Bharat Rakshak

A Reporter's Tale Of Ambush And Captivity
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David Rohde was imprisoned 10 days by Serbian officials in 1995 while covering the war in Bosnia for The Christian Science Monitor.
New York Times reporter David Rohde was covering Pakistan and Afghanistan in November 2008 when he, driver Asad Mangal and local Afghan reporter Tahir Luddin were ambushed and kidnapped by the Taliban. They were taken into the tribal areas of Pakistan and held captive for over seven months before Luddin and Rohde managed to escape.

Rohde recounts the ambush — and his subsequent imprisonment in Pakistan — in the Times article "7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity":

"I felt the car swerve to the right and stop," he writes of the kidnapping. "Two gunmen ran toward our car shouting commands in Pashto, the local language. The gunmen opened both front doors and ordered Tahir and Asad to move to the back seat. ... The gunman in the passenger seat shouted more commands. Tahir told me they wanted our cellphones and other possessions. 'If they find we have a hidden phone,' Tahir said, 'they'll kill us.' "

The Times team members later won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rohde also won a Pulitzer in 1996, while he was a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, for his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre.

"There is no question of Indian involvement in Afghanistan," he told the media on the eve of the Coast Guard commanders' conference in New Delhi on Wednesday. Antony's statement assumes significance in the light of the Indo-US Yudh Abhyas '09 joint army exercises which conclude in Babina cantonment near Jhansi on Thursday. One of the scenarios envisaged during the 18-day joint exercises, the largest yet between the two countries, were of US and Indian forces jointly intervening in a third country under the aegis of the United Nations. Responding to a query on whether he thought Indian and US forces would ever operate together, Antony responded in the negative: "I don't foresee such a situation. Not now, not in the future. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, we are helping in the reconstruction but there is no question of military involvement in Afghanistan," Antony said.

“I am categorically saying that there is no question of Indian military involvement in Afghanistan…not now, not in the future…”

There is a well-known saying in Afghanistan: "You can rent an Afghan, but you can't buy him."

Some experts on the region believe a U.S. program to pay Taliban fighters to quit the organization is buying temporary loyalty.

President Obama on Wednesday signed a $680 billion defense appropriations bill, which will pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal year. The bill includes a Taliban reintegration provision under the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which is now receiving $1.3 billion. CERP funding also is intended for humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects at commanders' discretion.

The buyout idea, according to the Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is to separate local Taliban from their leaders, replicating a program used to neutralize the insurgency against Americans in Iraq.

"Afghan leaders and our military say that local Taliban fighters are motivated largely by the need for a job or loyalty to the local leader who pays them and not by ideology or religious zeal," Levin said in a Senate floor speech on September 11. "They believe an effort to attract these fighters to the government's side could succeed, if they are offered security for themselves and their families, and if there is no penalty for previous activity against us."

But Nicholas Schmidle, an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for the non-partisan New America Foundation, said that while the plan has a "reasonable chance for some success," the old Afghan saying will eventually be borne out.

"So long as the Americans are keenly aware of this, you're buying a very, very, very temporary allegiance," he said. "If that's the foundation for moving forward, it's a shaky foundation."

The bill comes as an uptick in violence claimed the lives of several American troops in Afghanistan over the past few months. In the most recent attack on Tuesday, eight soldiers were killed in what officials are calling a well-coordinated attack in southern Afghanistan involving improvised explosive devices and small-arms fire.

"There's been an amnesty program for low-level Taliban in place for many years now and thousands of people have taken advantage of it," he said. "So this is not entirely a new idea. The idea of bribing people, local guys, to come over. ... It's one of the most cost-effective ways to get people to lay down their arms, either to negotiate a peace or coerce them."

Levin touted the plan, using the 'Sons of Iraq' plan to drive home his point.

"Large numbers of young Iraqis, who had been attacking us switched over to our side and became the 'Sons of Iraq,'" he added. "They were drawn in part by the promise of jobs and amnesty for past attacks, and in part by the recognition that the status quo was creating horrific violence in their own communities. In their own interests and the interests of their nation, they switched sides and became a positive force."

But Bergen argues the comparisons are not analogous.

"In Iraq, they turned their guns on al Qaeda in Iraq, which was a foreign level organization that was imposing Taliban-style rule. And that didn't go down very well with the local Iraqi Sunnis," he said. But in Afghanistan, "The Taliban is the guy you grew up with. They're not some foreigners who came in and to be part of the jihad. ... The values they [Taliban] have are not far off from what rural Pashtuns have."
It's one of the most cost-effective ways to get people to lay down their arms


He added that al Qaeda in Iraq made a lot of mistakes - which was instrumental in getting Iraqis to "switch sides and get on the American payroll."

The top commander in Afghanistan has backed the plan for the Taliban.

"Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with [a] foreign cadre with them," said Gen. Stanley McChrystal in a July 28 Los Angeles Times interview. Most are not ideologically or even politically motivated, he said in the interview. "Most are operating for pay; some are under a commanders charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders."

Among the ideas pushed forward is one that says that the Taliban is really not an enemy; al-Qaeda is the only enemy and so therefore it's not that necessary to defeat the Taliban. That would undercut the whole effort of boosting the Afghan military forces and increasing the military forces in Afghanistan. Is this a real competing idea right now?

This is a fairy tale. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been closely aligned ever since Osama bin Laden came back to Afghanistan in the mid 1990s. The Taliban leadership under Mullah Omar has been unwilling to break with al-Qaeda for more than a decade. Ever since the two had their first meeting back in the nineties--which I would remind people was set up by the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI--these two have been in a partnership. What is most remarkable about that partnership is that it has survived and endured when arguably the Taliban has been a big loser in this partnership.

...One more thing: the view that you can win the war against al-Qaeda by just bombing al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan--you don't think that can work, do you?

No.

That's part of the fairy tale?

That's part of the fairy tale. We are doing a brilliant tactical job in degrading al-Qaeda today in Pakistan. It depends upon an intricate network of intelligence sources. At any time that network could start to dry up. At any time al-Qaeda could change operational procedures which would make it harder. Al-Qaeda operates in a syndicate of terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It swims among these groups: the Afghan Taliban, the Pak Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and others. And for eight years now, it has been able to successfully operate there by swimming in this environment. The notion that you can somehow selectively resolve the al-Qaeda problem while ignoring the larger jihadist sea in which [al-Qaeda] swims has failed in the past and will fail in the future. That's what President Pervez Musharraf tried to do in Pakistan and it failed utterly. That, in many ways, is what [former President George W.] Bush and [former Vice President Dick] Cheney tried to do and it failed utterly. It's a fairy tale, and it's a prescription for disaster.

There's a piece in the Washington Post today suggesting that when the policy review was agreed upon last spring, no one really knew how much it was going to cost. And a lot of the disagreement now is due to the cost factor. Do you agree with that?

The strategic review and the strategy that the president articulated in March tasked the Pentagon, and in particular CENTCOM [Central Command], to come up with an operational plan to implement it. The strategy called for a counterinsurgency strategy to be developed in Afghanistan, particularly in the south and west. The operational plan was first assigned to General David McKiernan, who was then commander. The White House and the Pentagon came to the conclusion, for good reasons, that was not going to work, and they brought in General McChrystal to fulfill this requirement for an operational plan. The cost of that change of command, which was really unprecedented--we haven't changed a battlefield commander since 1951 in the Korean War--was time. Instead of getting an operational plan in May or June, we're getting an operational plan now in September and October. The political dynamic in the United States is different. The political dynamic in Afghanistan is different. And there's some sticker shock at the size of what the operational plan calls for. That's the unfortunate reality. That delay, while probably necessary in order to have the right people, has cost us some time.

...This review has been going on for some time, and you've said that the president doesn't want to really be seen as dithering. Do you expect some decision-making soon?

At some point there is a cost to delay. And that cost comes in how our partners and how our enemies respond. Our NATO partners are already a bit squeamish. The Pakistanis are already beginning to wonder about the seriousness of the American commitment. So that undue delay has a cost. Our enemies have already come to the conclusion that victory is in sight.
...They are confident that time is on their side, that they will defeat the Americans just like they defeated the Russians. And one of the most important things that the president and the administration have to do is convey seriousness, convey determination.

EDITS | Saturday, November 7, 2009 | Email | Print |


US can’t dither on Afghanistan

Hiranmay Karlekar

One can understand US President Barack Obama’s difficulties in hammering out a new military policy for Afghanistan. On the one hand, Gen Stanley A McChrystal, the commander of American forces in the country, wants at least 40,000 troops more to shore up counter-insurgency operations, and Adm Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, more funds — the figure going round in Washington is $ 50 billion — for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a report by Elizabeth Bumiller in The New York Times of November 4, this would be on top of the $ 130 billion the Congress has authorised for the period from October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010. On the other, the liberal Left in the Democratic Party and Vice-President Joseph Biden oppose both demands. In Afghanistan, he has to do business with President Hamid Karzai whom he and his advisers like Mr Biden and Mr Richard Holbrooke, his pointsman for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Mr Peter Galbraith have criticised openly and sharply.

While his desire not to blunder into a course of action which would be disastrous for the US makes sense, he will do well to remember that the delay in finalising a policy and the manner in which the conflicting viewpoints are being aired, gives the impression of a divided American political establishment and a vacillating President. The result is a growing feeling that the US may either choose a self-defeating soft option or, even if it goes for the right course, will leave when the going gets tough and the body bags coming home become more numerous.

This will enable the Taliban and Al Qaeda to resist more tenaciously in the hope of victory tomorrow. It will also encourage Islamabad, which is now supposed to be in the midst of a fierce offensive against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, commonly referred to as Pakistani Taliban, not to extend the same against the Afghan Taliban waxing under the leadership of men like Sirajuddin Haqqani holed up in North Waziristan. Pakistan would continue considering them as strategic instruments with which to re-establish its dominance over Afghanistan after the US and Nato forces leave, much in the same way after its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate and the US Central Intelligence Agency had helped create the Taliban in 1994.

This aspect has been discussed endlessly, particularly in the context of the known Pakistani design to gain ascendancy over Afghanistan in quest of strategic depth against India. Even those in that country who consider the idea hare-brained and support to the Taliban and Al Qaeda dangerous, will be inclined not to act against them for fear of retribution when they take over. Nor should the US be surprised if Mr Karzai seeks to protect his back in the event of an American withdrawal leaving him to deal with a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda, by striking alliances the US disapproves of. Significantly, Ahmed Rashid writes in Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia that “the US attack on Iraq was critical to convincing Musharraf that the United States was not serious about stabilising the region, and that it was safer for Pakistan to preserve its own national interest by clandestinely giving the Taliban refuge”. In the present instance, read delay in policy formulation in place of the Iraq war.

To a large extent, Mr Karzai’s dependence on men like Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum and Marshal Mohammad Fahim Khan, is a result of the failure of the US under President George W Bush and the West generally to provide adequate funds for war-ravaged Afghanistan’s reconstruction and enough troops and equipment to prevent a Taliban revival. In fact, the planning, money and troops that should have gone to stabilising Afghanistan and helping President Karzai to consolidate his position went to Iraq. It would be grossly unfair to blame him now for the mess that his country is getting to become. But is a conveinent scape goat

Unfortunately, the US and its allies have been doing precisely this, ignoring not only the severe shortcomings in their own efforts but also the fact that one cannot radically transform the character of a country’s Government and root out historically entrenched corruption by waving a magic wand. Which country in the world is free from corruption? Would the economic crisis currently afflicting the world have occurred without gargantuan corruption and inefficiency in the world of American big finance? Did the US Government not contribute to it by relaxing controls during the incumbency of President Bill Clinton? And what about the massive expenses scam by British MPs and Ministers? And what about corruption in Pakistan which would now be a recipient of fresh and massive doses of US financial and military aid? Besides, can Mr Karzai or anyone else wish away Gen Dostum and Marshal Fahim Khan, the latter a former Defence Minister of Afghanistan? {The real reason is the Karzai alliance with these two men who are the former NA warlords. The only people who could object to these men are the TSP jihadis. the corruption charge is a stick to beat Karzai for his alliance with these two people. And that benefits only TSP. Recall Ms Fair's comment to US Congress that US has to create space for TSP to act on its terrorists.}

Unfortunately, neither Mr Obama nor Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain seems to realise all this or the fact that their efforts to compel him to do their bidding can only undermine his position. Two examples would illustrate this point. The manner in which they arm-twisted him into accepting a run-off in the recent presidential election and his submission clearly indicated that he was bending unwillingly to pressure, which in turn could only have severely eroded his standing with Afghans who value defiant courage and independence above everything else in men, and look down upon those who stoop. Equally damaging was Mr Obama’s congratulatory message after Mr Karzai was finally declared elected President, admonishing him for failing to take on corruption and the drug trade, which he did not do during his first term, and his public commitment to do so, which followed.

One wonders whether Mr Obama’s attitude towards Mr Karzai stems from the fact that his advisers on Afghanistan include people known to be close to Pakistan which makes no secret of its hostility towards the Afghan head of state. Whatever it is, he will now have to deal with Mr Karzai and the sooner he finds a way of doing it without the former’s position the better it will be for both the US and Afghanistan. And he should announce his policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan before the military situation on the ground deteriorates further.

ramana wrote:We have studied Af-Pak for over a decade and still cling to psy-ops fro interested parties. If Af-Pak is not resolved suitably it will take down the Western domination of the world system. Its bigger than Korea, Vietnam and Cold War. Its an assymetric war between two different world views. The earlier examples were similar zero-sum situations.

Manmohan wants world to stand firm on Afghanistan

Sandeep Dikshit


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (right) and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt at the India-EU Summit in New Delhi on Friday. —


NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday urged the international community to stay the course in Afghanistan and called upon the West to introduce a more open and friendly visa regime to enable greater people-to-people movement.

Dr. Singh said stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan was of vital importance to India than any other nation as it stood to be affected more by the turmoil in the two countries.

He, however, appreciated the efforts of the international community in bringing stability in Afghanistan. He sincerely hoped that it would be willing to stay the course in recognising the problem.

The Prime Minister was talking to reporters along with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (whose country heads the European Union) and European Commission President Jose Manuel Borosso at the end of the 10th India-EU Summit,

...

Prem wrote:Simple solution is to dissolve Pakistan and bring the whole area under Indian influence IOW restore the balance with with pre 47 India sans British . Its inevitable anyhow so why not cooperate and settle sooner than latter.

Prem wrote:Simple solution is to dissolve Pakistan and bring the whole area under Indian influence IOW restore the balance with with pre 47 India sans British . Its inevitable anyhow so why not cooperate and settle sooner than latter.

ramana wrote:We now have to figure out the maximum and minimum acceptable solutions to each of the parties.

- An all powers conference to declare Afghan neutrality is crucial to return Afghanistan to buffer status like in the 19th century. This is to neutralize any wet dreams of wannabe jihadis.

It means acknowledging that, though the primary challenge in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a development one, encompassing processes of politics and economy and long term, large-scale processes of nation-building, you cannot begin to address the development challenge without moderating the security competition between India and Pakistan.

Without it, without some semblance of a comprehensive regional strategy, without mechanisms to moderate the security competition between India and Pakistan, without a resolution of Kashmir, at most we are busy constructing a temporary peace in Afghanistan.

ramana wrote:US perspective:

- Maximum acceptable solution: Non Islamist govt in Afghanistan
- Minimum acceptable solution: Friendly regime in place irrespective of their Islamist credentials.

Gagan wrote:In spite of all the gaali galoch between unkil and Iran, there has always been some track II diplomacy going on. Ombaba said so when he stated that he was willing to talk to anyone.

significantly reduced military presence that focuses more on destroying al Qaeda than on building Afghanistan, and relies more on airstrikes and special forces than on conventional tactics

The history of jihadism is full of examples of seemingly small incidents having a major effect on mobilization.

Acharya wrote:http://pakhistorian.com/
Current Pakistan Now Step one: Current day Pakistan


Step two: Take control of Pashtun areas


Step 3: Confederation of Afghanistan and Pakistan.


Step 4: Work with the Muslim world


Step 5: Grow the Muslim world

Although China is extremely reluctant to play any military role in Afghanistan, with which it shares a short border, the increased US lobbying comes at a time of growing realisation in Beijing that its interests would be considerably damaged by a US withdrawal and Taliban victory.