Afghanistan News & Discussion

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 05 Feb 2010 17:00

Everybody in Afghanistan is in Dostum's debt, and everybody hates his guts. But the guy knows his world very very well indeed. He's been there a long, long time. And, he knows how to deal with the Paks.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 05 Feb 2010 18:17

The indecent haste with which we have succumbed,suurrendered yet again to Uncle Sam's diktat,by resuming talks with Pak (where Pak is calling the shots imposing conditions upon India!),indicates that something happened in London behind the scenes.MKB has put the finger on the spot (regional rivals,meaning India and Pak,cooperating,leading to an Indian compromise/surrender to Pak on Kashmir).Looking in full perspective of the Afghan scenery,one sees nothing but US interests foremost,Pak's second and India the hindmost! Thanks to the gerentocracy and sentimentalists who hog current the Indian leadership,we astonishingly are letting Pak off the hook for 26/11 ,its daily terroism in J&K and our dumoing legitimate regional interests into the dustbin.Who at the helm of affairs is looking after India and its interests?

Airavat · Post by **Airavat** » 06 Feb 2010 06:37

Ghilzai/Durrani distinction does not matter

No one cares, not in any meaningful sense of the term, what a tribal confederation is in Afghanistan. They’ll list it, but ones Durrani-ness has as much to do with one’s identify as the color of one’s sandals. It simply does not matter—the idea that the Ghilzai/Durrani distinction is salient in any way is ludicrous.

Comment:
One important factor that is either neglected or unknown to the so-called “expersts” on Afghanistan is that Ghiljay and Durrani (Abdali) are not the only two large tribal confederation. Zadran, Wazir, Mehsud and other similar tribes belong to the Karlan tribal confederation.

Furthermore, the opposition consists of Noorzai, Alizai and Ishaqzai tribes. Ironically they are sub-branches of the Durrani (Abdali) tribe.

These so-called “experts” have no idea what they are talking about. There are Ghiljay tribesmen in Karzai’s cabinet.

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 06 Feb 2010 14:33

Tribal affiliations and disputes are to be experienced to be realised!

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 06 Feb 2010 23:34

X Posting

RamaY wrote:The Af-Pak problem is immediate and India cannot expect positive outcomes for itself without getting involved in the solution.

The MMS/UPA strategy of economic prosperity till 2020 will not work as it is naive to expect our enemies to give us that time.

If India were to make concessions to US/Nato in Afpak region, GOI should militarily contribute to Afghan stabilization program than agreeing to peace-talks with TSP. These are my reasons:

- It is always preferable to expose our armed forces to the enemy than exposing our soft-belly of economy and secular society. IA is better equipped, trained and prepared to take the likes of TSPA, Taliban and other Jihadee forces than Indian Police, civil infrastructure, and secular society.
- Always conduct war in enemy territory. If TSP views Afghanistan as its strategic depth, then conduct your war there.
- Never negotiate with someone weaker to you. Always negotiate with their masters.
- If India loses in Afghanistan, it would amount to US/NATO loss too. If India loses in JK or Mumbai, it is India’s loss only.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 08 Feb 2010 09:42

Taliban dig in Helmand for big assault

The Taliban are massing and preparing for a big fight ahead of a major NATO offensive in an insurgent stronghold in southern Afghanistan, villagers fleeing the area said on Sunday.

US Marines are set to launch a massive operation within days to take Marjah, a dense warren of canals and lush farmland in the centre of Helmand, the country’s most violent province.

Dubbed: Military commanders are dubbing the area the last big Taliban enclave in the province. The offensive, one of the biggest of the eight-year-old war, will mark the first major show of force since US President Barack Obama ordered in 30,000 extra troops.

Washington hopes the Marine operation will help decisively turn the momentum this year in a war that commanders accept has not been going their way. They have also not kept the planned offensive a secret, hoping the militants will give up the fight. “It has to do with letting people know what’s coming in the hope that the hardcore Taliban, or a lot of the Taliban, will simply leave, and maybe there will be less of a fight,” US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in Turkey on Saturday. {A bad strategy IMHO because those escaping will come back to haunt. These are the Taliban who are committed to the ideology and cannot be bribed and won over. They need to be taken down, not allowed to escape.}

According to some of the villagers escaping Marjah in fear of their lives, fighters are digging in rather than fleeing. “The Taliban are not going to leave Marjah. We have seen them preparing themselves,” said Abdul Manan, a man from Marjah who had fled to Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah.

“The Taliban are very active in Marjah. They are planting mines there and in the surrounding areas,” said another villager, Abdul Khaleq, after arriving in Lashkar Gah with his family.

Not backing down: Abdullah Nasrat, a Taliban commander in Nad Ali district where Marjah is located, told Reuters by telephone there were some 2,000 insurgents there ready to fight to the death. “We are well prepared and will fight until the end. We don’t have sophisticated weapons like the Americans with tanks and airplanes, but we have zeal. That is the power we have to fight against the infidels,” he said.

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 08 Feb 2010 12:44

Cross Posting
The good, the bad, and the ugly by KS in IE

The real issue is whether this will work. Will the Pakistani army and the ISI permit it to succeed? That depends on the course of the campaign the US will launch on completing the surge operation.The purpose of buying up the pseudo-Taliban is to pacify the Afghan territory as the US forces will move closer to the Durand line and intensify their attacks on the jihadis on the Pakistani side with their drones.

When that moment of truth arrives, the Pakistani Army and the ISI have to decide whether they will go along with US or stay out. If they stay out, the US drone offensive will intensify against all five jihadi elements. The latest QDR also mentions stepping up the armed drone effort by 75 per cent. That may unleash jihadi anger against the Pakistani army and the state, as it did in respect of the Pakistani Taliban for permitting US logistics through Pakistani territory and the operation of drones. If the Pakistani army opposes US action, that will result in a break-off of US aid, both civil and military as well as from the international community. If the army decides to go along with the US, the jihadi groups are likely to target the Pakistani cities and the army itself.

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 09 Feb 2010 04:07

U.S. should build Afghan agriculture
Dated....Jan 20 2010.

Rahimi added, “Agricultural development is the solution to poppy. Helmand province (the world poppy capital) has wheat, melons, pomegranates. Saffron in Helmand is more valuable than poppy.” Indeed, in the past year, help with wheat seed and cultivation has led to a 30 percent drop in Helmand’s poppy crop (aided by a drop in poppy prices due to overcultivation).

But Rahimi insists that the key to boosting farm production is helping Afghans build up their technical expertise. He would like to see more U.S. experts seconded to Afghan ministries, both in Kabul and in rural districts, training Afghans to take over. As of November, only one U.S. expert had appeared at his ministry, he said.

“The Indian government,” he told me, “is working to establish an agricultural university, based on the concept of U.S. land grant colleges. Why didn’t the U.S. come up with this?” Rahimi fondly recalls attending an Afghan technical institute in the early ’70s — “built by the Peace Corps and taught in English.” He also recalls the glory days of USAID experts, who were hugely popular in Afghanistan in the ’60s.

“Lashkar Gah (Helmand’s capital) was little America, with lots of U.S. agronomists,” he said. “There were mountains of wheat, melons, grapes, and not even a kilo of poppy. The State Department should look back at the time when everyone was in love with American agricultural teachers.”

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 09 Feb 2010 11:34

Indian Motion by Kapil Komireddi in FP

But India arguably has just as much at stake as the Western countries -- if not more

Thus far, India's policy toward Pakistan has been hands-off, leaving it to the paymasters in Washington and London. In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, New Delhi even acceded to Washington's requests and took no action against Islamabad in order to facilitate the war in Afghanistan. But now that dynamic is changing. As control of Afghanistan is being gradually handed back to the Taliban, an increasingly alarmed New Delhi will start looking for ways to prevent trouble

Washington's critics trace the origins of today's crisis to the United States' abrupt abandonment of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. The trouble with this version of history is that it skips over the 1990s. But contrary to what is now conventional wisdom in the West, the Taliban in its current incarnation is not a remnant of the Cold War. It is a creation of Pakistan

Of course, it is unlikely that New Delhi would directly oppose U.S. policy in the region. But in the first year of the Obama administration, much of the progress achieved over a decade of aggressive diplomacy to bring India closer to the United States has been undone.

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 10 Feb 2010 07:07

U.S. Troops Prepare to Test Obama's Afghan War Plan from Time
Worth a read and mark the outlines.
Marja first, Kandahar next, and then exit. What gets done in steps 1 and 2 will determine what actually happens after the exit. Will this be a clean action or like the paki army S Waziristan action? How much of degradation achieved etc.? The artcle is worth a read to get a feel for the markers of this US offensive.

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 10 Feb 2010 07:16

U.S. Enlists Ex-Foes for Afghan Army from WSJ
Interesting piece! Some excerpts -

Most ANA generals and colonels appointed to serve just below them, however, are veterans of the Soviet-built Afghan military that hunted these insurgents through the 1980s.

"Former army officers are very experienced, and the more we expand our army, the more we need them," says Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmad Popal, commander of the Kabul Military Training Center, a sprawling facility that churns out thousands of new ANA soldiers every month. The deputy corps commander of Kandahar in Communist times, Gen. Popal himself lived in exile in India until joining the ANA in 2008.

Nineteen colonels and brigadiers in their 50s and 60s graduated after several months of study with American and French instructors. Among them, 16 had fought in the Communist Afghan army, and only three hailed from mujahedeen backgrounds

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 10 Feb 2010 07:21

Pakistan military 'biggest obstacle' to Afghan reconciliation with Taliban Says Stanekzai - from The Telegraph

Stanekzai leads the internationally funded initiative agreed at last month's London conference to offer Taliban foot soldiers and junior commanders security, jobs and political representation if they abandon the insurgency

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 10 Feb 2010 08:55

Cross Posting CRM's piece in the IE, and highlighting Afghanistan related references -
The Great Game Folio: Helmand Offensive

If the US and its Afghan partners come out of this battle regaining territory in the Helmand province — and more important, by winning over some important Pashtun tribes — there might yet be a small chance for the international coalition to regain the political momentum.
It is a big IF indeed. In the event that the offensive is seen as a failure, Washington’s options will rapidly shrink. For the moment though, it is best to reserve one’s judgement on who is winning the war in Afghanistan until the results from Helmand are in

Must India be worried? No. For three reasons.......the best evidence for the Pakistan army’s strategic incompetence (it always has been brilliant tactically) comes from Afghanistan. After Soviet troops agreed to leave Afghanistan in 1988, Pindi had a full 13 years, until September 2001, to establish its dominance over Kabul. It failed spectacularly. If it could not gain control of Afghanistan then, how could it win now? And there was no India in Afghanistan then, to blame as Pindi does now.

Read it to make some more sense of what could be the thinking!

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 10 Feb 2010 18:44

Turkey regrets not inviting India for Afghan meet

During the talks, the two countries also agreed to work together with other like-minded countries for the finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the earliest. Turkey is the first Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) country to come out with a joint declaration with India on terrorism. The declaration denounces “those who sponsor, abet and instigate terrorism and provide them safe havens”.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 10 Feb 2010 19:43

Malayappan wrote:Cross Posting CRM's piece in the IE, and highlighting Afghanistan related references -
The Great Game Folio: Helmand Offensive

From that Raja Mohan article, the following caught my eye:

If the US and its Afghan partners come out of this battle regaining territory in the Helmand province — and more important, by winning over some important Pashtun tribes — there might yet be a small chance for the international coalition to regain the political momentum.

The US-Afghan partners will surely come out regaining control of that territory. They may even appear to win over the Pashtun there. The trouble here is that for all their posturing of digging in to fight the Americans, the Taliban will simply run away as they have done in Swat and South Waziristan. In Swat and now in Bajaur, they are beginning to re-appear. This is classic guerrilla tactic. Therefore, regaining territory will not be an indication of success. IMHO, two things need to be done. One, the Taliban must be physically eliminated, not allowed to run away. Second, the Americans & NATO forces must stay for whatever length of time it takes to completely win over the villagers/tribes rather than announcing a priori their exit dates. The Afghan National Army will not be trained and equipped by the time frame of 2011 and besides their loyalty may be still suspect in a country notorious for that. As for the tribes themselves, how can one instill confidence in them if they know that the NATO forces are slated to leave in about 20 months and inevitably the Taliban will return especially when they have not been physically liquidated ?

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 11 Feb 2010 04:28

x post from West asia thread

Top story is that West is broke and is looking and Saudi to fund anti AQAP ops in Yemen, ops in Af-Pak(pacification of taleban) and fund the arming of Pak Army. Washington has spent $8.7 bil to date on Paki army ops. Zardari spoke to Saudi FM in Istanbul meet. GID chief has established contact with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar via a US/Afghani businessman called Dawood Abidi. Prince Abdulaziz bin Bandar, the GID's number two, contacted Jalaluddin Haqqani. Karzai was in Riyadh officially for a pilgrimage on Feb 3rd but he did have a lengthy chat with King of KSA and Prince Muqrin (Head of KSA GID). Karzai asked for KSA help in mediating political settlement with Taleban.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 11 Feb 2010 04:55

If Saudis are involved then Bin Laden and his company waging war on House of Saud has to go i.e end of Global Jihad but India will still be targeted by Paki flavoured Jihadis . We must get ready for worst and use all possible means to eliminate this threat . Co-incidently MMS is due in Saudia by this summer, lets see if visit get postponed again. Seems like a great grand global bargaining going on. If WEST plus Saudi are on same side then Chinese will have trouble in Urmuchi as well face tight encirclement , squeeze on their energy supply . Paki will do what Holy Saudi tells them. It might come to both Asian powers to face the brunt as it will serve WESTERN interests. Wonder how Shia Iran and Russian interests are served? If sacrifical lamb Karzai ( being thrown to the Hyenas) can survive alone in Kabul then it has the potential to undo the whole game.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 11 Feb 2010 05:21

Prem ji,

isn't KSA one of the three nations that recognized Taliban govt in Afghanistan?

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 11 Feb 2010 07:35

SSridhar,
Based on the claim put out in the media the Helmand offensive will not be the like SWaziristan offensive. Again, as per the reports, there does not appear to be a pre-arrangement (that existed in the paki army actions). That is why I think we need to watch this closely. Buried in a link to Time in a previous post of mine, there are markers for this action. We need to follow progress on these markers. I am not saying this will be different from SWaziristan, but let us check closely how this pans out - level of casualties on both sides, resistance encountered, duration of the action, speed of mobilisation towards the next theatre (Kandahar) to mention a few of those markers...

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 11 Feb 2010 07:41

RamYa
KSA did it as even Massa talked to Talibans but this was before Bin Larden Jihad became global. Now they have tasted the fruit of their sin , they be careful and nudge them them toward other direction away from them. Right now AFPAk situation is in flux . India will have clear view within a year or so. Most probably ,We will keep loosing men and material for the next 4-5 years before Dushehra happen.

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 11 Feb 2010 07:43

Malayappan wrote:SSridhar,
Based on the claim put out in the media the Helmand offensive will not be the like SWaziristan offensive. Again, as per the reports, there does not appear to be a pre-arrangement (that existed in the paki army actions). That is why I think we need to watch this closely. Buried in a link to Time in a previous post of mine, there are markers for this action. We need to follow progress on these markers. I am not saying this will be different from SWaziristan, but let us check closely how this pans out - level of casualties on both sides, resistance encountered, duration of the action, speed of mobilisation towards the next theatre (Kandahar) to mention a few of those markers...

Also to be noted that the drone strikes will be tripled on the baki side....as per reports.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 11 Feb 2010 11:59

Charlie Wilson meets his 72 at 76

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 11 Feb 2010 20:02

Just adding on to my post above. Lot of the former taliban commanders and officials are in Riyadh like the former taleban ambassador to Islamabad. The KSA is looking to increase its influence in the US once again.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Feb 2010 23:58

What districts in Afghanistan are the Mullah Omar, Haqqani networks located in? I think these are confined to three or four districts and not as widespread as TSP based reporters make out to be.

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 12 Feb 2010 04:02

Riz Khan - Talking to the Taliban ---- Al Jazeera

Malayappan · Post by **Malayappan** » 12 Feb 2010 07:07

Q&A: Why the mission in Marjah is so important and well publicised from the Times UK

Pranav · Post by **Pranav** » 12 Feb 2010 09:49

Assault Breacher Vehicle, which will soon see action in Helmand. Check out the embedded youtube clip. Sweet.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-N ... -offensive

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Feb 2010 10:59

With all that explosives wont it self be vulnerable to a hit?

Ameet · Post by **Ameet** » 13 Feb 2010 03:27

U.S. Marines launch major offensive in Afghanistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

Thousands of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers traveling in helicopters and mine-resistant vehicles began punching into a key Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan early Saturday, as one of the largest operations to assert government control over this country got underway.

The first wave of Marines and Afghan soldiers swooped into the farming community of Marja at about 2 a.m. Saturday local time (4:30 p.m. Eastern), their CH-53 Super Stallion transport helicopters landing amid clouds of dust on fallow fields. As the troops, weighed down with ammunition and supplies, lumbered out and set up defensive positions, AV-8B Harrier fighter jets and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters circled overhead in the moonless sky.

Subsequent waves of troops were expected to alight in other parts of Marja in the hours before dawn. At sunrise, hundreds more Marines and Afghan soldiers plan to enter Marja by land, using mobile bridges to ford irrigation canals -- built by U.S. engineers 50 years ago -- that have served as defensive moats for the Taliban. Heavily armored mine-sweeping trucks and specially outfitted tanks will try to carve a path through a belt of makeshift bombs buried around the town.

"We're going to take Marja away from the Taliban," said Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. Doing so, he said, could result in "a fundamental change in Helmand and, by extension, the entire nation of Afghanistan."

Although there have been other large U.S. military campaigns to flush out the Taliban in the eight-year-long war, this mission is different, involving more extensive cooperation with the Afghan army than any previous effort. Each U.S. Marine company is partnered with an Afghan one -- U.S. and Afghan troops sat side by side on the helicopters -- and a top U.S. commander is working next to an Afghan general in a command center.

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 13 Feb 2010 10:35

Any TSP reaction to this Helmad offensive?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 13 Feb 2010 10:58

CRamS wrote:Any TSP reaction to this Helmad offensive?

You mean aside from brown pants and downhill skiing? Have to see what Zardari says tomorrow -- I wonder if they were informed in advance this time around. The build-up to this offensive seems pretty hush-hush compared to some of the previous offensives.

Ameet · Post by **Ameet** » 14 Feb 2010 02:16

Slow progress in US surge against Taliban in Afghanistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02089.html

MARJA, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers encountered pockets of stiff resistance and extensive minefields as they sought to press into this Taliban sanctuary in southern Afghanistan on Saturday.

Numerous gunfights with insurgents and painstaking efforts to clear roads of makeshift bombs slowed the advance of many coalition units and delayed them from reaching some of their key destinations in this farming area of 80,000 people. The operation was further complicated by the challenge of fording irrigation canals that ring the area and traversing a landscape covered in knee-deep mud.

"We've had some pretty tough fights," said Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. "It's been a tough slog for some of our companies."

The effort to flush the Taliban out of Marja, which involves 5,000 Marines and Afghan security forces, is part of the largest coalition operation since the start of the Afghan war to combat the insurgency and exert government over lawless areas of the country. British and Afghan troops are conducting a related military operation in an adjacent Taliban stronghold 30 miles to the northeast.

It was not clear how many insurgents were killed by Marine ground units and by a series of Hellfire missile strikes from unmanned Predator and Reaper drones flying over the area that commanders employed to pursue bands of fighters shooting at coalition forces.

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 14 Feb 2010 06:28

India must seek Army role in Afghanistan

Airavat · Post by **Airavat** » 14 Feb 2010 17:00

Tajik general Atta Mohammad Noor

Among his constituents in Balkh province, Atta commands equal measures of fear and respect. People tend to glance around when asked about him; when they speak, it is in lowered tones, often referring to him as ustad - teacher, or master. Over the summer, Atta defied Karzai by coming out in favor of his main rival for the presidency, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, a fellow ethnic Tajik and onetime comrade-in-arms in the Northern Alliance.

The province is one of the most well-off and orderly in all Afghanistan, and it is nearly Taliban-free, with poppy cultivation all but quashed. Mazar is probably the safest of the country's large cities, only rarely hit by suicide bombings or even street crime. "I can come to my shop at 6 a.m., when no one is around, and stay open late at night, and feel perfectly safe," carpet seller Mohammed Asef said. "People credit him for this."

sunnyP · Post by **sunnyP** » 14 Feb 2010 20:51

How to win friends and influence people.

Nato has confirmed that two rockets fired at militants during its offensive in southern Afghanistan missed their target and killed 12 civilians.

The rockets struck a house in Marjah as thousands of Nato troops carried out operations to oust the Taliban from their stronghold in Helmand province.

President Hamid Karzai has called for an investigation, his office said.

Nato commander Gen Stanley McChrystal told Mr Karzai that "we deeply regret this tragic loss of life".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8515141.stm

shaardula · Post by **shaardula** » 14 Feb 2010 21:01

attention paul, ramana, et al.,
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/ ... y-13-1872/
wahabbi-fanatics-reported-on-the-afghan-frontier-today-february-13-1872
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/201 ... d/1870.jpg

A sequel to the 'Note of Warning."
In June and July of 1870, a Mohameddan circular flew threw some of the north-west provinces of British India. It was called a "Durschutnama," or "Note of Warning," and professed to emanate from Mecca, and to be a manifesto of the "the only true followers of the Prophet," a reforming sect which arose in Arabia one hundred and twenty years ago, under the rule of ABD-EL-WAHAB, and which has since become historical under the title of Wahabees. On the north-west frontier of India, between the British Indian-territory and the country of the Afghans, there exists what a recent number of Pall Mall Gazzette calls "a mischevious nest of fanatic conspiracy." From this point, the bigoted propoganda of the Wahabees has been disseminated among the thirty millions of Mohammedan subjects of the British Crown. Insisiting with dogged pertinancy upon the dogma of the prophet, that it is sinful to yield obedience to infidels, the Wahabee fanatics made considerable impression even the most docile of Indian Mohammedans.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 15 Feb 2010 02:01

CRamS wrote:Any TSP reaction to this Helmad offensive?

My uninformed guess is - Pune.

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 15 Feb 2010 03:20

A_Gupta wrote:
CRamS wrote:Any TSP reaction to this Helmad offensive?
My uninformed guess is - Pune.

Could very well be.

But on the Helmad offensive itself, I see true to form, Pentagon's channels CNN and Fox are hyping up the "heroics"; en route to declaring "victory".

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 15 Feb 2010 14:42

deleted - copyright

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 15 Feb 2010 16:43

Afghan attack gives Marines a taste of war