates have said on some of the war’s pressing issues.

Withdrawal Date

Obama famously campaigned in 2008 on his early and vocal opposition to the war in Iraq. By contrast, he dubbed Afghanistan “the War We Need to Win” and pledged to —and did— increase troop levels in Afghanistan. At the same time, he committed to fixed withdrawal dates.

In a December 2009 speech, Obama simultaneously announced a “surge” of 30,000 soldiers and a pledge to begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops by July 2011. A year later, the administration backed away from that date, and agreed to a framework with other NATO members to turn over control to Afghan forces by 2014.

In June of last year, Obama

Taliban Outflank U.S. War Strategy with Insider Attacks
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 21 September 2012
Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta sought to minimize the crisis in U.S. war strategy Tuesday by calling the inside attacks on NATO troops the “last gasp” of a Taliban insurgency that has been “unable to regain any of the territory that they have lost.”

 

Sharply increased attacks on U.S. and other NATO personnel by Afghan security forces, reflecting both infiltration of and Taliban influence on those forces, appear to have outflanked the U.S.-NATO command’s strategy for maintaining control of the insurgency.

The Taliban-instigated “insider attacks”, which have already killed 51 NATO troops in 2012 – already 45 percent more than in all of 2011 – have created such distrust of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and national police that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command has suspended joint operations by NATO forces with Afghan security units smaller than the 800-strong battalion of Kandak and vowed to limit them in the future.

ISAF had intended to carry out intensive partnering and advising of ANA and police units below battalion level through 2012 to get them ready to take responsibility for Afghan security. Now, however, that strategy appears to have been disrupted by the insider attacks, and Afghan military and civilian officials are seriously concerned.

Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta sought to minimize the crisis in U.S. war strategy Tuesday by calling the inside attacks on NATO troops the “last gasp” of a Taliban insurgency that has been “unable to regain any of the territory that they have lost.” The “last gasp” phrase recalls then Vice-President Dick Cheney’s infamous 2005 claim that the Iraqi insurgency was “in its last throes”.

But Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has no apparent personal stake in touting the existing strategy in Afghanistan, called the attacks “a very serious threat to the campaign” in an interview on Saturday.

“You can’t whitewash it,” said Dempsey. “We can’t convince ourselves that we just have ...

We Won, for Now
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 18 September 2012
The government has now lost four times in a litigation that has gone on almost nine months.

 

In January I sued President Barack Obama over Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, strip them of due process and hold them in military facilities, including offshore penal colonies. Last week, round one in the battle to strike down the onerous provision, one that saw me joined by six other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, ended in an unqualified victory for the public. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, who accepted every one of our challenges to the law, made her temporary injunction of the section permanent. In short, she declared the law unconstitutional.

Almost immediately after Judge Forrest ruled, the Obama administration challenged the decision. Government prosecutors called the opinion “unprecedented” and said that “the government has compelling arguments that it should be reversed.” The government added that it was an “extraordinary injunction of worldwide scope.” Government lawyers asked late Friday for an immediate stay of Forrest’s ban on the use of the military in domestic policing and on the empowering of the government to strip U.S. citizens of due process. The request for a stay was an attempt by the government to get the judge, pending appeal to a higher court, to grant it the right to continue to use the law. Forrest swiftly rejected the stay, setting in motion a fast-paced appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and possibly, if her ruling is upheld there, to the Supreme Court of the United States. The ...

British Base Attacked by Taliban
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 15 September 2012
Peace in Afghanistan, the Civil Society Way
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 7 September 2012
Analysts say there is an international side to these move marked by attempts by regional and international powers to obtain political ‘sovereignty’ over Afghanistan, and an internal one related to the legacy of the war, which is still contributing to instability.

 

 More than a decade after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is still in the midst of an irregular war. Talking peace is difficult because no one quite knows who to talk to.

The efforts gain significance coming ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting Sep. 14 on promoting a culture of peace. As officials talk, more ground-level efforts are being led by civil society groups.

New efforts have been made by officials to talk to anti-government groups, driven by the 2014 transition date when responsibility for security will be transferred fully to Afghan authorities, and when most of the international forces are due to leave Afghanistan.

Many social activists in Kabul see such efforts as unproductive. “I am not optimistic about peace,” Sima Samar, who heads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) tells IPS. “There is a negative competition on the negotiation issue, with too many players trying to fulfill their own specific agenda, and no clear mechanism regarding who should talk with whom, about what, for which purpose.

“Personally, I believe we are going to lose our time, unless we clearly specify the mechanisms through which we want to bring peace in the country and we clearly understand who are our enemies and who are our friends. Furthermore, we must address the conflict not only as a political issue, but also as a social one. Otherwise, we risk to get a short-time deal, but not a real, lasting reconciliation process.”

“The rhetorical clamor over talks about talks has led to a number of desperate and dangerous moves on the part of the Afghan government and its international allies to bring purported insurgent leaders to the negotiating table,” Robert Templer, the International Crisis Group’s Asia program director, said in March while presenting the Crisis Group report

U.S. Government Pressures Pakistan on Mumbai Terror Group
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 1 September 2012
“The suspects targeted include Sajid Mir, who was indicted by U.S. prosecutors last year for allegedly working with Pakistan's spy agency to direct the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai that killed 166 people, including six Americans.”

 

The Obama administration's decision to designate the leadership of Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba group as terrorists this week sends a pointed, if largely symbolic, message to a Pakistani government that remains unable or unwilling to crack down on the extremist organization.

On Thursday, the Treasury Department issued an order against eight Lashkar leaders that prohibits Americans from doing business with them and freezes any of their assets under U.S. jurisdiction. The suspects targeted include Sajid Mir, who was indicted by U.S. prosecutors last year for allegedly working with Pakistan's spy agency to direct the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

ProPublica has reported extensively on the attacks and the ties between Lashkar and Pakistani intelligence. The other Laskhar chiefs named Thursday by Treasury are accused of running finances, propaganda and military operations against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where Lashkar cooperates with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

"Today's action against LET (Lashkar-e-Taiba) is Treasury's most comprehensive to date against this group and includes individuals participating in all aspects of Lashkar's operations,” David S. Cohen, the undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement. "Attacking LET's facilitation networks is particularly important, since charitable donations LET raises in Pakistan — its primary revenue source — are used to fuel LET's military operations.”

The financial impact on Lashkar will be less than devastating, however. Although donations are a significant source of income, the militant group is also a longtime recipient of funds, arms, training and protection from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence ...

The Best Laid Plans
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 27 August 2012
By the end of 2014, U.S. “combat troops” are to be withdrawn, but left behind on the giant bases the Pentagon has built will be thousands of U.S. trainers and advisers, as well as special operations forces to go after al-Qaeda remnants (and other “militants”), and undoubtedly the air power to back them all up.

In the wake of several deaths among its contingent of troops in a previously peaceful province in Afghanistan, New Zealand (like France and South Korea) is now expediting the departure of its 140 soldiers.  That’s not exactly headline-making news here in the U.S.  If you’re an American, you probably didn’t even know that New Zealand was playing a small part in our Afghan War.  In fact, you may hardly have known about the part Americans are playing in a war that, over the last decade-plus, has repeatedly been labeled “the forgotten war.”

Still, maybe it’s time to take notice.  Maybe the flight of those Kiwis should be thought of as a small omen, even if they are departing as decorously, quietly, and flightlessly as possible.  Because here’s the thing: once the November election is over, “expedited departure” could well become an American term and the U.S., as it slips ignominiously out of Afghanistan, could turn out to be the New Zealand of superpowers.

You undoubtedly know the phrase: the best laid plans of mice and men.  It couldn’t be more apt when it comes to the American project in Afghanistan.  Washington’s plans have indeed been carefully drawn up.  By the end of 2014, U.S. “combat troops” are to be withdrawn, but

Schoolgirls Beat Taliban
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 30 July 2012
“We need more investment to educate women and thwart the Taliban’s attempts of scaring women away from getting educated.”

 

 Far from fears that female education is on the decline after the Taliban campaign against girls’ schools, female students outclassed their male counterparts in the secondary school examination for 2012.

And participation itself was a success. In all 265,000 students sat the examinations, including 115,343 girls. The results were declared over a ten-day period earlier this month.

The results have come as a boost to authorities in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and nearby Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) regions of north Pakistan. “It’s great given the Taliban’s attitude towards female education,” KP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told IPS.

“About 700 schools were damaged by miscreants in the last five years in KP and FATA. Despite that girls have got top positions in the secondary school certificate (SSC) examination.” The top 15 positions went to girls. This meant an outright rejection of Taliban calls against women education, Hussain said.

In militancy-riddled Malakand division in KP, girls grabbed 10 of the 20 top positions. Malakand saw destruction of 181 schools from 2007 to 2009, among them 118 were girls’ schools.

“For one-and-a-half years I sat idle due to Taliban’s opposition to female education but since their defeat in 2009, I have been studying vigorously,” Farzana Bibi, who got second place in the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) in Swat, one of the seven districts of Malakand division, told IPS over telephone. “Now, I intend to become a doctor and serve the women patients in my area.” The BISE is the examining body conducting the SSC examination.

The results are dramatic given that the literacy rate for women in KP is 17 percent, and in FATA 43 percent, compared to the national Pakistani average of 68 ...

What’s Stopping Women?
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 20 July 2012
“I expected that many men of that younger generation would also have strong reactions, given how many of them are trying to figure out how to be with their children, support their wives’ careers, and pursue their own plans.”

 

When I wrote the cover article of the July/August issue of The Atlantic, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” I expected a hostile reaction from many American career women of my generation and older, and positive reactions from women aged roughly 25-35. I expected that many men of that younger generation would also have strong reactions, given how many of them are trying to figure out how to be with their children, support their wives’ careers, and pursue their own plans.

 

I also expected to hear from business representatives about whether my proposed solutions – greater workplace flexibility, ending the culture of face-time and “time machismo,” and allowing parents who have been out of the workforce or working part-time to compete equally for top jobs once they re-enter – were feasible or utopian.

 

What I did not expect was the speed and scale of the reaction – almost a million readers within a week and far too many written responses and TV, radio, and blog debates for me to follow – and its global scope. I have conducted interviews with journalists in Britain, Germany, Norway, India, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, and Brazil; and articles about the piece have been published in France, Ireland, Italy, Bolivia, Jamaica, Vietnam, Israel, Lebanon, Canada, and many other countries.

 

Reactions differ across countries, of course. Indeed, in many ways, the article is a litmus test of where individual countries are in their own evolution toward full equality for men and women. India and Britain, for example, have had strong women prime ministers in Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, but now must grapple with the ...

More U.S. Folly in Afghanistan
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 8 July 2012
When the United States finally tired of the corruption and waste of Vietnam, we pulled out our props, only to witness the unviability of our client state without massive U.S. aid.

Two New York Times stories this week capture the persistence of U.S. folly in Afghanistan. The first highlights the persistence of corruption in Afghanistan and our country's key role in funding it. The second showcases the enormous expense of providing U.S. air power as a "force multiplier" to prevent the Taliban and other anti-coalition forces from prevailing. The subtext of both articles is that without massive funding and aid from the United States, and without profligate expenditure of money and munitions by American air assets, the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai would almost certainly collapse.

Haven't we seen this before? Think Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The United States spent enormous sums of money, and used air power in even more profligate ways, to prop up the corrupt and ultimately illegitimate government of South Vietnam. Prodigious expenditures of money fed the corruption of Vietnamese officials while profligate expenditure of munitions kept the North Vietnamese enemy from prevailing (as in our ability to thwart the North Vietnamese Army's Spring Offensive of 1972), even as a suspect South Vietnamese army (ARVN) became dependent on that same U.S. air power.

When the United States finally tired of the corruption and waste of Vietnam, we pulled out our props, only to witness the unviability of our client state without massive U.S. aid.

What happens when we finally tire of Afghanistan? Though we won't witness a massive conventional military assault that ended in the chaos of Saigon in 1975, it is likely that the corrupt government of Karzai and the

Taliban Assault Leaves 18 Civilians Dead
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 22 June 2012
It Couldn’t Happen Here, it Does Happen There
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 18 June 2012
“The gunmen promptly barricaded themselves inside with their hostages, including women and small children, and refused to let anyone leave.”

 

"Do you do this in the United States? There is police action every day in the United States... They don't call in airplanes to bomb the place." -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai denouncing U.S. air strikes on homes in his country, June 12, 2012

It was almost closing time when the siege began at a small Wells Fargo Bank branch in a suburb of San Diego, and it was a nightmare.  The three gunmen entered with the intent to rob, but as they herded the 18 customers and bank employees toward a back room, they were spotted by a pedestrian outside who promptly called 911.  Within minutes, police cars were pulling up, the bank was surrounded, and back-up was being called in from neighboring communities.  The gunmen promptly barricaded themselves inside with their hostages, including women and small children, and refused to let anyone leave.

The police called on the gunmen to surrender, but before negotiations could even begin, shots were fired from within the bank, wounding a police officer.  The events that followed -- now known to everyone, thanks to 24/7 news coverage -- shocked the nation.  Declaring the bank robbers “terrorist suspects,” the police requested air support from the Pentagon and, soon after, an F-15 from Vandenberg Air Force Base dropped two GBU-38 bombs on the bank, leaving the building a pile of rubble.

All three gunmen died.  Initially, a Pentagon spokesman, who took over messaging from the local police, insisted that “the incident” had ended “successfully” and that all the dead were “suspected terrorists.”  The Pentagon press office issued a statement on other casualties, noting only that, “while conducting a ...

World Leaders to Plan for Afghanistan’s Future
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 20 May 2012
The Political Drones Get Louder
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 18 May 2012
“We believe Drone strikes are illegal according to international law because they kill innocent people,” Imran Khan told IPS from Islamabad.

The Tehreek Insaf party led by former Pakistani cricket captain Imran Khan first stepped up the political heat against the Drones. Civil society groups, including Pakistani lawyers, and now also groups from the U.S. and Britain have joined the campaign. 

 


"We believe Drone strikes are illegal according to international law because they kill innocent people," Imran Khan told IPS from Islamabad. "The U.S. or any other country has no right to violate frontiers of an independent state." 


The cricketer-turned-politician blames the Pakistani government for its "indifference" to the killing of innocent tribesmen in the Drone attacks. "They have sold out our sovereignty to our enemies." 


"A Drone attack killed the first ever head of outlawed Tehreek Taliban, Neik Mohammad Wazir in 2004," Prof Ziaullah at the Government College in Charsadda, one of 25 districts of the border state Khyber Pakhtunkhwa told IPS. "But lately attacks have assumed political dimensions largely due to Khan’s protests." 


Those began on Apr. 23 last year when Tehreek Insaf activists blocked the road to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) vehicles in Hayatabad town for two days. U.S.-led NATO attacks on two checkpoints in Salala Mohmand Agency earlier this year which killed 28 soldiers sparked off mass protests, forcing the government to halt NATO supplies to Afghanistan through Pakistan. 


On Mar. 13, the National Assembly passed a resolution against Drone strikes in the border areas. Civil society activists are now pressuring the Pakistani government to do more to block such attacks. 


The Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), a Pakistan based legal charity, filed two constitutional petitions last week before the Peshawar High Court against the Federation of Pakistan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ...

Taking Refuge in Hell Camp
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 22 April 2012
“One of seven agencies that make up FATA, Khyber Agency has been riddled with militancy for the past two years, prompting the government to impose daily curfews in an effort to crush the Taliban in a military operation.”

The children fetch water from nearby makeshift tanks, which isn’t drinkable, he says. Rahim and his family are not the lone sufferers in sprawling Jallozai camp, home to thousands just like him who were uprooted by a military campaign against the Taliban in the violence-wracked Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). 


One of seven agencies that make up FATA, Khyber Agency has been riddled with militancy for the past two years, prompting the government to impose daily curfews in an effort to crush the Taliban in a military operation. 


The majority of FATA’s population of 10 million people has been caught in the incessant crossfire between the warring sides. 


In early March, the Pakistan army intensified action and asked the residents of Bara tehsil, one of three administrative clusters in Khyber Agency that lies on the border with Afghanistan, to shift to the camp. 


"But the camp doesn’t have facilities. People are becoming sick from the bad food provided to us. The weather is becoming too hot and the children are at the receiving end (of the misery)," said Abdul Ghafoor, an elderly resident of the camp who arrived with a family of 12. 


Ghafoor, a shopkeeper by profession, is sick of the camp’s management. "There’s nobody to listen to our requests for water and electricity. Even the United Nations agencies have shut their eyes to our needs," he told IPS. 


Concerned for the future of the younger generation, he lamented the fact that children who grow up in an environment of perpetual violence will become "monsters" if immediate action is not taken. 


The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) has registered 46,331 displaced families or 201,070 homeless individuals since Mar. 17. 


"Some 12,646 families, ...

Photos of Soldiers With Afghan Corpses the Latest Outrage for U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 19 April 2012

We get reaction to two photographs published by the Los Angeles Times that show U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses and body parts of dead Afghans. "I think (the photos) shock us actually more than they shock Afghans," says journalist Anand Gopal. "From the Afghan perspective, we’ve had troops urinating on corpses, a massacre of 17 civilians, air strikes, night raids, troops cutting off fingers for sport, and so, for Afghans, this is part and parcel of the experience of being in war." Meanwhile, several NATO allies have promised to underwrite Afghanistan’s armed forces after foreign troops depart. The United States and other nations plan to retreat from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and hand the security issue over to Afghan security forces. "If we don’t address the agreements that the U.S. and Australian governments and other governments are making for a long-term war strategy in Afghanistan, we are heading for an increase in violence in this part of the world … more serious than the Kabul attacks," says Hakim, coordinator for Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Transcript:

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Los Angeles Times has published two photographs that show U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses and body parts of dead Afghans. In one ...

Operations in Afghan War Plan Revealed
Amir Gholi
Published: Thursday 12 April 2012
U.S.-Led Talks with Taliban Going Nowhere, Report Says
Amir Gholi
Published: Monday 26 March 2012
The Taliban announced two weeks ago that it was suspending preliminary talks with the U.S. because of what they described as “the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans.”

A prominent international think tank has warned that U.S.-led talks with the Taliban are going nowhere and has called for the United Nations to take the lead in peace negotiations to prevent Afghanistan sliding into civil war.

In a report released Sunday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said that current negotiations were unlikely to achieve a sustainable peace because they were dominated by the U.S. and hampered by a "half-hearted and haphazard" approach by the Afghan government.

"Far from being Afghan-led, the negotiating agenda has been dominated by Washington's desire to obtain a decent interval between the planned U.S. troop drawdown and the possibility of another bloody chapter in the conflict," said the report.

The ICG said that the result thus far of international involvement in negotiations had been to embolden "spoilers" like insurgents, government officials and war profiteers, "who now recognize that the international community's most urgent priority is to exit Afghanistan with or without a settlement."

Regional player like Pakistan and Iran had also significantly hindered talks, the report said.

Candace Rondeaux, senior Afghanistan analyst with the ICG and one of the report's authors, told McClatchy that time was running out to get peace talks back on track. The last few months had seen efforts led by the U.S. to negotiate with the Taliban "faltering left and right," Rondeaux said.

The Taliban announced two weeks ago that it was suspending preliminary talks with the U.S. because of what they described as "the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans."

 

"If we continue along the same path, under the same rubric, with the U.S. in the lead on negotiations and the Afghan government trailing behind, this could be extremely ...

The Lost-Cause War in Afghanistan
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 17 March 2012
“The U.S. war in Afghanistan was lost a long time ago.”

In the wake of the lethal rampage by a U.S. sergeant who killed 16 Afghans in the early hours of March 11, the Taliban have put a halt to talks with the Americans and President Hamid Karzai, who has demanded that NATO troops pull out of the villages and return to their camps.

As with the burning of the Qurans last month, the Pentagon has been groveling in contrition. The acting commander of the U.S.-led coalition, Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, expressed "deep regret and sorrow at this appalling incident. 'I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts, but they were in no way part of authorized ... military activity.'"

Afghans could be forgiven for suffering "massacre fatigue," precisely because "authorized military activity" by U.S. troops and Special Forces in Afghanistan has long since degenerated into a lethal culture of assassination, "revenge" sorties, desecration of bodies, and the harvesting of trophies such as severed fingers, ears and the like. In the recent past, Afghans have also been able to study photographs of laughing American soldiers pissing on the bodies of dead Afghans.

Back in April of 2010, after furiously denying responsibility for the deaths of three Afghan women in a messed-up Special Forces night-time raid, the U.S. commander in Kabul admitted U.S. forces had indeed ...

Taliban Suspend Talks with U.S.; Karzai Calls for Faster Transition
Amir Gholi
Published: Thursday 15 March 2012
“U.S. officials have held secret talks with the Taliban for months, aiming to help broker an agreement with Karzai’s government.”

The Taliban said Thursday that they had suspended negotiations with the United States and Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on international troops to withdraw from villages in the latest apparent fallout from a U.S. soldier’s alleged murder of 16 Afghan villagers.

A statement from Karzai’s office said that he had asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was visiting Afghanistan, to keep international troops in their bases. Karzai also called for transferring security responsibilities from U.S.-led coalition forces to Afghan soldiers and police by 2013, a year earlier than currently scheduled.

The moves had already been part of the Pentagon’s transition plan for Afghanistan, but the statements by Karzai would appear to put more pressure on the Obama administration to wind down the war.

More damaging to the administration’s efforts, perhaps, was the statement by the Taliban saying that it had suspended the opening of its office in the Gulf state of Qatar _ which U.S. officials had described as a breakthrough on the way to a political settlement to the conflict _ because the Americans were “shaky, erratic and vague.”

U.S. officials have held secret talks with the Taliban for months, aiming to help broker an agreement with Karzai’s government, but the insurgent group said that an American representative in their most recent meeting had backtracked on past promises and presented “a list of conditions…which were not acceptable.”

“The Islamic Emirate has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the Americans clarify their stance on the issues concerned,” the statement said.

It is widely believed that the Taliban are seeking the release of prisoners in American custody. The statement said that the U.S. broke its promises by portraying the Taliban as having commenced multilateral talks with Kabul, while the ...

Speaking Truth About Power
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 14 March 2012
“How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?”

A willingness to speak truth to power is an essential civic virtue for the well-being of a democratic-republic. Equally virtuous and essential, however, are those rare citizens willing to risk their personal well-being by standing up to speak truth about power.

Meet Lt. Col. Danny Davis, a 48-year-old career Army man who fought in both the first and second Iraq wars and has had two year-long deployments in the Afghanistan war. Over the years, this soldier had often seen top commanders try to put a positive light on a negative military situation, but in our ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan, Davis saw that the candor gap had become a chasm, with the brass going from spin to outright lies.

So, this time, he wasn't going to be quiet about it. Davis became a whistleblower, daring even to call out Gen. David Petraeus, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who now heads the CIA. Last year, Petraeus had told Congress that the Afghan Taliban's momentum had been "arrested," that our progress there was "significant," and that the mission was "on the right azimuth," to succeed.

That ...

More Bad News on the Afghan Front
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 13 March 2012
“A new Washington Post/ABC public opinion poll released Sunday found that 60 percent of respondents now believe the Afghan war was not worth fighting, close to an all-time high in the decade-long war.”

While U.S. officials insisted their counterinsurgency strategy is still working, Sunday's pre-dawn massacre by a U.S. staff sergeant of 16 people, including nine children, in their homes in Kandahar province has dealt yet another body blow to Washington's hopes to sustain a significant military presence in Afghanistan after 2014.
 

The massacre was perpetrated by one individual acting entirely on his own, the Pentagon said Monday. But it was the latest in a series of recent incidents, including the dissemination on the Internet of a video showing four U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of dead Afghans and the apparently inadvertent burning of copies of the Quran outside a U.S. military base, that have stoked popular outrage against U.S. and other foreign troops. 
 

It also took place amid indications that the U.S. electorate and Congress are increasingly disillusioned with what last year had already become the longest war in U.S. history. 
 

A new Washington Post/ABC public opinion poll released Sunday found that 60 percent of respondents now believe the Afghan war was not worth fighting, close to an all-time high in the decade-long war. 
 

Moreover, only 30 percent of respondents said they believed most Afghans support U.S. and NATO efforts in their country; 55 percent said they believed that most Afghans oppose the foreign presence. 
 

The massacre also took place just after Washington and the government of President Hamid Karzai had finally agreed on one of two key points of contention that have stood in the way of the signing of a strategic partnership agreement that would permit Washington to retain a substantial military advisory force and possibly access to several key bases after 2014, the deadline by which foreign combat troops are to have left Afghanistan. 
 

The two sides reached an agreement last week on transferring ...

Green on Blue
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 8 March 2012
“Civilians live in dread of the legacy of the Obama strategy: the presence of half a million gunmen on the loose, in search of a sponsoring khan.”

Recent weeks have brought yet another sad chance to watch badly laid plans in Afghanistan go haywire.  In three separate incidents, allies, most from the Afghan National Army (ANA), allegedly murdered six Americans -- two of them officers in the high-security sanctum of Kabul’s Interior Ministry.  Marine General John R. Allen, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, even briefly withdrew NATO advisors and trainers from all government ministries for their own protection.

Trained in their hundreds of thousands over the past 11 years by a horde of dodgy private security contractors, as well as U.S. and NATO troops, the Afghan National Army is supposed to replace coalition forces any day now and defend its own country.

This policy has been the apex of Washington’s Plan A for some time now.  There is no Plan B.

But what to make of the murders in the Ministry?  An AP article 

Blown Away
Anna Gilliam
Published: Wednesday 29 February 2012
“How the U.S. fanned the flames in Afghanistan”

Is it all over but the (anti-American) shouting -- and the killing?  Are the exits finally coming into view?

Sometimes, in a moment, the fog lifts, the clouds shift, and you can finally see the landscape ahead with startling clarity.  In Afghanistan, Washington may be reaching that moment in a state of panic, horror, and confusion.  Even as an anxious U.S. commander withdrew American and NATO advisors from Afghan ministries around Kabul last weekend -- approximately 300, military spokesman James Williams tells TomDispatch -- the ability of American soldiers to remain on giant fortified bases eating pizza and fried chicken into the distant future is not in doubt. 

No set of Taliban guerrillas, suicide bombers, or armed Afghan “allies” turning their guns on their American “brothers” can alter that -- not as long as Washington is ready to bring the necessary supplies into semi-blockaded Afghanistan at staggering cost.  But sometimes that’s the least of the matter, not the essence of it.  So if you’re in a mood to mark your calendars, late February 2012 may be the moment when the end game for America’s second Afghan War, launched in October 2001, was initially glimpsed. 

Amid the reportage about the recent explosion of Afghan anger over the torching of Korans in a burn pit at Bagram Air Base, there was a tiny news item that caught the spirit of the moment.  As anti-American protests (and the deaths of protestors) ...

Seven U.S. Soldiers Wounded by Grenade During Afghanistan Protest
Anna Gilliam
Published: Monday 27 February 2012
“Qatra said a Taliban insurgent in the crowd threw the grenade that injured the seven Americans, whom he described as trainers.”

Seven U.S. soldiers were wounded Sunday when an insurgent threw a grenade into their base in the northeastern province of Kunduz, local officials said.

The attack took place during a protest in the Imam Sahib district against the burning last week of copies of the Quran and other religious material by U.S. military personnel at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.

The burnings have led to a weeklong series of demonstrations across Afghanistan. Clashes between protesters and Afghan security forces have left at least 28 dead and more than 100 injured.

Sunday's attack took place after a large crowd attacked a police station, throwing stones at officers before marching on the U.S. base, said Samiullah Qatra, the police chief of Kunduz. Qatra said a Taliban insurgent in the crowd threw the grenade that injured the seven Americans, whom he described as trainers.

Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, the police spokesman for Kunduz province, told McClatchy that the injured U.S. personnel were special forces soldiers involved in training Afghan local police.

Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, confirmed there was an explosion outside an International Security Assistance Force base in northern Afghanistan. He refused to say if there had been casualties.

The attack at Kunduz came a day after two American officers were shot dead inside an Afghan Interior Ministry compound in Kabul. U.S. Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, ordered ISAF personnel removed from government ministries in and around the capital.

The killings have renewed concern in the U.S.-led coalition about the reliability of Afghan security forces, which will assume control of Afghanistan when coalition combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

They follow other similar incidents, including the killing of four French soldiers in Kapisa province last month, which prompted France to announce ...

Army Officer’s Leaked Report Rips Afghan War Success Story
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 12 February 2012
Both in his longer report and in an article for Armed Forces Journal published online Feb. 5, Davis recounts his experience at an Afghan National Police station in Kunar province in January 2011.

An analysis by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, which the U.S. Army has not approved for public release but has leaked to Rolling Stone magazine, provides the most authoritative refutation thus far of the official military narrative of success in the Afghanistan War since the troop surge began in early 2010.

In the 84-page unclassified report, Davis, who returned last fall after his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, attacks the credibility of claims by senior military leaders that the U.S.-NATO war strategy has succeeded in weakening the Taliban insurgent forces and in building Afghan security forces capable of taking primary responsibility for security in the future.

The report, which Davis had submitted to the Army in January for clearance to make it public, was posted on the website of Rolling Stone magazine by journalist Michael Hastings Friday. In a blog for the magazine, Hastings reported that "officials familiar with the situation" had said the Pentagon was "refusing" to release the report, but that it had been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House.

Hastings wrote that he had obtained it from a U.S. government official.

Contacted by IPS Friday, Davis would not comment on the publication of the report or its contents.

Writing that he is "no Wikileaks guy Part II", Davis reveals no classified information in the report. But he has given a classified version of the report, which cites and quotes from dozens of classified documents, to several members of the House and Senate, including both Democrats and Republicans.

"If the public had access to the classified reports," Davis writes, "they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is true behind the scenes."

Davis is in a unique position to assess the real ...

Taliban Responsible for 77% of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan, U.N. Says
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 5 February 2012
The U.N. report said the record loss of life of Afghan children, women and men “resulted from changes in the tactics of anti-government elements and changes in the effects of tactics of parties to the conflict.”

The Taliban and other insurgent groups were responsible for nearly 80 percent of the civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan last year, said a U.N. report released Saturday.

The report said the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented 3,021 civilian deaths in the conflict in 2011 — up 8 percent from 2010, which saw 2,790 deaths, and an increase of 25 percent from 2009, when 2,412 civilians were killed.

The U.N. said "anti-government elements" — shorthand for the Taliban and other insurgent groups — were responsible for 2,332, or 77 percent, of conflict-related deaths in 2011, up 14 percent from 2010.

The report said 410 civilian deaths, or 14 percent of the 2011 total, were caused by operations by "pro-government forces," or Afghan, U.S. and international security forces — a drop of 4 percent from 2010. A further 279 deaths, or 9 percent of civilian fatalities, could not be blamed on any side.

A leading Afghan politician and women's rights activist labeled Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar a hypocrite and called his followers terrorists in the wake of the report.

"Civilian casualties by any side ...

Al Qaida Still Holding Elderly American Hostage in Pakistan
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 26 January 2012
“Militants and security analysts said Weinstein might be traded for al Qaida members who were in Pakistani custody, or used as a human shield to prevent security forces from striking its camps in North Waziristan.”

A kidnapped 70-year-old American aid contractor is alive and in good health, being held by a Pakistani al Qaida affiliate that's likely to use him as a bargaining chip, according to militants, security officials and analysts.

Warren Weinstein, who was kidnapped in August from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, is in the custody of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants in North Waziristan, a ranking Pakistani militant told McClatchy. The militant said he'd seen Weinstein last month and at that point "his health was fine."

"He is being provided all available medical treatment, including regular checkups by a doctor and the medicines prescribed for him before he was plucked," the militant, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said last week in an interview.

Little has been revealed publicly about Weinstein's status since December, when Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of al Qaida, said in a video that the terrorist network was holding him. Weinstein, who's from Rockville, Md., had heart surgery in 2009 and suffers from high blood pressure and asthma.

Weinstein had spent several years as the Pakistan country manager for J.E. Austin Associates, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Reportedly in ill health, he'd packed his bags and was within hours of leaving Pakistan for good on Aug. 13 when militants kidnapped him from his home in the affluent suburb of Model Town.

Mohammed Imran, a security analyst in Islamabad who maintains contact with Pakistani militant groups, said he'd received messages from militants indicating that Weinstein's captors had no plans to harm him, and that he was being provided with medical care.

"Al Qaida won't kill Weinstein. It will keep him as healthy as is possible in the circumstances, and use him as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Pakistani authorities," he ...

Afghanistan’s Poppy War
Anna Gilliam
Published: Monday 23 January 2012
“International efforts to stamp out opium production are failing.”

For a symbol of how America's decade-long war is going in faraway Afghanistan, look at the beautiful fields of red poppies flowering so bountifully there. Unfortunately, that bounty symbolizes the failure of an ambitious Western initiative against Taliban forces.

Poppies are the raw ingredient for making opium, which can be transformed into heroin. And Afghanistan produces nearly 90 percent of the world's opium. Illicit flower power fuels the Taliban with the money to buy weapons, train fighters, bribe Afghan officials, and otherwise make war.

So the West's strategy has included an all-out effort to eradicate poppy production, both by banning the crop and by helping Afghanistan's impoverished sharecroppers switch to such alternatives as wheat and cotton. That may sound like a good strategy. But it isn't working.

Many poppy growers didn't want to give up this cash crop, so they moved to a desert region under Taliban control that turns out to be remarkably good for cultivating poppies. Meanwhile, those raising wheat and cotton are producing good crops, but the Western development specialists forgot to focus on the key factor in convincing people to switch: profit.

Afghan cotton isn't competitive with the cheaper Pakistani cotton exports. Plus, the lone cotton mill in the region often breaks down and is notoriously slow in paying farmers.

More farmers are going into the desert. As one put it, "there aren't any other crops where we can make enough money to fill our children's stomachs." The value of the opium Afghanistan produced in 2011 soared 133 percent from a year earlier, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Trying to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan ...

French Troop Deaths Spark Worry Over Afghan Training Mission
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 21 January 2012
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, as they often do in such instances, though it isn't always clear that the Islamist insurgent group has indeed infiltrated the Afghan security forces.

The killings of four French troops Friday by an Afghan soldier they were training has renewed concerns — a decade into the training mission — that Afghans are growing increasingly disdainful of the U.S.-led coalition forces ostensibly there to help them and are striking back.

The American military has conceded that troop deaths at the hands of Afghans have climbed in the last six months but has refused to release statistics. The Pentagon hasn't suggested any renewed security measures for American troops training their Afghan counterparts, a cornerstone of the U.S. strategy to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014.

"We believe that they do appear to be increasing in frequency in recent months. What we can't discern is a cause for that," Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday.

"We're certainly concerned about these incidents, and officials are taking a look at it," he said. "But we also don't believe that this is an endemic or systemic problem. The great majority of partnered operations, and frankly most of our operations are partnered, are done successfully, smoothly, efficiently."

Coalition partners appear more concerned. The French suspended their mission in Afghanistan on Friday after the deaths of their soldiers and ...

Blood on Whose Hands?
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 21 January 2012
“Bradley Manning, Washington, and the Blood of Civilians.”

Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about... civilian war casualties?  What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc.

A couple hundred thousand dead civilians have a way of making such noble ideals seem like dollar-store tinsel.  And so, throughout our decade-long foreign policy debacle in the Greater Middle East, we in the U.S. have generally agreed that no one shall commit the gaucherie of dwelling on (and “dwelling on” = fleetingly mentioned) civilian casualties. Washington elites may squabble over some things, but as for foreigners killed by our numerous wars, our Beltway crew adheres to a sullen code of omertà.

Club rules do, however, permit one loophole: Washington officials may bemoan the nightmare of civilian casualties -- but only if they can be pinned on a 24-year-old Army private first class named Bradley Manning.

Pfc. Manning, you will remember, is the young soldier who is soon to be court-martialed for passing some 750,000 military and diplomatic documents, a large chunk of them classified, to the website WikiLeaks.  Among those leaks, there was indeed some serious stuff about how Americans dealt with civilians in invaded countries.  For instance, the documents revealed that the U.S. military, then the occupying force in Iraq, did little or nothing to prevent Iraqi authorities ...

Analysts: U.S., Pakistan Collaborating Again on Drone Strikes
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 17 January 2012
“Security analysts said the selective targeting suggested that Pakistani security authorities had sanctioned the strikes, despite a Foreign Ministry statement Thursday that drone intrusions into Pakistan’s airspace ‘cannot be condoned.’”

Two apparent U.S. drone attacks last week on militant targets in Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan very likely signal the resumption of joint counterintelligence operations by the CIA and Pakistan's military spy agency, security analysts here said Monday.

The reported strikes would be the first in Pakistan since U.S.-led NATO forces killed 25 Pakistani soldiers in a "friendly fire" incident on the border in November, which drove relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low.

News reports over the weekend quoted anonymous Pakistani military officials as saying that radio chatter among militants suggested that the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, was among four insurgents who were killed Thursday in the second of the drone strikes in the North Waziristan tribal area.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban denied Mahsud's death, however, saying he wasn't in the area at the time. Members of rival militant factions told McClatchy that they'd received no news of his death.

"The signs are that the U.S. has revisited intelligence cooperation with Pakistan, and the two sides have returned to the early stages, when drone attacks were initiated under a covert joint mandate," said Simbal Khan, the director of research at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, a research center funded by Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.

In the first of the strikes, last Tuesday, four al Qaida fighters from the gas-rich central Asian republic of Turkmenistan were killed, analysts said.

However, the drones didn't target the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction that draws hundreds of fighters from Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the top militant commander in North Waziristan.

Security analysts said the selective targeting suggested that Pakistani security authorities had sanctioned the strikes, despite a Foreign Ministry statement Thursday that drone intrusions into ...

Afghanistan Forever. And Ever. And Ever.
Brian Walker
Published: Wednesday 11 January 2012
“Pentagon war hawks now say they want to negotiate with Karzai to keep thousands of American forces there (as well as billions more of our tax dollars) beyond Obama's deadline.”

 

Oh, to be in Afghanistan again, when the poppies are in bloom!

If you need a symbol of how America's decade-long war is going in this faraway land, look no farther than the beautiful fields of red poppies flowering so bountifully there. Unfortunately, that bounty symbolizes a failure of an ambitious Western initiative against the Taliban forces.

Innocent little poppies are the raw material for producing opium — and the poppy crop in just one Afghanistan province supplies more than 40 percent of the world's opium trade. In turn, that illicit flower power fuels the Taliban with tens of millions of dollars a year to buy weapons, recruit and train fighters, make bombs, bribe Afghan officials and otherwise make war.

So, the West's strategy has included an all-out effort to eradicate poppy production in the province, both by banning the crop and by helping Afghanistan's impoverished sharecroppers switch to such alternatives as wheat and cotton. Good theory! If it works.

It hasn't. Many poppy growers didn't like having their 

He Signed It on the Dotted Line
Brian Walker
Published: Friday 6 January 2012
“The NDAA renders the Posse Comitatus Act a dead letter.”

America changed as the new year stumbled across the threshold, but the big shift didn't get much press, which is easy to understand. Can there be a deader news day than a New Year's Eve that falls on a weekend? Besides, alive or dead, habeas corpus has never been a topic to set news editors on fire.

The change came with the whisper of Barack Obama's pen, as he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual ratification of military Keynesianism — $662 billion this time — which has been our national policy since World War II bailed out the New Deal.

Sacrificial offerings to the Pentagon aren't news. But this time, snugly ensconced in the NDAA, came ratification by legal statute of the exposure of U.S. citizens to arbitrary arrest without subsequent benefit of counsel and to possible torture and imprisonment sine die. Goodbye, habeas corpus. I wrote about this here before Obama signed the bill, but when a president tears up the Constitution the topic is worth revisiting.

We're talking about citizens within the borders of the United States, not sitting in a hotel or out driving in some foreign land. In the latter case, as the late Anwar al-Awlaki's incineration in Yemen bore witness a few months ago, that the well-being or summary demise of a U.S. citizen is contingent upon a secret ...

Is Killing Taliban a Good Idea?
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 13 December 2011
The reality is that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, yet many people in the West still believe that killing Taliban fighters keeps up military pressure that might eventually lead to a negotiated outcome.

Ten years ago, a conference in the German city of Bonn agreed on a roadmap – the Bonn Agreement – for the creation of a post-Taliban administration in Afghanistan. Taliban were excluded from participation and subsequent Afghan governments were strongly dominated by Taliban’s former foes. Ten years later, Taliban were once again absent at this week’s second Bonn conference, which was boycotted by Pakistan in protest against an American air strike inside Pakistan that killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers. All the main speakers emphasized the need for peacemaking with the Taliban.

The reality is that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Yet many people in the West still believe that killing Taliban fighters keeps up military pressure that might eventually lead to a negotiated outcome. For their own reasons, the Taliban also see military pressure as sound strategy. Both sides are probably wrong. The escalated military contest is likely to be as unwinnable as the war.

The side that reaches this conclusion first and declares a temporary ceasefire – a ceasefire that becomes permanent if the other side reciprocates – will have a considerable advantage. Not only would it be good strategy for the United States or the Taliban to make the first move, it would also be smart for Pakistan to change course and advocate such a move, regardless of who moves first.

Despair grows in Afghanistan. Obama’s surge increased the killing and capture of Taliban, but killings by the Taliban have surged even more steeply. The 2011 fighting season is the worst the war has seen, especially for civilians. Meanwhile, the government of Afghanistan enjoys less legitimacy than ever and is edging towards becoming a narco-state. Opium production is expected to rise further in 2012 to supply more than 90 per cent of the world’s illicit trade.

It is hard to be sure whether President Hamid Karzai’s administration is ...

Are 24 Pakistani Soldiers Dead Because of the “Fog of War” or a Calculated Strike?
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 4 December 2011
“For all the talk of ‘precision weapons’ and ‘surgical strikes,’ drones have inflicted hundreds of civilian deaths and 500 lb. bombs have very little in common with operating rooms.”

In the aftermath of the Nov. 26 NATO attack on two border posts that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, the question being asked is whether the assault was a “fog of war” incident or a calculated hit aimed at torpedoing peace talks in Afghanistan? Given that the incident has plunged relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low at a critical juncture in the 10-year war, the answer is vitally important.

According to NATO, U.S. and Afghan troops came under fire from the Pakistani side of the border and retaliated in self-defense. American officials have suggested that the Taliban engineered the incident in order to poison U.S.-Pakistani relations. But there are some facts suggesting that the encounter may have been more than a “friendly fire” encounter brought on by a clever foe, an ill-defined border, and the normal chaos of the battlefield.

Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Samiullah Rahmani denies they were even in the area—and the insurgent group is never shy about taking credit for military engagements (of course, if deception was involved that is what the Taliban would say). However, this

Taliban Slide ‘From Hero to Zero’
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 4 December 2011
Quoting data from the country’s interior ministry, Sikandar claimed that more than 23,000 civilians and 5,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in the ‘war against terror’ since 2005.

Religious and political forces in Northern Pakistan, which hitherto drew strength from their association with the Taliban have begun to distance themselves from the militants, as the latter’s legitimacy plummets in the border regions.

By targeting schools, mosques, funerals, soldiers, music shops, government buildings, dancers and a range of other professions and civil institutions, the Taliban have brought themselves to the brink of collapse, explained Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

As the Taliban’s ship sinks, actors who had benefitted from the group’s popularity are increasingly wary of expressing their allegiance to the militants.

"The religious forces’ unflinching support for the Taliban was the only reason (the latter) won a sweeping victory at the 2002 polls," Mian Iftikhar said.

"At the time, the Taliban enjoyed massive public support in the areas bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," he added.

After the U.S-led allied forces dismissed the militants’ government in Kabul towards the end of 2001, the Taliban were warmly welcomed in the tribal areas, where they were "revered as ‘true jihadists’," according to Muhammad Nasir, a student of Peshawar University.

But now the Taliban are entering a new era, one that will test their ability to withstand severely diminished public support.

The first signs of the group’s waning popularity came on May 2, when Osama bin Laden’s assassination by U.S. forces in Abbottabad failed to draw a single protest or demonstration condemning the action as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

"This was clear evidence that the Taliban have moved from ‘hero to zero’," Nasir added.

A slew of attacks against various scholars and public officials over the last half-decade have also ...

Pakistan Targets U.S. Troop Supplies, Drone Base After NATO Kills 24
Taylor
Published: Sunday 27 November 2011
Pakistan announces retaliation after NATO attack on Pakistani border outpost.

Pakistan on Saturday blocked supply routes for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan and announced it would end American use of a Pakistani airbase by American forces in retaliation for a NATO attack on a Pakistani border outpost that officials said killed at least 24 soldiers and injured another 13.

American forces were given 15 days to vacate the remote Shamsi airbase, which was secretly turned over to them after the 9/11 attacks. The decision to order the Americans out followed an emergency meeting of Pakistan's top civilian and military leadership late Saturday to decide how to respond to the deaths of the soldiers.

Shamsi was used for launching the war in Afghanistan in late 2001, then later served as the base for the U.S. drone program targeting militants. Set in desert in sparsely populated Baluchistan province in Pakistan's west, the airbase became highly controversial within Pakistan for its association with drone strikes, which Pakistan officially condemns.

The decision to expel the Americans, made by the country's leadership meeting as the Defense Committee of the Cabinet, was an admission that Shamsi remains in American use.

The committee also announced that the government would "revisit and undertake a complete review of all program, activities and cooperative arrangements" with the United States and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, "including diplomatic, political, military and intelligence".

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Unacceptable in Today’s GOP? Realism and Compassion
Moderator
Published: Saturday 26 November 2011
“What the debate also revealed again is that a Republican who dares to utter a few words of compassion or realism is likely to prove unacceptable to the base of that party.”

Tasteless and questionable as it was for CNN to "co-sponsor" a Republican presidential debate with a pair of right-wing Washington think-tanks, at least the branding was accurate. There among the honored interlocutors were the authors of dismal failure and national disgrace in the Bush era, such as Paul Wolfowitz and David Addington, whose presence helpfully reminds us that to elect a Republican risks a presidency that will make the same gross moral and strategic errors, or worse. Listening to them talk about Iran, a nation that unlike Iraq or the Taliban is a real military power, it was clear that we will certainly edge closer to another war with almost any Republican in power.

 

What the debate also revealed again is that a Republican who dares to utter a few words of compassion or realism is likely to prove unacceptable to the base of that party.

 

Coming off his proposal to repeal child labor laws, so that schools can force 9-year-olds to do the work of "unionized janitors," it was surprising to hear Newt Gingrich appeal to human decency in resolving the immigration issue. But so he did, sensibly noting that deporting 11 million or more undocumented residents of the United States would be not only impractical but viciously cruel. It would mean ripping apart families that have lived here peacefully for generations.

 

"I'm prepared to take the heat," said the former speaker, rather courageously, for insisting that the law should be enforced "with humanity" — and his opponents, notably Mitt Romney, brought that heat to a boil, attacking Gingrich for supposedly supporting "amnesty," perennial buzzword of the anti-immigrant movement.

 

Actually, Gingrich doesn't back amnesty per se — which usually indicates a "path to citizenship" — but his position is close enough to mean trouble from the GOP's large ...

Taliban Publish Document with Security Plans for Upcoming Afghan Assembly
Moderator
Published: Monday 14 November 2011
A spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry also dismissed the document as a fake; however, several of the phone numbers listed for Afghan security officials were authentic.

Attempting to embarrass the Afghan government ahead of a major national assembly, the Taliban on Sunday published what they called the government's secret security plan for the event, including details of troop deployments and cell phone numbers of security officials.

The Taliban emailed the 28-page document — which purported to carry the signatures of top U.S. and Afghan military officials — to McClatchy and other news organizations and published it on their website, saying they had obtained it from infiltrators in two government ministries.

But the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force dismissed the claim early Monday, saying on its official Twitter feed that the "document doesn't appear authentic." It also said that the signature of a senior coalition commander, U.S. Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, on the last page of the document was "definitely not" authentic.

A spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry also dismissed the document as a fake; however, several of the phone numbers listed for Afghan security officials were authentic. U.S. officials had no immediate comment on the release.

The competing claims ratcheted up a propaganda war between the Taliban and ISAF ahead of the loya jirga, or grand assembly, which begins Wednesday in Kabul. If real, the document appeared to include ...

Afghanistan’s Suffering Civilians
Moderator
Published: Thursday 10 November 2011
“Our recent mid-year report found that 1,462 Afghan civilians were killed in the first half of this year, the highest number since the UN started documenting deaths and injuries of civilians in 2007.”

“The Taliban come to any house they please, by force. Then they fire from that house, and then ISAF and the Afghan National Army fire at the house. But if I tell the Taliban not to enter, the Taliban will kill me. So what is the answer? Either ISAF kills me or the Taliban kills me. The people cannot live like this.”

That experience, recounted by a resident of Afghanistan’s Marja district, is all too frequent in the country. For three decades, Afghan communities have been caught in the middle of war. It is long past time for civilians to stop bearing the brunt of it.

Every day, United Nations human-rights workers in Afghanistan meet community members in districts and villages on fact-finding missions into incidents of civilian casualties. Our recent mid-year report found that 1,462 Afghan civilians were killed in the first half of this year, the highest number since the UN started documenting deaths and injuries of civilians in 2007.

"Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Staffan de Mistura, click here."

Fighting continues in Afghanistan, with the surge of the international military forces and Afghan government forces and the spring-summer offensive by the Taliban and other insurgents. While we are all working to assist in finding an Afghan-led political solution to this conflict, the fighting is not going to stop immediately. Therefore, it is essential that those fighting take very seriously their obligation not to target civilians – indeed, to do everything possible to protect them.

The Taliban and other insurgents are responsible for nearly 80% of civilian casualties, so they bear the greatest responsibility to change their behavior. ...

13 Americans Believed Killed in Kabul Bombing
Taylor
Published: Sunday 30 October 2011
At least 17 people died on Saturday from a Taliban suicide bombing.

At least 17 people — including as many as 13 Americans — were killed Saturday when a Taliban suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into an armored NATO military bus on a busy road in the Afghan capital.

The International Security Assistance Force said that five of its soldiers and eight civilian contractors working for the U.S.-led coalition had been killed, and news services reported that all were American. It would make it the deadliest day for Americans in Afghanistan since August, when 30 U.S. soldiers died in the downing of a Chinook helicopter in the eastern part of the country.

The attack demonstrated the continuing ability of Taliban insurgents to stage shocking attacks against coalition forces and civilians. U.S. Marine Gen. John R. Allen, commander of ISAF, said he was "saddened and outraged" by the attacks and said that the insurgents were trying "to hide the fact that they are losing territory, support and the will to fight."

The attack took place in front of the American university here not far from a U.S.-run military base, on a route often used by coalition forces. Gen. Mohammed Ayob Salangi, the police chief of Kabul, said that at least four Afghans were killed, including two schoolchildren, a bicyclist and a police officer.

An eyewitness at the scene saw thick plumes of smoke rising from a burning military bus that contained the badly mangled bodies of soldiers in uniform. The blackened wreckage of vehicles littered the area. At least two ISAF ...

13 Americans Killed in Afghan Bombing
Taylor
Published: Saturday 29 October 2011
U.N. Says Afghanistan Routinely Tortures War Suspects
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 11 October 2011
The 74-page report said the interviews uncovered evidence of ‘the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment.’

The United Nations on Monday said that suspected Taliban detainees are routinely beaten and tortured in detention centers run by Afghanistan's police and spy agency.

The U.N. said it based its findings on interviews conducted with 379 pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners at 47 detention centers in 22 provinces between October 2010 to August 2011.

The 74-page report said the interviews uncovered evidence of "the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment."

It said beating and torture was applied "systemically" in detentions centers run by the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's spy agency.

Forty-six percent of 273 detainees interviewed in the Afghan spy agency's detention centers told U.N. interviewers that they had been subjected to different forms of torture while the were interrogated. The abuse often included sexual humiliation.

Beyond physical mistreatment, many prisoners also said they had been held beyond the maximum allowed by law and denied family visits, the report said.

"Electric shock, twisting and wrenching of detainees' genitals, stress positions including forced standing, removal of toenails and threatened sexual abuse were among other forms of torture that detainees reported," the report said.

The U.N. said it had taken into consideration Afghan government concerns that prisoners might lie about their treatment to discredit the police and security forces.

Afghanistan's interior minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammedi, the head of the National Directorate of Security, denied the allegations last month when word of the report's likely findings were leaked. A statement issued then said the Afghan government "made sure human rights are respected and prisoners are not mistreated."

But the United States-led ...

Rabbani’s Death Deals Blow to U.S. Peace Plan
Elizabeth
Published: Wednesday 21 September 2011
Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of the U.S.-led international forces, said in a statement that Rabbani’s death “is another outrageous indicator” that the Taliban “do not want peace, but rather war.”

An assassin with a bomb hidden in his turban on Tuesday killed former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chairman of the government’s peace council, in the latest in a slew of high-profile attacks and a major blow to U.S.-backed efforts to draw Taliban-led insurgents into peace talks.

The blast inside Rabbani’s home in Kabul’s diplomatic enclave also wounded Rahmatullah Wahidyar, a former Taliban minister and peace council member, and Masoom Stanekzai, a top aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the director of the peace council’s secretariat, Afghan officials said.

The bomber gained entry to Rabbani’s heavily guarded residence close to the U.S. Embassy by pretending to be a Taliban commander who wanted to surrender to the former president, officials said.

Karzai cut short a visit to New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, returning to Afghanistan after meeting with President Barack Obama.

Rabbani “has sacrificed his life for the sake of Afghanistan and for the peace of our country,” Karzai said. “We will miss him very much . . . a terrible loss.”

Obama and Karzai said Rabbani’s death wouldn't derail the U.S.-backed strategy of pursuing peace talks with Taliban-led insurgents as the United States and other foreign powers begin withdrawing their combat forces from Afghanistan after a decade of war.

But Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of the U.S.-led international forces, said in a statement that Rabbani’s death “is another outrageous indicator” that the Taliban “do not want peace, but rather war.”

Rabbani, a patriarchal figure for the country’s Tajik ethnic minority who headed a major guerrilla faction against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation, was the chairman of the High Peace Council of political, religious and cultural figures whom Karzai appointed last year to promote reconciliation with the ...

The Economics of Peace in Afghanistan
Elizabeth
Published: Saturday 17 September 2011
The economics of what an Afghanistan at peace would look like must be a critical part of any negotiations, but what does the economics of peace entail, and why is it so important?

Suicide bombings, assassinations of top Afghan leaders, brutal attacks on Charikar and other places close to Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and a rapid increase in civilian deaths from drone attacks are jeopardizing the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from the country. So pervasive has the violence become that Ahmed Rashid, the renowned expert on the Taliban, has concluded that speeding up the peace process through dialogue with the insurgents is the only option.

The economics of what an Afghanistan at peace would look like must be a critical part of any negotiations. But what, precisely, does the economics of peace entail, and why is it so important?

"Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Graciana del Castillo, click here."

One main objective should be to transform Afghanistan’s vast underground economy, which has thrived, despite the large number of NATO forces, by creating profitable opportunities for Taliban and other groups involved in the fighting. To reintegrate these fighters into the productive economy will require a change in policies, including a rapid reactivation of rural development schemes and the promotion of local entrepreneurship, public works, and other legal activities.

In particular, the United States, together with other donors and NATO troop contributors, should heed “Ten Commandments” during and after the negotiations.

First, apply the dictum of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) that it is better to let “them” do it than it is to try to “do it better” for them. Thus, let national negotiators, local leaders, and communities determine what ...

CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 6 September 2011
“The CIA’s institutional interests in continuing the drone war may have become so commanding that no director could afford to override those interests on the basis of his own analysis of how the drone strikes affect U.S. interests.”

When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday, he will be taking over an organization whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analyzing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.

But the transformation of the CIA did not simply follow the expansion of the drone war in Pakistan to its present level. CIA Director Michael Hayden lobbied hard for that expansion at a time when drone strikes seemed like a failed experiment.

The reason Hayden pushed for a much bigger drone war, it now appears, is that it had already created a whole bureaucracy in the anticipation of such a war.

During 2010, the CIA "drone war" in Pakistan killed as many as 1,000 people a year, compared with the roughly 2,000 a year officially estimated to have been killed by the SOF "night raids" in Afghanistan, according to a report in the Sep. 1 Washington Post.

A CIA official was quoted by the Post as saying that the CIA had become "one hell of a killing machine", before quickly revising the phrase to "one hell of an operational tool".

The shift in the CIA mission's has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency's entire workforce, according to the Post report.

The agency's analytical branch, which had been previously devoted entirely to providing intelligence assessments for policymakers, has been profoundly affected.

More than one-third of the personnel in the agency's analytical branch are now engaged wholly or primarily in providing support to CIA operations, according to senior agency officials cited by the Post. And nearly two-thirds of those are analyzing data used by the CTC drone war staff to make decisions on targeting.

Some of that shift of ...

Militants From Inside Afghanistan Conduct Cross Border Raids on Pakistani Infrastructure
Moderator
Published: Saturday 27 August 2011
Airstrike Kills Taliban Who Shot Down Chinook Copter
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 10 August 2011
In Valley Where SEALs Died, U.S. Raids Boost Taliban Support
Moderator
Published: Monday 8 August 2011
"Night raids have become a significant part of the U.S. strategy aimed at weakening the insurgents and compelling their leaders to accept U.S. and Afghan government offers."

The 30 U.S. soldiers, many of them Navy SEALs, who died Saturday in the U.S. military's single biggest loss of the Afghan war, were operating in a Taliban-controlled valley where frequent U.S.-led night raids have won the insurgents popular support, area residents said Sunday.

The raids occur "every night. We are very much miserable," said Roshanak Wardak, a doctor and a former member of the national Parliament. "They are coming to our houses at night."

Wardak runs a clinic about 3 miles from the rugged Tangi Valley where insurgents early Saturday shot down a helicopter carrying the U.S. troops, an Afghan translator and seven Afghan commandoes.

Night raids have become a significant part of the U.S. strategy aimed at weakening the insurgents and compelling their leaders to accept U.S. and Afghan government offers to hold talks on a political settlement of the decade-old war.

The Taliban have suffered heavy losses in the operations, which have soared since last year to an average of 340 per month, according to a Western intelligence official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the issue.

There has been no apparent progress toward convening peace talks, but U.S. commanders defend the raids as effective in eliminating and capturing insurgents, and gaining intelligence that leads to other militants and arms caches.

"Eight-five percent are shots not fired, when you're talking about night raids and disruption," said the Western intelligence official. "Over 50 percent of the time they hit the target that they're after, which shows the intelligence has been accurate."

Afghan commandoes participate in all such operations, he added.

The tactic, however, has proven highly controversial with ordinary Afghans amid charges that they claim civilian lives. President Hamid Karzai has demanded that they stop.

Residents of the Tangi Valley area, in eastern Wardak ...

Tourism Takes On Taliban
Moderator
Published: Saturday 6 August 2011
Authorities hope that the archaeological sites, trout fishing and other charms of Swat, plus its hardy population of 1.8 million, can restore the status of the valley as a world tourist destination.

Standing in the busy main market place of Mingora, it is hard to think that just two years ago this city in Swat district was under the tyranny of the Taliban.

Men shorn of their beards, which were mandatory under the Taliban rule, are a sure sign that the writ of the Islamic scholars no longer runs in these parts. Even women, draped in simple chadars (shawls), can be seen bustling about the streets.

Memories are still fresh of the days when Swat was a hotbed for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main Islamist group with its trademark bomb blasts and gruesome public displays of the dead bodies of political enemies and those who violated their codes.

In December 2009, a few months before the Pakistani army cracked down hard on the scholars, they murdered a popular female dancer and strung her body up from an electric pole as a warning.

The Taliban ordered women to quit work and torched some 200 girls’ schools so they would stay home. Music, dance and films were banned and shops selling videos and entertainment material became prime targets for arson.

That video shops have reappeared in Swat is one more sign that normalcy is returning to this valley, once called Udhyana (garden), and likened by modern tourists to Switzerland for its alpine beauty.

Authorities hope that the archaeological sites, trout fishing and other charms of Swat, plus its hardy population of 1.8 million, can restore the status of the valley as a world tourist destination.

That may be a long haul. As the army cracked down on the Taliban some 800,000 people fled to safer places and most businesses shut down.

In 2010, just as people were beginning to return another scourge hit them - the devastating floods that affected a fifth of Pakistan as the Indus river overflowed its banks.

With 338 hotels and restaurants in the valley, 43 percent of all business in Swat has to do with the hospitality sector, according to a survey carried ...

Taliban Down U.S. Helicopter in Afghanistan, 38 Dead
Moderator
Published: Saturday 6 August 2011
"It was the worst single-day toll for American forces in Afghanistan since U.S. troops entered that country nearly 10 years ago."

Thirty-one U.S. special forces troops and seven Afghan soldiers died when their helicopter was shot down during an overnight operation against Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, according to statement issued Saturday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

It was the worst single-day toll for American forces in Afghanistan since U.S. troops entered that country nearly 10 years ago, and one of the largest tolls in a single incident of either the Afghan war or the fighting in Iraq.

The last time the U.S. military suffered such catastrophic loses was in January 2005, when 30 U.S. Marines and a sailor were killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq's Anbar province; throughout the country, another six U.S. troops died on the ground the same day.

U.S. officials in Afghanistan provided no details, but a senior Pentagon official in Washington confirmed that the helicopter had been shot down, though he said he could not provide details. A villager in the area where the helicopter went down told McClatchy he heard rocket fire. He said he later saw the helicopter burning an orchard about a half-mile from his home.

"Smoke was rising from the helicopter till morning," Mansour Majab said.

In his statement, Karzai said the helicopter went down in Maidan Wardak province, west of Kabul. He expressed his condolences for the deaths to President Barack Obama and the families of the American dead.

President Obama issued a statement from the White House. It read:

"My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of the Americans who were lost earlier today in Afghanistan. Their deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices made by the men and women of our military and their families, including all who have served in Afghanistan. We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of securing our country and standing up for the values that they embodied. We also mourn the Afghans who died ...

In One Tense District, Afghan Crisis Comes Into Focus
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 2 August 2011
"This Taliban-haunted district's dysfunctional governance, power struggles and long-standing rivalries offer a grim microcosm of the national crises that plague Afghanistan."

The atmosphere inside the district headquarters had grown as torrid as the pulsing summer heat outside when tempers finally exploded.

"If you keep rudely interrupting me, I'll stomp on you," thundered Ali Ahmad, a grizzled tribal elder. Dozens of men leapt from the floor, some with fists and teeth clenched, others pushing apart would-be brawlers.

The uproar that ended the traditional tribal parley last week was a measure of the volatility that's left Sarobi the only one of 15 districts in Kabul province that the U.S.-led international security force hasn't transferred to Afghan responsibility.

This Taliban-haunted district's dysfunctional governance, power struggles and long-standing rivalries offer a grim microcosm of the national crises that plague Afghanistan. Together, they're fueling fears that the drawdown of allied combat forces that began last month could push the country deeper into turmoil and perhaps even all-out civil war.

Sarobi's struggles may not be unique in Afghanistan, but the 425-square-mile district of sweeping mountains and remote valleys, home to about 120,000 people, is especially crucial to the country's fate.

Sarobi is a strategic gateway to Kabul, the Afghan capital. The main highway linking Kabul to the Pakistani border runs through here, a vital corridor for trade, travel and U.S. military supplies.

The highway skirts the Kabul River as it plunges through the cliffs of the Kabul Gorge and finally spills into a mountain-ringed basin, where it feeds an azure lake formed by a decrepit, Soviet-built hydroelectric dam. Tracing a route that invaders used for centuries, it passes between rocky choke points that make perfect defenses.

In 1996, after overrunning the district center, Taliban fighters took less than 24 hours to storm into Kabul, 30 miles to the west, where they consolidated their grip on Afghanistan and set the world on a collision course with ...

Kandahar Mayor Killed in Another Blow to U.S. Afghan Plans
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 27 July 2011
"Taliban campaign of bombings and other “horrific acts” aimed at terrorizing people can backfire and make Afghans “pretty pissed off.”

A suicide bombing that killed the mayor of Afghanistan's second largest city Wednesday is the latest in a rash of high-level assassinations that have cast doubts over whether security gains in the Taliban's southern heartland will endure the drawdown of U.S. surge troops.

Kandahar Mayor Ghulam Haider Hamidi, who was a U.S. citizen, died in his heavily guarded compound when a man detonated explosives hidden in his turban as Hamidi accepted petitions from tribal elders, officials said. At least one other person, in addition to the bomber, died. The assassination comes just 15 days after the the head of Kandahar's provincial council, who was Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, was murdered by a bodyguard.

“I was inside my office when I heard the explosion,” Mohammad Afzal, a senior official who was working in another part of the compound, said in a telephone interview. “I later heard that that the man had a petition in his hand and came close to the mayor, crashed his head into the mayor and set off the explosion.”

A Taliban spokesman called news media to claim responsibility for killing Hamidi, 65, who was close to President Hamid Karzai’s family and was mayor for more than five years of Kandahar city, the cultural and spiritual capital of the Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates the Taliban. He survived an ambush last year.

The new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, condemned Hamidi’s slaying “in the strongest possible terms.”

But in his first meeting with foreign journalists since assuming his post on Monday, Crocker cautioned against “a rush to judgment as to exactly who did this. It’s not clear to me for example at this point that this was a Taliban-conducted act.”

He also held out the possibility that an intensified Taliban campaign of bombings and other “horrific acts” aimed at terrorizing people could ...

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