An article in Der Speigel reports Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) tried to negotiate with elements of the Taliban hoping to split them off from alliance with Al Qaeda.
The BND was pursuing one goal in particular: It wanted to know whether or not the Taliban were prepared to withdraw from al-Qaida's embrace. Creating a rift between the two groups is considered by the West as a precondition for the lasting success of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In return, the German government would intensify its involvement in reconstruction by building hospitals, roads and mosques -- the sorts of projects that the German public tends to support.
The German public tends to support mosque construction? Oh dear.
The Taliban wanted to be more like Yasser Arafat. Why would they want to be that ugly? (you can tell I am taking real serious the idea of negotiating with the Taliban)
The Taliban demanded political recognition of the kind once given to Yasser Arafat's PLO. "We do not want to be considered terrorists. We want to be treated as a political force," the "commander" is said to have demanded, whereupon the agent leading the BND's three-man delegation is said to have responded: "Then break with al-Qaida." The BND agent outlined a multi-stage process in which Berlin would begin by offering civilian aid, to be followed by regular talks -- at which point recognition of the Taliban as a political party could be discussed.
This started in July 2005. The Germans were never clear whether the guys they were negotiating with had authority to speak for a large faction of the Taliban. They flew these Taliban into Zurich Switzerland for initial negotiations.
The US has also looked for ways to split portions of the Taliban away from the Al Qaeda and away from the most Islamically fervent elements of the Taliban.
Even the US, which officially refuses all contact with the Taliban, have repeatedly used mediators to discreetly gauge the willingness of the insurgents to talk. The BND coordinated its secret talks with the US intelligence agencies, and European countries such as France were also in the know. "There was a time when many Western countries spoke to the Taliban," says one German government official.
So "we never negotiate with terrorists" is not always the case. "We never negotiate with terrorists unless we think they might be willing to renounce terrorism and Jihad" might be closer to the truth.
The talks ultimately failed.
The German talks eventually collapsed, apparently due to the insurgents' refusal to distance themselves from al-Qaida. The BND took that refusal to mean that the Taliban is not all that interested in civilian reconstruction. But the negotiations only came to an end after eight to 10 weeks of secret diplomacy.
The Taliban is not all that interested in civilian reconstruction? My guess is they are interested in more wives, keeping down the women (which means keeping out Western influences), more money, and putting the screws to other tribal factions.
SANGIN, Afghanistan — A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.
Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.
American bombs are supposedly killing more civilians than the resurgent Taliban are. Makes us look bad to the locals.
I hope you all weren't expecting a tribal society to improve and become all lovey dovey.
Most Afghans cheered the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and they appreciate the ways U.S. assistance has improved their lives since then: reopening schools, building roads and bridges, bringing electricity to remote villages. Yet they increasingly resent the unending war, especially its rising toll in civilian lives—and they don't hesitate to blame America and its multinational allies. Anti-U.S. rallies in the towns of Shindand and Jalalabad each drew more than a thousand protesters last week, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai once again declared that his government can no longer tolerate the deaths of so many innocent Afghans. "We are very sorry when the [U.S.-led] international Coalition Force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured," he told a press conference. "It pains us. But Afghan [civilians] are human beings, too."
Hamid Karzai is that stylishly dressed guy we chose to make into the "democratically" elected President of Afghanistan (I originally typed "leader" but corrected myself). Karzai knows how to do Central Asian Muslim chic. Which is cool in some circles. But darn it, he rules over (sort of anyway) a bunch of consanguineously marrying, very high fertility, low IQ, Muslim fundamentalist tribes. Not exactly material to emulate an East Asian tiger success story.
Most of the Aghanis who are dying are getting killed by the Taliban. But they are going to hate us more the longer the war continues.
More than 900 of them died in 2006 alone. Roughly three quarters of that number died in Taliban attacks, nearly half of which "appear to have been intentionally launched" against civilian targets, according to a newly released report from Human Rights Watch. Even in attacks on legitimate military targets, the report found "little evidence to suggest that insurgent forces were in any way seeking to minimize [civilian] losses." Instead, the report said, the objective seemed to be "not merely to harm specific individuals but to generate broader fear among the civilian population." Roughly 230 civilians died in U.S. and Coalition attacks last year, but the report found no evidence that any of those killings were deliberate.
The outsiders who aren't part of local tribes (that would be soldiers from the US, Canada, and some European countres) are held to a higher standard.
Afghans expect the worst from the Taliban, but they hold America to a far higher standard. "The Taliban never claimed to support human rights," says Abdul Sattar Khowasi, a member of Parliament from Kapisa province, about 70 miles northeast of Kabul. "The U.S. came here in the name of human rights." Besides, people are increasingly afraid to criticize Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban forces in public.
An incident involving an attack on US Marines where the Marines killed a lot of civilians has made the Afghans especially sensitive. Those Marines were supposed to be the Marine version of some sort of special forces unit. The Marines got yanked out of Afghanistan due to that incident.
We don't want Afghanistan to become an Al Qaeda training base again. But hanging around will just make the locals hate us. Still, if we leave the central government (meaning: the government that rules Kabul) might fall and the Taliban might shoot its way back into power. What to do? Suggestions anyone?
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 17 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that American and NATO military commanders in Afghanistan, worried about a resurgent Taliban insurgency, had asked for additional troops and that he was sympathetic to the request.
Speaking to reporters after a two-day visit to Afghanistan and before heading here for meetings with Saudi officials, Mr. Gates said commanders had “indicated what they could do with different force levels,” but he would not divulge the size of the increases under consideration. A senior Defense official said late Tuesday that the commanders were seeking fewer than 3,500 more American troops as well as about 1,000 more troops from NATO allies.
Remember how Taliban control of Afghanistan allowed Sunni Al Qaeda members to train and organize terrorist attacks on Western targets? Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Now if we withdraw our troops and leave the Shia Arabs in control of Iraq the Sunni Wahhabi Arabs will look at the leaders in Baghdad as their enemies. A withdrawal from Iraq would also make it easier to deal with the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Iraqis are not going to hell in a handbasket all by themselves.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The conflict in Afghanistan has entered a dangerous phase, and the next three to six months could prove crucial in determining whether the United States and its NATO partners can suppress a revitalized enemy — or will be dragged into another drawn-out and costly fight with an Islamic insurgency, according to senior military and security officials and diplomats.
"I think we are approaching a tipping point, perhaps early in the new year," said a Western diplomat in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly.
I think we'll be dragged into another costly fight with an Islamic insurgency. Where's the effort needed to prevent that outcome? The US is tapping out its Army just trying to deal with the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Well, Iraq is going to get worse still. I do not expect Afghanistan to get the attention it warrants until the tipping over has already happened.
The Taliban are running a parallel government in some provinces.
"Their support network has improved, and in some areas they've been able to operate and control roads and villages and the like," said Seth Jones, a counterinsurgency expert at the Rand Corp. who was recently in Afghanistan for field research. "The Taliban have created a shadow government in a number of provinces — people going to Taliban governors rather than centrally appointed governors on rule-of-law issues."
Attacks have increased 4 fold since 2005. The Taliban may have lost as many as 7,000 fighters as compared to 180 for NATO and allies. But Americans are becoming less popular in Afghanistan just as happened in Iraq.
In much of the country, the lack of security has severely stunted development projects, which in turn has fostered widespread disillusionment. Particularly in dirt-poor rural areas, many Afghans believe their daily lot has improved little since Taliban times, and tend to cast the blame on the same Americans they once hailed as liberators.
The Bush Administration invasion of Iraq has been a distraction from the countries that really matter in the battle against Islamic terrorism. Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda trained to launch their terrorist attacks in the United States. Pakistan was the backer of the Taliban and some top Pakistani intelligence officials were on friendly terms with Al Qaeda. Oh, and Pakistan has nuclear bombs. Plus, the 9/11 attackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia.
In spite of all this Bush invaded Iraq. The neocons were thrilled that the Iraq invasion would make the Middle East safer for Israel. But they were wrong about that. Bush thought he was going to fight an easy war that would boost his domestic popularity. He was wrong about that. Now he doesn't want to admit the scale of his mistake. So he won't pull out American troops from Iraq. Well, some of those troops are needed in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan many secret schools located in homes have been set up in order to avoid attacks by the Taliban. Public schools have been forced closed by Taliban attacks.
Within two years of the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement that banned girls' education and emphasized Islamic studies for boys, officials boasted that 5.1 million children of both sexes were enrolled in public schools. These included hundreds of village tent-schools erected by UNICEF.
...
President Hamid Karzai told audiences in New York this week that about 200,000 Afghan children had been forced out of school this year by threats and physical attacks.
According to UNICEF, 106 attacks or threats against schools occurred from January to August, with incidents in 31 Afghan provinces. They included one missile attack, 11 explosions, 50 burnings and 37 threats. In the four southern provinces under serious assault by Taliban forces, UNICEF said, nearly half of the 748 schools have stopped operating.
Many parents want their sons and even their daughters to receive educations. But the Taliban is opposed to education for girls and want the boys to receive religious instruction only. The US has not paid enough attention to Afghanistan because Iraq has become such a drain and a distraction. But Afghanistan is so backward and so split by tribal divisions that even with more effort by foreigners its future is something less than bright.
The Euros are going negative on Afghan President Hamid Karzai as donestic discontent grows as well.
As a sense of insecurity spreads, a rift is growing between the president and some of the foreign civilian and military establishments whose money and firepower have helped rebuild and defend the country for nearly five years. While the U.S. commitment to Karzai appears solid, several European governments are expressing serious concerns about his leadership.
...
"This is a crucial time, and there is frustration and finger-pointing on all sides," the official said. "President Karzai is the only alternative for this country, but if he attacks us, we can't help him project his vision. And if he goes down, we all go down with him."
My sense of listening to Karzai: he is not ruthless enough or Machiavellian enough to govern a place like Afghanistan. But are Western criticisms of Karzai correct? Maybe he needs to do more things that they find objectionable such as making more deals with leaders of criminal gangs or tribal leaders. The Euros and the US aren't going to provide a non-corrupt foreign police force. Maybe there's no way to give Afghanistan non-corrupt government because so few can resist the pressures of tribal family politics..
The Taliban have grown in power.
Hamida, 32, waited on a bench for alterations. She said she was visiting from Zabol province in the south. "My husband was a school principal, but the Taliban threatened to kill him, so he quit and now he is sitting at home," she said. "We women cannot leave our houses. The police come under attack at night, and we only see foreign soldiers once in a while. There is no one to protect us."
One Afghan political figure says Karzai has to be soft toward powerful people.
It's not clear whether any leader could have lived up to the expectations of Afghans and the world. But the accomplishments in Afghanistan have been considerable. Five years ago the Taliban ruled and al-Qaida leaders had a haven. Now the country has an elected president, an elected parliament, a constitution, a national army.
"It's a necessity to have Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan now," said parliament member Mohammad Mohaqiq, a former warlord who lost to Karzai in the 2004 presidential election. "There is no way except the way Hamid Karzai does things, by being soft toward powerful people. It's not the best way, but there's no other way."
Well, there is another way: Karzai could ruthlessly consolidate power by having rivals killed. Worked for Saddam Hussein.
Karzai is trapped between his need for support from both foreigners and powerful and ruthless natives.
Observers say Karzai has been trapped by bad advice and by the people around him. They complain about some of his allies, especially the man he reportedly backed for speaker of the lower house of parliament, a warlord accused of atrocities. They describe the president as increasingly isolated, master of the palace but not the country.
"Hamid Karzai is a good man," said Hamidullah Tokhi, a parliament member from southern Zabul province. "He doesn't hold grudges. He's kind to all Afghans. But there are some advisers who have circled Karzai and given him bad advice. They have almost taken Hamid Karzai hostage. He cannot do anything independently."
From the very beginning Karzai has been dependent on the support of foreigners and on compromises among Afghans. He still needs foreign troops and foreign-aid dollars. He still needs the support of former warlords.
Karzai's position in Afghanistan is a lot like the US's position in Iraq. He does not have enough resources and power and ability to behave ruthlessly to accomplish anything and so things get worse. Will he flee from Afghanistan before the US withdraws from Iraq?
The US had trouble enough trying to handle Afghanistan while hunting down Bin Laden. The invasion of Iraq shifting resources away from Afghanistan. Special forces and intelligence assets got shifted toward Iraq. Criminal gangs and the Taliban expanded into the power vacuum.
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – Last summer, Shahida Hussain was pounding the dusty streets of Kandahar campaigning for Parliament in defiance of Taliban threats. Now this outspoken woman rarely leaves her house for fear of getting caught up in the violence engulfing Afghanistan's southern city.
"Six months ago things were better, but security gets worse day after day. Our children cannot go to school and we've stopped going out," says Ms. Hussain, who would only agree to an interview at a hotel for fear of having foreign visitors at her home.
Police corruption and criminal gangs are seen by many as bigger threats than the Taliban.
But the Taliban is making a big come-back as well.
The Taliban have become far more daring, infiltrating areas where they have not been seen for over four years in large numbers. Some of the worst fighting this week was in Panjwayi district, less than 20 miles from the heart of Kandahar, which has left aid agencies able to operate only within the gates of Afghanistan's second largest city.
Monday, Coalition forces reported that an airstrike late Sunday in Panjwayi district killed up to 80 suspected Taliban militants. Kandahar's governor told reporters that 16 civilians also died. As the fighting heated up last week, villagers from the district could be seen carrying all their belongings on donkeys or packing them in cars and fleeing into Kandahar.
"It was an acknowledgment that the government could do nothing for them," says a western security expert in the south.
Read the whole article.
The US overextended by invading Iraq. Afghanistan is a difficult problem. Multiple languages and ethnic groups, consanguineous marriage, Islam, decades of civil war, low average IQs, and extreme poverty. In Afghanistan, like in Iraq, there is no shared sense of common interest in a nation. While the Bush Administration bungles America's Middle Eastern policy it pursues a far more damaging set of policies toward immigration. In America signs that immigration is reducing the shared sense of common national interests aren't hard to find.Mexican immigrants do not want American citizenship. So much for the idea that they are coming here for freedom. If our foolish elites had their way they'd bring about an America as fragmented and divided as Iraq and Afghanistan.I hope America doesn't eventually reach the point of having middle class flight out of the country as Iraq is experiencing. But if our elites get their way that day will come.
Writing for the Christian Science Monitor David Montero reports on the worsening security situation in Afghanistan
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Nearly five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's security situation continues to be dragged down by endemic corruption, roving militias, and a growing nexus between narco-warlords and remnants of the Taliban, officials and analysts say.
The melting snows of spring often bring an uptick in violence, as rebels emerge from their mountain redoubts. Yet there are indications of a deepening instability beyond the seasonal surge. More than 70 foreign troops, mostly Americans, have been killed this past year, making it the deadliest period since the conflict began. Violence, meanwhile, seems to be spreading beyond the volatile south, encroaching on areas formerly considered outside the zones of conflict.
Governors and police are in cahoots with drug smugglers and the Taliban.
Many governors and chiefs of police, rather than confronting the Taliban and neutralizing drug lords, are increasingly intertwined with them, either for political or monetary gain, some analysts say. Amid the lawlessness, military intelligence has become a political game, a tool for blackmail or settling old scores, analysts allege.
Lawlessness helps the Taliban.
A few weeks back I came across a TV interview of Christian Parenti who writes for The Nation (a ideologically leftist political magazine - but Parenti knows his subject) on his trips into the Middle East and Afghanistan. Parenti had a number of disturbing things to say about what is going on in Afghanistan. Parenti says that elements of the Pakistani government are still helping the Taliban.
BRANCACCIO: Now, you mention the Taliban. You actually met a bunch of these guys what, on a lonely road?
PARENTI: In a canyon not far from Kandahar in Zabul province. Just off the road, the main road between Kabul and Kandahar, my translator and I managed to hook up with a group of Taliban fighters. The Taliban mostly operate in groups of five or six, and then they come together maybe up to 50 fighters at a time, to do stuff like they did the other day, attack a U.S. base. And they're pretty clearly... according to these guys and then a Taliban spokesperson I spoke with, this western spy, and some Afghan intelligence people, the Taliban is run out of Pakistan with the support of the Pakistani state. They have sort of three main fronts that they operate out of. And they're a coherent, aggressive movement wreaking havoc with the aid of a U.S. ally, Pakistan. And the Bush Administration seems to be putting no pressure on Pakistan to change that policy.
BRANCACCIO: So you have the insurgency, the Taliban. Who really holds the actual power within Afghanistan at this stage?
PARENTI: You know, there is no one group that holds power within that country. Because the country is so broken up into a series of fiefdoms. And local powers are sort of city states around the major cities like Herat or Kandahar. But the government, Karzai's government, is populated by very horrible warlords with abominable human rights records.
And the main problem is that George Bush has used Afghanistan as a prop in his domestic political theater and rushed through the creation of the government there. And so there is now a government made up of really horrible criminal warlords.
One of the people that I interviewed, one of the stories I did out of this trip was with a former Taliban commander who was responsible for the destruction of the Buddhas in Bamiyan; those ancient statues. He's now in the Parliament. That's just one example. You could go on and on.
Those types of people, once in government, turned the ministries and the agencies they control into patronage organizations. They have, even according to the Afghan government, involved in drug running. So you have a government that is incapable of delivering development. And basically just becomes a nepotistic patronage system that's riddled with corruption.
And then in the countryside the local warlords, the big landlords, the leading families control their areas. The independent human rights commission in Afghanistan located and actually managed to close 40 different private detention facilities. But there are many more. So there is no one power. There's just localized power. And in the South, the Taliban are increasing in power.
They've burnt and closed 200 schools this year. They stop traffic and tax it on the roads. They operate with relative impunity. And actually with the support of the very sort of conservative Pashtun villages in the South.
Insufficient US power means the bad guys become more powerful and that stretches US power even more severely.
In March 2006 Parenti wrote a lengthy piece for The Nation about Afghanistan which is worth reading in full. The Taliban have a united leadership headquartered in the United States's supposed anti-terrorist ally Pakistan.
"We are fighting because we won't let the American troops in our land," says the Taliban leader. "If their objectives were to rebuild our country we would not fight against them. But that is not their goal." He thinks America is here to "destroy our country" and "not leave."
How is the Taliban organized? "We are under one leadership. We have several groups, but we work together under one leadership. We have one command, but we have to operate in groups of five or six, because if we gather in groups of fifty we are afraid of the aircrafts. They would destroy us in big groups." This jibes with what an officer in the Afghan National Security Directorate tells me. The NSD officer says the Taliban have three fronts but all answer to one Pakistan-supported and -based leadership.
And what about support from Pakistan? "Yes, Pakistan stands with us," says the leader. "And on that side of the border we have our offices. Pakistan is supporting us, they supply us. Our leaders are there collecting help. The people on this side of the border also support us."
Parenti says Bush is failing to do what is necessary to deal with Afghanistan.
Bush is cutting aid and troops in Afghanistan because he sees it as a sideshow as compared to Iraq. Note that the 9/11 attackers were headquartered in Afghanistan, not Iraq and that Bin Laden and Zawahiri are still somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
In the face of Afghanistan's deepening troubles, the US government is now slashing its funding for reconstruction from a peak of $1 billion in 2004 to a mere $615 million this year. And thanks to the military's recruitment problems, the United States is drawing down its troops from 19,000 to 16,000. In short, despite Bush's feel-good rhetoric, the United States is giving every impression that it is slowly abandoning sideshow Afghanistan.
So Afghanistan is going to hell in a handbasket, elements of the Pakistani government still support the Taliban, and yet Bush is distracted by attempts to bring Jeffersonian democracy to an Iraq that is very far from fertile ground to such a quixotic project.
Parenti had an interesting chat with a Western intelligence agent.
Toward the end of my stay I meet a European "contractor" who is in fact a Western intelligence agent in charge of several important dossiers pertaining to Afghan security. All of this is confirmed through Afghan intelligence sources. But my "contractor" friend maintains his pretenses and I remain respectful of that, and we proceed with otherwise very frank conversations.
To my surprise, this agent to the great powers, this builder of empire, is the most cynical person I've met my whole trip. Highly intellectual, he talks of Afghanistan as doomed, a hostage to history and to the idiocy, arrogance and Iraq obsession of the Bush clique. He passes me a series of "red gaming papers"--intentionally dissenting analyses of the Afghan situation written by and for the coalition.
The papers paint an arrestingly bleak picture of Afghanistan as a political "fiction," a buffer state that no longer buffers, a collection of fiefdoms run by brutal local warlords. The coalition's mission is portrayed as a fantasy game managed by sheltered careerists. One of the papers is by an American. It ends on this note: Nothing short of an open-ended blank check from the United States will keep Afghanistan from returning to chaos.
I see more chaos and continued growth of Taliban power in Afghanistan. The Bush Administration has overstretched the United States and will not either raise taxes or implement a draft in order to get the resources needed for the scale of commitments and problems that have resulted from the overstretch.
After the Taliban were overthrow the United States was still faced with a very large job to hunt down the Al Qaeda top leaders, hunt down Taliban top leaders, establish a fairly non-corrupt government in Afghanistan, and create an environment in which the people of Afghanistan would see the new regime as worthy of support and beneficial to them. But Bush shifted resources away from Afghanistan to go after Saddam. He took shortcuts whose costs are gradually accumulating. The Taliban was given the breathing space needed to regroup. The US did not have enough intelligence resources to pry apart the threads connecting the Pakistani government with the Taliban. Bush and the neoconservatives are engaged in imperial overstretch which hurts US interests and security.