Bharat Rakshak

A General Steps From the Shadows
Mannie Garcia/Reuters

ELISABETH BUMILLER and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: May 12, 2009
WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

Switch Signals New Path for Afghan War (May 13, 2009)
No Food for Thought: The Way of the Warrior (May 17, 2009)

Times Topics: Stanley A. McChrystal
He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.

“He’s lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier,” said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. “He’s got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect.”

If General McChrystal is confirmed by the Senate, as expected, he will take over the post held by Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was forced out on Monday. Obama administration officials have described the shakeup as a way to bring a bolder and more creative approach to the faltering war in Afghanistan.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the operation at the last minute, saying it was too risky and was based on what he considered questionable intelligence, a move that former intelligence officials say General McChrystal found maddening.

When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“He knows intelligence, he knows covert action and he knows the value of partnerships,” said Henry Crumpton, who ran the C.I.A.’s covert war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well. His wife and grown son remained back in the United States.

General McChrystal was born Aug. 14, 1954, into a military family. His father, Maj. Gen. Herbert J. McChrystal Jr., served in Germany during the American occupation after World War II and later at the Pentagon. General Stanley McChrystal was the fourth child in a family of five boys and one girl; all of them grew up to serve in the military or marry into it.

“They’re all pretty intense,” said Judy McChrystal, one of General McChrystal’s sisters-in-law, who is married to the eldest child, Herbert J. McChrystal III, a former chaplain at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

General McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and spent the next three decades ascending through conventional and Special Operations command positions as well as taking postings at Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a commander of a Green Beret team in 1979 and 1980, and he did several tours in the Army Rangers as a staff officer and a battalion commander, including service in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

One blot on his otherwise impressive military record occurred in 2007, when a Pentagon investigation into the accidental shooting death in 2004 of Cpl. Pat Tillman by fellow Army Rangers in Afghanistan held General McChrystal accountable for inaccurate information provided by Corporal Tillman’s unit in recommending him for a Silver Star. The information wrongly suggested that Corporal Tillman had been killed by enemy fire.

At the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, where General McChrystal directs the 1,200-member group, he has instituted a daily 6:30 a.m. classified meeting among 25 top officers and, by video, military commanders around the world. In half an hour, the group races through military developments and problems over the past 24 hours.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brought General McChrystal back to Washington to be his director last August, and the physical proximity served General McChrystal well, Defense officials said. In recent weeks, Admiral Mullen recommended General McChrystal to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as a replacement for General McKiernan.

One other thing to know about General McChrystal: when he was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2000, he ran a dozen miles each morning to the council’s offices from his quarters at Fort Hamilton on the southwestern tip of Brooklyn.

“If you asked me the first thing that comes to mind about General McChrystal,” said Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the council, “I think of no body fat.”

American ammunition and its supplied assault rifles are finding their way into the hands of Taliban, making the militants carry out their battle against the US forces for years, a media report said.

A study of ammunition markings of 30 rifles recently seized from Taliban militia in Korngal valley, close to the Pakistan border, suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops, the New York Times reported.

US for smaller India role in Kabul
- Pakistan pressure to prune consulate footprint in Afghanistan
JAYANTH JACOB

New Delhi, May 26: The US administration is nudging India to scale down its presence in Afghanistan — including pruning or closing down its consulates — in line with Islamabad’s demands, sources said.

This stand goes against US policy of the past eight years, when Washington wanted India to send troops to Afghanistan.

The US is now hunting new allies to “stabilise” Pakistan and Afghanistan, such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran that have leverage with Islamabad, as President Obama’s Afpak policy takes off.

Delhi’s role in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, including infrastructure projects and integrated development projects, has not gone down well with Pakistan, which sees India’s strategic interest in its presence.

Islamabad, which is the epicentre of America’s fight against terror in the region, is pressuring Washington to prevail upon New Delhi to reduce its presence in Afghanistan.

The matter was hinted at in talks with India when Richard Holbrooke, the US administration’s special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, was in Delhi recently. The sources said the US would like India to prune or shut down consulates in Herat and Jalalabad.

Other than the embassy in Kabul, India has four missions in Afghanistan — in Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat and Jalalabad.

Herat and Jalalabad are in regions where the Taliban are active, and Islamabad accuses India of using its consulates there to whip up anti-Pakistan sentiments. While Herat borders Iran, Jalalabad is close to Pakistan.

The Obama administration is leaning towards Pakistan’s friends China and Saudi Arabia as the fight against the Taliban in the country becomes increasingly tenuous. Holbrooke visited China on April 16 and the US has sounded out Beijing on helping Pakistan fight the insurgents, the sources added.

China has an immediate interest in this, having made huge investments in Pakistan, where some 10,000 of its engineers and technicians work. Besides, Pakistani training camps are blamed for the insurgency in the Xinjiang region of China. With Iran too coming into the picture in US policy on Afghanistan, Washington would be keener on shifting its focus on countries that have greater influence on Islamabad than New Delhi.

Has Af-Pak strategy led to civil war in Pakistan?
24 May 2009, 0200 hrs IST, SHAUN GREGORY

It is a measure of the intensity of US pressure that the Pakistan army appears finally to have begun serious counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This is part of the overall US Af-Pak strategy of containing the Taliban and related militancy to the Pashtun areas, which straddle the Afghan-Pakistan border. The US intent is to weaken the Taliban and allied militants to the point they can be contained, at least temporarily, by the Afghan and Pakistan militaries respectively, allowing the US to scale down its regional presence to one of minimal support for counter-insurgency and the conduct of the ongoing battle against al-Qaida. If this can ever be achieved, it will be called victory.

On the Afghan side, strategy-implementation is led by the US forces and nuanced by the linkages between the US, NATO and the estimated 500,000 foreign nationals working in civilian nation-building roles. On the Pakistan side the US is at one remove, seeking to implement strategy through the brute tool of the Pakistan army.

In the Rah-e-Haq 4 operations that are unfolding in the districts of Buner, Dir and Swat, and in similar operations that occurred earlier in Bajaur, it is possible to see the way in which the Pakistan army is seeking to subvert American intentions in the continued pursuit of its own interests. A useful point of departure to understand this is the Pakistan army’s operations in Bajaur, which began in September 2008 in the wake of the Islamabad Marriott bombing. Fearful of significant combat losses, and worried about the loyalty of its soldiers, the army used air strikes, helicopter gunships and artillery to pound militant positions and flatten towns and villages.

When this phase of the conflict was over in late February 2009, the regional commander, Major General Tariq Khan, flew journalists to observe the piles of rubble that had once been the homes of the people of Bajaur. Khan claimed that the Taliban were defeated in Bajaur and that the whole of the FATA would be back in the hands of the Pakistan state by the end of 2009. Three months later, these claims are exposed as hubris. The Taliban are back in de facto control of most of what remains of Bajaur. To assert state control over the whole of the FATA in the next seven months now seems unlikely.

The unfolding operations bear hallmarks of the Bajaur operation. The use of air strikes, helicopter gunships and artillery again form the centrepiece and the price is being paid by the peoples of these districts. Most estimates suggest that more than two million people may be internally displaced from Pakistan’s tribal areas.

One element of the strategy, however, appears different. The Pakistan army has reportedly airlifted troops into the Peochar valley in order to surround the Pakistan Taliban Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi (TNSM) leadership of Maulvi Fazlullah. If confirmed, and if Fazlullah and his commanders are not spirited away, this will mark a stepchange in Pakistan army operations. It will also expose the myth of the army’s inability to move against militants. In theory, no force on earth could have better counter-insurgency credentials than the Pakistan army, which for decades has trained, supported and sometimes fought alongside militants. Nor can the Pakistan army’s claim to be under-resourced be seen as anything other than an appeal to Washington for more funding.

So, making sense of what is taking place in Pakistan’s tribal areas requires revisiting the fundamentals. There is, as yet, no move against the Afghan Taliban on the Pakistan side of the border, no increase in useable intelligence about the Afghan Taliban being provided to the US or NATO, and no reduction of pressure on NATO supply lines through Pakistan. There is also no move against the Haqqani or Hekmatyar networks, nor against the core of militants and terrorists in the FATA, particularly in North and South Waziristan. Bajaur was flattened and much of its population driven out, but Bajaur has not been held or brought under the writ of the Pakistan state.

Moreover, following Bajaur and earlier operations in the FATA, the army cannot have been unaware of the humanitarian refugee catastrophe, which would result from the failure to properly prepare for the deluge. Is it too cynical to suggest that the army has forced the refugee crisis knowing (as in Sri Lanka) that there will be an international clamour to end the fighting?

The huge unknown, hanging over all these events, is the likely scale and nature of the backlash against the Pakistani state. If, as some believe, a powerful ‘Deobandi complex’ is now taking shape in Pakistan involving militants, religious movements, religious and conservative political parties, Islamist sympathizers, and perhaps some within the army and ISI, then the ‘Af-Pak’ strategy may be seen to have precipitated the first phase of a civil war in Pakistan.

The writer is a professor at the Pakistan Security Research Unit, University of Bradford.

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The strategic analyst talks about India's security issues.........

US POLICY TOWARDS PAKISTAN

May 30, 2009, 3:28 PM

In the last couple of days there have been two very thought-provoking
articles in the mainstream US print media about current US Af-Pak
policy. Writing in the IHT (Friday, May 29, 2009), well known
columnist Stanley Weiss has laid out an argument that is subsumed in
the title of the piece: "Help Us or We Leave". The thrust of the piece
is that the US will leave the Af-Pak theatre if it is not assisted by
countries like India.

This is an exigency - that of the US deciding to 'quit' - that has
been discussed intensely in many fora ever since President Obama
assumed office. One school of thought opines that the Pakistani
military is certain that the US will pull out within the first Obama
term (the assumption that he will contest and win a second term) and
hence the reticence to really fight the Taliban. The IHT piece may
influence thinking within the US and in the region. I discussed this
Weiss article today with Mr. K Subrahmanyam - the guru of the Indian
strategic community and here is a summary of his response.

'The threat held out in the Weiss article does not sound very
credible. Hypothetically If India were to offer three army divisions
to fight in Afghanistan, will the US be able to deploy them in
Afghanistan - given the Pakistani military's paranoia about India? The
fact of the matter is that the US has been sleeping with the enemy
-Pakistan. Post 9-11 and the US military action in the region, the
Pakistan Army's objective under Gen. Musharraf was to save the Al
Qaeda and provide it a safe-haven. Its second objective was to nurture
the Taliban and its associated Jehadi organizations. For eight years
the Pak GHQ had all these activities financed at the US tax-payers'
expense. As Bruce Riedel has pointed out, the US under President Bush
allowed itself to be taken for a ride. For this none else can be
blamed. Of course in the process Pakistan created for itself a
Frankenstein as was foreseen by many and those Taliban chickens are
now coming home to roost.'

Furthermore, KS added, : ' Is the US today prepared to consult on a
strategy to contain Pakistan and deal with Al Qaeda and Taliban and
save democracy in that country along with India and Russia , the two
democracies interested in achieving such a result.? Will the US ask
China to stop its continuing nuclear proliferation to Pakistan in
terms of Plutonium production and additional reactors? Will the US
talk to Iran about containing Pakistan? The problem today is not about
fighting a war against a somewhat depleted Al Qaeda but to deal with
the Frankenstein that Pakistan created for itself with US acquiescence
over the last eight years. Obama has got it right as far as the
assessment of the issue is concerned - though he is yet to derive the
right strategy to deal with this complex threat.'

It is significant that in a much longer piece in the WSJ (May 30),
Bruce Riedel, a member of the Clinton national security team and a
respected voice on South Asia makes a very candid admission: "America
needs a policy toward Pakistan and its bomb which emphasizes constancy
and consistency and an end to double standards with India."

Both these articles and KS' observations warrant wide circulation and debate.

*************************

Army fury at refusal to bolster Afghan campaign

Senior commanders warn British strategic alliance with United States is being put at risk

By Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent

Monday, 1 June 2009
Britain's most senior military commanders have warned Gordon Brown that unless he sends more troops to Afghanistan Britain will lose credibility with its American allies, The Independent has learnt.

Senior generals are bemused that the Prime Minister has turned down the advice of his own Defence Secretary, John Hutton, that a larger force should be sent to Afghanistan following the withdrawal from Iraq. Now they have warned Number 10 that the reputation of the armed forces will suffer in the eyes of senior American commanders unless Mr Brown authorises an autumn surge in troop numbers. Such a surge, they say, would signal Britain's intent to "pull its weight" in the Afghan conflict by plugging the shortfall in the multinational force.

On Saturday, two more British troops died in Helmand, bringing to 165 the total number killed in the conflict so far – just 14 fewer than the total number of British soldiers who died in Iraq.

Mr Brown has until now turned down, on cost grounds, the generals' proposal to send 2,500 extra troops in support of the projected US-led "surge" against the Taliban. Instead, he has authorised a deployment of 700 temporary troops to cover the period of the forthcoming elections in that country. But The Independent has learnt that defence chiefs have persuaded the Government to review the situation in the autumn. Even then, any increase is likely to be in the hundreds rather than in the numbers that the Army believes are needed.

In a sign of the private concern felt by senior military personnel over the Government's stance, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, has publicly warned that Britain's strategic alliance with US is at risk unless British forces are seen to be pulling their weight in Afghanistan.

In a speech to the international relations think-tank Chatham House he said: "Britain's calculation has long been that maintaining military strategic 'partner-of-choice' status with the United States offers a degree of influence and security that has been pivotal to our foreign and defence policy. But this relationship can only be sustained if it is founded on a certain 'military credibility threshold'.

"Credibility with the US is earned by being an ally that can be relied on to state clearly what it will do and then does it effectively. And credibility is also linked to the vital currency of reputation." General Dannatt added that "unfairly or not" British performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has already been called into question by some in the US administration.

"In this respect there is recognition that our national and military reputation and credibility, unfairly or not, have been called into question at several levels in the eyes of our most important ally as a result of some aspects of the Iraq campaign," he said.

"Taking steps to restore this credibility will be pivotal, and Afghanistan provides an opportunity."

This view has been backed up Col David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer who helped plan General Petraeus's surge in Iraq and acted as an advisor to Condoleezza Rice.

He told The Independent: "It is true that the British have received some criticism in the US, and some of it has been unwarranted. The Americans too made mistakes in Iraq, but they subsequently tried to rectify that.

"The British have a great opportunity to win back the credibility they have lost with the Americans and enhance it in Afghanistan."

Col Kilcullen, who remains close to senior figures in the US military, said that in his opinion the British General Sir David Richards, who is due to take over from General Dannatt as head of the Army, was "one of the best ever" head of Nato forces in Afghanistan.

He added: "No one doubts the professionalism and bravery of the British, and we accept that they already have a large force in Afghanistan. But we are coming to a crucial time in the campaign there, and I am sure more British help will be welcome."

The US is dispatching up to 17,000 troops to southern Afghanistan, with many of them going to Helmand, which is the centre of UK operations in the war. British commanders are convinced that after three years of committing resources and lives to the mission, reinforcements are essential to maintain the British footprint on the ground.

President Barack Obama is believed to have discussed additional troops for Afghanistan with Mr Brown. US commanders have also expressed disappointment at the shortfall in the troops being sent, especially after redeploying 4,000 troops from Baghdad to Basra to make up for the UK withdrawal from Iraq.

The Afghan campaign

8,300 British troops in Afghanistan

700 extra British troops deployed temporarily for election

610 British troops hurt from 1 January 2006 to 15 March 2009

175 British troops seriously injured between 1 January 2006 and 15 March 2009

165 British troops have lost their lives

39 British troops died in 2006 after taking over in Helmand

28 British troops killed in 2009

10 British troops seriously injured between 7 October 2001 and 31 December 2005

Mysterious 'chip' is CIA's latest weapon against al-Qaida targets hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt• Tribesmen plant devices to guide drone attacks
• Locals shun fighters for fear of becoming targets

Declan Walsh in Peshawar
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 May 2009 23.55 BST
Article history

The CIA is equipping Pakistani tribesmen with secret electronic transmitters to help target and kill al-Qaida leaders in the north-western tribal belt, in a tactic that could aid Pakistan's army as it takes the battle against extremism to the Taliban heartland.

As the army mops up Taliban resistance in the Swat valley, where a defence official predicted fighting would be over within days, the focus is shifting to Waziristan and the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

But a deadly war of wits is already under way in the region, where tribesmen say the US is using advanced technology and old-fashioned cash to target the enemy.

Over the last 18 months the US has launched more than 50 drone attacks, mostly in south and north Waziristan. US officials claim nine of the top 20 al-Qaida figures have been killed.

That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed "chips" or "pathrai" (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.

"Everyone is talking about it," said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. "People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it."

According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.

Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. "There are body parts everywhere," said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.

Until now the drone strikes were the only threat to militants in Waziristan, where the Pakistani army had, in effect, abandoned the fight. But now, emboldened by a successful campaign to drive militants out of Swat, a region about 80 miles from Islamabad, the army is preparing to regain lost ground in the more remote eastern tribal belt.

It will be a much tougher campaign than in Swat, with the army pitched against a formidable, battle-hardened opponent. Yesterday Taliban fighters ambushed a military position in what could be a prelude to much more intense combat.

For the US military, drones have proved to be an effective weapon against al-Qaida targets, although they have done little to prevent militants from attacking targets inside Pakistan.

On 1 January a drone-fired missile killed Usama al-Kimi, a Kenyan militant who orchestrated last year's Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad, a senior official with Pakistan's ISI spy agency said.

It is a high-tech assassination operation for one of the world's most remote areas. The pilotless aircraft, Predators or more sophisticated Reapers, take off from a base in Baluchistan province. But they are guided by a joystick-wielding operator half a world away, at a US air force base 35 miles north of Las Vegas. Barack Obama has approved the drone campaign, which is cheap and limits the danger posed to US troops. But the strikes have many unintended victims. A Pakistani newspaper estimated that 700 people had been killed since 2006, most of them civilians, as a result of drone attacks.

For the tribesmen who plant the microchips and get it wrong, the consequences can be terrible. Last month the Taliban issued a video confession by Habib ur Rehman, 19. "They money was good," he said in a quavering voice, describing how he was paid 20,000 rupees (£166) to drop microchips hidden in a cigarette wrapper at the home of a target.

Rehman said his handler promised thousands of pounds if the strike was successful, and protection if he was caught. The end of the video showed Rehman being shot dead with three other alleged spies. Residents say such executions – there have been at least 100 – indicate how much the drone strikes have worried the Taliban.

In Wana, the capital of south Waziristan, foreign fighters are shunning the bazaars and shops, and locals are shunning the fighters. "Before, the common people used to sit with the militants," said Wazir. "Now they are also afraid.

Paranoid militant commanders are closely monitoring cross-border traffic with Afghanistan, from where they suspect the chip-carrying CIA spies are coming, said Imtiaz Wazir, a resident of Spin Wam village in north Waziristan. "If I go to Afghanistan without any purpose, the militants come to ask why," he said.

A local transporter named Haji Hamid who gave the wrong answer, he said, was found shot dead two months ago, his legs and fingers broken.

The drone strikes are despised across Pakistan, where politicians including President Asif Ali Zardari denounce them as a breach of sovereignty. But behind the scenes his government is quietly colluding with Washington.

A former CIA officer who served in Waziristan in 2006 said that small American teams comprising CIA agents, radio experts and special forces soldiers are stationed inside Pakistani military bases across the tribal belt.

From there, the CIA recruits a network of paid, and sometimes unwitting, informers – known as "cut-outs" – to help identify targets, he added. In most cases they are poor local men.

Ironically, support for the drone strikes is strongest in the frontier, especially among embattled security officials. "They are very precise, very effective, and the Taliban and al-Qaida dread them," said the provincial police chief, Malik Naveed Khan, with undisguised admiration. The strikes have caused friction between the US and the ISI, which would like America to give it control over the new technology. "The problem with the Americans is that the only instrument up their sleeve is the hammer, and they see everything as a nail," said a senior official.

The ISI resents the US for failing to target Mehsud, whose deputy claimed for last week's Lahore attack that killed at least 24 people, including an ISI colonel.


But as the army prepares to attack South Waziristan, with broad public support, the warlord's luck may be running out. Authorities in North West Frontier Province are preparing for up to 500,000 refugees, added to 2.5 million displaced by operations in Swat.

Mehsud faces other challenges, too. Rival militant groups, with army support, are challenging his dominance in South Waziristan.

And he faces the ever-present danger that some visitor could drop a "pathrai" at his doorstep, and bring an American drone with it.

He said those few in the fight in the country’s south did not know how to combat the Taliban guerrilla insurgency. As for the rest, Mr. Gates, sounding very irritated 18 months back, described himself “not satisfied that an alliance whose members have over two million soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen cannot find the modest additional resources that have been committed for Afghanistan.”

Presto, change-o. It’s June 2009 and this just in from Oslo, where the NATO Parliamentary Assembly met last week: absolution. For the first time in years, said one of those attending, Denis MacShane, a Labor member of Parliament and a former minister of state for Europe in the British government, no Europeans got their heads banged “for not dying and refusing to pull their weight.”

Bhima wrote:Stand Up, Be Counted - K Subrahmanyam

“We should not negotiate out of fear but we should not fear negotiations either,”

Since the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008, India has stuck to the position that there will be no resumption of dialogue with Pakistan until the “infrastructure of terrorism” in that country is dismantled and the perpetrators and masterminds of the incident are brought to justice.
“It may not be possible for India to insist, in the face of pressure from other countries, that we will talk only when these two conditions are fulfilled,”

Three months on and the militants are back in full swing. Proof of this comes from the following recent developments: militants have established checkpoints in Umaray, Damadola, Seway, Badan and Kamar areas of Mamund tehsil and almost all areas of Charmang. They are also conducting snap checking of vehicles in the Tangi/Gang and Mandal areas. Armed militants patrol all these areas and even the areas of Sheikh Baba, Babar Shah, Shago and Lashora in the agency headquarters of Khar. FM radio stations run by militants are still airing propaganda against Pakistan and the army. They are also issuing threatening decrees against the people who sided with the army in the operation. The militants have declared CNICs as un-Islamic and have threatened to kill women who apply for CNICs. Kidnappings and beheadings have again started in the agency and the Salarzai lashkar's headquarters in Pashat has been attacked several times by the militants.

Malik Munir of Mamund lashkar, Malik Kamal Khan of Salarzai lashkar and many elders of Mandal lashkar have been target-killed in Khar. Ears of four members of the peace committee in Khar village were chopped off by the militants. During the most recent polio campaign -- which took place just a week ago -- the militants severely beat up polio teams in Tangi, Maminzo, Babar Shah and Faja areas of Khar, all within one kilometre of the local FC headquarters. Armed militants beat up people at the Post Office in Khar Bazaar because they applied for the government assistance under the BISP scheme. The Post Office is a stone's throw from the heavily guarded office of the Commander Bajaur Levies. Seeing this situation, ordinary tribesmen are losing confidence in the government and security forces.

EDITS | Wednesday, June 10, 2009 | Email | Print |


Dealing with Afghanistan

Ashok K Mehta

The Obama Administration’s special envoy for AfPak Richard Holbrooke said last week in Islamabad that India had a legitimate role in providing stability to Afghanistan and the region and though he was not designated to India, he kept in constant touch with its officials. Such comments are bound to ruffle feathers in Islamabad where the establishment remains concerned about India’s encirclement of Pakistan to negate its dated quest for strategic depth in Afghanistan. Some Afghans complain that New Delhi and Islamabad are using their soil to fight their battles adding insult and injury to a deeply divided country trapped between foreign forces and the Taliban.

The Taliban say that while Americans have the watches, they have the time. Mullah Omar, the elusive Taliban leader who “wants foreigners to leave Afghanistan”, forgets that US-led Nato forces are in no hurry to leave the region even though ‘an exit policy’ is a political imperative of the new AfPak strategy. Afghans have begun to understand that sovereignty and decision-making will remain in the hands of outsiders who are both part of the problem and the solution. If they were to leave, their fear is that the Taliban would take over.

Without contiguous borders and a transit corridor through Pakistan, India realises the limits to what it can do in Afghanistan. New Delhi has always sought an India-friendly regime in Kabul and had supported the Northern Alliance in retention of a toe-hold in Badakshan, warding off Pakistan-backed Taliban assaults in the late-1990s. It was from this launch pad that the US-led forces rolled back the Taliban in 2001.

New Delhi’s strategic priorities are to ensure that the Taliban’s ideology and its brand of terror are not exported to India; there is no shade of the Taliban represented in the Government in Kabul; external interference is minimal; it can create space for access to central Asia and Afghans are able to stand on their own feet, recovering their strategic autonomy. In other words, making their own decisions.

The role India gets to play is circumscribed by Islamabad’s exaggerated fears of New Delhi and Kabul ganging up against its own legitimate interests, a concession that the US and the West make for Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The recent Pakistani Army offensive in Malakand division has impressed the US and Pakistan will extract a price which could include seeking a further dilution of India’s activities in Afghanistan.

India has been largely kept out of the political and security dynamics in Kabul — confined to development and reconstruction activities while maintaining a strong bilateral relationship with Afghanistan, employing its rich soft power. While India engages more than 30 countries in a strategic dialogue, strangely this does not include any SAARC country. India remains on listening watch as part of the wider regional contact group with a special envoy accredited to it.

Pakistan has credited the four Indian consulates at Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Kandahar, and the trade office in Khost, with surreal capacity for anti-Pakistan operations. The eight-man consulate in Kandahar, for example, is depicted as 800-strong, up to no good and fomenting insurgency in Baluchistan. Similarly, the Jalalabad consulate, which is also close to the Pakistani border, frequently hits the headlines and is on the Taliban-ISI hitlist, as are other Indian assets and projects inside Afghanistan. The suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul last year, executed by the Taliban, an acknowledged ISI strategic asset, has not been forgotten.

Kabul recognises the centrality of New Delhi in its reconstruction and peace-building programme. Iran and Pakistan are the other two active regional players with Afghanistan’s Northern and Central Asian neighbours keeping a low profile. India is the sixth largest bilateral donor with $ 1.2 billion committed in numerous projects varying from building toilets to transmission lines spread across the country in all 27 provinces. The development projects are conceived by the Afghans with security being provided by them.

The Delaram-Zaranj blacktop road, the first in Nimroz province, was built by Indian Border Roads Organisations, 400 ITBP men providing close protection were guarded by 1,400 Afghan security personnel — 139 of them were killed protecting the Indians.

The development assistance programme, the largest outside India, is regarded a foreign policy success and falls into four categories: Humanitarian, infrastructure, small development projects and capacity-building. These include building medical missions, the Parliament building, transmission lines for electricity from Uzbekistan to Kabul, frequently called the capital of darkness, 50 small projects and providing training facilities for Afghan public services, scholarships for higher education, rehabilitation of war widows and much more.

Lack of land access is the biggest impediment to relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation work. Pakistan has refused passage to 100,000 tonnes of protein biscuits meant for school children and 250,000 tonnes of wheat to serve as Afghanistan strategic food reserve. This despite India meeting its condition of removing ‘Made in India’ labels and allowing Pakistani trucks to carry the cargo. The alternative route, via Chabahar Port in Iran, involves 30 per cent time and cost overruns.

Although the Afghan Defence and Interior Ministries want Indian participation in these sectors, New Delhi keeps out in deference to Islamabad’s sensitivities. Instead of cooperating in Afghanistan’s development and even undertaking joint projects, India and Pakistan try cancelling each other out. Mistrust and suspicion are of high order. Both countries should discuss their legitimate interests, avoiding bitterness and conflict. There are 40 countries and 120 NGOs active inside Afghanistan but none as antagonistic to each other as India and Pakistan.

Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are conflict-ridden countries, stricken with terrorism and religious extremism that spills across to India, which, therefore, has a legitimate interest in the internal stability and security of both countries. As soon as the composite dialogue in whatever shape is resumed, a frank bilateral conversation on Afghanistan is of paramount importance.

Afghanistan has no bilateral dialogue mechanism with Pakistan. In 2007, during a Pakistan-Afghanistan summit in Islamabad, President Hamid Karzai provided a list of Afghan Taliban safe-houses in Quetta. But there was no action — for Pakistan, these were the ‘good’ Taliban. New Delhi, Islamabad and Kabul can find common ground for peace by collectively confronting the entire Taliban, good, bad and ugly.

For the present, India’s strategic restraint in Afghanistan includes no boots on the ground, again not to rock relations with Pakistan. The western frontier astride the Durand Line and the Hindukush is the historical invasion route to New Delhi and its first line of defence. We should be looking at Paakpiya and Pakpika in Afghanistan, not Panipat.

Former British commander in Afghanistan says Treasury is crippling war
(Heathcliff O'Malley)

Brigadier Ed Butler, who says the Treasury has hampered the British campaign in Afghanistan

Michael Evans, Defence Editor
The British military operation in Afghanistan was crippled by a spending cap imposed by the Treasury, a former senior officer told MPs yesterday. Brigadier Ed Butler, who commanded 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand province in 2006, told the Defence Select Committee that the financial constraints meant that the Army could “just about hold the line, but couldn’t sustain a higher tempo” in its campaign against the Taleban.

The brigadier resigned his commission last year, claiming that he wanted to spend more time with his family. But his premature resignation was widely acknowledged to be in protest at the handling of operations.

His brigade suffered high casualties during its six-month tour. Thirty-five members of the Armed Forces died during the brigade’s tour of duty, although 14 of these were killed when an RAF Nimrod caught fire in mid-air and exploded.

Many soldiers who were killed by enemy action died in isolated outposts such as Musa Qala in northern Helmand where the Taleban launched multiple attacks on the district centre, which was being guarded by only a 30-man platoon.

Taliban will ‘never be defeated’

Blast kills soldier, 19, in Afghanistan
British soldier dies as Taleban chief killed

Brigadier Butler told the committee that in 2006 the Treasury had “capped” resources available for the operation, limiting funding to £1.3 billion for a “three-year campaign”. The Government has always denied imposing a cap on resources for the mission. “There was a Treasury-imposed cap on the number of troops we could have in Afghanistan,” he said.

With the troops available to him — 3,300 — “we could just about hold the line but we couldn’t sustain a higher tempo”. Brigadier Butler said he was visited by numerous ministers during his tour of command but not once by a Treasury minister.

The financial constraints resulted in a severe shortage of helicopters in the field and seriously hampered the ability of British forces to cover the ground, Brigadier Butler said.

He pointed out that in Northern Ireland there were 70 helicopters for 10,000 to 15,000 troops but in Afghanistan, with casualties rising steeply in the fiercest fighting since the Korean War, there were far fewer.

He said that the Taleban “forced us off the road” when they turned to “asymmetric warfare”, targeting the troops with roadside bombs. But there were not enough helicopters to move soldiers around Helmand province.

Brigadier Butler’s devastating exposé of the restrictions he had to deal with as he commanded his brigade appeared to contradict the public pledge made by Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister that the troops in Afghanistan could have whatever they wanted. Gordon Brown was Chancellor at the time.

Brigadier Butler was also highly critical of the overall government strategy towards Afghanistan. In 2006, he said, the main fighting was in the north of Helmand and efforts should have been made to start development and reconstruction programmes in the other areas. But nothing was done. “Whitehall was of the view that the whole of Helmand was burning, but actually it was about 6 per cent of the province where the real battles were going on,” he said.

The Government should have implemented development programmes in the first 100 days of the campaign, he said.

He told the MPs: “No one knew what type of campaign we were involved in. It came as a considerable shock when it was discovered what we were engaged in.”

The “tribal tapestry” in Whitehall was as complex as it was in Afghanistan, he said. In December 2005 he and other senior commanders and officials had gathered in Kandahar to work out what needed to be done in Helmand, but their recommendations “were not taken forward”.

He said that the officials working in Helmand from the Department for International Development were the most “risk-averse” of the civilians involved in the campaign, followed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the security services.

Brigadier Butler was giving evidence about the so-called comprehensive strategy in Afghanistan under which all government departments are supposed to co-ordinate their work.

He said that a strong secretary of state was needed to ensure that everyone co-operated, and praised John Reid, who was Defence Secretary in 2006, for “knocking heads together”. “It needs someone with clout back home. . . if you want to go into these places [Afghanistan], you must go deep and go long or go home. . . and it must be properly resourced,” he said.

The tribal militias of the Frontier
The British had terrible luck purchasing their loyalty

Joshua Foust

ONE of the ideas recently circulating around US.policy circles is utilising a tribal militia of some sort to address otherwise intractable security issues. The “Sons of Iraq,” as the Anbar Awakening came to be known in the US government, seems to be a popular model for problems everywhere: with the Pentagon, one can find “Sons of…” ideas for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Somalia.

One western power in particular, however, has a long history of using these tribal militias in pursuit of its interests. Perhaps most famously along the Northwest Frontier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British empire employed multiple types of militias and community defence organisations in an attempt to secure their border along Afghanistan. Examining their creation, successes, and failures, lends substantial lessons for today.
Probably the earliest deliberate use of tribal elements in providing security along the Northwest Frontier was the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides, formed in Peshawar in 1846. Created by Sir Henry Lawrence, the Corps of Guides was a mixed infantry and cavalry force that had a Pashtun majority, though there were some other ethnic groups involved in its early days—most notably Sikhs.

Very quickly, the Guides developed into an elite force with a strong reputation in the Indian Army. In contrast with later militia groups, the Guides did not elevate their tribal or communal loyalties above that of their unit. During the Second Anglo-Afghan War, a group of the Corps of Guides accompanied the British contingent and stood guard at the embassy they established in Kabul. After the signing of the Treaty of Gandamak, an angry mob attacked the embassy in Kabul, killing all the Englishmen inside, including Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British Resident. After their deaths, the remaining Corps of Guides were offered safe passage back to India if they laid down their arms; all, however, refused, and fought to the death. This sort of devotion made them legends in the British empire.

By 1878, the Frontier Scouts, whose members were drawn directly from local tribes, entered service along the Northwest Frontier. Their primary mission was policing the Khyber Pass, a job the Scouts did with little fanfare, budget, or firepower. Part of this was born of necessity—the British were wary of imposing too much change on a people they considered primitive—but part was born of an ingrained distrust in the Scouts’ loyalty. This distrust kept them lightly armed and at arm’s length. The importance of this distance came to matter a great deal during the Third Anglo-Afghan War, when King Amanullah Khan capitalised on the growing weakness of British rule along the Frontier and marched as far as the city of Thal in Parachinar. During this war, many Pashtuns in the Frontier Scouts deserted to fight alongside the Afghans.

One of the most visible successes the British had with tribal militias was in the war against the Faqir of Ipi from 1936 to 1947, also known as the Tori Khel Rebellion. Led by by a charismatic Islamic fundamentalist leader named Haji Mirza Ali Khan, or the Faqir of Ipi, all of Waziristan collapsed into violence. After a few months of sustained fighting, the Tori Khel came to a peace jirga. Despite this, there remained a serious problem of cross-border tribal militancy from Afghanistan—militants continued to cross the Durand Line and launch attacks. This postponed the fighting until well into 1939, not fully petering out until the 1940s.

In his diary-like account of an early period of the war, Geoffrey Moore, for example, noted that they could only threaten entire communities with violent reprisals should attacks on British troops continue—a provision written into the very laws of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), which was first drafted in 1872 but made law in 1903, enshrines the role of Sharia in judicial settlements in FATA. This brought the areas under de facto British control, but exempted the area’s residents from de jure British rule. A key enforcement clause of the FCR is the idea of collective or communal punishment, in which an entire community is held responsible for the actions of an individual or group of individuals. While Moore highlights one way this could be effective, today collective punishment could be classified as a crime against humanity.

The British found terrible luck, at least in the long term, in purchasing the loyalty of tribal groups. During the First Anglo-Afghan War, for example, the loyalty of local Pashtuns from Rawalpindi to Kabul was purchased in gold. When the gold ran out in 1842, however, and the Pashtuns demanded even more than the British had paid before, the result was the disaster at Gandamak. FW Johnston, who wrote the briefing paper for future political agents to the area, noted that they promised the Ahmadzais vast tracts of land in return for help in providing security. It is unclear the Pakistani government could bring about a similarly appealing set of incentives for reduced militancy.

Another challenge the British faced was the periodic rise of charismatic figures that used prophesies and appeals to tribal and Islamic loyalties to urge the local Pashtuns to rebel. In the Dir district of the FATA in 1897, a man known only as the Mad Mullah incited a series of violent attacks on the camps in Dir and western Swat. After a rapid movement of reinforcements, the British fought off the tribes, and though there remained holdouts in Upper Swat they never reprimanded.

Furthermore, the tribal militias were not guarantors of security. HRC Pettigrew tells the story of the Frontier Scouts’ aggressive push into Ladha, “the highest of the Scouts’ posts.” It was deep into Mehsud territory, and relations with them were always restless.

While tribal issues in NWFP were not a significant factor during the anti-Soviet jihad (most of the tribes’ energy, save some fighting amongst the different warlord factions, was spent trying to kill Soviets), tribal issues again rose to prominence in the 1990s. During this time, the Pakistani government actively encouraged militancy in many of the NWFP and FATA districts as a deliberate strategy to build up “fanatical” religious soldiers to fight India in Jammu & Kashmir. These zealot-tribals also took advantage of the relative lawlessness and anarchy in Afghanistan and increased their cross-border economic and military activities, often doing tours fighting both for the Taliban and in low-intensity conflicts in Kashmir. This was openly practised until just after September 11, 2001; since the US invasion of Afghanistan, such activity has become much more proscribed.

The recent calls within the US for a “Sons of Pakistan” program—such as a late 2007 decision to “partner” with renowned militant leader Maulvi Nazir—reflect an unsettling ignorance of the use of these militias in the tribal areas of Pakistan. For its part, the Pakistani government has steadfastly refused to arm or otherwise support home-grown tribal militias for reasons many Americans find inexplicable. The answer lies buried in history, one few westerners have ever much explored.

Has India betrayed Afghans?

Jun 14 2009 20:49 hrs IST

By Tushar Gandhi

……………. our betrayal of the Pukhtoons of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) is tragic. This region has been overrun by the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, the Americans are chasing Al Qaeda and their inaccurate bombings are wreaking havoc on the villages of Afghanistan & NWFP. …………..

The world has kept quiet, but the silence of the Indian government is tragic. The Pukhtoons of NWFP, the romantic ‘Qabuliwalas’, have been our friends since long. During our independence struggle, under the leadership of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, the Pukhtoons in their hundreds of thousands joined the non-violent fight for freedom. ……………… The Punjabi politicians of Pakistan have never forgiven the Pukhtoons and have been persecuting them since its inception. Now they have found an ally in the Americans. Under the pretext of fighting the Taliban, the Pakistani military and government have unleashed a reign of terror on the Pukhtoons. Like the Tamils of Sri Lanka …………….. the Pukhtoons too have been dreaming of a Pukhtoonkhwa, a nation comprising of Pukhtoon territories of Afghanistan and NWFP in Pakistan. Unfortunately the Pukhtoons have not found any patrons in their quest for a homeland.

It makes strategic sense for us to help divide Pakistan further by helping the Pukhtoons in their quest for Pukhtoonkhwa, carving out a great Pukhtoon nation friendly towards us. The Pukhtoons are practitioners of the moderate Sufi Islam, they will be a buffer against the Talibanised form of fanatic Islam. The Pukhtoons are being persecuted by both the fanatic Taliban and the vengeful Pakistani establishment. ………………… The Pukhtoons are being decimated and the world is watching silently. But our betrayal of the Qabuliwala is shameful.

A new factor has been introduced into the mess in Pakistan making it even more murky and dangerous for us. President Obama has asked China to intervene in Pakistan. We all know the mischief China has been up to against us in partnership with Pakistan. …………………

Will foreign minister SM Krishna raise these concerns with the US? Will the UPA government stand by our friends — the Pukhtoons?

CLICKY

Correspondents say that the idea of using it as an alternative route for supplying US and Nato forces in Afghanistan has been floated before.

ISLAMABAD, February 16 (PPI): Germany has appointed a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. VOG reported. Germany is the third western country after United States and Britain which has appointed special envoy Bernard Muetzelburg who is currently German Ambassador to India. Muetzelburg will work closely with US special envoy Richard Holbrook and Sherard Cowper-Coles British Special Envoy to help support the review of policy about Pakistan and Afghanistan as announced by new US President Barak Obama.