Bharat Rakshak

..
According to the official, the Pakistan army has already been in contact with top Taliban commanders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani. Information is then passed onto the Saudis, who in turn liaise with the Americans.

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The security official indicated, however, that unlike in the past nine years since the ouster of the Taliban and the US-led anti-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar has shown a positive and flexible attitude.

....

The initial talks have covered two main areas - the issue of about 60 Pakistanis in the US's Guantanamo detention facility, and al-Qaeda.

"A delegation of Pakistani officials will soon visit the Guantanamo Bay prison to personally interview the Pakistani prisoners. [Their release] would be a goodwill gesture from the American side, and also set the stage for negotiations between the Taliban and Washington," the Pakistani official told ATol.

Another element touched on in the talks is the American demand that it maintain a military presence in northern Afghanistan, while agreeing to give control of the south to the Taliban. The Taliban do not agree with this - they want a complete US withdrawal. This remains a point of major disagreement.
...

The director general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, was sent to Washington regarding a proposal for al-Qaeda to shift from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia.

.....

In Afghanistan, the southwest is controlled by Mullah Omar's Kandahari clan, while the southeast is completely under the command of pro-al-Qaeda commanders such as Qari Ziaur Rahman and Sirajuddin Haqqani. Their forces include thousands of non-Pashtun linked with the anti-Iran Jundallah and the powerful 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri. They also draw support from the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi and last but not least the Pashtun Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban).

Recently, al-Qaeda launched Chechen and Uzbek fighters from the Pakistani tribal areas back into the Central Asian republics and Russia. In the latest attack, on Thursday, 18 people were killed and more than a hundred injured in a suicide bombing in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz.

Under the command structure of Laskhar al-Zil, a shadowy army comprising various al-Qaeda-linked groups, al-Qaeda is reasserting itself in Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, and at the same time planning to open up a new and constant front in India.

According to ATol contacts in the militant camp, al-Qaeda has no objection if the Taliban strike a deal with Washington that paves the way for an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda would simply leave Afghanistan and jack up its operations in Pakistan and India. Al-Qaeda has already escalated attacks in Pakistan to create space for itself.

In the past few weeks, al-Qaeda-linked groups like Tariq Afridi have struck deals with local warlord Mangal Bagh to target major cities in restive Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province, including Kohat and the capital Peshawar.

Commander Badr Mansoor has been tasked to increase activities in cities near the tribal areas, including Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu and Lucky Marwat. Sabir Mehsud of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been asked to escalate attacks in the main urban centers of Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta, while commander Bin Yameen has been ordered to mobilize cadre in the Swat Valley.

While the Taliban-Washington dialogue process is in its early stage, al-Qaeda is well on the way to setting up an infrastructure to prove that it - not any state, army or the Taliban - is the real player of the upcoming game.
...

Altair wrote:Afghanistan's dirty little secret

Afghanistan: President Karzai called on Taliban leader Mullah Omar to stop fighting and join peace talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan's Dawn News reported 10 September. The Afghan government hopes Mullah Omar joins the peace process, gives up fratricide, bombings and blasts, and stops causing casualties to Afghanistan's children, women and men, Karzai said, using Omar's religious title.

Comment: Some US media have reported without context that Karzai's overtures to the Pashtun Taliban, led by Omar, are creating fissures within Karzai's government. Actually that assertion is accurate but not new.

Since 2001, when non-Pashtun tribes supported the US special forces in recapturing Kabul from the fleeing Taliban, the northern tribes have resisted every attempt by any group to reach out to the Pashtuns. The Uzbeks and Tajiks blame the Pashtuns for the atrocities of the Taliban government and oppose any effort to reward the evil-doers.

Nevertheless, Pashtuns are a plurality in Afghanistan. No government can long survive without their cooperation. Despite the resentment of northern tribal leaders over rewarding the Pashtuns, in any reasonable democratic government scheme, the Pashtuns always dominate or force a coalition government. Demographics accomplish that result every time in a democratic system.

The northern tribes were oppressed and besieged by the Taliban regime in Kabul. They have good grounds for resenting and resisting any program that rewards their Pashtun tormentors and enemies with political clout. They have never surrendered and will never surrender their tribal grievances just because Westerners say to do so. Many also do not see the wisdom or value in pursuing non-violent solutions in pursuit of justice in a tribal feud. This is a study in democracy

shravan wrote:Taliban soften as talks gain speed By Syed Saleem Shahzad

The process of bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table is gaining momentum, with the United States and its allies escalating their efforts to get America out of the Afghan quagmire.

In principle, the Taliban have agreed to clearly state their position on several issues so that formal talks with Washington will be internationally acceptable. In particular, the Taliban will explain their stance on al-Qaeda.

It was the presence of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan that led the US to invade the country in late 2001 in retaliation for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US. The Taliban will spell out their position of decrying international terrorism and of not supporting violence in Muslim countries. Above all, they will clearly state that the Taliban are an indigenous movement struggling against foreign occupation forces with no agenda outside Afghan boundaries.

During the talks in the UAE, it was clarified that the Taliban would not allow any training camps for international terrorism on their territory.

However, the Taliban pointed out that if a person crossed the Kandahar border (Afghanistan) and entered into Chaman (a Pakistani area) and carried out an act of sabotage, it would not be the responsibility of the Afghan government, which would only be accountable within its borders.

Afghanistan & Pak nukes
Expect Osama Bin Laden with WMDs after the US quits the region, says N.V.Subramanian.

13 September 2010: The United States' problem won't only be Al-Qaeda terrorism after it withdraws from Afghanistan sometime after July 2011. It will also be Pakistan. Pakistan will become the world's number one troublespot too as it has always been for India.

After 9/11, the US realized the horror of spawning Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda in the name of fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties. On the other hand, Pakistan still believes it can control terror elements it employs against Afghanistan and India, although one of the lethal gennext byproducts of the Afghan "mujahedeen" war, the Pakistani Taliban, is gaining in strength to capture large parts of the country in the west.

Once the United States leaves Afghanistan, the Taliban forces, backed by the Pakistan army and the ISI, and inspired by the Al-Qaeda in North Waziristan and Quetta, will make bloodthirsty attempts to regain the entire country. Eastern and southern Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban invaders but the west and the north will resist them. These are non-Pashtun areas that have traditionally opposed the Taliban and will likely do so again backed by Iran, the Central Asian states, Russia and likely India. The United States is also looking at these areas to establish bases once it withdraws substantially from Afghanistan.

Given the past history when even without the US presence, the Taliban could not control Afghanistan entirely, that is likely to repeat again. Being evicted from state power once, the Taliban may indefinitely postpone a war to seize the west and north and instead turn against its present host, Pakistan. The Taliban bar perhaps the Haqqani faction loathes Pakistan and particularly the ISI and entirely understands their gameplan in Afghanistan against India. But more than any felt loathing, the Taliban will see an opportunity in its blocked advance to west and north Afghanistan by moving decisively to seize the Pashtun territories of Pakistan, which would mean all of NWFP and disputed portions of Baluchistan. The Durand Line will be buried for good.

The allies for the Taliban in this enterprise will the Pakistani Taliban who are Pashtun. Since this part of the war will be waged in Pakistan, the Al-Qaeda will be more openly engaged. The Al-Qaeda will press the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban to go for the biggest prize, which are Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Since these weapons are in the custody of Pakistan's predominantly Punjabi army, it will become a clash between the Pashtuns and the Punjabis, which has been alluded to by other strategic writers. This is roughly how a post-US Afghanistan will become a world problem via Pakistan.

What's the solution? Frankly, this writer does not know. The Pakistanis conned the Americans into droning the Pakistani Taliban while leaving the Afghan Taliban and the Al-Qaeda largely alone. It did not save the situation for the US in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis will probably plead with the US to go after the Pakistani Taliban some more, sending desperate SOSs about the vulnerability of their nukes. Perhaps, with their clouded strategic mindset, the Americans will comply. So the war in Afghanistan will morph into one about protecting Pakistan's nuclear assets.

But the Afghanistan story will repeat again. After all, the US can only bomb the homeland of the Pakistani Taliban in FATA and elsewhere. But that won't contain the Taliban's fanatical quest for Pakistani nukes. The Taliban will do everything to gain them, including suicide bombing every square inch of Pakistani Punjab. How long will the Pakistan army be able to withstand this onslaught, not to speak of jehadized insiders leaking away the assets when security slacks and controls loosen everywhere?

In the end, it boils down to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Rather than being a deterrent against India, Pakistani nukes will bring Pakistan down. And the world should be well aware of the consequences of nukes falling into the wrong hands. So in addition to Al-Qaeda terrorism, the US probably will have to contend with Osama Bin Laden armed with Pakistani nukes sometime after president Barack Obama issues orders to quit Afghanistan.

N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: [email protected].

the recently concluded annual conference of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in Geneva (September 10-12, 2010), Henry Kissinger had a telling comment on the “exit strategy” being pursued by the US and its allies in Afghanistan. He said that the focus appeared to be more on exit and less on strategy. His strategy for a viable solution? A regional compact among key stakeholders that effectively sanitised Afghanistan from regional and great power competition. This would effectively give the country a neutral status, guaranteed by the international community and respected by the country’s neighbours.
Two, the Chinese position is problematical. There is a belief in some quarters that China may be positively inclined towards this proposal because of its fear over a spillover of Islamic irredentism into the adjoining Chinese province of Xinjiang. Chinese concerns are being exaggerated. China had no reservations in dealing with the previous Taliban regime in Kabul. It may also consider a Pakistani-dominated Taliban regime a better insurance for the pursuit of its interests in the country than a neutral dispensation. After all, Pakistan has always been extraordinarily sensitive to Chinese interests.
The nervous reaction in Pakistan to Ambassador Blackwill’s advocacy of a de facto partition of Afghanistan between a southern Pushtun and possibly Taliban-ruled entity and a non-Pushtun remainder, derives from this anxiety about an irresistible tide of Pakhtoon nationalism, especially at a time when central control over an ethnically diverse and now economically ravaged country is becoming increasingly tenuous. Pakistan may well demand, as its price, an Afghan and international recognition and guarantee of the Durand Line. No Afghan government is likely to concede that.
India, therefore, should really be crafting a strategy to retain a strong presence in Afghanistan and even augment it, irrespective of what other actors decide to do. This is dictated by the need to prevent the country from once again degenerating into a base for jihadi terrorism against India. It is also an useful platform for India’s engagement with Central Asia. India does have convergent interests with some of the stakeholders, both within Afghanistan and including some of its neighbours like Iran and Russia. At the very least, there are those who, like India, cannot accept a fundamentalist Sunni-dominated regime in Kabul. We need to help coalesce them together in the pursuit of our shared interests.
We must be mindful of the tendency among some of our western friends to offer concessions at the expense of India in a dubious attempt to buy Pakistan’s support of their “exit strategy”, however this may be defined. A British participant at the conference wondered whether it would not be wise for India to close its consulates in Afghanistan and retain only its embassy in Kabul, in order to “get Pakistan off your (India’s) back”. This is more like getting India off Pakistan’s back! We should dispel the notion, widely held among the western strategic community, that India’s presence and involvement in Afghanistan has been made possible thanks to the International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF’s) security cover and, therefore, it should not be allowed a “free ride” at the expense of western interests. These includes assuaging Pakistani security concerns vis-a-vis India, however paranoid they may be. The reality is that we have been able to sustain a significant presence in Afghanistan and earn considerable goodwill, including in Pushtun areas, precisely because we have been careful not to be associated with ISAF activities, but operate strictly on a bilateral basis with the Afghan government.
India should also revisit its position on the Durand Line. It may be worthwhile for us to signal that we do not necessarily recognise the Durand Line as a legitimate frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Aligning India with long-standing Pakhtoon aspirations may be a potentially potent lever to use as the new version of the Great Game unfolds in our neighbourhood.

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Afghanistan Will Only Get Worse
By GILLES DORRONSORO
Published: September 14, 2010

The final brigades of the troop surge in Afghanistan arrived this month, signaling the height of American involvement in the country. Nearly half of the U.S. troops in the country are deployed to Helmand and Kandahar to implement the new counterinsurgency strategy and success is supposed to show that the American surge can win the war.

But the Western coalition is in a quagmire in the south and the Taliban are winning in the north, consolidating their grip in the east, and slowly encircling Kabul.

The United States has expended a great deal of resources in the south. American troops planned to showcase the potential for their new counterinsurgency strategy with an early success in Marja. Instead, the area remains unstable and insecure months after the long offensive began. This delayed plans to move aggressively on Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city.

Having concentrated the bulk of its forces in the south, the coalition is not able to contain the Taliban in other parts of the country.

When I was traveling across Afghanistan in the spring, the Taliban’s momentum was already clear. And safety conditions continue to deteriorate. This summer, when I returned only a few months later, the situation was even worse.

The Taliban’s control of the south is apparent in the inability of U.S. troops to extend any control beyond their bases. It takes them hours just to move hundreds of meters outside of the perimeters on patrol. This means that they have no contact with the population and have been unable to build strong ties with local groups.

While it is still safe in Kabul, you can feel the Taliban tightening its hold around the capital. Leaving the city by car is becoming dangerous. The Taliban have set up roadblocks that increase the likelihood foreigners will be captured — and worse fates are likely for Afghan officials.

In the districts where the fighting is most intense, the population is primarily on the side of the insurgents. The Taliban are more aggressive than ever; they are systematically killing Afghans working with the coalition.

Worse, the lack of local reform and a toothless anti-corruption policy leaves the coalition fighting for a corrupt government with no popular support.

The Taliban have a great deal of influence, but even where they haven’t established control, the Afghan government doesn’t enjoy any support.

Casualties have increased the demands on leaders across Europe to get out of Afghanistan. And with America’s European partners planning to leave over the next few years, the United States will be on its own, mired in a war with no clear exit strategy.

At this point, 80 percent of Afghanistan has no state structure left. This means that there is no credible Afghan partner for the United States to work with. And where the government has lost its grip and the American-led coalition is losing, the Taliban are filling the void. As the only effective force in many areas, the Taliban are beginning to build a shadow state. The services are limited but efficient, and the Kabul government is often nowhere to be seen.

A telling example is that international nongovernmental organizations are increasingly working directly with the Taliban. The NGOs negotiate directly with Taliban leaders to ensure access to the Afghan people and carry out their programs. The process has become so formalized that international groups can now expect to receive a paper that is stamped and sealed by the Taliban outlining the permissions granted.

The coalition will not defeat this increasingly national insurgency.

Instead of beginning a slow drawdown of troops next summer, the United States would need to add more forces to just hold on to the areas it currently controls. As the United States struggles — and fails — to implement a successful counterinsurgency strategy in just a few parts of the country, the rest of Afghanistan is being lost.

The United States needs to start facing reality and begin negotiating with the Taliban before it’s too late. The longer Washington waits to rethink its reliance on a military solution, the worse the realities will become on the ground and the less likely the Taliban will be willing to talk.

Negotiating a new coalition government with assurances that Al Qaeda will not operate in Afghanistan again is the best hope left for an American exit.

Gilles Dorronsorois a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

A Pakistani official close to the talks described a “breakthrough moment” when the two presidents agreed in front of their ministers to put an end to the “games that have been played, games that have not been ours.” The official was quoting Mr. Karzai. Mr. Zardari agreed, the official said, that “full peace can only be achieved when both countries actively cooperate.”

Engage regional and global stakeholders in a diplomatic effort designed to guarantee Afghan neutrality and foster regional stability. Despite their considerable differences, neighboring states such as India, Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia share a common interest in preventing Afghanistan from being dominated by any single power or being a permanently failed state that exports instability to others.

The United States should also use its influence to reduce tensions among the various regional actors—and especially India and Pakistan—in order to decrease their tendency to see Afghanistan as an arena for conflict or to view the Taliban or other non-state groups as long-term strategic assets.

Pakistan: Al Qaida's No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahiri, used an audio recording to accuse the Pakistani government of responding too slowly to severe flooding in the country and urged Pakistanis and Turkish Muslims to revolt for their countries' involvement in Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

Comment: The audio recording was apparently intended to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. What Zawahiri advocates for Pakistanis suggests borderline dementia.

{I think its a call to seize control of those countries! Very logical for AlQ to take over the new borderline fundoo states}{/i]

Afghanistan: Major General Afzal Imam, the Afghan army's operations chief, said the following areas are under militant control:

Kamdesh district, Nuristan Province;

Nika district, Paktika Province;

Nawa district, Ghazni Province;

Khak-e-Afghan district, Zabol Province;

Ghorak and Mianshin districts, Kandahar Province; and,

Baghran, Washer and Desho districts, Helmand Province.

The election commission does not plan to hold elections in these areas, which have no security force presence, Imam added.

Comment: General Imam conceded that nine of 400 districts are so lost to the government that it will not attempt to operate election stations in them. There are several ways to interpret this admission. On a positive, note the General's statement suggests the extent of real Taliban control is quite modest.

On the other hand, the General admits that a US backed client government does not control areas that it professes to rule.

Pakistan: Political note. The context of the following two items is that the local press has reported favorably about the military response to the epochal floods this rainy season. It also has contrasted the efficiency of the military response with the tardiness and inadequacy of the actions by the Gilani government.

This is selective coverage because Prime Minister Gilani authorized the use of the military for relief operations and is getting little credit for his decision. Flood relief operations have encouraged new respect for the armed forces and generated a still-developing sense that military government might be better than elected civilian government.

The Associated Press of Pakistan reported Prime Minister Gilani rejected rumors of government change and said the coalition government would protect democracy. He said any action will be taken through the parliament, adding that technocracy is unacceptable - a euphemism for military takeover.


Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz head, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said there is no danger of dictatorship in Pakistan and that martial law would not solve Pakistan's problems. He did say that some people were plotting conspiracies against democracy. Nawaz said change must be discussed, but it must be done within the constitution's boundaries.

Comment: Gilani and Nawaz Sharif are the most prominent political leaders in Pakistan. For both men to make statements dismissing political change at the hands of the military suggests the rumors have substance.

Pakistan's command structure and traditions require that the Chief of Army Staff must be involved in political plotting that has any chance of succeeding. However, the current Chief, General Kayani has been a staunch supporter of elected civilian government, while he concentrated on rebuilding the Pakistan Army's capabilities and discipline as well as on restoring civilian respect.

No public information indicates Kayani has changed his views, which helps explain why the Prime Minister extended him on active duty, essentially for the duration of the Gilani administration.

A military takeover would seem to be premature, so soon after the departure of Pervez Musharraf's administration in 2008. Nevertheless, the government's supposed inefficient response to the flooding has caused the political pendulum to begin to swing in favor of the "military party" in Pakistani politics.

The statements by Gilani and Nawaz Sharif bespeak their recognition that the shift has begun and represent their halting and unconvincing attempts to slow it. A statement dismissing the rumors by General Kayani is now due. If he fails to dismiss the rumors, then the rumors have substance.

{We can start coup watch!}[/b]

Afghanistan: For the record. The Afghan Taliban called the 18 September parliamentary elections an American process and urged people to boycott the vote, according to a statement issued on 16 September. The Taliban said it took measures to foil the "illegitimate process" of elections across the country.

Comment: During the presidential elections, the Taliban staged 700 attacks in a single day. That is a useful benchmark for measuring the gravity of the threat. The US military command or a UN agency is expected to publicize attack data.

Regarding al-Qaeda, the Taliban say they are willing to make sure that no “outside” forces use Afghanistan as a springboard to attack other nations. The Taliban have agreed to expel the terrorist organization, but they argue that al-Qaeda be given “honorable treatment.” What that means is not clear, but it is not likely to become a major sticking point. U.S. intelligence says al-Qaeda has virtually no presence in Afghanistan. According to Shahzad, the terrorist organization is more interested in the Central Asian “Stans” and southern Russia. On Sept 9, the group set off a bomb in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz that killed 18 people.
According to AT, al-Qaeda would rather get the U.S. out of Afghanistan than for it to have an in-country presence, and the organization would have no objection to the Taliban cutting a deal with Washington.The Americans also want the right to keep troops in Northern Afghanistan, the home of its major in-country allies, the Northern Alliance, but, according to officials close to the talks, the Taliban want all foreign troops out. The Taliban originally demanded the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan that existed at the time of the 2001 invasion. But in Ramadan talks held in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, “Taliban representatives indicated a willingness to accept a more broad-based political setup in Afghanistan,” says Shahzad.

Is the Kandahar operation, then, blind folly—Gen. David Petraeus is lobbying for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan for years to come—pre-negotiating positioning, or theater, because the enormous U.S. military budget is coming under increasing pressure? No one is going to suggest cutting military spending while the troops are locked in battle, a point that U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates have been arguing to Congress.
The danger is that the U.S. will step back from an opportunity to end the bloodletting in Afghanistan because Washington is worried that it will look like a defeat—it is—or because keeping the war going will armor the Pentagon from spending cuts. There was a moment like this in 2007, but the U.S. ignored a tentative Taliban peace proposal and the war got worse. If the Obama Administration is not careful, it could happen again, and the U.S. will slip deeper into the Afghan quagmire.

An Afghan bone for Obama to chew on
By M K Bhadrakumar

http://www.atimes. com/atimes/ South_Asia/ LI18Df02. html

When Robert Blackwill, who was former United States secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's deputy as national security adviser and George W Bush's presidential envoy to Iraq, took the podium at the International Institute of Strategic Studies think-tank in London on Monday to present his "Plan B" on Afghanistan, readers of the Wall Street Journal would have wondered what was afoot.

Blackwill is wired deep into the bowels of the US establishment, especially the Pentagon headed by Robert Gates. And the IISS prides itself as having been "hugely influential in setting the intellectual structures for managing the Cold War". Thus, the setting on Monday was perfect.

Blackwill has remarkable credentials to undertake exploratory voyages into the trajectory of US foreign policy. In a memorable opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in March 2005 titled "A New Deal for New Delhi", he accurately predicted the blossoming of the US-India strategic partnership. He wrote:The US should integrate India into the evolving global non-proliferation regime as a friendly nuclear weapons state ... Why should the US want to check India's missile capability in ways that could lead to China's permanent nuclear dominance over democratic India? ... We should sell advanced weaponry to India ... Given the strategic challenges ahead, the US should want the Indian armed forcesto be equipped with the best weapons systems ... To make this happen, the US has to become a reliable long-term supplier, including through co-production and licensed manufacture arrangements. Blackwill' s construct almost verbatim did become US policy. Again, in
December 2007 he penned a most thoughtful article titled "Forgive Russia, Confront Iran". He wrote:To engage Russia, we need to substantially change our current policy approach to Moscow ... This is not to underrate the difficulties of interacting with Moscow on its external policies and its often-raw pursuit of power politics and spheres of influence ... But there are strategic priorities, substantive trade-offs and creative compromises that Western governments should consider. The West needs to adopt tactical flexibility and moderate compromise with Moscow.Again, he hit the bull's eye in anticipating the US's reset with Russia. So, an interesting question arises: Is he sprinting indefatigably toward a hat-trick?

There can be no two opinions that the crisis situation in Afghanistan demands out-of-the-box thinking. Blackwill's radically original mind has come up with an intellectual construct when hardly 10 weeks are left for US President Barack Obama to take the plunge into his Afghanistan strategy review.

Blackwill foresees that the US's Afghan counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy is unlikely to succeed and an accommodation of the Taliban in its strongholds becomes inevitable in the near future. The current indications are that the process is already underway. (See Taliban and US get down to talks Asia Times Online, September 10, 2010.)

The Blackwill plan probes the downstream of this "accommodation" . Blackwill flatly rules out a rapid withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan as that would be a "strategic calamity" for regional stability, would hand over a tremendous propaganda victory to the world syndicate of Islamist radicals, would "profoundly undermine" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and would be seen as a failure of US leadership and strategic resolve.

Therefore, he proposes as a US policy goal a rationalization of the tangled, uneven Afghan battlefield so that it becomes more level and predictable and far less bloody, and enforcement of the game can come under new ground rules.Â

Prima facie, it appears scandalous as a plan calling for the "partition" of Afghanistan, but in actuality it is something else. In short, US forces should vacate the Taliban's historic strongholds in the Pashtun south and east and should relocate to the northern, central and western regions inhabited by non-Pashtun tribes.Â

Blackwill suggests the US should "enlist" the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras to do more of the anti-Taliban resistance, instead of COIN. And the US should only take recourse to massive air power and the use of special forces if contingencies arise to meet any residual threats from the Taliban after their politicalaccommodat ion in their strongholds.

A striking aspect of the Blackwill plan is that it is rooted in Afghan history and politics, the regional milieu and the interplay of global politics. Since 1761, Afghanistan has survived essentially as a loose-knit federation of ethnic groups under Kabul's notional leadership. The plan taps into the interplay of ethnicity in Afghan politics. The political reality today is that the Taliban have come to be the best-organized Afghan group and they are disinterested in a genuinely broad-based power-sharing arrangement in Kabul.

Unsurprisingly, the non-Pashtun groups feel uneasy. Their fears are not without justification insofar as the erstwhile anti-Taliban Northern Alliance has disintegrated and regional powers that are opposed to the Taliban, such as Russia, Iran and India, have such vastly divergent policy objectives (and priorities) that they cannot join hands, leave alone finance or equip another anti-Taliban resistance.

The Kabul government headed by President Hamid Karzai is far too weak to perform such a role. (Blackwill, curiously, doesn't visualize Karzai surviving.) According to Blackwill's plan, the US offers itself as the bulwark against an outright Taliban takeover. It envisages the US using decisive force against any Taliban attempt to expand beyond its Pashtun strongholds in the south and east, and to this end it promises security to non-Pashtun groups.

If it works, the plan could be a geopolitical coup for the US. It quintessentially means the US would hand over to the Taliban (which is heavily under the influence of the Pakistani military) the south and east bordering Pakistan while US forces would relocate to the regions bordering Central Asia and Iran.

The US would be extricating itself from fighting and bloodshed, while at the same time perpetuating its military presence in the region to provide a security guarantee to the weak Kabul government and as a bulwark against anarchy and extremism - on the pattern in Iraq.Â

The US's and NATO's profile as real-time providers of regional security and stability can only boost their influence in Central Asian capitals.

Seemingly recent random "happenings" mesh with Blackwill's plan, including:Â
A base to be built for US special forces in Mazar-i-Sharif. The expansion of the air bases at Bagram and Shindand.The overhaul of the massive Soviet-era air base in Termez by the US and NATO.An agreement between the German Bundeswehr and the Uzbek government regarding Termez as a stop-off point for NATOmilitary flights.Fresh deployments of US special forces in Kunduz.The US's parleys with non-Pashtun leaders in Berlin.Mounting pressure on Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai to vacate KandaharÂ

(Blackwill said in an interview with the British Telegraph newspaper last week, "How many people really believe that Kandahar is central to Western civilization? We did not go to Afghanistan to control Kandahar.")Â

As a seasoned diplomat, Blackwill argues that China and Russia will choose to be stakeholders in an enterprise in which Washington underwrites Central Asia's security. True, China and Russia will be hard-pressed to contest the US's open-ended military presence in Afghanistan that is on the face of it projected as the unfinished business of the "war on terrorism". Central Asian states will be delighted at the prospect of the US joining the fight against creeping Islamism from Afghanistan.Â

The Blackwill plan brilliantly turns around the Taliban's ascendancy since 2005, which had occurred under Pakistani tutelage and, in retrospect, thanks to US passivity.

Blackwill admits that his plan "would allow Washington to focus on four issues more vital to its national interests: the rise of Chinese power, the Iranian nuclear program, nuclear terrorism and the future of Iraq".

Without suffering a strategic defeat, the US would be able to extricate itself from the war while the drop in war casualties would placate US opinion so that a long-term troop presence (as in Iraq) at the level of 50,000 or so would become sustainable. This was exactly what General David Petraeus, now the top US man in Afghanistan, achieved in Iraq.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says. “I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

But Mr. Biden is not the only one who harbors doubts about the strategy’s chances for success. Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing that the president’s reviews did not “add up” to the decision he made. Richard C. Holbrooke, the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted saying of the strategy that “it can’t work.”

Although the internal divisions described have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense and disparate than previously known and offers new details. Mr. Biden called Mr. Holbrooke “the most egotistical ba****d I’ve ever met.” A variety of administration officials expressed scorn for James L. Jones, the retired Marine general who is national security adviser, while he referred to some of the president’s other aides as “the water bugs” or “the Politburo.”

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his deputy, Gen. James E. Cartwright, went behind his back, while General Cartwright dismissed Admiral Mullen because he “wasn’t a war fighter.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates worried that General Jones would be succeeded by his deputy, Thomas E. Donilon, who would be a “disaster.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was overall commander for the Middle East until becoming the Afghanistan commander this summer, told a senior aide that he disliked talking with David M. Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, because he was “a complete spin doctor.” General Petraeus was effectively banned by the administration from the Sunday talk shows but worked private channels with Congress and the news media.

...

During a daily intelligence briefing in May 2009, Mr. Blair warned the president that radicals with American and European passports were being trained in Pakistan to attack their homelands. Mr. Emanuel afterward chastised him, saying, “You’re just trying to put this on us so it’s not your fault.” Mr. Blair also skirmished with Mr. Brennan about a report on the failed airliner terrorist attack on Dec. 25. Mr. Obama later forced Mr. Blair out.

...

The book also reports that the United States has intelligence showing that manic-depression has been diagnosed in President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and that he was on medication, but adds no details. Mr. Karzai’s mood swings have been a challenge for the Obama administration.

As for Mr. Obama himself, the book describes a professorial president who assigned “homework” to advisers but bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision he was not yet comfortable with. Even after he agreed to send another 30,000 troops last winter, the Pentagon asked for another 4,500 “enablers” to support them.

The president lost his poise, according to the book. “I’m done doing this!” he erupted.

To ensure that the Pentagon did not reinterpret his decision, Mr. Obama dictated a six-page, single-space “terms sheet” explicitly laying out his troop order and its objectives, a document included in the book’s appendix.

Mr. Obama’s struggle with the decision comes through in a conversation with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who asked if his deadline to begin withdrawal in July 2011 was firm. “I have to say that,” Mr. Obama replied. “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

Afghanistan: The Governor of Balkh Province in northern Afghanistan said on 21 September that the militant group Hizb-i-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (HiG) not the Taliban, is responsible for most of the violence and instability in the north. Governor Ata Mohammad Nur said the lack of responsible leadership in security institutions, uncoordinated and ineffective military policies and operations, and night raids have strengthened opponents of the government.

Nur said about half of Hizb-i-Islami's members have joined with the government, but the other half are causing insecurity and violence.
{So it could be a power play by those H-e-I outside the govt.}

Comment: By reputation, Nur is one of several "warlord" governors in the north. They reportedly obtained significant land holdings in the interim period between the last Taliban offensive against the Tajiks in the north in 2001 and the return of refugees from Pakistan to reclaim their farms after US special forces and Uzbek militias routed the Taliban.

Land expropriation in the north by Tajik and Uzbek strong men in late 2001 and thereafter is one of the most serious, least reported and unaddressed problems left over from the overthrow of the Taliban. In the north, it is a major factor contributing to Pashtun support for the Taliban.

Nur's statement that HiG has split is accurate, but even those that joined the government are for sale and usually in the service of Nur as protection and tax collectors. Nur, which means "enlightened," previously was known only as Atta Mohammad and was an ethnic Tajik militia leader. He remains an enemy of Karzai and the Pashtuns.

Nur's exoneration of the Taliban implies that he is making deals with his enemies as he sees fit and outside the control of the central government. Identification of HiG in this fashion indicates Nur has not yet found the price for buying off the HiG remnants, as he has the Taliban. Pashtuns live in several enclaves in Balkh, mainly in Mazar-i-Sharif, one of the largest cities in northern Afghanistan.

Balkh is relatively free of insurgent violence, mainly because Nur uses ancient tactics to maintain the peace: bribery or extermination and confiscation of land. Balkh is not a cradle of good government in a western sense, but it is much less violent than most provinces.

James B wrote:Some excerpts from Woodward's "Obama's Wars" book

So what will we likely be hearing about for the next month? Gen. David Petraeus once referred to top Obama advisor David Axelrod as "a complete spin doctor," according to the book, titled "Obama's Wars." Joe Biden once called Afghanistan guru Richard Holbrooke "the most egotistical b**tard I’ve ever met." And national security advisor James Jones once called Obama's political aides "water bugs."

But what should we be talking about from the book?

The undeclared, undebated secret war in Pakistan is bigger than we knew, and it's being conducted in part by CIA-trained Afghans:

The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.

The Obama administration seems to be enamored with a drone-based foreign policy:

Mr. Woodward reveals the code name for the C.I.A.’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, Sylvan Magnolia, and writes that the White House was so enamored of the program that Mr. Emanuel would regularly call the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, asking, “Who did we get today?”

This is how President Obama defines victory in Afghanistan:

Obama told Woodward in the July interview that he didn't think about the Afghan war in the "classic" terms of the United States winning or losing. "I think about it more in terms of: Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?" he said.

And this is the man who the United States is relying on over there:

The book also reports that the United States has intelligence showing that manic-depression has been diagnosed in President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and that he was on medication, but adds no details

-- The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.

...

Obama campaigned on a promise to extract U.S. forces from Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he described as the greater threat to American security. At McConnell's top-secret briefing for Obama, the intelligence chief told the president-elect that Pakistan is a dishonest partner, unwilling or unable to stop elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from giving clandestine aid, weapons and money to the Afghan Taliban, Woodward writes.

By the end of the 2009 strategy review, Woodward reports, Obama concluded that no mission in Afghanistan could be successful without attacking the al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens operating with impunity in Pakistan's remote tribal regions.

"We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama is quoted as saying at an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009. Creating a more secure Afghanistan is imperative, the president said, "so the cancer doesn't spread" there.

Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."

Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."

Among the book's other disclosures:

-- Obama told Woodward in the July interview that he didn't think about the Afghan war in the "classic" terms of the United States winning or losing. "I think about it more in terms of: Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?" he said.

...

-- A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer." He said: "When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one where you can't afford any mistakes."

-- Afghan President Hamid Karzai was diagnosed as manic depressive, according to U.S. intelligence reports. "He's on his meds, he's off his meds," Woodward quotes U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry as saying.



'The cancer is in Pakistan'

Obama campaigned on a promise to extract U.S. forces from Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he described as the greater threat to American security. At McConnell's top-secret briefing for Obama, the intelligence chief told the president-elect that Pakistan is a dishonest partner, unwilling or unable to stop elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from giving clandestine aid, weapons and money to the Afghan Taliban, Woodward writes.


An older war - the Vietnam conflict - does figure prominently in the minds of Obama and his advisers. When Vice President Biden rushed to the White House on a Sunday morning to make one last appeal for a narrowly defined mission, he warned Obama that a major escalation would mean "we're locked into Vietnam."

...

Obama kept asking for "an exit plan" to go along with any further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated with the military hierarchy for not providing one. At one strategy session, the president waved a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which put a price tag of $889 billion over 10 years on the military's open-ended approach.

In the end, Obama essentially designed his own strategy for the 30,000 troops, which some aides considered a compromise between the military command's request for 40,000 and Biden's relentless efforts to limit the escalation to 20,000 as part of a "hybrid option" that he had developed with Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a dramatic scene at the White House on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009, Obama summoned the national security team to outline his decision and distribute his six-page terms sheet. He went around the room, one by one, asking each participant whether he or she had any objections - to "say so now," Woodward reports.

The document - a copy of which is reprinted in the book - took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy's objectives, what the military was not supposed to do. The president went into detail, according to Woodward, to make sure that the military wouldn't attempt to expand the mission.

After Obama informed the military of his decision, Woodward writes, the Pentagon kept trying to reopen the decision, peppering the White House with new questions. Obama, in exasperation, reacted by asking, "Why do we keep having these meetings?"

...

The president is quoted as telling Mullen, Petraeus and Gates: "In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, 'We're doing fine, Mr. President, but we'd be better if we just do more.' We're not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] . . . unless we're talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011."

...

Petraeus took Obama's decision as a personal repudiation, Woodward writes. Petraeus continued to believe that a "protect-the-Afghan-people" counterinsurgency was the best plan. When the president tapped Petraeus this year to replace McChrystal as the head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus found himself in charge of making Obama's more limited strategy a success.

Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, "You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

ramana wrote:Shyamd, The move means ALQ has decided its the KSA they need to first takeover.

ramana wrote:Shyamd, The move means ALQ has decided its the KSA they need to first takeover. BTW historically Yemen has played an important role in spread of Islam.

ramana wrote:RajeshA, It has been mentioned before that the sources are subscription based. If the source is needed then the posting will stop.

And if this drone strategy doesn't work (as it apparently doesn't in Pakistan), we still have Associate Professor Cora Sol Goldstein from California State University, another advocate of partition. She has already gone a step further, regretting that "the national and international political context makes it impossible for the U.S. to fight a total war [sic!] in Afghanistan and Pakistan" and that the "use of nuclear weapons" in the AfPak region is "not yet justified."

Not yet.

Blackwill is not against "nation-building" in Afghanistan but he wants to "devote" it to the imaginary Northwestern half of Afghanistan alone where, he assumes, "people are not conflicted about accepting U.S. help and not systematically coerced by the Taliban" (by the way, Nuclear Cora also has something to say about this, and much more bluntly than Blackwill would ever put it: "Any policy, governmental or non-governmental, aiming at increasing education in a Taliban-ruled society, means increasing the power of the enemy." Ergo: Let the Pashtuns die illiterate).

Well, Blackwill should travel to the North. If he ever was able to step out of his armored vehicle (surely possible given all the sympathy for the U.S. there), he will find out that there are many non-Pashtuns, including the former mujahedin leaders he apparently believes still are full-hearted U.S. allies as they were during the 1980s proxy war against the Soviet Union, who do not appreciate the already existing U.S. heavy-handedness in their country.