Af-Pak -> Pak-Af Watch

[ramana]

Remember the Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul which was the precursor to Af-Pak-> Pak-Af to evolving Fak-AP?

Nightwatch says

Afghanistan: Political and intelligence sources in Afghanistan said the October 2009 suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul was the work of Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) in collaboration with a Taliban faction controlled by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, India's Business Standard reported.

Afghan Foreign Minister Spanta said his government had evidence the bombing was planned by the "same sources" behind the bombing of the Embassy in July 2008. The Afghan and Indian investigations of the 2008 bombing also implicated Pakistani intelligence.

[YaoMing]

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.aspx?new=6951

The Barack Obama administration is refusing to acknowledge an offer by the leadership of the Taliban in early December to give "legal guarantees" that it will not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries.

The administration's silence on the offer, despite a public statement by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton expressing scepticism about any Taliban offer to separate itself from al Qaeda, effectively leaves the door open to negotiating a deal with the Taliban based on such a proposal. The Taliban, however, has chosen to interpret the Obama administration's position as one of rejection of its offer.

The Taliban offer, included in a statement dated Dec. 4 and e-mailed to news organisations the following day, said the organisation has "no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantees if foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan".

The statement did not mention al Qaeda by name or elaborate on what was meant by "legal guarantees" against such "meddling", but it was an obvious response to past U.S. insistence that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is necessary to prevent al Qaeda from having a safe haven in Afghanistan once again.

It suggested that the Taliban is interested in negotiating an agreement with the United States involving a public Taliban renunciation of ties with al Qaeda, along with some undefined arrangements to enforce a ban al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan in return for a commitment to a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.

[brihaspati]

Both the Talebs and the US admin requires an excuse for the US forces to withdraw from AFG. But this entire thing is tricky, as USA will have to fall back on only the Paki Taleban as an excuse to be present in TSP to protect its strategic assets - the TSPA and ISI. It will depend on how far PRC can guarantee Taleb behaviour at least so far as internal USA opinion is needed to be satisfied. Once the temporary lull is assured, and USA can claim real changes on the political ground in AFG, a possible national consensus gov at Kabul with the good Taleb in it installed - USA can withdraw with good face. Then will start the merry dance of PRC from behind and TSPA in the middle, and the Talebs in the front.

To protect attention on the Uyghurs, PRC will "allow" the Taleb enthusiasm to be unleashed back on TSP and then to India. A case of the wet cowdung smiling as the dried cowdung burns.

[Gagan]

From India's POV, the talibs must not survive this. They are an uprooted war hungry force waiting to fall in the wrong hands and be directed elsewhere.

India must aim at as much attrition of the talibs and the pakis as long as massa is present in Af Pak.

[Lilo]

What is Obama's real 'Exit Strategy' for Afghanistan? And why it matters to India

but polling shows clearly that a majority of Afghans remain willing to support the presence of international forces if they provide the security that Afghans crave. To the extent that foreign forces in Afghanistan are increasingly unpopular with segments of the Pashtun public, it is because of their manifest failures to improve security -- not the fact of their presence. A surge that reverses the erosion of human security in large swathes of Afghanistan would restore the legitimacy of the Western troop presence in the eyes of an Afghan majority that has no love whatsoever for the Taliban. Yet Obama's suggested "exit strategy" will raise doubts about U.S. reliability among the Afghan public -- and among the Taliban leadership, who can afford to wait out Western forces. is this true or is it a cliche disjoint from reality?

Might there be more to the president's new strategy than meets the eye? Some Indian strategists hope so. K. Subrahmanyam, the dean of India's strategic community, asks in today's Indian Express how the United States can possibly hope to train sufficient Afghan security forces to begin drawing down in only 18 months

A bit dated but goes on to show that the idea of a greater role for india to help ombaba's surge is no more just an indian proposal and is gaining support in their think tanks.

[AnimeshP]

Unkil trying to get a foothold in Xinjiang under the pretext of Af-Pak ...

CHINA: Xinjiang’s Wakhan Corridor as US Base?

[Malayappan]

Cross Posting from the TSP thread -
Further to the post by Johan on the killings of CIA Officials by the ISI -
Afghans Answering the Call to Fight by Carlotta Gall, NYT

Supported by American Special Forces troops, and led by Afghan intelligence officials, the effort has been building for six months and is now gaining traction in some rural areas where Afghan and NATO forces are too thinly spread to stop the Taliban’s encroachment.

The militias, working alongside Afghan and NATO forces, recently helped clear several areas of insurgents. The gains may not be permanent, but they have dealt a setback to the Taliban, the officials said.
For three years President Hamid Karzai called for former mujahedeen forces to be revived but failed to find Western support for the idea, until now.

“We should use former mujahedeen, formally and logically, as they have the sense of how to fight the Taliban,” he said. During the resistance period the mujahedeen had forces in every village, General Daoud said. Still loyal to their parties and their local leaders, they represent an extensive network of potential fighters, informants and helpers throughout the country, he said.

While it has been easy to mobilize Turkmen and Uzbek tribes, who are under threat from the Taliban, it has been harder to encourage local Pashtun communities to resist the Taliban, who are largely Pashtun.

Worth reading in full! No wonder the ISI caught on to it pretty quickly and sought to take remedial action. The Americans should be impressed with this prompt action. Sometimes I wonder whose side the US State Department is! Is it really on the American side?

[ramana]

LINK:
http://nightwatch.afcea.org/NightWatch_20100105.htm

Special Comment: First impressions. Publication of Major General Mike Flynn’s criticism of his own area of responsibility, intelligence, was headline news around the world. The document -- Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan -- deserves detailed study, but even a cursory examination indicates astonishing, fundamental problems, despite nine years of fighting in Afghanistan.

First, Flynn is the Director of Intelligence in Afghanistan, the J2, under General McChrystal. He is supposed to own all the intelligence in the theater, but clearly and amazingly he does not.

Second, the J2 is supposed to be a producer of intelligence for the Commander, but the report suggests he is more like a customer of intelligence produced by national agencies. That is the organizational model DIA adopted for the Joint Staff in the Pentagon in 2006. The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the only four-star rank flag officer in the US armed forces without his own fully dedicated intelligence staff. The Chairman’s J2 is a DIA customer, though he is also a DIA flag officer.

While that unusual circumstance might be tolerable in Washington, it is inconceivable that such a bizarre arrangement would be exported to a hot combat zone. Flynn’s report indicates that it has been.

Third, the news media have ignored the extraordinary fact that Flynn published his views in an unclassified outlet. This implies an admission that he lacks the respect and authority to make changes within his own chain of command. That can only be true if he is a customer of intelligence that others produce, rather than the head of his own analytical centers.

What quality and degree of frustration compel a J2 to resort to the unclassified media to plead his case for fixing his own command responsibility?

Fourth, the US has been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001. Whatever semantic games people choose to play about the nature of the fight, the information Flynn wants is just basic to any intelligence problem in support of forces in combat. The information exists. The volume of intelligence reporting on Afghanistan is beyond belief. The detail is extraordinary for anyone who takes the time to read it.

National agencies and Commands were accustomed to know how to mine low grade ore/information to obtain high grade results, routinely. Moreover, combat units always have been sources of actionable tactical intelligence, a historical fact that some in the Afghanistan command seem to think is novel and that they discovered. That is what debriefing is all about. When did the US Army forget that lesson?

Cultural and other detailed local studies are not new requirements for intelligence. DIA once excelled at this work, 40 years ago. So what happened? What’s going on in US intelligence that good people must reinvent old wheels that have existed since World War II?

Fifth, a year ago CJCS Admiral Mullen promised the Afghanistan command everything it needed. DIA set up a 300 person support cell. A year later General Flynn suggests this promise has not been kept or the effort has made no difference, in a year. He wrote that he has enough analysts, but for some reason can’t direct them to do what he judges the Combat Command needs. How can this be possible?

Sixth, why would any nation send its young men and women to fight under these conditions? They do not know and cannot tell who the enemy is, as the attack at FOB Chapman demonstrated, and cannot rely on intelligence to provide the answers, according to Flynn.

More on this after a more careful review of the report.

[pgbhat]

Instability awaits Kabul ---- Vikram Sood

The coalition failure in Helmand has been interpreted by most Afghans as victory for the Taliban and also drew more recruits to the Taliban. It is impossible to distinguish them from ordinary villagers and it would be a mistake to conclude that they are resented by the Pushtun population. Coalition forces have remained far too inadequate and ill motivated to allow for an effective clear and hold policy.

It is difficult to predict if and when the US will change its decades old policy of pardoning Pakistan all its transgressions. What we need to take into account is that one of these days the US will carry out its much vaunted but ridiculously inadequate much delayed surge, declare mission accomplished and thin out. Its longterm policies are dictated by election year compulsions. Once the coalition forces begin to pull out a few things will inevitably happen as other interests try to fill the empty spaces.

Pakistan will naturally assume that its moment has come again and it could now acquire its much dreamt of strategic depth, throw the Indians out and be the overlord in Afghanistan. The Iranians are unlikely to remain idle spectators as a Sunni Wahabbi neighbour is going to be an unsettling factor for them.

The Chinese have already begun to move in with their commercial and resource interests into Afghanistan as they would see an opportunity to move closer to the Persian Gulf, given their steady relations with the Iranians.

They also need to keep the Islamist extremists away from sensitive areas like Xinjiang. The Central Asian Republics and Russia have their concerns about the dangers of Talibanised ideology spreading into their countries. Finally, the absence of a strong centralised authority will only create more confusion in a country that has been run on drug money and foreign doles.

India
Pakistan’s exultation may be temporary.
Unable to control its own territory it is unlikely to be able to run Afghanistan in the way it may want to. It does not have the resources to do so and the US will not sub lease Afghanistan to Pakistan this time.

The other very real danger is that the Pushtuns on both sides of the Durand Line, joined together in a common fight for decades, may well ask if they fought all these years only to end up being minorities in both countries. The departure of the Coalition Forces will only add to the instability of the region and India needs to prepare itself for this eventuality.

There have been subtle suggestions made in recent months that are designed to create illusions of grandeur in us. These suggest that as a power rising towards its destiny as a major power, we should be playing a more active role in our neighbourhood, especially in Afghanistan.

Some have suggested that we could send in a brigade as a token. This is dangerous talk. The cost of maintaining a brigade is enormous and could be as high as Rs one crore a day. Add to this the logistics, air support, artillery cover, not to mention the other vital aspect, intelligence cover. Surely this intelligence would not come from the Taliban. Others suggest that we should have no problem in equipping, stationing and supplying several divisions of troops in Afghanistan. In a series of articles in this newspaper in January 2009, Manoj Joshi had cited reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General to show how inadequately equipped our forces were. The situation could not have altered dramatically since then.

It is true that there is goodwill for India in Afghanistan for our contribution to its infrastructure. This will dissipate rapidly once we are seen as an occupation force. It will not be difficult to create this impression particularly as we have no means of influencing opinion in Afghanistan, there being no media presence of our own there. Instead, we should follow the Chinese model, of gaining influence in Afghanistan without firing a single shot or losing a soldier. We need not make our policies Pakistanspecific all the time.
Role

We should look for a role in the region beyond the current troubles but we need not prove this by sending in our troops hoping to succeed where others have failed. We may develop a two- front war strategy but we are hardly capable of fighting a three front war.
We should be prepared to train Afghans in India, in whatever discipline and numbers they want this. We should offer additional infrastructure building, taking care to match this with the Afghan capacity to absorb.

We need to ask Afghans what they want and not decide ourselves what we want to give. We need to co- ordinate with Iran, Russia and Central Asia in our endeavours. Post US, there has to be a regional agreement ensuring peace and neutrality in Afghanistan.

[ShauryaT]

AL QAEDAS & AL QAEDAS -- B.RAMAN

12. I had often mentioned in the past that as a jihadist movement, the Taliban is not a monolithic phenomenon. There are Talibans and Talibans each calling for a different strategy by the international community to deal with the threat, Recent events in Fort Hood, Detroit, Chapman, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq show that there are now Al Qaedas and Al Qaedas.It no longer seems to be a monolithic movement. Myriad Al Qaedas have bloomed and continue to bloom. What one requires is not a single strategy which can deal with all of them, but a mix of strategies suited to different groups. This makes counter-terrorism even more complicated and difficult than it has been. (7-1-10)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: [email protected] )

[ShauryaT]

2011 and beyond: Visualising Af-Pak Ali Ahmed

This possibility of enlightened Indian self-interest has been pointed out discreetly by the
United States. It has found little traction in India, for fear that a change in the Indian stance
could be seen domestically as occurring at US behest. But this is not something that should
hold up action. The argument that India can handle what a weakened Pakistan can throw
at Indian interests in Afghanistan, if necessary by putting ‘boots on the ground’, is perhaps
true. The shrillness of Pakistani protestations can testify to India’s diplomatic and intelli-
gence reach. The danger lies in increasing stakes over time being built in and increasing
commitment to defend and further these. A visualization of Af-Pak in 2011 and beyond
indicates that this is indeed avoidable. As a first step an internal debate needs to be initiated
as to where India’s interests lie in the wake of Obama outlining the end game in Af-Pak.

[shyamd]

Looks like a new vid was released.
Taliban-Pakistan claims Khost suicide bomber was one of its own

DEBKAfile Special Report

January 9, 2010, 2:06 PM (GMT+02:00)
Dead suicide bomber, double agent Khalil al-Balawi

Dead suicide bomber, double agent Khalil al-Balawi

A video clip released to al Jazeera Saturday, Jan. 10, shows double agent Hammam Khalil al Balawai, the suicide bomber who killed eight people at a base in Khost, Afghanistan on Dec. 30, saying before the attack: "We will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud" (the Pakistan Taliban leader killed by a US drone in South Waziristan in August last year).

He is also shown referring in the future tense to Ummar Farouk Abdulmutalleb, the Nigerian who tried to blow up a US airliner five days earlier on Dec. 25.

These references,DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources note, clash with the accounts given by president Barack Obama and US intelligence chiefs, which linked both attacks and their perpetrators to al Qaeda.

Balawi, a Jordanian medical doctor of Palestinian descent, was identified by US spokesmen as a double agent employed by the CIA and Jordanian intelligence to use his al Qaeda past for penetrating its top ranks and meet its No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, whereas on the new clip, Balawi says:

"This is a message to the enemies of the Umma, Jordanian intelligence and the CIA. To retaliate for the death of Baitullah Mehsud will remain an obligation on all emigrants he harbored."

Mehsud's brother and successor, Hakimullah, Mehsud is shown sitting beside the Jordanian suicide killer in the video.

Balawi goes on to hope that "Pakistan's Taliban Hakimullah will go on the same methodology and the same path until we achieve victory or meet the same fate as Hamza Abdul Mutalleb."

He then shoots a gun to show how he will target the seven American CIA officers and a Jordanian intelligence captain, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, all of whom he took with him when he killed himself at the Khost base.

Our counter-terror sources take Balawi's pre-mortem message as a Taliban threat to press forward with more suicide operations both in Afghanistan and Pakistan and inside the United States.

This threat, first heard from the late Baitullah Mehsud before he was killed, must now be taken very seriously. For more than a year, the Khost killer managed to hoodwink US and Jordanian intelligence in two ways: he persuaded them he was a mine of information on al Qaeda and al-Zawahri as a former loyalist of the organization, while he was in fact on a mission for Taliban-Pakistan.

Balawi's success places a question mark over the Obama administration's entire Afghanistan surge policy, whose declared objective is to weaken the local Taliban and contain its strongholds sufficiently to prevent al Qaeda from reestablishing itself in Afghanistan.

It is obvious that he was not the Taliban's only covert collaborator at the top-secret CIA base. There is no other explanation for the publication of a photo of the dead Balawi among the bodies of dead American agents which was released on Saturday to al Jazeera.

The Taliban demonstrated by its disastrous operation at this secret base and the perilously near-destruction of a US-bound airliner that their threat to the US goes beyond local interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It must be treated as a serious menace to the US national homeland security as well.

[Amber G.]

^^^ Sorry if already posted, the video link is given here:
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?video ... el=newsOne

[NRao]

Af-Pak.

Than it became Pak-Af, which is what it should have been all along.

A belated inclusion of Somalia.

Now, sigh .................... Yemen? At this rate we will run out of short forms and acronyms.

I have suggested that India takes over Northern Somalia. OK. No go.

A'stan is too kosher. That is fine too.

How about sending some to Yemen. Surgical. Cold start.

[pgbhat]

^ you mean send spec ops team to assist US in exchange for intel? Given the situ of present US intel gathering it seems useless to me.
Seeing how majority of youth of Yemen are phucked up on qat all the time, I see it as unkil's diversion to gradually steer away from A'stan.

[shyamd]

We can't even protect ourselves and take out LeT assets, yet we are talking about going to Yemen. F that. We need to provide advice and training to KSA in mountain warfare, charge KSA hefty amount for training in mountain warfare. Alas these are wet dreams.

[muraliravi]

We can't even protect ourselves and take out LeT assets, yet we are talking about going to Yemen. F that. We need to provide advice and training to KSA in mountain warfare, charge KSA hefty amount for training in mountain warfare. Alas these are wet dreams.

Shyam Saab, and then KSA will train TSP against our own army which would have thought KSA mountain warfare, kyun isme fazna hai?

[shyamd]

Shyam Saab, and then KSA will train TSP against our own army which would have thought KSA mountain warfare, kyun isme fazna hai?

And you think TSP terrorists/army aint studying Indian methods already and know what tactics they use?? Why even the US can pass on our tactics to TSP army when they train them.

[Gagan]

Its going to become "Pak-Af-Som-Yem" soon

[muraliravi]

Shyam Saab, and then KSA will train TSP against our own army which would have thought KSA mountain warfare, kyun isme fazna hai?

And you think TSP terrorists/army aint studying Indian methods already and know what tactics they use?? Why even the US can pass on our tactics to TSP army when they train them.

true, did not think of the unkil factor.

[ramana]

Focus and knowledge. The Af-Pak->Pak-Af is Talibanistation of the area.

KSA internal trumoil is rebels against the Saud family.

Yemen and Somalia are failed states falling to terrorists. The Yemen thing is not AlQ but Sunni-Shia fight. Calling them AlQ is to justify the KSA intervention. The stakes are if Yemen goes Shia then East KSA with oil fields cant be ruled out. So that is the game there.
Somalia is a case by itself.

So dont bring in non-Af-Pak items in this thread.

Thanks, ramana

[kmkraoind]

Fighting in Afghanistan leaves 5 U.S. troops dead

[NRao]

A few thoughts:
1) Af or Pak or whatever, is determined where the jihadic thinking gravitates to hibernate and reconstitute. Granted there are regional dynamics, but the current Yemeni dynamics has clearly grown beyond regional pull-push. Yemen is in the cross hairs for sure. The issue is when will the gravitational pull become strong enough for it to be promoted to be included in the Pak-Af equation. My thinking is that it has, India can provide a nudge ..... to move things along a little faster
2) Controlling LeT within India. LeT is controlled from outside India. It is a far better strategy to control LeT where it resides - IF it can be done. Assets contributed to the Yemeni theater should gain brownie points, which could be used elsewhere
3) The Horn of Africa has always been a thorn, a small one till now. India has been present in that region for eons (via teh Brits). Aden specifically was built with the help of Indians. Oman has very good relations with India
4) Gulf of Aden/Red Sea mouth falls under IOR. Presence/control there is a must. That mouth there is just about 12 miles wide and not all of it is deep enough
5) That area is Indian gig

[Rampy]

Didn't see this article posted here.. please delete if duplicate

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.c ... d=15173037

Very nice article

“YOU should enjoy this,” said a Pushtun from Waziristan, the most remote and radicalised of the tribal areas in North-West Pakistan that border Afghanistan, as he proffered a bottle of Scottish whisky. It was an excellent Sutherland single-malt; but the man was referring to the bottle’s more recent provenance, not its pedigree.

He had been given it by a fellow Waziristani working for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. This spy had received the illegal grog from an American CIA officer. Your correspondent’s friend returned homewards, Scotch in hand, driven by another Waziristani, who is also employed as a fixer by al-Qaeda.

[ramana]

Yemen and Somalia are out of area issues for India. It will be a rehash of the colonial wars to deploy without our own interests.
Yemen has huge number of Western passport holders in the madarassas of Sanaa.

[Philip]

They've learnt well from the LTTE!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 63353.html

Taliban make 'undetectable' bombs out of wood

By Andrew Johnson
Sunday, 10 January 2010

The Taliban's IEDs killed 48 British troops last year
Taliban fighters have developed a deadly new generation of their most lethal weapon, the improvised explosive device, or IED, which is almost undetectable because it has no metal or electronic parts, military experts said last week.

IEDs have proved the Taliban's most deadly weapon: three out of five coalition troops killed last year in Afghanistan were victims of the bombs. At least 48 of the 108 British fatalities were caused by IEDs.

Chris Hunter, a former bomb disposal expert who served in Iraq and now runs his own consultancy said the new weapons were being manufactured from wood in Pakistan.

Related articles
Sunday Mirror journalist killed in Afghan blast
One in five troops unfit to fight on the front line

"The expertise for this new generation of bombs is likely to be coming from foreign fighters from places such as Chechnya," he said. "But they are being mass produced in Pakistan and are being wheeled out on an industrial level. You see them everywhere."

Earlier in the war, IEDs would be mostly triggered by two hack-saw blades separated using a spacer. When the blades were stepped on or driven over they would complete an electronic circuit which so detonated the explosive – often an artillery shell.

Mr Hunter added that the metal saw blades have now also been replaced with graphite blades and the artillery shells with ammonium nitrate. The damage is caused by the power of the blast rather than metal fragments, or shrapnel.

The number of IEDs used in Afghanistan has increased by 400 per cent since 2007 and the number of troops killed by them by 400 per cent, and those wounded by 700 per cent according to a report by a US group called Homeland Security Market Research.

One brigade commander posted to Afghanistan said that sniffer dogs were the most reliable way of detecting IEDs, but this method took a long time and required a lot of animals. Already convoys have to move at very slow speeds while roads ahead are checked for explosives.

He added his troops were becoming "IED-shy", because of the stress levels created by this new generation of weapons.

[pgbhat]

The number of IEDs used in Afghanistan has increased by 400 per cent since 2007 and the number of troops killed by them by 400 per cent, and those wounded by 700 per cent according to a report by a US group called Homeland Security Market Research.

[NRao]

Moved to West Asia Thread...

ramana

[ramana]

Sigh....

[ramana]

Hindu Op-Ed by M.V. Bhadra Kumar

Choices before the Afghan conference

...An international conference in London on January 28 will focus on the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan. Some 70 delegations, including from India, may attend the conference, co-chaired by the Secretaries-General of the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The challenge is daunting as the Afghan war is no more redeemable.....

Mr. Brown said the aim of the conference would be to deliver “a new compact between Afghanistan and the international community.” He underscored that “the first of those priorities is security,” which meant expectations that countries like Germany might actually announce “troop deployments building on the total of 1,40,000 troops promised for 2010.” Yes, incredible as it sounds, Ms Merkel might actually end up pledging more deployments on top of the 4,500 troops already serving in northern Afghanistan. The German press is reporting about parleys among Berlin politicians to arrive at a consensus figure.....

Meanwhile, the genie is out of the bottle: Mr. Obama’s December 1 strategy never intended to focus on a U.S. withdrawal plan. The plain-speaking U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said on December 7 that Mr. Obama’s mind was being widely misinterpreted, in particular the mid-2011 date in his strategy speech six weeks ago. “It’s not a withdrawal, but the start of a responsible transition in which American combat troops will begin to draw down,” said Mr. Holbrooke, adding another review by Mr. Obama would look at the issue again in December.

Mr. Holbrooke was shepherding an attentive gathering of American think-tankers to think straight instead of meandering into silly notions of a U.S. troop withdrawal. He underlined that the U.S. had more important issues to worry about such as promoting reconciliation between the Afghan government and the “relatively moderate” Taliban elements. Mr. Holbrooke, who is in Islamabad for consultations with the Pakistani civilian and military leadership, says the reconciliation process with the Taliban is “high on our personal priority list.” Indeed, he already has an able and highly experienced deputy positioned in Islamabad to assist him — Ambassador Robin Raphel, who as Assistant Secretary of State in the Bill Clinton administration was exceptionally well regarded by the Taliban leadership in Kandahar.
...

The non-NATO participants at the London conference such as India will face a tough call as to how far it is in their interest to identify with the patently unilateralist Anglo-American agenda. The bottom line will always be that India should never consider deploying troops in Afghanistan. Fortunately, the U.S. will never disregard Pakistani sensitivities and invite New Delhi, either.

[Prem]

Not sure if this was posted before.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.c ... extfeature

Despite their remoteness, these tribesmen have often had a hand in the fates of governments in Kabul, Delhi and elsewhere. In 1929 a British-backed Afghan, Nadir Shah, used an army of Wazirs to seize the Afghan throne. A force of Wazirs and Mehsuds was dispatched in 1947 to seize Kashmir for the newly formed Islamic republic, sparking the first Indo-Pakistan war. In the 1980s Pakistan, America and Saudi Arabia armed them to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. In 2001 thousands of Afghan Taliban and their al-Qaeda guests fled to Waziristan. They have resumed their jihad from across the border, this time against NATO troops—aided, Afghans say, by the ISI.


”. “It is all a great game,” said Rehmat Mehsud, a Waziristani journalist. “The army, the Taliban, the ISI, they are all involved, and we don’t know who is doing what.”

Tribal kin may find themselves playing on different teams. For example, a Mehsud army officer, a member of the most radical Pushtun tribe, whose militant chiefs head a frontier-wide conglomeration of tribally based Islamists known as the Pakistani Taliban, admits that several of his cousins are high-ups in the Taliban. Yet he bears them no ill-will. “We are all Mehsud,” he says, over a beer or two. “So long as one family earns, the rest can eat,” said another South Waziristani, explaining the advantages of thus spreading political bets.

Making for the hills

[ramana]

They are Waziris and not Wazirs!

[ramana]

Rajiv Srinivasan in Pioneer

http://www.dailypioneer.com/229225/Clos ... point.html

OPED | Thursday, January 14, 2010 | Email | Print |


Close to tipping point

Rajeev Srinivasan

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have demonstrated a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of both geo-politics and tactics. It is a mistake to underestimate them as they have the ISI, which excels at covert action, to help them. After Khost, it will no longer be easy for Obama to continue with his soft approach

The Jordanian suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who infiltrated the CIA’s Forward Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan and killed seven CIA operatives and his Jordanian handler on December 30, last year carried out a picture-perfect strike. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on January 7 (“The Meaning of Al Qaeda’s double agent”), former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht said: “Indeed, Al Qaeda did to us exactly what we intended to do to them: Use a mole for a lethal strike against high-value targets. In the case of al-Balawi, it appears the target was Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy.”

It was a brilliant operation, and the Americans were sitting ducks. The question is: Why? The fact that the CIA threw normal caution to the winds indicates American incompetence, or, chillingly, desperation. They seem to be clutching at straws, desperate for some success.

On the other hand, ever since US President Barack Obama unveiled his timetable for an American pull-out from Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have gone from strength to strength: The shooting of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood (although this did happen a few weeks before Mr Obama’s actual speech, the contours of the plan were known); the Christmas attempt to blow up Northwest flight 253 bound over Detroit; and then the Khost incident itself.

Aren’t all of these highly demoralising for the Americans? Even the normally placid Obama is showing the strain — he is under pressure to do something.

Going back to the Khost attack, Mr Gerecht also maintains that normal operating procedure was violated under the orders of the station chief in Khost and several regional CIA staff flew in to have a face-to-face meeting with the supposed informant; he apparently was also not subjected to the usual detailed security check. The incident shows the critical dependency of the CIA on others — for reasons of lack of language skills and of length of tenure.

The fact that the CIA underestimated the enemy’s resourcefulness and intelligence also bodes ill for the future. They should have learned that their enemy is capable of surprisingly good tactical operations, and they should have taken due care. There have been at least two previous instances where the jihadis demonstrated a clear grasp of tactics.

The first was the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud in his Panjshir Valley redoubt. An unquestioned military genius, Massoud had held off the formidable Soviets for years. He was assassinated in September 2001, just two days before 9/11. Massoud was the Taliban’s principal foe as the military commander of the Northern Alliance. Undoubtedly a cautious and careful man, Massoud was tricked into being interviewed by two Tunisians bearing Belgian passports, who posed as journalists — they hid a bomb in the camera.

Then there was the singular incident of the siege of Kunduz in November 2001. In this ‘Airlift of Evil’, the US allowed Pakistan to spirit away hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz. Most of the so-called Taliban who were evacuated were senior officers of the Pakistani Army or the ISI.

Clearly, the CIA was bamboozled by the ISI and the Pakistani Army in allowing the airlift. Left to themselves, the Northern Alliance would have overrun the fort in Kunduz and captured the insurgents, thereby breaking the back of the Taliban.

These chickens have now come home to roost. The CIA has a history of strategic blunders in Afghanistan, surely because they are misled continuously by the Pakistanis. For instance, as much as 20 per cent of all the billions of CIA dollars funneled into fighting the Soviets went to the ISI’s then favourite, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now an implacable foe of the Americans. Now the ISI are creating myths about “good Taliban” (translation: Those who help the ISI’s agenda) and “bad Taliban” (all others). We can expect more American money to be funneled to those intent of killing Americans.

There is now great confusion about the motives of the double-agent al-Balawi. The most obvious hypothesis is that the Taliban/Al Qaeda wished to disrupt Predator and Reaper drone flights that are inconveniencing them by pinpointing their cadre from the air. The drones, as it were, rain down American wrath and have become the US’s most successful weapon and it will not be easy to abandon them and for Mr Obama to continue with his soft approach. His Cairo and Ankara speeches, his munificence to Pakistan, etc, have caused his enemies to lose respect for him. Mr Obama, the Nobel peace-prize winner, is perforce going to be a war President.

It is necessary to acknowledge that the Taliban/Al Qaeda have demonstrated a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of both geo-politics and tactics. It is a mistake to underestimate them — they have the ISI, the kings of covert action, to help them plan their operations. In this context, I was amused to come across a report from The Economist of January 24, 2009, titled “The growing, and mysterious, irrelevance of Al Qaeda”. Famous last words. A year later, it is not clear it is Al Qaeda who are irrelevant.

[sum]

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have demonstrated a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of both geo-politics and tactics. It is a mistake to underestimate them as they have the ISI, which excels at covert action, to help them.

It is a mistake to underestimate them — they have the ISI, the kings of covert action, to help them plan their operations.

Good article but is the ISID really THAT invincible and super-duper?

[JE Menon]

We would like them to think so

[ramana]

The Nation's article How the US funds Taliban

However the reporter doesnt understand that it would require much more troops for logistics if this approach is not taken. In Europe they used the Red Ball Express etc for same job.

[ramana]

Posted by SSridhar in Pak thread:

This is a fantastic article by Khaled Ahmed completely exposing the Pakistani perfidy and agenda. I am posting this in full for posterity's sake ! Courtesey TFT.

Pakistan stands at some kind of a crossroads with its relationship with the United States. With the whole population and almost all the political parties poisoned with anti-Americanism, Pakistan has never looked more like an Arab state, hard in Islam and hard in its animus against the West in general and Americans in particular. The alliance with America is troubled and faces a breakdown as Pakistan becomes more and more isolationist in the region and the world.

The immediate cause for concern is the ‘strategic clash’ between the two on the policy of fighting terrorism. The US targets Al Qaeda and its allies, the Taliban. Pakistan doesn’t target Al Qaeda and divides the Taliban linked to Al Qaeda into two categorises: the ‘good’ Taliban and ‘bad’ Taliban. It targets the ‘bad’ Taliban because they kill inside Pakistan through terrorist bombings; it doesn’t target the ‘good’ Taliban who attack the Americans in Afghanistan. It regards the alliance as heavily bent in its favour and wishes to distance itself from the Taliban, located on its territory, who attack the Americans in Afghanistan.

A Pak strategy premised on American defeat:

Pakistan’s approach is inward-looking. It focuses on the military operations it is carrying out against the ‘bad’ Taliban and doesn’t want to drag the ‘good’ Taliban into this conflict. The ‘good’ Taliban headed by Mullah Umar are allowed to gain safe havens inside Pakistan. Some local ‘good’ Taliban are allowed to strike across the Durand Line. In North Waziristan there are ‘good’ Taliban who are a mixture of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. The Haqqani father-and-son team runs North Waziristan as their own little state complete with taxation and judicial institutions. The Haqqani network has outreach in Khost, the stronghold of Al Qaeda, and operates against the NATO-US forces in Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni, Wardak and Kabul; it helps the other Taliban in Kunar, Nangarhar, Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The American press quotes unnamed US officials saying Pakistan’s ISI is linked with the Haqqanis who are embedded inside the Al Qaeda shura, with son Haqqani carrying US$5 million American money on his head. Pakistan is apparently happy with the Haqqani network and its local ally Hafiz Gul Bahadur because they don’t mess with Pakistani forces fighting the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP turned ‘bad’ only in 2009; before that Pakistan was in the coalition against terrorism without any real commitment to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the latter belonging to Pakistan’s large baggage of denial. The policy as it stands now is one-sided and ignores the American side of the bargain.

Unclear policy on drones:

This sends a signal to the Americans: leave Afghanistan and let Pakistan handle the situation. Pakistan’s policy on drones confirms this message. The difficulty here is that Pakistan gets its $1.5 billion a year and more only because the Americans have the policy of coming out and facing up to Al Qaeda in the region. Not getting Pakistan to cooperate, the Americans use the drones mostly on North Waziristan, targeting the Haqqanis and their allies and more often than not killing Arab Al Qaeda terrorists. Pakistan’s demand is that the drones should be handed over to it because it wants to use them more judiciously against the terrorists on its territory. This means that the Americans should not use the drones, or at least should give up the ones flying over North Waziristan and occasionally further afield.

The Americans use the drones because Pakistan will not fight the ‘good’ Taliban, not even trespassers like the Haqqanis who have virtually annexed North Waziristan’s centre, Miranshah. The Pakistanis say they will tackle the Haqqanis later after they have finished dealing with the TTP, but no one even in US-hating Pakistan believes that that would be possible: because the TTP is a part of the Al Qaeda-led jihad against the Americans. The Pakistan army is spread thin because it has not mobilised enough and insists on keeping the bulk of its troops on the eastern border with India because of increased threat of an Indian strike after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. This argument spills over into another position that Pakistan has taken on the coming ‘surge’ of American troops in Afghanistan.

Policy of keeping US-NATO weak:

Pakistan says if President Obama sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the US-NATO forces will become more effective against the Taliban, leading to the latter’s strategic retreat into Pakistan. There will also be more refugees adding to Pakistan’s one million registered and over two million unregistered Afghan refugees. This will affect Pakistan’s own war against the TTP by exposing more and more cities to terrorism and resultant economic slowdown. From the Pakistani point of view the Americans are being asked to remain in a position of disadvantage with more casualties in the war against Al Qaeda so that Pakistan can win against the TTP without disturbing its forward position on the Indian border. This is an untenable proposal. It means only this: leave Afghanistan and leave it to Pakistan.

The Americans express themselves in the newspapers in Washington more freely while keeping their mouths shut in front of the Pakistani officials. They think there will be no spill-over of the Taliban after the surge because in the past on many occasions, like the face-off in Helmand, this did not happen. Some officials have spoken more ominously about Pakistan’s real reasons for not fighting the Taliban, saying the Pakistan army was divided ‘and General Kayani is concerned the move [to go after the Haqqanis] will cause the nationalist elements of the army and the ISI to side with the pro-Islamists and spark a civil war within the military’. The presence of ex-army officers like Ilyas Kashmiri – denied officially but confirmed by elements within the army – in North Waziristan as a part of Al Qaeda’s latest military programme seems to confirm this.

India, not Taliban, the real enemy:

Pakistan seems to be determined to keep India on the east in focus while trying to defeat the ‘bad’ Taliban in South Waziristan. It has an almost hundred percent anti-American public opinion on its side. Since this position is irreducible it wants the Americans to leave Afghanistan, after which it will have the Islamists in the army spearheading yet another foray into Afghanistan, this time not looking for strategic depth but for a moratorium on terrorism inside Pakistan from Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Getting India out of Afghanistan will be achieved by this strategy, relying on Al Qaeda to create its new state of Khorasan, as announced by Abdullah Said Al Libi, an Al Qaeda commander now dead. The Al Qaeda Khorasan will be carved out of some areas of Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Pakistan will hope that, if the Americans are driven out, Pakistan would be spared.

The problem is that Al Qaeda can’t bail out Pakistan economically. (In fact after Khorasan is achieved, Pakistan will be squeezed for the new state’s economic bailout.) Pakistan is getting by, relying on the American compulsion to keep Pakistan inside its tent {that is the qabila part} even if it is pissing in instead of out. Most Pakistani officials think that the Americans will take a lot of snubbing from Pakistan in the process because 70 percent of the NATO-US supplies still go through Pakistan which the Americans can’t afford to disrupt. In 2009, after the drones hit South Waziristan, Pakistan cut off the supply caravans! But this alliance, based on mistrust, cannot go on. The Americans might have a ‘Plan B’ but Pakistan doesn’t, as it responds to its India-driven nationalist stimuli and its embedded Islamists.

[Stan_Savljevic]

Quiet trip to Afghanistan
http://telegraphindia.com/1100116/jsp/f ... 991150.jsp

[Rudradev]

Posted by SSridhar in Pak thread:

This is a fantastic article by Khaled Ahmed completely exposing the Pakistani perfidy and agenda. I am posting this in full for posterity's sake ! Courtesey TFT.

Is there a link? Or at least full details of publication (The Friday Times, Issue Number, Page Number, Dateline). This thing has to be circulated widely.

[Lalmohan]

meanwhile, just another normal day in Helmand

patrol ambush