| War on Terror | |
| 06 Oct 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| Afghanistan: Several disturbing reports of resurgent Taliban | |
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The unthinkable seems to be happening — the prospect of an Afghan settlement involving the Taliban is increasing. Analysis and reports by M.K. Bhadrakumar, Pamela Constable, Charles Bremner, Mohammed Al Shafey, Neil Lyndon, Tariq Ali and B Raman *************** Coming to terms with resurgent Taliban By M.K. Bhadrakumar For the bulk of the Indian strategic community, the unthinkable is happening — the prospect of an Afghan settlement involving the Taliban is increasing. A sensational expose by an investigative journalist, based on highly sensitive cable traffic last month between the French embassy in Kabul and Quai d'Orsay in Paris, has thrown light on the Afghan war. For us in India, it is especially helpful in spotting the war, otherwise hidden behind the global banking meltdown and the India-United States nuclear deal. Claude Angeli, veteran journalist of Le Canard Enchaine, got hold of a copy of a coded cable by the French Deputy Chief of Mission in Kabul, Francois Fitou, based on a briefing by the heavyweight British diplomat, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who serves as ambassador to Afghanistan. What Sir Sherard told Mr. Fitou in confidence is worth recalling: — "The current situation [in Afghanistan] is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government [of Hamid Karzai] has lost all trust." — "The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them … They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic." — "We [NATO allies] should tell them [United States] that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. In the short term, we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan … The American strategy is doomed to fail." — Britain aimed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2010. — The only realistic outlook for Afghanistan would be the installation of "an acceptable dictator" and the public opinion should be primed for this. For the bulk of the Indian strategic community, the unthinkable is happening — the prospect of an Afghan settlement involving the Taliban. From all accounts, the Taliban appears edging closer to the Afghan capital and tightening its control in the provinces ringing Kabul. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Karzai has appealed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to mediate with the Taliban. To request the Saudi King to stake his prestige is serious business. Mr. Karzai couldn't have acted alone. Alongside there are reports that the British intelligence has been talking to the Taliban envoys in London. The influential Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that senior Taliban functionaries who travelled to Saudi Arabia in the recent days have put forward 11 conditions, which include the withdrawal of foreign forces, political accommodation of the Taliban in key Ministries and the drawing up of a new Constitution that affirms Afghanistan as an Islamic state. The Indian policymakers, who are bogged down in the labyrinthine passage of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, need to take note that the ground is dramatically shifting. Regional security is set to transform. Several factors call for reckoning. First, there is cause to worry about Washington's attention span in the period ahead to press ahead with the Afghan war. The big issue in America is the bailout of the economy. As well-known columnist Alexander Cockburn summed up, the Americans are indifferent to whether Sarah Palin is capable of waging a nuclear war or frying 'Afghan terrorists.' Their sole concern today is that in the political tier in Washington, they have someone "who sounds somewhat like a human being with the same concerns as them, starting with the fear that their local bank will lock its doors in the morning." That is truly an extraordinary recalibration of national priorities for a world power. Barack Obama and John McCain, during their debate on September 26, paid lip service to Afghanistan but were preoccupied with the new priorities. Both took the easy way out, agreeing that they would take troops out of Iraq and put them in the Hindu Kush. But is it that simple? Surely, there is a vague sense of bipartisan enthusiasm in the U.S. for an Afghan "surge." The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, says he could do with three additional brigades to the one promised by the Pentagon, which will add at least 15,000 troops to the current 35,000. But the total allied force level in Afghanistan stands at just above 70,000 including the U.S. troops. The NATO allies are reluctant to commit more troops. After much U.S. persuasion, French President Nicolas Sarkozy chose to be helpful, adding a measly 100 troops to the French contingent, while opinion polls show that two out of every three French citizens disapprove of the war. The outgoing NATO commander estimated that 400,000 troops are needed to defeat the Taliban. An optimal troop level is impossible to be met. The U.S. and its NATO allies simply do not have the capacity to deploy the troops necessary to force a military settlement or to pacify and occupy Afghanistan. Even with additional troops, to quote the new head of the U.S. Central Command, David Petraeus, "wresting control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult." Mr. Petraeus' approach is to repeat his tactic in Iraq, to bribe the Pashtun tribesmen and to turn them against the pro-Taliban groups — in other words, hire Pashtun mercenaries to fight the war. Given the Pashtun character and tribal ethos, the strong likelihood is that the tribal belt will become anarchic and the war will spread to Pakistan. Its effect on Pakistan will be catastrophic but the expansion of the war is unlikely to stem the tide within Afghanistan, which has gone badly wrong for the western forces. The Taliban today operates in virtually every Afghan province. It has the capacity to mount sustained offensives. It has created a parallel government structure. Pamela Constable, correspondent of The Washington Post and old hand on the South Asia beat, wrote recently: "In many districts a short drive from the capital, some of them considered safe even six months ago, residents and officials said the Taliban now controls roads and villages, patrolling in trucks and recruiting new fighters." Meanwhile, a new dimension has appeared. The incoming U.S. administration in January may not consider doubling down in Afghanistan as an option at a time when its attention is riveted on putting together a rescue package for the American economy that may involve up to $11.3 trillion. How would this scenario play out in the tangled Afghan mountains — precisely, how would the protagonists of the Afghan resistance view Washington's difficulty in financially sustaining the open-ended war effort? 'Deep, rich chuckle' The irrepressible British columnist, Neil Lyndon, obviously made a point when he wrote last week: "Whenever the wind stops howling over the mountains of Tora Bora, a deep, rich chuckle can presumably be heard echoing down the valleys. If he is still alive, nobody will be enjoying the plight of America more than Osama bin Laden. The anarchic carnage in the American financial and political system brings in sight a humiliating withdrawal and defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq. It even raises the possibility of the final collapse of the evil empire which Osama forecast." Gloomy but entirely plausible. A perception is growing that with the U.S. government taking responsibility for $5 trillion in liabilities in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and under compulsion to pledge billions to support the financial system, there is bound to be difficulty in bearing the combined cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated could total $2.4 trillion over the coming decade. No wonder, a feeling is gaining ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan that it is a matter of time before Washington makes a deal with the Taliban for a coalition government. The interplay of these various factors will accelerate as Afghanistan gears up for the presidential election in 2009. The election year will be highly divisive. There is challenge to Mr. Karzai from other Afghan groups. His political base in the Pashtun areas remains fragile. The U.S. and its allies are yet to decide whether Mr. Karzai is their best choice to hold the reins of power for another five years. Britain, in particular, has had public spats with Mr. Karzai. The failure of the war is blamed on him. But the failure of the war is not personal. A U.S.-style presidential system does not suit Afghanistan. The country needs a decentralised system of power-sharing and a constant search for intra-Afghan compromise. Most certainly, it means bringing the Taliban into the political process. The cardinal mistake has been that the Taliban movement is entirely conflated with the Al-Qaeda, whereas, to quote Tariq Ali, "If NATO and the U.S. were to leave Afghanistan, their [Taliban's] political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan's domesticated Islamists." Tariq Ali didn't mention Maulana Fazlur Rahman but New Delhi knows how farcical it would be to remain in the grip of paroxysms of nervousness about the redoubtable Islamist leader. Our apprehensions withered away once the Maulana, variously described as the 'father of the Taliban,' began visiting India. Equally, we need to do some 'out-of-the-box' thinking about the Taliban. (The writer is a former ambassador and Indian Foreign Service officer.) http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/06/stories/2008100655491000.htm **************** A Modernized Taliban Thrives in Afghanistan Militia Operates a Parallel Government By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, September 20, 2008; A01 KABUL, Sept. 19 -- Just one year ago, the Taliban insurgency was a furtive, loosely organized guerrilla force that carried out hit-and-run ambushes, burned empty schools, left warning letters at night and concentrated attacks in the southern rural regions of its ethnic and religious heartland. Today it is a larger, better armed and more confident militia, capable of mounting sustained military assaults. Its forces operate in virtually every province and control many districts in areas ringing the capital. Its fighters have bombed embassies and prisons, nearly assassinated the president, executed foreign aid workers and hanged or beheaded dozens of Afghans. The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage. "This is not the Taliban of Emirate times. It is a new, updated generation," said Waheed Mojda, a former foreign ministry aide under the Taliban Islamic Emirate, which ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001. "They are more educated, and they don't punish people for having CDs or cassettes," he said. "The old Taliban wanted to bring sharia, security and unity to Afghanistan. The new Taliban has much broader goals -- to drive foreign forces out of the country and the Muslim world." In late 2001, U.S. forces made common cause with ethnic groups in Afghanistan's north to overthrow the Taliban, in response to Osama bin Laden's use of the country as a base. Hamid Karzai was tapped as president by the United States and other powers, then elected to the job. In the early years, much of the deeply conservative Muslim country was largely peaceful and secure. Over the past two years, the Taliban's revival has been fueled by fast-growing popular dissatisfaction with Karzai's government, which has failed to bring services and security to much of the country. Deepening public resentment against civilian deaths caused by U.S. and NATO alliance airstrikes is another factor. No one here believes that the insurgents, estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 fighters, are currently capable of seizing the capital of Kabul or toppling the government, which is backed by more than 130,000 international troops. But a series of spectacular urban attacks in recent months, notably the bombing of the Indian Embassy and an armed assault on a parade reviewing stand where Karzai sat, have turned Kabul into a maze of bunkers and barricades that drive officialdom ever farther from the public. In many regions a short drive from the capital, some of them considered safe even six months ago, residents and officials said the Taliban now controls roads and villages, patrolling in trucks and recruiting new fighters. Its members execute government employees, bomb and burn cargo trucks on the highway, and search bus passengers for foreign passports and cellphones programmed with official numbers. "Our staff members don't want to commute to the capital anymore," said Nader Nadery, an official of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "They say, 'If the Taliban find my cellphone and call you, please tell them I am a shopkeeper.' " The Taliban is "creating an environment of fear, and it is working very well, because the people have no hope of being protected if they stand up against them," Nadery added. Abdul Jabbar, a former anti-Soviet guerrilla commander and a member of parliament from Ghazni province, said he no longer dares visit his home district. Interviewed in Kabul, he said Taliban leaders asked him to leave the government and join their cause, but he refused and now fears being killed. Last week, three Ghazni residents were hanged by the Taliban, which called them government spies. "The other day, a Taliban commander called me and said I should come help him to free Afghanistan from the foreigners," Jabbar recounted. "I asked him, 'What do you want me to do? Kill a teacher? Kidnap an engineer? Capture a U.N. vehicle?' The people are not happy about the Taliban, but the government is weak, and the foreign forces have not brought us security. What choice do we have?" In Wardak, the next province toward Kabul along a highway that is under constant Taliban attack, residents said they now ask relatives from the capital not to travel there for weddings or funerals. Roshanak Wardak, the only private obstetrician in the region, said that since last spring, Taliban leaders have recruited dozens of young men from her town. Wardak, who is also a legislator, said people in her province may not like the Taliban, but they relate to those in the movement as fellow Afghans and Muslims, at a time of growing public disenchantment with U.S. and NATO military forces. "Their popularity is increasing day by day, because the government has done nothing for our province," she said. "They take our innocent boys and tell them Islam is in danger. They offer them money and weapons. Now everyone is becoming a Talib. It is a great game, and they are the fuel." As in Ghazni, many of the Taliban supporters in Wardak are Pashtuns, members of the country's largest ethnic group. They believe that rival ethnic groups unfairly rule the country with the help of foreign soldiers. Though Karzai is a Pashtun, he is viewed in Taliban ranks as a traitor to his religion and community. One aspect of the game the Taliban now clearly dominates is the propaganda war over battlefield victories, defeats and casualties. Once composed of largely illiterate fighters and clerics who shunned modern technology as un-Islamic, the Taliban now uses a variety of high-tech means to communicate its version of events, often far faster than its adversaries. This issue has crystallized with the controversy over civilian casualties inflicted by U.S. and NATO airstrikes, especially a village bombing last month near Herat in western Afghanistan. Although civilian deaths have been frequent and real, officials say the Taliban quickly broadcasts exaggerated tolls, stoking public anger, while foreign military officers may take days to respond. "We are definitely not winning the information war, and we have to reverse that," said Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, the chief spokesman for NATO forces here. He said the Taliban uses such tactics as hiding in farm compounds, dressing dead fighters in civilian clothes and then denouncing foreign forces for bombing villagers. "They don't have to bother with the truth," Blanchette said. Today's Taliban also has a much greater degree of formal organization. The old Taliban was disastrous at governing, and ministries were run by barefoot mullahs who scribbled orders on scraps of paper. The new Taliban structure has councils for each area of governance, appoints officials in controlled areas and confers swift justice for crimes and disputes. One Afghan journalist said he recently visited the capital of Logar province, less than an hour's drive south of Kabul, where the Taliban now wields enormous power. He said a man had walked into a Logar radio station and politely introduced himself to the astonished manager as the new provincial spokesman for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. According to Mojda and others, the Taliban is still led by Mohammad Omar, a village cleric who headed the 1996-2001 administration and has been a fugitive since its overthrow. Some former leaders hold senior posts in the new movement, although many have been killed. The rank-and-file fighters are a mix of old members and new recruits. Their statements focus on ridding Afghanistan of foreign occupiers and incompetent leaders. Although they use Islam to motivate followers, they regularly violate what people here consider to be basic Islamic tenets against such things as the murder of women and trafficking in opium. Their predecessors used harsh punishments to instill law and order but were often pious Muslims. This year, the insurgents have killed teachers, mayors, policemen, truck drivers, doctors, female aid workers and Muslim clerics. "These people claim to be Muslims, but they are nothing more than terrorists," said Abdul Razzak Qureshi, police chief of Paghman, a district in the mountains west of Kabul. Last week he showed a visiting journalist a trove of land mines and explosive devices that his officers had found planted beside roads and in culverts in the past several months. One such device was detonated last week under a vehicle carrying Abdullah Wardak, the governor of Logar province, near his home in Paghman. He died instantly, along with two bodyguards and a driver. In separate interviews, residents of Paghman, a pretty area in the hills with wildflowers, birches and breezy picnic spots, said they had unhappy memories of Taliban rule and hoped it would not return. So far, the insurgents have not emerged in daylight there, but Razzak, the police chief, said he was unsure how long his force of 147 officers could continue to protect a sprawling district of 186 villages that borders Taliban-controlled Wardak. "The Taliban used to have nothing, but now they have more modern weapons than we do," he said. "Our people feel safe for now, but just over the border they operate freely and have their own checkpoints. If they decide to come here one day, there is nothing I can do to stop them." Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903980_pf.html ************************** British envoy says mission in Afghanistan is doomed, according to leaked memo The military presence in Afghanistan is part of the problem, the ambassador said Charles Bremner in Paris and Michael Evans, Defence Editor October 2, 2008 Britain's Ambassador to Afghanistan has stoked opposition to the allied operation there by reportedly saying that the campaign against the Taleban insurgents would fail and that the best hope was to install an acceptable dictator in Kabul. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a Foreign Office heavyweight with a reputation for blunt speaking, delivered his bleak assessment of the seven-year Nato campaign in Afghanistan in a briefing with a French diplomat, according to French leaks. However sources in Whitehall said the account was a parody of the British Ambassador's remarks. François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador to Kabul, told President Sarkozy's office and the Foreign Ministry in a coded cable that Sir Sherard believed that "the current situation is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust". According to Mr Fitou, Sir Sherard told him on September 2 that the Nato-led military operation was making things worse. "The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them . . . They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic," the Ambassador was quoted as saying. Britain had no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan, "but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one", he was quoted as saying. "In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan . . . The American strategy is doomed to fail." The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that the cable did not accurately reflect the views of the Ambassador. It is understood that the meeting between Sir Sherard and the French envoy did take place, but that the French account of is regarded in Whitehall as a gross distortion. The French Foreign Ministry did not deny the existence of the cable but it deplored its publication by Le Canard Enchaîné, the investigative weekly. "I am not alarmed because I know that this is not the official British position," a spokesman told The Times. Claude Angeli, the veteran Canard journalist who reported the cable, said that he had a copy of the two-page decoded text, which was partly printed in facsimile in his newspaper. "It is quite explosive," he told The Times. "What I did not say is that our French diplomats quite agree with the British." Mr Angeli also reported that the French had been told that Britain aimed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2010. The pessimistic view in the cable is common among French diplomats and military officers who are concerned by President Sarkozy's strong support for the Nato operation in Afghanistan and his recent reinforcement of the French contingent. There was suspicion in Whitehall that the British position was exaggerated for French purposes. Sir Sherard, 53, a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia,was sent to Kabul last year to beef up Britain's role in the campaign to secure the Government of President Karzai and combat the resurgent Taleban. In an interview last year he said that Britain could expect to stay in Afghanistan for decades. According to the French cable, he said that the only realistic outlook for Afghanistan would be the installation of "an acceptable dictator" within five or ten years and that public opinion should be primed for this. British insiders said that the Ambassador never uttered these words. "The trouble with the British Ambassador is that he is always at the high end of gloom and doom when in fact it's not that bad," a diplomatic source said. After a summer of violent clashes with the Taleban alliance sources admitted that the perception was that the enemy was gaining in confidence. But, said one military source, " in combat terms Nato is still kicking a***". — Britain is withdrawing the children of its diplomats from Pakistan after last month's suicide bomb attack, which killed 55 people at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the Foreign Office said. Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4860080.ece ************************** Taliban Set Conditions before Serious Negotiations By Mohammed Al Shafey 2 Oct 2008 London, Asharq al-Awsat -- Mohammad Siddiq Tashakkuri, the former Afghan information minister, confirmed in a telephone interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that Afghan President Hamed Karzai did indeed send a letter to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah Bin-Abdulaziz two months ago asking him to intervene to end the violence in Afghanistan. Tashakkuri expressed to Asharq Al-Awsat his belief that trusted clerics from the Taliban visited Saudi Arabia to perform the minor pilgrimage during the month of Ramadan and said that Kabul is in discussions regarding 11conditions stressed by Taliban movement before holding serious negotiations, most notably the foreign forces' withdrawal from Afghanistan, appointment of ministers from the fundamentalist movement in the principal ministries, and drawing up a new constitution for the country which underlines the importance of establishing an Islamic state on the land of Afghanistan. Asharq Al-Awsat has learned that one of Arab Afghans' leaders during the years of jihad against the Russians is leading the ongoing negotiations between the Taliban and the Kabul government. On his part, a former commander of Afghan mujahidin in the capital Kabul asserted when Asharq Al-Awsat telephoned him that there are negotiations at present between the Taliban and President Karzai's Government and said that national reconciliation aims to open up to the moderate elements among the Taliban's leaders. He pointed out that some of Taliban's clerics and imams have been in Saudi Arabia for some days and stressed that one of the Arab Afghans' leaders who is in Britain and is a jurisprudence expert known for his strong relations with the brothers of leader Ahmad Shah Masud, the lion of Panjsher assassinated by Al-Qaeda two days before 9/11, is the official architect who opened the channels of dialogue with the Taliban for ending the violence in Afghanistan. He said the Taliban's official announcement that there are such negotiations would weaken the fundamentalist movement's image in the media because these reports come at a time when Mullah Omar took a more hard-line stand in his recent statement on the occasion of Al-Fitr feast. On their part, government sources close to 10 Downing Street, the British cabinet office, said "our policy is to support the Afghan elements which renounce violence and terrorism" and pointed out that the armed insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be defeated by military action alone but by dialogue and reconciliation with the moderate elements." They added that Gordon Brown's Government had repeatedly stressed in the past the importance of reconciliation in Afghanistan in order to end the insurgency and violence in the Afghan street and said reconciliation with the Taliban elements "should concentrate on renunciation of violence, not having any contacts with Al-Qaeda, and total acceptance of the Afghan constitution. Source: http://www.asharqalawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=14266 ********************************* Sarah Palin could be the new Ronald Reagan John McCain looks doomed. But on last night's evidence, Sarah Palin has a political future Sarah Palin could still end up as a footnote to history, the same way Geraldine Ferraro did after the Mondale-Ferraro ticket plummeted to defeat in 1984 when Ronald Reagan won his second term. Or she could be back in the coming years as a major Republican player on the national scene. As the pick of those betting on the latter proposition, Palin did herself the best of favours last night. After widely criticised interviews with Gibson of ABC and Couric of CBS she put up a spirited performance against Joe Biden in the one and only vice-presidential debate in St Louis and showed that just like Ronald Reagan she might be shaky on the fine print but knows how to write the headlines. The giant issues in America today are the economy and the $700bn bail-out. No one outside the professional commentariat really wants to know whether Sarah Palin is capable of waging nuclear war or frying Afghan 'terrorists'. They want a sense that there's someone in the political tier who sounds somewhat like a human being with the same concerns as them, starting with the fear that their local bank will lock its doors in the morning. In their debate last week neither Obama nor McCain passed this simple test. Last night Joe Biden, a silver-haired denizen of Washington in his sixth, six-year term, tried to offer himself as worried Joe Six-pack from Scranton, PA, but the act was pretty thin. Palin, despite somewhat excessive folksiness, with "gosh-darneds" and the like, did look as though she and Todd had spent some time at their kitchen table in the not-too-distant past figuring out how to pay the bills and deciding they couldn't afford health insurance. This was no faltering Palin unable to tell Katie Couric which newspaper she read. This was a Palin fiercely denouncing, at least a dozen times across 90 minutes, "the corruption on Wall Street". Alone of the four candidates, she spoke to the fury and fear of Main Street America about the $700bn bail-out, now approved by the US Senate and probably soon to be passed by the House of Representatives after the requisite number of Republicans have been bribed or cowed into submission. The bail-out - not yet quite a done deal - gives $700bn to the big moneymen in Wall Street to smuggle into safe harbours, while making the US Treasury the debt collector from middle and working-class Americans unable to pay their mortgages and facing foreclosure. Both presidential candidates - Obama, the salesman of hope and McCain the maverick - voted in the US Senate for the plan drafted by Treasury Secretary Paulson, formerly the CEO of Goldman Sachs. So did Senator Joe Biden. Palin is the only one not inconvenienced by a Yes to bail-out, and was therefore able to denounce the "toxic mess" on Wall Street. If McCain had issued similar denunciations More than once last night I thought Palin must have been watching re-runs of Reagan's speeches in his debate, and campaigned against the bail-out across the last ten days in Washington and voted No in the Senate, his campaign would not now be in a truly desperate situation. Obama doesn't have to say much. Americans are living through the last months of an eight-year Republican presidency and the experience has proved harrowing. Crucial 'battleground states' like Pennsylvania are tilting decisively towards the Democrats. Will Palin's performance last night - victorious in the first 45 minutes, adequate in the second half - stop McCain's slide? Almost certainly not. The Republican presidential candidate is beleaguered not only by his awful performance on the bail-out, but also by questions about his health. Nothing Palin could have done last night will rehab McCain on these matters, though he has two more debates with Obama in which he can try to repair the damage. On present trends, the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed, just as the Republican presidential campaign of another Arizonan senator, Barry Goldwater, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Yet that defeat was the making of Ronald Reagan, who stole every right-wing Republican heart with his speech for Goldwater in the party convention that year. Two years later, Reagan was governor of California. Twelve years later in 1976, he was challenging an incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford. In 1980 he won the presidency. More than once last night I thought Palin must have been watching re-runs of Reagan's speeches, though decades of deference to Hollywood tycoons made Reagan far more respectful of Wall Street than the Alaskan Governor, who even presumed to introduce the antique phrase "working class" into the debate. Her first national political run may have only a month to go, but last night she won herself a long-term political future. Alexander Cockburn will cover the final presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama on October 7 and 15. FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 3, 2008 *********************** Wall St Crisis gives bin Laden the last laugh The Wall Street bail-out puts US commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq in doubt, says Neil Lyndon Whenever the wind stops howling over the mountains of Tora Bora, a deep, rich chuckle can presumably be heard echoing down the valleys. If he is still alive, nobody will be enjoying the present plight of America more than Osama bin Laden. The anarchic carnage in the American financial and political system brings in sight a humiliating withdrawal and defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq. It even raises the possibility of the final collapse of the evil empire which Osama forecast. The US occupation of Iraq is costing $1bn every three days. The total spent so far is $800bn. This year's Senate appropriation for Iraq is $188bn. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2007 that the combined cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion over the next decade. But that was before the federal government took responsibility for $5 trillion of liabilities in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and pledged infinite billions to the support of the financial system. How can even America afford such all-fronts expense? Federal revenues are already declining (driven down by rising unemployment with concomitant drops in taxes). Current account running costs are rocketing and, with its commitments to the collapsing financial system, the real risk is emerging that the US government might default upon its obligations, placing Uncle Sam in the same historical category as those earlier printers of money - Mexico, Poland and Zimbabwe. In the winter of 1916-17, John Maynard Keynes warned the Cabinet that, if they continued to spend £1m a day out of foreign exchange reserves on the war in France, world power would shift irreversibly across the Atlantic to America. Today, a collapse in the dollar as a reserve currency could result in a similarly irreversible transfer of hegemony to China. Can't you hear OBL hooting? Source: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45513,opinion,wall-street-crisis-gives-osama-bin-laden-the-last-laugh ******************* Posted September 16, 2008 2:52 pm Tomgram: Tariq Ali, Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun? As Andrew Bacevich tells us in the latest issue of the Atlantic, there's now a vigorous debate going on in the military about the nature of the "next" American wars and how to prepare for them. However, while military officers argue, that "next war" may already be creeping up on us. Having, with much hoopla, launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, each disastrous in its own way, the Bush administration in its waning months seems intent on a slo-mo launching of a third war in the border regions of Pakistan. Almost every day now news trickles out of intensified American strikes -- by Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones, or even commando raids from helicopters -- in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border; and there is a drumbeat of threats of more to come. All of this, in turn, is reportedly only "phase one" of a three-phase Bush administration plan in which the American military "gloves" would "come off." Think of this as the green-lighting of a new version of that old Vietnam-era tactic of "hot pursuit" across national borders, or think of it simply as the latest war. Already Pakistan's sovereignty has functionally been declared of no significance by our President, and so, without a word from Congress, the American war that already stretches from Iraq to Afghanistan is threatening to widen in ways that are potentially incendiary in the extreme. While Pakistani sources report that no significant Taliban or al-Qaeda figures have been killed in the recent series of attacks, anger in Pakistan over the abrogation of national sovereignty and, as in Afghanistan, over civilian casualties is growing. In Iraq, 146,000 American soldiers seem not to be going anywhere anytime soon, while in Afghanistan another 33,000 embattled American troops (and tens of thousands of NATO troops), suffering their highest casualties since the Taliban fell in 2001, are fighting a spreading insurgency backed by growing anger over foreign occupation. The disintegration seems to be proceeding apace in that country as the Taliban begins to throttle the supply routes leading into the Afghan capital of Kabul, while the governor of a province just died in an IED blast. "President" Hamid Karzai was long ago nicknamed "the mayor of Kabul." Today, that tag seems ever more appropriate as the influence of his corrupt government steadily weakens. In the meantime, in Pakistan, a new war, no less unpredictable and unpalatable than the last two, develops, as American strikes fan the flames of Pakistani nationalism. Already the Pakistani military may have fired its first warning shots at American troops. Part of the horror here is that much of the present nightmare in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be traced to the sorry U.S. relationship with Pakistan's military and its intelligence services back in the early 1980s. At that time, in its anti-Soviet jihad, the Reagan administration was, in conjunction with the Pakistanis, actively nurturing the forces that the Bush administration is now so intent on fighting. No one knows this story, this record, better than the Pakistani-born journalist and writer Tariq Ali. As we head into our "next war," most Americans know almost nothing about Pakistan, the sixth most populous country on the planet with 200 million people, and the only Islamic state with nuclear weapons. As the Bush administration commits to playing with fire in that desperately poor land, it's time to learn. Ali, who posts below on the next U.S. war, has just written a new book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power -- published today -- that traces the U.S.-Pakistani relationship from the 1950s to late last night. I can tell you that it's both riveting and needed. Check it out. And while you're at it, check Ali out in a two-part video, released by TomDispatch, in which he discusses the history of the tangled U.S.-Pakistani relationship and Barack Obama's Afghan and Pakistani plans. Tom The American War Moves to Pakistan Bush's War Widens Dangerously By Tariq Ali
The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Senator Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Hillary Clinton, tried to outflank her by supporting a policy of U.S. strikes into Pakistan. Senator John McCain and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view and so it has become, by consensus, official U.S. policy. Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace. Why, then, has the U.S. decided to destabilize a crucial ally? Within Pakistan, some analysts argue that this is a carefully coordinated move to weaken the Pakistani state yet further by creating a crisis that extends way beyond the badlands on the frontier with Afghanistan. Its ultimate aim, they claim, would be the extraction of the Pakistani military's nuclear fangs. If this were the case, it would imply that Washington was indeed determined to break up the Pakistani state, since the country would very simply not survive a disaster on that scale. In my view, however, the expansion of the war relates far more to the Bush administration's disastrous occupation in Afghanistan. It is hardly a secret that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is becoming more isolated with each passing day, as Taliban guerrillas move ever closer to Kabul. When in doubt, escalate the war is an old imperial motto. The strikes against Pakistan represent -- like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to bomb and then invade Cambodia (acts that, in the end, empowered Pol Pot and his monsters) -- a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong. It is true that those resisting the NATO occupation cross the Pakistan-Afghan border with ease. However, the U.S. has often engaged in quiet negotiations with them. Several feelers have been put out to the Taliban in Pakistan, while U.S. intelligence experts regularly check into the Serena Hotel in Swat to discuss possibilities with Mullah Fazlullah, a local pro-Taliban leader. The same is true inside Afghanistan. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a whole layer of the Taliban's middle-level leadership crossed the border into Pakistan to regroup and plan for what lay ahead. By 2003, their guerrilla factions were starting to harass the occupying forces in Afghanistan and, during 2004, they began to be joined by a new generation of local recruits, by no means all jihadists, who were being radicalized by the occupation itself. Though, in the world of the Western media, the Taliban has been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda, most of their supporters are, in fact, driven by quite local concerns. If NATO and the U.S. were to leave Afghanistan, their political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan's domesticated Islamists. The neo-Taliban now control at least twenty Afghan districts in Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan provinces. It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters. Though often characterized as a rural jacquerie they have won significant support in southern towns and they even led a Tet-style offensive in Kandahar in 2006. Elsewhere, mullahs who had initially supported President Karzai's allies are now railing against the foreigners and the government in Kabul. For the first time, calls for jihad against the occupation are even being heard in the non-Pashtun northeast border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan. The neo-Taliban have said that they will not join any government until "the foreigners" have left their country, which raises the question of the strategic aims of the United States. Is it the case, as NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer suggested to an audience at the Brookings Institution earlier this year, that the war in Afghanistan has little to do with spreading good governance in Afghanistan or even destroying the remnants of al-Qaeda? Is it part of a master plan, as outlined by a strategist in NATO Review in the Winter of 2005, to expand the focus of NATO from the Euro-Atlantic zone, because "in the 21st century NATO must become an alliance… designed to project systemic stability beyond its borders"? As that strategist went on to write: "The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward. As it does, the nature of power itself is changing. The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way… [S]ecurity effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability." Such a strategy implies a permanent military presence on the borders of both China and Iran. Given that this is unacceptable to most Pakistanis and Afghans, it will only create a state of permanent mayhem in the region, resulting in ever more violence and terror, as well as heightened support for jihadi extremism, which, in turn, will but further stretch an already over-extended empire. Globalizers often speak as though U.S. hegemony and the spread of capitalism were the same thing. This was certainly the case during the Cold War, but the twin aims of yesteryear now stand in something closer to an inverse relationship. For, in certain ways, it is the very spread of capitalism that is gradually eroding U.S. hegemony in the world. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's triumph in Georgia was a dramatic signal of this fact. The American push into the Greater Middle East in recent years, designed to demonstrate Washington's primacy over the Eurasian powers, has descended into remarkable chaos, necessitating support from the very powers it was meant to put on notice. Pakistan's new, indirectly elected President, Asif Zardari, the husband of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto and a Pakistani "godfather" of the first order, indicated his support for U.S. strategy by inviting Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai to attend his inauguration, the only foreign leader to do so. Twinning himself with a discredited satrap in Kabul may have impressed some in Washington, but it only further decreased support for the widower Bhutto in his own country. The key in Pakistan, as always, is the army. If the already heightened U.S. raids inside the country continue to escalate, the much-vaunted unity of the military High Command might come under real strain. At a meeting of corps commanders in Rawalpindi on September 12th, Pakistani Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani received unanimous support for his relatively mild public denunciation of the recent U.S. strikes inside Pakistan in which he said the country's borders and sovereignty would be defended "at all cost." Saying, however, that the Army will safeguard the country's sovereignty is different from doing so in practice. This is the heart of the contradiction. Perhaps the attacks will cease on November 4th. Perhaps pigs (with or without lipstick) will fly. What is really required in the region is an American/NATO exit strategy from Afghanistan, which should entail a regional solution involving Pakistan, Iran, India, and Russia. These four states could guarantee a national government and massive social reconstruction in that country. No matter what, NATO and the Americans have failed abysmally. Tariq Ali, writer, journalist, filmmaker, contributes regularly to a range of publications including the Guardian, the Nation, and the London Review of Books. His most recent book, just published, is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Scribner, 2008). In a two-part video, released by TomDispatch.com, he offers critical commentary on Barack Obama's plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as on the tangled U.S.-Pakistani relationship. Copyright 2008 Tariq Ali Source: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174977 ************** The war against Taliban - I By B Raman The Pakistani Army and the US Armed Forces are locked in a fierce battle with the various jihadi groups which have coalesced to form the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, whose Ameer is Baitullah Mehsud. The claimed retreat by Mehsud's men is no sign of their imminent defeat The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a united front of over 20 Taliban groups operating autonomously in different Pashtun tribal areas, was formed on December 14, 2007, at a secret meeting held somewhere in South Waziristan, which was attended by 40 tribal leaders from the South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Aurakzai, Kurram, Khyber, Mohmand and Bajaur tribal agencies of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and North-West Frontier Province. The TTP was projected as a joint resistance movement with three objectives -- first, to help Taliban in its operations against the US and other NATO forces in Afghan territory; second, to undertake defensive operations against the Pakistani security forces and third, the enforcement of shari'ah in the entire Pashtun tribal belt. Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan was nominated as the amir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur of North Waziristan and Maulana Faqir Mohammed of Bajaur as deputy ameers. What brought them together was what they perceived as the divide-and-rule tactics of the Pakistan Army, which was accused by them of ostensibly making peace overtures to some Taliban leaders while undertaking military operations against others. It was reportedly agreed at the meeting that while each local Taliban group would be free to undertake operations against the security forces depending on the local requirements, there would be no unilateral peace negotiations by any group with the Government or the Army. It was decided that peace negotiations, if any, would be undertaken only after approval by the TTP's shura. Since then, the TTP has been engaged in two types of operations -- operations of a conventional nature which are confined to the tribal areas, with the tribal leader of each area heading and co-ordinating the operations in his area and operations of an unconventional nature such as acts of terrorism, including suicide terrorism, which are not confined to the tribal areas. Since the formation of the TTP, the conventional operations have been mainly confined to the Swat Valley of the NWFP and the Bajaur Agency of the FATA. The US suspects that many of the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda are located either in North and South Waziristan or in the Bajaur Agency. There has been an unwritten and unacknowledged division of responsibilities between the US and the Pakistani Armed Forces. While the US has restricted its operations to air surveillance of the two Waziristans and attacks by unmanned aircraft (Drones)on suspected jihadi hide-outs in the two Waziristans, the Pakistan Army has been focussing its operations on the Swat Valley and the Bajaur Agency. In the past, the US had undertaken air attacks through Drones in the Bajaur Agency too, but it has refrained from such attacks in the Bajaur area for more than a year now. The US Special Forces undertook a ground action in South Waziristan unilaterally on September 3, 2008, but have not undertaken any further ground operations following strong criticism by Pakistani leaders and military officers. The local commanders of the TTP in the Swat Valley and in the Bajaur Agency proclaim their operations as defensive in nature provoked by the Pakistani Army attacks on the positions held by them at the behest of the US. The conventional fighting between the Pakistani forces and the local units of the Taliban initially started in the Swat Valley in November last year. The operations were co-ordinated by the then Maj Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who was the Director-General of Military Operations at that time. He has since been promoted as Lt Gen and posted as Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence on September 29. Faced with the offensive of the Armed Forces in the Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah, the Ameer of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, who controls the Swat Valley, followed the same tactics as were followed by the Taliban in Afghanistan when the US launched its operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban under Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. To avoid suffering heavy casualties at the hands of the Pakistan Army and para-military forces (mainly the Frontier Corps) and Air Force, the Maulana and his men broke off engagement with the Pakistani forces and withdrew into the hills or went back to their villages and resumed their normal professions. The consequent decline in resistance by the TNSM was interpreted as defeat of the TNSM. In fact, it was proclaimed in January 2008 that the TNSM had been defeated and the writ of the Government re-established in the Swat Valley. The claim proved to be premature. After a comparative lull, the TNSM staged a come-back and resumed the fighting. The newly-elected Government headed by the Awami National Party (ANP), which came into office in Peshawar after the elections of February 18, 2008, proposed peace talks with Fazlullah. He agreed to it. Similarly, Rehman Mallik, the Adviser to the Ministry of Interior, took the initiative for peace talks with Baitullah Mehsud, which caused concern to the US and criticism in the Pakistan People's Party because of the alleged involvement of Baitullah in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. While the move for peace talks with Baitullah was abandoned by the Federal Government, the peace talks initiated by the NWFP Government with the TNSM collapsed due to the Government's inability to meet the demands put up by Fazlullah for the release of all his men arrested during the operations in the Swat Valley and the withdrawal of all the cases registered against the clerics and madrasa students after the Army action in Islamabad's Lal Masjid in July last year. Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=oped&file_name=opd1.txt&counter_img=1 ---------------------------------- Getting Baitullah not enough - II By B Raman
This wanted jihadi's death will not have an adverse impact on the Taliban groups and Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal belt. One of his deputies will take over as the new amir and continue to wage jihad
After the peace talks initiated by Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province Government with the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), which controls the Swat Valley, collapsed, fighting again resumed. While the TNSM has not been able to re-establish its territorial control in the Valley, it has undertaken a series of hit and run raids on the security forces and acts of suicide terrorism. A war of attrition has been going on in the Swat Valley and the security forces have not so far been able to damage effectively the conventional fighting capability of the TNSM. The TNSM forces fighting in the Swat Valley have reportedly been joined by a number of Punjabi cadres of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) headed by Maulana Masood Azhar.
The Pakistan Army, reportedly under pressure from the United States, opened a second front against the followers of the TTP in the Bajaur Agency in the beginning of August 2008, after the visit of Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani to Washington DC in the last week of July. Despite the use of helicopter gunships and repeated air strikes, the Army has not been able to subdue the Taliban forces fighting against it in the Bajaur Agency for nearly two months now. Here, too, the immediate objective is not territorial control, but steady attrition.
While the conventional fighting in the Swat Valley is commanded and coordinated by Fazlullah, the Taliban attacks in the Bajaur Agency are commanded and coordinated by Maulana Faqir Mohammad, who was accused by US sources in January 2006, of planning to host a dinner at his Damadola village in Bajaur Agency on January 13, 2006, for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the NO. 2 to Al Qaeda. A US attack with missiles killed a number of innocent civilians, but Zawahiri was not hit. It was not even known whether he attended the dinner or not. The Maulana rejected the allegations of his planned dinner for Zawahiri as baseless and fabricated by the US to justify the killing of innocent civilians.
Faqir Mohammed, who was born in 1970 in the Bajaur Agency, started his career in the TNSM under Maulana Sufi Mohammad, its former amir, and had fought against the invading US forces in Afghanistan along with Sufi Mohammad in October 2001.
When a large number of TNSM cadre died in the US air strikes, Sufi Mohammad and Faqir Mohammad along with the survivors fled back into the FATA. While Sufi Mohammad was arrested by the Pakistani authorities and kept in detention for nearly six years, Faqir Mohammad escaped arrest and has been looking after the TNSM in the Bajaur Agency as its local amir. He is a member of the Mommand tribe.
The TNSM in the Bajaur Agency is being helped by a large number of Punjabi cadre of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who was named by Benazir Bhutto as possibly involved in the failed attempt to kill her at Karachi on October 18, 2007, when she returned from political exile. Recent media reports in Pakistan had alleged that the HUJI is one of the principal suspects in the huge explosion outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20, 2008.
While there are no reports of any large-scale involvement of Arabs of Al Qaeda and Uzbeks of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) in the current fighting in the Swat Valley, there are reports of the involvement of many of them in the fighting in the Bajaur Agency.
In addition to the TNSM cadre of Faqir Mohammad and the HUJI cadres, there are four other groups which have been fighting against the security forces in the Bajaur agency. These are a splinter group of the TNSM headed by one Ismail, which is reportedly based in Damadola, a group of the Afghan Taliban based in Charmang, which is headed by Qari Ziaur Rehman, a group called Jaishul Islam headed by Qari Wali Rehman and a group headed by Maulvi Naimatullah based in the Salarzai area.
Source reports say that the largest number of Arabs and Uzbeks are with the Afghan Taliban group headed by Ziaur Rehman.
The Pakistan Army claimed on September 24, 2008, that Qari Ziaur Rahman and Qari Wali Rehman were injured in clashes with the security forces. While a spokesman of Wali Rehman confirmed this report, there has been no confirmation of the Army claim about injuries to Ziaur Rahman.
The TTP is a conglomeration of nearly 20 different tribal groups, assisted by the JEM and the HUJI from the Punjab and they have been co-ordinating their autonomous operations against the security forces quite well. It is not clear what role Baitullah plays in this coordination and whether there is a common operational command and control assisting him in this.
Even more unclear is the line of command in respect of the acts of terrorism, including suicide terrorism, in the tribal and non-tribal areas. These terrorist attacks have targeted a large variety of hard targets -- many of them military establishments -- in Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore, Sargodha, Kohat, Peshawar, Tarbella Gazi etc. It is also not clear as to how many of these strikes were undertaken by self-radicalised jihadis (jundullahs or soldiers of allah) with no organisational affiliation and how many were undertaken by volunteers of different Taliban groups.
Who selects the targets? Who trains the volunteers? Who co-ordinates the strikes? Many of these strikes would not have been possible without precise intelligence. Who collects the intelligence? How do the suicide bombers repeatedly manage to avoid the security checks as was seen in the case of the bomb blast outside the Marriott Hotel? A truck packed with 600 KGs of military-grade explosives and a large quantity of aluminia powder managed to reach Islamabad without being checked and detected at any of the security barriers on the road. How did it manage it? What is the extent of complicity of the security personnel responsible for physical and road security? What is the role of Al Qaeda, the IMU and the IJU in this? Are the various terrorist strikes being undertaken by the amirs of each of the Taliban groups autonomously or are these being planned and organised by a common command and control? Where is this command and control located? What is the role of Baitullah in this command and control? There are no satisfactory answers to these questions.
In the meanwhile, rumours about the declining health of Baitullah due to diabetes and consequent renal problems have raised the question as to what will be the effect of his death, if it comes about, on the conventional as well as unconventional operations of the TTP. In fact, two days ago, there were rumours of his death, but these have been refuted by his spokesmen. The role of Baitullah has been similar to that of bin Laden in respect of Al Qaeda's global operations -- inspiration, motivation and guidance, where necessary, and not day-to-day control.
The various Taliban groups enjoy and have exhibited considerable autonomy of operation. It is, therefore, assessed that Baitullah's death will not have a major adverse effect on the operations of Al Qaeda and the various Taliban and Uzbek groups in the tribal belt. One of his deputies may take over as the new amir of the TTP. 7 Oct 2008 http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=856
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