Bharat Rakshak

What's with Karzai?
Karzai makes offer to Taliban

Karzai offers Taliban government office Afghan president say he is willing to meet with Mullah Omar for peace talks

The US has concluded that the fight against the Taliban is endless and they now want to cut a deal with them.

It ignores 2 things :

1) The taliban are addicted to jehad. Even if there was no conflict, they would create one.

2) The taliban knows that when the US leaves as it will eventually, they will 'win' anyway. Then they will declare it an islamic victory.

Offers of political legitimacy only works when the opposition is close to being defeated. That serves as an olive branch to them to give up their 'struggle' for good. For India this strategy has always been used where militancy is faught out for years until the militants are exhausted.

It does not work when the opposition is winning as the Taliban clearly know they are while the US is getting exhausted.

More to the Karzai offer

[MK in Kabul

[quote]
......
The Taliban resurgence, on both sides of the Durand line between Pakistan and Afghanistan, has wrecked the best-laid plans of the western reconstruction effort. Ironically, it has strengthened Pervez Musharraf’s hand in the middle of repeated onslaughts by the pro-democracy judiciary at home.

Karzai has offered to talk to Taliban chief Mullah Omar as well as warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to the chagrin of the Americans, inviting them to join his government. The Taliban have virtually rejected the offer, saying that all foreign troops must first leave Afghanistan.

The Indian foreign office has been debating over the past year whether Delhi should also make some gestures to the Pashtun Taliban groups, making a distinction between them and the Arabic-speaking al Qaida formations.

Significantly, Karzai has made the same distinction in his talks offer. He has said that he will speak to the “Afghan Talibanâ€

Gerard wrote:Afghan Boy With US Dollars Hanged

Impossible -- it's religion of peace.

Staying the course in Afghanistan - M.K. Bhadrakumar

[quote]Following a three-hour meeting on September 23 in New York, India’s foreign policy ship took a sharp curve. It headed in an unknown direction, no matter the choppy waters. Inebriated with the T20 Cup victory in Durban and the gala “Incredible Indiaâ€

Google books recommendation:

The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, C.1710-1780 By Jos J. L. Gommans

ANd

Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World By Andre Wink

"If Afghanistan is lost,Pakistan will fall...",Dire prediction indeed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Afghanistan is lost, says Lord Ashdown

By Tom Coghlan
Last Updated: 3:33am BST 25/10/2007

Nato has "lost in Afghanistan" and its failure to bring stability there could provoke a regional sectarian war "on a grand scale", according to Lord Ashdown.

Frontline: Reports from our correspondents in the war zones

The former United Nations High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina delivered his dire prediction after being proposed as a new "super envoy" role in Afghanistan.

Lord Ashdown said: "We have lost, I think, and success is now unlikely."

The assessment will be considered extreme by some diplomats but timely by those pressing for more resources for Nato operations.

Lord Ashdown added: "I believe losing in Afghanistan is worse than losing in Iraq. It will mean that Pakistan will fall and it will have serious implications internally for the security of our own countries and will instigate a wider Shiite [Shia], Sunni regional war on a grand scale.

"Some people refer to the First and Second World Wars as European civil wars and I think a similar regional civil war could be initiated by this [failure] to match this magnitude."

Lord Ashdown, 66, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was speaking in advance of a Nato summit in the Dutch town of Noordwijk yesterday.

Britain and the US infuriated by the lack of assistance granted by allies to those countries with forces operating in Afghanistan.

advertisementThe tensions are particularly acute given that members pledged a year ago that they would do everything within their power to ensure "success" in the country.

With a growing sense in Kabul that the reconstruction and military efforts are lacking focus, Britain and the US are pushing for the creation of a super envoy and are looking for a political heavyweight to fill the role.

Both countries consider that Tom Koenigs, the current UN special representative to Kabul who is a former regional politician in Germany, lacks the international standing to fulfil such a role. He will complete his posting by Christmas.

It is understood that the super envoy would have the existing duties of the UN representative but also greater powers to co-ordinate the rebuilding of the country after decades of war. Progress in reconstruction and development - especially in the violent south - has been sporadic and considered largely unsatisfactory by the international community.

However, there remains widespread discussion over the precise remit that the new figure would have, particularly in relation to any oversight they might have of Nato operations and Operation Enduring Freedom, the US's separate mission.

A spokesman at the British Embassy in Kabul told The Daily Telegraph: "There is an important role for the United Nations to play in co-ordinating efforts in Afghanistan and we would like to see the international effort better co-ordinated."

A senior diplomat who declined to be named said: "The overall leadership here is that of President Karzai.

"So whoever takes on this role needs to be able to co-ordinate the international community but also serve the interests and structures of a sovereign state."

Apart from Lord Ashdown, candidates under consideration for the new enhanced role include Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, the serving French foreign minister, and Jaroslav Kaczynski, the former Polish prime minister who lost Sunday's general election.

Worsening violence strangles Afghan aid

Six years since the Taleban fell, Afghanistan's main national road is not safe enough for aid convoys to reach those most in need in some parts of the country.

That is the grim picture painted by the United Nations, of deteriorating security, more suicide bombs and increasing attacks on humanitarian workers. UN Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom Koenigs said 34 aid workers had been killed so far this year, 76 kidnapped and that 100 UN facilities or convoys had been robbed or looted.

"Security now prevents us from travelling large parts of the southern ring road and this is a matter of great concern," he told a news conference.

"Reaching the people is not a political issue, it is a humanitarian issue, and we must send the message that the attacks on aid missions must stop.

"We need local communities to help provide our staff and convoys safe passage."

Suicide attacks

Just a few hours before he spoke, another suicide bomber had struck in Lashkar Gah, in the south of the country. Described by local police as being between 15 and 16 years old, the bomber had targeted Afghan traffic police, killing at least three people and injuring many more.

It was the 10th suicide bombing in Helmand province since the start of September and marks a change in tactics in one of the most violent parts of the country.

Things are so bad in the south that the UN World Food Programme's country director, Rick Corsino, said practically no food had reached western Afghanistan since June, because of the poor security on the road.

"Last year we had five attacks on WFP vehicles, but this year in 10 months we have already had 30," he said.

"We've lost 1,000 tonnes of food worth £750,000 (£364,000) and the cost of transport has gone up by 25% to 50% in the past 12 months, because of the risks."

But it is not just the southern areas where aid is struggling to get through and where security is deteriorating.

The UN security map shows more areas, closer to the capital, are now very dangerous or extremely risky.

The provinces surrounding Kabul have seen fighting between insurgents and both Afghan and international security forces.

And there have been more suicide attacks in the capital itself.

In the past few weeks, more than 100 people have been killed - the worst attacks were on buses transporting army and police officers.

Growing fear

Haiatulla was the driver of one of those buses on 29 September, but somehow he escaped without serious injury.

He is now recuperating at home, but is angry that the insurgents are killing and injuring local people.

He says the security situation has deteriorated in Kabul.

"I'd rather leave Kabul than stay here - I want to live somewhere where there are no suicide bombs and I can just work to feed my family and live in peace," he said.

And along the Jalalabad Road to the east of Kabul a shopkeeper explained to me how the last bomb blast against a military convoy had scattered debris close to his shop.

It is now the most dangerous stretch of road in the capital, as armoured vehicles belonging to contractors, international troops and the Afghan police are all targeted.

"People don't come to my shop any more as they are afraid to stop," he told me and there is a growing fear in the capital that more bombs could follow.

Some people even pulled their children out of a school close to the airport road - another place popular with suicide bombers.

The children have since returned, but it is an indication of the paranoia that is starting to affect Afghans in Kabul.

Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban
[quote]
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,â€

[url=http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/2 ... ghanistan/]60 Minutes: “Bombing Afghanistanâ€

The "Sons of Nippon" nip back home! "Banzai" to them.The new Japanese
leadership has realised the inevitable defeat of coalition forces in Afghanistan,thanks to Dubya and Blair's bufoonery and support of the Taliban's heart and headquarters,Pakistan,and are homeward bound.Big kick in the nuts for Dubya ! It is also likely to have some significant impact upon the so-called "quadilateral" of Asian military powers which the US hopes to inveigle India into.The entire reecent Andamans exercise was a dummy run for the impending US attack upon Iran and securing the Straits Of Hormuz.

Japan pulls out of Afghanistan coalition
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0 ... 98,00.html

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Thursday November 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A Pakistani destroyer (l) is refuelled by the Japanese vessel Tokiwa in the Arabian Sea. Photograph: Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force/AP

Japan's government has ordered its navy to end its mission in support of coalition forces in Afghanistan after failing to win opposition backing to renew the deployment before today's midnight deadline.
Since 2001, Japan has provided about 126m gallons of fuel to US, British and other vessels operating in the Indian Ocean. The two Japanese ships on duty - the supply ship Tokiwa and the destroyer Kirisame - are expected back home in about three weeks.

Opposition parties, which gained control of the upper house of Japan's parliament in July, said the mission did not have a UN mandate and possibly violated the country's pacifist constitution, which severely limits the military's overseas role.
The prime minister, Yasuko Fukuda, today vowed to pass new legislation that would enable Japan to play a smaller, but symbolically important part in the US-led war on terror.

"To fulfill our responsibility as part of international efforts towards eradicating terrorism, we need to continue our refueling mission," he said in a statement. "The government will do all it can to pass the special bill for the refueling mission so we can restart our mission as soon as possible."

Earlier this week, Mr Fukuda failed in a last-ditch attempt to persuade Ichiro Ozawa, who leads the biggest opposition party, to support the mission.

The withdrawal was a blow to US efforts to keep the coalition together. Several senior US officials have publicly urged Mr Ozawa to think again and yesterday the ambassadors of the US, Britain and nine other countries met dozens of Japanese MPs to stress the value of the country's contribution.

The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said he was concerned by the withdrawal. "Defeating terrorists is one of the highest security challenges the world faces," he said. "It is a global challenge and combating terrorism is a collective responsibility."

But US defence department spokesman Geoff Morrell said the decision would not have "any operational impact whatsoever". Japan provided about one-fifth of all fuel consumed by coalition ships between December 2001 and February 2003, according to Pentagon data, but only about 7% since then.

Officials in Washington denied that the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, would apply more pressure on Japan when he visits Tokyo next week.

The timing of the visit was "purely coincidental", a Pentagon official was quoted as telling Japanese reporters in Washington. "I assure you the United States has no intention of injecting itself into that legislative process."

The issue is expected to be on the agenda, however, when Mr Fukuda meets the US president, George Bush, later this month.

40 dead in Afghan suicide blast

At least 40 people have died in a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan, say hospital and provincial officials.

At least six members of the Afghan parliament, and reportedly many schoolchildren, were killed in the blast in the province of Baghlan.

A Taleban spokesman has condemned the attack, denying the Taleban are behind it.

The region is in deep yurd thanks to the lopsided priorities of the Bush brigade.The Taliban and its paki godfathers,have now got the karzai regimeon the backfoot and rapidly peddling even further backwards!

Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/s ... 94,00.html


· Frontline getting closer to Kabul, says thinktank
· Aid not going to those who need it most, warns Oxfam

Graphic: Taliban presence in Afghanistan

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday November 22, 2007
The Guardian

Afghan National Army soldiers head out on patrol. Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.
Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".

It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.

The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when ... and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out."

Its 110-page report coincides with an equally severe warning from Oxfam. In a report for the House of Commons International Development Committee the humanitarian and aid agency warns that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating significantly with the country's problems exacerbated by corruption in central and local government.

Senior British and US military commanders privately agree despite their public emphasis on short-term successes against Taliban fighters.

The insurgency is divided into a largely poverty-driven "grassroots" component and a concentrated group of "hard-core militant Islamists", says the Senlis Council, which has an office in Kabul and field researchers based in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.

It says that the Nato-led International Security Force of some 40,000 troops should be at least doubled and include forces from Muslim countries as well as Nato states which have refused to send troops to the country.

There is no sign of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.

While western governments, like the Senlis Council and Oxfam, are increasingly concerned about the lack of effectiveness of President Hamid Karzai's government, there is no agreement about how to solve the problems.

Oxfam warns that urgent action is needed to avert humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan where millions face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa". Though the country has received more than $15bn (£7.5bn) in aid since 2001, the money is not getting to projects which could lead to sustained improvements in people's lives, says Oxfam.

It adds that at least 1,200 civilians have been killed so far this year, half in operations by international or Afghan forces. It notes there are four times as many air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

The Senlis Council wants Nato forces, and their Provincial Reconstruction Teams, to take on a bigger role distributing aid and Oxfam says the military should stick to providing security.

Oxfam warns that urgent action is needed to avert humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan where millions face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa". Though the country has received more than $15bn (£7.5bn) in aid since 2001, the money is not getting to projects which could lead to sustained improvements in people's lives, says Oxfam.

Thats a lot of aid per captia in Afghanistan uless it went to pay US contractors. Should have made some diffeence but obviously not.

ramana wrote:

Oxfam warns that urgent action is needed to avert humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan where millions face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa". Though the country has received more than $15bn (£7.5bn) in aid since 2001, the money is not getting to projects which could lead to sustained improvements in people's lives, says Oxfam.

Thats a lot of aid per captia in Afghanistan uless it went to pay US contractors. Should have made some diffeence but obviously not.

Met my Afghan Mechanic yesterday. Per him , onlee Indian aid is visible .

> The entire reecent Andamans exercise was a dummy run for the
> impending US attack upon Iran and securing the Straits Of Hormuz.

It will only happen after US installs a govt of its choice in pakistan.

ramana wrote:Thats a lot of aid per captia in Afghanistan uless it went to pay US contractors. Should have made some diffeence but obviously not.

It's US law that is the problem. US law requires USAID to give american grown food in aid, ship it in an american flagged vessel and a bunch of stupid things. Quite often, the bags of food are sold in the open market by the aid agencies and the money is used to buy what is really required.

Also, the amount of aid is calculated at the American end i.e. if they ship a bag of grain that costs 100$ in the US, that counts as 100$ in aid although a bag of grain may be available locally for less than half that amount.

Yes,get "Johnny Gurkha" to do your dirty work while you pay him a pittance for it,far less than the other soldiers by his side! Shameful!

Troops dig in to defend town seized from TalebanNick Meo in Afghanistan
British troops were braced yesterday for their hardest challenge in the notoriously difficult town of Musa Qala in Helmand province.

Days after driving out a strong Taleban force they were preparing to hold the town against expected counterattacks and beginning to help to develop a local administration that will be supported by a jaded population.

To provide physical defences, Gurkha engineers were using diggers to pile sand into giant hessian bags in front of a derelict building that last held Taleban fighters. Afghan soldiers were setting up machinegun posts on nearby roofs. But a more difficult operation was persuading the people that they will be better off under the Afghan Government than supporting the Taleban. Some admitted that they did not really care who held the town, they just wanted security. Ahmad Nurzai, a shopkeeper, opened for business, selling biscuits and fruit to American paratroopers. A few days ago the Taleban had been his customers. He said: “The Taleban are poor people. They didn’t have money to buy things. I don’t care about politics really, I just want to live without worrying about war and criminals.â€

Glorious!In another thread,I spoke of duplicitous Brit mandarins of the Foreign Office.Now we have dear old MI6 ,getting into the picture 007 style! The end loser,the NATO farce,sorry force,in this farcial neo-imperial misadvanture.Oh that Kipling were alive to write another soldier's lament.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Britain in secret talks with the Taliban
By Thomas Harding and Tom Coghlan
Last Updated: 1:51am GMT 26/12/2007

Agents from MI6 entered secret talks with Taliban leaders despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

No peace for Marines on Christmas patrol
Officers from the Secret Intelligence Service staged discussions, known as "jirgas", with senior insurgents on several occasions over the summer.


Taliban leaders meet to discuss strategy: Gordon Brown had told Parliament that there would not be any negotiations


An intelligence source said: "The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide 'mentoring' for the Taliban."

The disclosure comes only a fortnight after the Prime Minister told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

Opposition leaders said that Mr Brown had "some explaining to do".

The Government was apparently prepared to admit that the talks had taken place but Gordon Brown was thought to have "bottled out" just before Prime Minister's Questions on Dec 12, when he made his denial instead.

It is thought that the Americans were extremely unhappy with the news becoming public that an ally was negotiating with terrorists who supported the September 11 attackers.

The delicate balance in Afghanistan was underlined as it emerged that two diplomats had been ordered by the Kabul government to leave the country after allegations that they had met Taliban insurgents without the administration's knowledge.

advertisementThe pair, a top European Union official and a United Nations staff member, were declared "persona non grata" and said to be "threatening national security".

They are both Afghan experts who have been working in the country since the 1980s. They are in their forties and cannot be named. One man works as a political adviser to the European Union while the other is employed as a political adviser to the UN mission in Kabul.

One of the men described the charges as "banal and preposterous" and said he hoped the Afghan government would quickly drop its threat to deport them.

MI6's meetings with the Taliban took place up to half a dozen times at houses on the outskirts of Lashkah Gah and in villages in the Upper Gereshk valley, to the north-east of Helmand's main town.

The compounds were surrounded by a force of British infantry providing a security cordon.

To maintain the stance that President Hamid Karzai's government was leading the negotiations the clandestine meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials.

"These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms," an intelligence source said. "The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban."

The Prime Minister had denied reports of talks with the Taliban under questioning from David Cameron, the Tory leader, in Parliament.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary said: "If this turns out to be untrue the Prime Minister will have some explaining to do to the British public."

Britain has said it would support efforts by the Afghan government to negotiate with tribal fighters now supporting the Taliban - but only if they embraced democracy.

Senior Government sources have claimed that the only negotiations with the Taliban were attempts by President Karzai to persuade them to change sides.

Kipling:

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier

Anon:
THE REFUSAL

You asked this man who was a boy
To take his life by his own hand,
To freely give, himself destroy
Upon those plains that echo Troy
And see the best of men unmanned.

If, after he had ceased to be,
You’d set no other boys aflame
With thoughts that he had fought to free
Ought but his own fantasy,
A task pursued by fools in vain;
Or if, after I’d my self set free,
Led my mad heart to its grave,
You’d ceased to preach of liberty
And thought, by thinking, you could save
What is at birth in slavery
And bound by flesh that falls away;

We’d have known that you could promise
More than we can promise you,
And we’d be somewhat less self-conscious,
We who say man must self choose
If he’s to stand before what is
And do what he was born to do;

And I’d be lying by my brothers
Dead upon those plains so red,
Or I’d be fighting with an other
Where heroes fight, and fools led.

Dunya Mikhail:She fled Iraq,This is her poem "The War Works Hard"

How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
. . .
The war continues working, day and night.
It inspires tyrants
to deliver long speeches,
awards medals to generals
and themes to poets.
It contributes to the industry
of artificial limbs,
provides food for flies,
adds pages to the history books,
achieves equality
between killer and killed,
teaches lovers to write letters,
accustoms young women to waiting,
fills the newspapers
with articles and pictures,
builds new houses
for the orphans,
invigorates the coffin makers,
gives grave diggers
a pat on the back
and paints a smile on the leader’s face.
The war works with unparalleled diligence!
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.

As one senior British officer told me: "If the Army could not control an 84-mile long border in Northern Ireland, it is hardly likely to control the 1,500-mile border with Pakistan."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main ... do0402.xml
We've six months to defeat the Taliban

By Con Coughlin
Helmand province

One of the Army's most enduring traits is its "can-do" attitude. Irrespective of whether there are enough men and supplies, it is almost ingrained in the DNA of officers that they undertake any mission, no matter how daunting.

No doubt this innate willingness to serve played its part when British commanders deployed to Afghanistan at the end of last year.

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The Army itself might be suffering severe overstretch through a combination of underfunding by Gordon Brown's Treasury and Tony Blair's messianic willingness to commit forces to resolve the world's ills, but that did not dampen the enthusiasm of Army chiefs to take on a challenging new mission.

This, after all, is the front line in the war on terror, where the Taliban, who receive much of their funding from al-Qa'eda, have for some months been threatening to make a comeback after being comprehensively defeated during the coalition-led Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001.

The chance to return to Afghanistan to help the government establish its authority over an area that has rarely succumbed to Kabul's writ was too good to miss. Undertaking such a mission would also help to reinforce Britain's reputation as a leading Nato military power.

It is now nearly two months since British forces started to deploy in strength to the lawless province of Helmand in southern Afghanistan, and British commanders have come face to face with the reality of trying to impose order.

To date, five soldiers have been killed and many more suffered severe injuries in their attempts to subdue the Taliban. Brigadier Ed Butler, the British force commander, has warned that further casualties are likely if the mission is to succeed.

The relatively high level of casualties, and the fierce resistance British forces have encountered from the Taliban, has taken many by surprise, not least the ministers responsible for sending them there.

It was only last April that John Reid, then defence secretary, glibly remarked that it would not be necessary for British troops to engage the Taliban, because their primary role was reconstruction, not counter-insurgency.

This was just one of the many fanciful notions that were doing the rounds of Whitehall earlier this year, prior to the deployment, the most ludicrous of which being Downing Street's proposition that the troops' main task should be to assist with the eradication of southern Afghanistan's lucrative poppy crop.

As one Afghan expert remarked during my recent visit to Helmand, "Poppy is the glue that holds everything together in this part of the world" - farmers, drug barons, government officials, and the Taliban.

Just how British troops were supposed to destroy the main livelihood of most residents of Helmand without taking on the Taliban was never explained. "No one in Downing Street thought this through," commented a British official.

Fortunately the military did think it through, and quickly reached the conclusion that engaging in agricultural reconstruction was not for them: their primary task was to establish some semblance of law and order that would provide a degree of protection for ordinary Afghans.

In strictly military terms, the British mission to date can be judged a success, despite the casualties. British troops, working in temperatures that rarely fall below 40C, have succeeded in fanning out across Helmand's inhospitable terrain and have made their presence felt in most of the key towns and villages.

Lt Gen David Richards, the thoughtful British commander of the Nato force in Afghanistan, wants to establish a network of what he calls "security zones" throughout the British area of operations.

Once these have been established, the Afghan authorities and aid agencies would be encouraged to begin reconstruction work in an area that has not known stability and peace for more than 30 years.

In theory, this plan seems sound; whether it can be successfully implemented is quite another matter. To start with, the composition of the British force, with just 600 combat troops, is insufficient to establish a permanent presence throughout all 12 administrative districts in Helmand.

Rapid reaction units, which are mainly drawn from 3rd Bn The Parachute Regiment, can be deployed to engage the Taliban, but they just as quickly return to base at Camp Bastion once their mission is accomplished, allowing the Taliban to regroup.

The proportion of British combat troops will increase over the next few months, but on current estimates they will still be insufficient to have effective control over an area that is four times the size of Wales.

Once British forces have established control over these districts, the next stage of the plan envisages the Afghan government moving in to administer the district and oversee reconstruction projects.

But, like the British, the Afghan government is short of resources, and does not have enough staff to man all the district offices. Intimidation by the Taliban of those officials who are prepared to accept government positions is also widespread. Last month, Taliban sympathisers killed 32 relatives of the local MP.

Attempts to recruit a local Afghan army and police force to supplement the British force have not been a great success. Absenteeism among the 600 Afghan army recruits in Helmand is running at 40 per cent, and on current estimates there will be just 130 fully trained Afghan soldiers in the province by next June.

Nor are the prospects for the British mission helped by the fact that most of the key Taliban commanders are hidden away on the other side of the Pakistan border, in Quetta. Despite recent efforts to improve cross-border co-operation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Taliban fighters can move at will.

As one senior British officer told me: "If the Army could not control an 84-mile long border in Northern Ireland, it is hardly likely to control the 1,500-mile border with Pakistan."

In such circumstances, it is hard to see how Britain's three-year commitment to Afghanistan's reconstruction can ultimately be a success. Whether it ends in failure will depend on the ability of British troops to wrest control of Helmand from the Taliban. As another senior British officer remarked: "If we can't defeat the Taliban in the next six months, we are never going to control southern Afghanistan."

Terrible News! May the engineers souls rest in peace.

Two Indians killed in Afghanistan; Indian aid to continue (Second Lead)

The incident comes only a few days after an Improvised Explosive Device exploded near the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Dec 13. However, at that time, Indian officials had insisted that the consulate had not been specifically targeted.

A resurgent Taliban had been targeting Indian personnel employed for various reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.

In 2006, a driver at BRO, working on the same Zaranj-Delaram road, Ramankutty Maniyappan, was kidnapped and killed by Taliban. Within five months, an Indian telecom engineer working for an Afghan mobile company, K. Suryanarayana, was also found dead after being kidnapped.

Indian engineer, Afghan cops killed in suicide attack: official

7 Killed in Afghanistan Suicide Attack

By NOOR KHAN – 8 hours ago

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber attacked Indian road construction workers and their Afghan police escorts Thursday in southwestern Afghanistan, killing seven and wounding 12, an official said.

The convoy had been traveling on a main road toward the city of Khash Rod in Nimroz province when it was first hit by a remote-controlled bomb that was planted on a motorcycle, wounding one policeman, said Nimroz Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad.

The convoy stopped after the primary explosion, and a suicide bomber set off a secondary attack, killing six policemen and an Indian worker, Azad said. Ten policemen and two Indian workers were wounded.

Looks like the escalation against Indian presence started after this announcement on 13th december.

India to invest Rs. 7.5 bn in Delaram-Zaranj road in Afghanistan

----------------
This was missed.
Bomb blasts outside Indian consulate

Published: Saturday, 15 December, 2007, 09:08 AM Doha Time

JALALABAD: Two homemade bombs exploded overnight outside an Indian consulate in eastern Afghanistan, causing no casualties or damage, officials said yesterday.
Two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were lobbed at the consulate in Jalalabad city, the capital of Nangarhar province, late on Thursday, Indian consul Pratab Singh said.
“There were two IED blasts outside the premises of our consulate. There were no casualties or damage. We are fine,â€

What's this about Mullah Dadullah being fired?

Mullah Dadullah Fired by Taliban Leader Mullah Omar

Bagram detention centre now twice the size of Guantanamo

08 January 2008

The United States has quietly expanded the number of "enemy combatants" being held in judicial limbo at its Bagram military base in Afghanistan, a facility which has now grown to more than twice the size of the controversial and much more widely discussed military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Bagram has received just a fraction of the world attention paid to Guantanamo, but the two facilities have prompted very similar complaints – about prisoners held incommunicado for weeks or months, the lack of recourse to any system of legal redress, and persistent reports of prisoner mistreatment that many human rights campaigners have characterised as torture.

The New York Times, which has seen confidential documents relating to the running of the Bagram prison, reported yesterday that the military base north of Kabul now contains around 630 prisoners, a far greater number than the 275 still being held at a rapidly emptying Guantanamo.

Although conditions are generally reckoned to have improved at Bagram since December 2002, when US officials admitted that its guards beat two Afghan prisoners to death, the base's warren of isolation cells have still prompted high-level complaints from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

As recently as last summer, the ICRC complained that prisoners were being denied access to its inspectors for weeks or months at a time, and were sometimes subjected to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the newspaper reported.

"The problem at Bagram hasn't gone away," said the human rights lawyer, Tina Foster, who has filed numerous lawsuits on behalf of the detainees. "The government has just done a better job of keeping it secret."

Prisoner numbers have swelled because of the ever deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, and the mounting threat posed by the resurgent Taliban to the fractious pro-American government headed by Hamid Karzai. Since 2005, US officials have harboured plans to hand over the prisoners to the Afghan authorities, who would house them at a brand new $30m (£15m) facility financed by the United States on the outskirts of Kabul.

Every aspect of the handover has been mired in problems, however, with the Afghans raising objections to US attempts to persuade them to establish a similar home-grown regime of indefinite detentions and trial by military commission already endorsed by the Bush administration, and the Americans fearing for the security and day-to-day conditions of the proposed new facility.

The agreement first broke down in 2006, soon after a high-security detention centre run by the Afghan military began its US-sponsored overhaul, when President Karzai refused to sign a decree establishing a legal framework for the prisoners based on the discredited Guantanamo model.

The plan then hit crisis point last May when two US soldiers overseeing the project were shot dead by a suspected Taliban sympathiser who had infiltrated the guard corps. The killings led to two months of vetting of the other guards and the dismissal of almost two dozen trained recruits, according to The New York Times.

The first 12 Bagram detainees moved into the new facility at Pul-i-Charkhi prison in April 2006, and those numbers grew to 157 over the next nine months, including 32 transferred from Guantanamo. Despite initial American concerns that the Afghans could not be trusted to imprison such "enemy combatants", it now appears that some prisoners will remain at Bagram indefinitely.

The Surge is about to begin, bit by bit...

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/i ... 8520080109

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321488,00.html

The plan calls for sending one ground and one air Marine contingent plus one battalion for a "one-time, seven-month deployment," Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morell said Wednesday.

Defense officials are not calling this a surge, rather a specific increase for more troops. Currently roughly 26,000 American troops are in Afghanistan, under NATO auspices. NATO commanders have asked for 7,500 more troops, but Gates has called on allies to contribute the additional forces.

Hah, a surge by any other name

Attack on luxury Afghan hotel kills guard, militant: ISAF

Jan 14, 2008

KABUL (AFP) — At least three gunmen launched a brazen attack on the main luxury hotel in Kabul late Monday, leaving a hotel guard and one of the rebels dead, the NATO force in Afghanistan said.

The hardline Taliban movement said its men, including a suicide bomber, carried out the attack on the Kabul Serena, a five-star hotel frequented by foreigners.

Norwegian media reporting from Kabul said Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere was in the hotel at the time of the attack but was safe and sheltering in the basement.

"Three people attacked the hotel. They were apparently on foot," said a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Captain Mario Renna.

"One has been killed by guards of the hotel but two others managed to get inside and they managed to kill one guard and wound two others, one of them seriously."

He did not say what had caused the blast or who may have carried out the attack. He also had no details on the fate of the other two attackers.

A loud explosion was heard across the city and a Kabul Serena employee said there had been a bomb blast in the parking lot. However, Afghan officials could not immediately give details.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the insurgent group was responsible.

"Four members of the Taliban, one of them wearing a suicide vest and all armed with Kalashnikovs, entered the Serena hotel and opened fire on foreigners," Mujahed told AFP.

"One of them exploded himself," he said.

The Afghan interior ministry confirmed there had been an explosion. "We don't know what it was at this stage," spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

Hotel management contacted by AFP would not immediately comment.

The main road running outside the five-star establishment, which is opposite the presidential palace, was sealed off and police and international military vehicles arrived at the scene, an AFP reporter said.

Two ambulances were allowed through the hotel gate but reporters were kept away.

The Serena, opened in November 2005, is the main venue for top-level functions of the government, foreign embassies and businesses in the capital.

It is heavily barricaded and reinforced because of the security threats, with a Taliban-led insurgency at its peak.

Philip wrote:Glorious!In another thread,I spoke of duplicitous Brit mandarins of the Foreign Office.Now we have dear old MI6 ,getting into the picture 007 style! The end loser,the NATO farce,sorry force,in this farcial neo-imperial misadvanture.Oh that Kipling were alive to write another soldier's lament.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Britain in secret talks with the Taliban

It is learnt that MI6 wasn't the first western intelligence agency to enter into talks with Taliban.

In July 2005, the BND (german intel agency) flew 2 commanders of the Taleban into Zurich for talks. The talks didnt achieve anything.

All the western agencies are after the same thing with the Taliban. That is to get them to distance from Al Qaeda. They have all failed because it is difficult to identify taliban figures who hold large authority over the organisation, which is led by a Shura council.

So it was NATO exercise to get some baksheesh and reduce the attacks on their soldiers. If the UK and Germany were talking to the Taliban the US must be right in front of them.

Oh this is hilarious! The US ranting at British "inexperience" in Afghanistan! Surely,the US has heard of the word history and Kipling?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 201002.ece

Outrage as US accuses Britain of inexperience in Taleban conflict
Soldiers of C company, The Royal Gurkha Rifles, in Helmand, Afghanistan

Michael Evans: Defence Editor
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, risked an unprecedented rift with Britain and other close allies after accusing Nato countries fighting in southern Afghanistan of lacking experience in counter-insurgency warfare.

Mr Gates said failings in the south were contributing to the rising violence in the fight against the Taleban.

His outspoken criticism, voiced in an interview with an American newspaper, provoked instant reactions from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, the three most prominent members of the alliance, who have endured much of the fiercest fighting in southern Afghanistan.

The Dutch were so angry at what appeared to be direct criticism that they summoned the US Ambassador in The Hague to explain Mr Gates’s comments. British and Dutch officials refused to believe that the criticism was directed at them, but Eric Adelman, the US Assistant Secretary of Defence, nonetheless had to ring around Nato capitals to give reassurance that Mr Gates was not attacking any individual member.

Expert View
Paddy Ashdown will be expected to achieve nothing less than to save the faltering Western mission in Afghanistan.

Mr Gates was quoted as saying: “I’m worried we’re deploying [military advisers] that are not properly trained, and I’m worried we have some military forces that don’t know how to do counter-insurgency operations.â€

ramana wrote:So it was NATO exercise to get some baksheesh and reduce the attacks on their soldiers. If the UK and Germany were talking to the Taliban the US must be right in front of them.

Yes sir....All done with US approval of course.

Well Karzai seems to share the USviewpoint,with his startling statements,that now give the British a grand opportunity to GO HOME!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 248318.ece

The British have made matters worse, says Afghan President

David Charter in Davos, Anthony Loyd in Helmand and Richard Beeston
Britain and Afghanistan fell out in spectacular fashion yesterday after President Karzai accused his British allies of bungling the military operation in Helmand and setting back prospects for the area by 18 months.

Mr Karzai, Britain’s key ally in Afghanistan, had little praise for the efforts of the 7,800 British troops deployed in his country. Most are in the restless southern Helmand province, where Britain has invested billions of pounds in trying to defeat the Taleban, bolster central government authority and begin reconstruction.

But Mr Karzai said that they had failed in the task, particularly the initial military mission launched nearly two years ago by 16 Air Assault Brigade — a unit that is returning for its second tour this year.

“There was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces,â€

Paki's use of extremism has backfired: Karzai
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 20:31 [IST]

New York: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said Pakistan's use of "extremism" to foment trouble for its neighbours has begun to backfire, insisting that failure to rein in militancy would spell "gloom and doom" for the region.

Karzai, who has frequently sparred with his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf on the issue cross-border terrorism, said the two neighbouring countries must join hands to eradicate extremism in the region.

"Unless we do that, the picture is one of doom and gloom - for Pakistan, and as a consequence for Afghanistan," Karzai was quoted as saying in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine.

The Afghan leader also said nations must not use extremism as a tool. "We cannot use extremism as a tool for any purpose. It will hurt us eventually, as it has begun to hurt Pakistan," he told the magazine.

Interestingly, Karzai and Musharraf shared a platform at the recently concluded World Economic Forum in Davos, where they addressed the issue of terrorism and the need for a global effort to fight the scourge.

Karzai said the Taliban, ousted from power by the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, was trying to stall progress in the country by trying to prevent reconstruction, killing and intimidating people and preventing children from going to school.

Without mentioning Pakistan by name, Karzai said militant groups "would not be strong without support".

When pressed on Pakistan's possible involvement in fomenting terrorism in Afghanistan, Karzai said, "I've just had a very good trip to Pakistan, so what I would say is that Pakistan and Afghanistan and the US and the rest of the world must join hands in sincerity in order to end this problem".

The Afghan crisis gathers speed.Predictions of gloom,statements that the battle has been lost and internal spats between the NATO/western is only accelerating the collapse of the Karzai regime and a taliban victory,that two years ago seemed remote. The winner in this war is Pakistan,the extremist forces who have gradually taken over that country and are now flexing their muscles after seeing the effect of the US debacle in Iraq.Thanks to the greed of Dubya Bush,who waged war on two fronts ,creating a wave of anti-US militancy fromfundamental Islamists,the legitimacy of waging war in Afghanistan,to destroy Al Q's bases there and remove the Taliban from the country has been waste with his obsession with Iraq.At the fag end of his term,Afghanistan now is in such bad shape that possibly before Bush's term ends,we might see Karzai on the run,even as Bush's allies prepare to flee the land!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 292038.ece

Enough. Time to pack up and leave
Britain's presence in Afghanistan is futile. The Foreign Secretary must act courageouslyMatthew Parris
All of us, at every turn in our life, encounter circumstances in which there are severe limits to our ability to intervene. We feel no shame in this sane and commonplace response. “There's only so much I can do,â€

Talk about biting the hand that feeds it! Here Britain is bribing the hand that bites it! Oh what a tangled web of deceit the US,Britain and NATO has woven in Afghanistan,the graveyard of foreign invaders and interlopers.The end is in sight,the future in question,whether Pakisatn will also fall to the ungodly after the Aghan cebacle.However,Karzai might very well switch sides if only to save his skin.Nothing is impossible in his land,as the old saying goes,"you can't buy an Afghan,you can only rent them"!

Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 77671.html

Related Articles
Andreas Whittam Smith: If the Afghans don't want us, why should we

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Monday, 4 February 2008


Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.


The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."

The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.

Afghan government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.

Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.

A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."

But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple's EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.

Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and "spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail" which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.

Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".

Background to the proposal

* December 11

British and Afghan troops take Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand, after President Hamid Karzai reveals that a senior Taliban commander swapped sides.

* December 23-24

The acting head of the EU mission, Michael Semple, and the third-ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, hold talks with local dignitaries and Taliban sympathisers in Helmand. Afghan secret police arrest their colleague, General Stanikzai, and seize a memory stick containing plans for training camps.

* December 25

Semple and Patterson are given 48 hours in which to leave Kabul.

* December 27

The two diplomats fly out of the Afghan capital, despite international appeals to let them stay.

PS:The audacity of British chicanery in the region,once again playing the "Great Game",as if the clock had turned back to those haady days of imperialism when Britannia ruled the waves and "God was an Englishman",amazes one.Gordon Brown comes over and talks about an "equal relationship",while his hatchetmen are upto old imperialist tricks.

The bloody fools....

Interestingly, no mention of the US in that article...

well they british during Raj era faced lot of defeats in current AF. they were
mostly content to build some forts, staff them with indian soldiers and
periodically bomb the villages.

this time its no different. they expect others to do the fighting.