Bharat Rakshak

A concerted effort to start unprecedented talks between Taliban and British and American envoys was outlined yesterday in a significant change in tactics designed to bring about a breakthrough in the attritional, eight-year conflict in Afghanistan.

Senior ministers and commanders on the ground believe they have created the right conditions to open up a dialogue with "second-tier" local leaders now the Taliban have been forced back in a swath of Helmand province.
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The second tier of the insurgency are regarded as crucial because they control large numbers of Taliban fighters in Pashtun-dominated southern Afghanistan. The first tier of Taliban commanders – hardliners around Mullah Omar – could not be expected to start talks in the foreseeable future. The third tier – footsoldiers with no strong commitments – are not regarded as influential or significant players
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David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, yesterday held out the prospect of reconciliation between the Afghan government and Taliban fighters prepared to renounce violence.

For more than a year, British intelligence officers have been instigating contacts with Taliban commanders and their entourage. But their task has been very delicate given the sensitivities of the Karzai administration in Kabul.
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Miliband's call for talks with more moderate Taliban elements was echoed later by Gordon Brown, who said: "Our strategy has always been to complement the military action that we've got to take to clear the Taliban, to threaten al-Qaida in its bases – while at the same time we put in more money to build the Afghan forces, the troops, the police."

RaviBg wrote:So US and UK want to cut their losses and run. And they expect the pakistanis to fight the taliban when they know that victory is near!! All TSP has to do is to hang on for 6 months-year and the US/UK will have fled the region, and they can then make use of their strategic backyard again

The sooner they leave, the sooner can one hope to see a cut in aid to Pakistan. More focus and pressure on the Pakistanis to move against all sorts of terrorist groups, and not just against the anti-American Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

RajeshA wrote: The sooner they leave, the sooner can one hope to see a cut in aid to Pakistan. More focus and pressure on the Pakistanis to move against all sorts of terrorist groups, and not just against the anti-American Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Loss of all those billions would mean a more rapid implosion of Pakistan, a quicker loss of control.

US boots on the ground

narayanan wrote:

The sooner they leave, the sooner can one hope to see a cut in aid to Pakistan. More focus and pressure on the Pakistanis to move against all sorts of terrorist groups, and not just against the anti-American Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

The "aid" is not given because of any love. It is mostly given as govt. subsidies to the weapons industry, routed through the Pakis so that it appears to be part of another budget, not the military budget. The Generals and the company bosses take their cuts, and the baksheesh flows back to the politicians. So, mere withdrawal from Afghanistan does not imply end of "aid" to Pakistan to enslave Afghanistan and terrorize India.

(CBS) U.S. forces are about to get some much-needed help as they fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, reports CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan in an exclusive report. The Colombian commandos are U.S. trained and battle-tested from having defeated terrorists in their own country.

Ten years ago, they didn't even exist. Today, elite Colombian Special Operations troops are preparing to fight alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan, reports CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan.

General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman: we underrated the Taleban

Michael Evans, Defence Editor

Military commanders underestimated the insurgency in southern Afghanistan when British troops were sent there three years ago, a senior defence chief has admitted.

General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman told The Times that the campaign had put the Army “hugely under pressure”.

“We thought that the insurgency still existed in Helmand, but the violence and scale has been shocking,” the general said. “We have made some progress but at a dickens of a cost in lives.”

General Granville-Chapman, who has just retired as Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, said that dispatching a single “specialist brigade” — 16 Air Assault Brigade — to Helmand province in 2006 seemed reasonable at the time because of the continuing commitment in Iraq.

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Germans shoot first, shout later at Taleban

Now, he said, the number of British troops of about 9,000 was “about the right figure” for the period leading up to the Afghan presidential election next month. “After that we will have to step back and see what is needed,” Sir Timothy said.

The Army had become “an exceedingly complex and hazardous profession”. Corporals in their 20s had to make decisions about whether to attack the enemy. If they made the wrong decision, the consequences for them “would end up on the highest desks in the land”.

He said that the manpower of the Armed Forces should not be cut in next year’s defence review, but consideration would have to be given to reducing numbers of equipment types — “fewer fast jets” and even possibly ordering only one of the proposed two 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers.

Despite Britain sending just 3,300 troops in 2006, General Granville-Chapman said that they had succeeded in preventing the insurgents from meeting their strategic objective “which was to oust us”.

One of the key elements of next year’s defence review would be to decide whether it was possible to carry out a medium-scale campaign for such “an enduring period” — as in Afghanistan — if there were other commitments elsewhere.

He said that ministers might have to give up on the Armed Forces ever again taking part in a large-scale conflict, focusing instead on medium-range operations.

Afghanistan had shown that “the instruments of power and influence” — the military working with civilian officials and diplomats — had to be in harmony. This was working well in Lashkar Gah in Helmand where the Foreign and Commonwealth Office-led provincial reconstruction team served alongside the military. “But this has not yet been replicated in Whitehall,” [in coordinating government strategy in Afghanistan] he said.

The general admitted that after the general election ministers would need to reach “harsh decisions” about what to keep and what to axe.

Richard Holbrooke has a reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator
Barack Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan has declared war on the Taleban’s bankrollers, announcing a campaign to interdict hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign funds flowing into the militants' coffers each year.

Richard Holbrooke, the former Balkan peace enforcer now tasked with America’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, said the volume of money reaching insurgents from sympathisers in the Gulf, exceeding even the profits of the lucrative opium trade.

Among the countries of origin are staunch American allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates but sympathisers in Western Europe were also responsible for fuelling the insurgency.

While the Afghan Taleban battling in the Pashtun belt are still largely funded by the $400 million per annum opium trade, the wider insurgency relies on of “massive amounts of money from outside Afghanistan”, Mr Holbrooke told reporters at the Nato headquarters in Brussels after talks with Nato counterparts.

“This is a huge problem, and we are forming up a task force to work on this,” the special envoy said. “The money is coming in from sympathisers from all over the world with the bulk of it appearing to come from the Gulf, not any money we know of coming from governments. Money is probably coming from sympathisers in Western Europe as well.”

The “task force on drugs and money” is to be led by the US Treasury with officials from the FBI and CIA in a bid to trace insurgent funds back to their origins. Much of the foreign money flowing into Pakistan and Afghanistan, however, is channelled through the complex but informal halwala system, making it notoriously difficult to trace.

“There are a lot of ways that money flows,” Mr Holbrooke said. “People carry it in suitcases. It’s such a daunting issue.” Mr Holbrooke also berated European allies for failing to stump sufficient aid money for the refugee crisis in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, warning that it could become the newest recruiting hotspot.

Soaring casualty list forces Army to call on US medics

Scale of injuries caused by roadside bombs and mines in Afghanistan putting unbearable pressure on British surgeons

By Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent
Friday, 31 July 2009

According to the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen Association, 73 members of the armed forces had lost limbs and the number is expected to rise to 80 when recent injuries are counted

The rising toll of British casualties in Afghanistan has left Army surgeons so exhausted that they have had to ask for urgent help from an American medical team. The number of British troops injured in Afghanistan has soared – 57 were wounded in action in the first two weeks of July, the highest figure in such a period for both the Afghan and Iraq conflicts.

The number for the whole month is expected to be even higher as further casualties from Panther's Claw, the biggest operation undertaken by UK forces in the Afghan war, filter through. In comparison, there were 46 injuries in the whole of June and 24 in May. July has also been the deadliest month since the mission began, with 22 deaths.

Additional medical staff, including plastic surgeons, X-ray technicians and specialist nurses have been rushed out to Helmand to cope with the steep rise in the numbers of those blown up and shot during continuing and fierce engagements.

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And more beds might have to be provided at the rehabilitation centre at Headley Court, Surrey, for those who had suffered amputations. According to Blesma (British Limbless Ex-Servicemen Association), 73 members of the armed forces had lost limbs and the number is expected to rise to 80 when recent injuries are counted.

The pressure has been intense, according to Surgeon Rear-Admiral Lionel Jarvis, assistant chief of defence staff (Health). "As a result of the exhaustion of the surgeons and the very long hours that they are working in theatre, we talked to our coalition colleagues and an American surgical team from elsewhere came to reinforce the hospital at Camp Bastion [a British base]," he said.

"We have been watching the whole campaign – not just Panther's Claw – over the past two to three years, reacting to the number of patients in the hospital. In fact, we identified that there was a stage at which we needed more surgeons and surgical teams to react to the ongoing flow of casualties."

Colonel Peter Mahoney, who has just returned after serving as medical director for clinical care at Camp Bastion at the height of the fighting in Panther's Claw, said: "It is stressful for everybody dealing with injured young people, particularly when you are cutting off people's camouflage that you recognise as your own; that's always more emotive, it's very distressing. It's been busy, there's no doubt about it.

"There have been days when surgical teams are working constantly. We had pulses of activity depending on what's taking place on the ground."

Colonel Mahoney described the difficulties posed by the increased use of roadside bombs and mines by the Taliban which has been the biggest source of deaths and injuries among British forces. "It has been difficult, it has certainly tested our skills but our results show that our training has been appropriate. We are looking at all the latest advances in surgery to deal with this."

Other statistics released yesterday by the Ministry of Defence reflected the rising tempo of violence in what has been described as a defining time in the Afghan conflict. Already this year, 61 members of the British forces have been seriously or very seriously wounded, compared with a total of 65 for the whole of 2008.

Last month, 230 service personnel were brought back to the UK for treatment. In one week alone this month, 157 people were brought to the Camp Bastion field hospital for treatment, including British, other Nato and Afghan troops. There have now been some 2,650 casualties in Afghanistan since the start of MoD records in 2006.

And yesterday, the bodies of the latest British soldiers killed in the war were returned. Warrant Officer Class 2 Sean Upton, of 5 Regiment Royal Artillery, and Trooper Phillip Lawrence, of the Light Dragoons, died in separate explosions in Helmand on 27 July. Bombardier Craig Hopson, of 40 Regiment Royal Artillery, died on 25 July in a roadside bomb attack.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the outgoing head of the Army, called on the whole of Government to be put on a "war-like footing" to deliver support for troops and security for Afghanistan. He said: "We should be under no illusion. We are at war and if we want to succeed, which we must, we must get on to a war-like footing.

"Afghanistan is truly war among the people, about the people and for the people. We are succeeding in spite of the tragic losses that we have suffered. Our people have much to be proud of and I have been immensely humbled by the fortitude of our serving young men and women and their families over the past few years."

'You don't hear about life-changing injuries'

Sergeant Major Andrew Stockton, 42, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during an ambush near Sangin in June 2006, and lost an arm. He was medically discharged from the Royal Artillery in 2007.

I must confess that when I deployed on overseas tours I always thought I might not come back. What I didn't consider was that I might come back maimed, with life-changing injuries.

I have always said that you hear, very sadly, about those who lose their lives but not about the three or four other people who have suffered life-changing injuries. I've always found that surprising. I think the public should know about the injuries that are occurring out there.

I have found it straightforward dealing with my injury. I had one incident in bed at night when I had phantom limb pains and I suddenly thought 'I've only got one arm now'. But it quickly passed. No amount of crying and griping will help the situation. Most soldiers have the same attitude. Blesma (British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association) opens doors to a new life. At 40 years of age I learned to water-ski, qualified as an advanced open-water diver and went white-water rafting.

Last time I was told a guy had been shot in the face, I wondered how I was going to react. I have empathy but it is limited as it was so easy for me to recover. There are people who have worse injuries than me.

There is an overwhelming feeling: 'I have survived'. I have come back and that is reward enough. If people ask me then I tell them I got ambushed in Afghanistan. It is usually good for a pint.

Philip wrote:One has to sympathise with the poor soldiers ,cannon fodder who are being sent out to Afghanistan.CNN had a report on a veteran soldier of 30+ yrs. of service ,repeatedly sent back to the hotspots.He suffered from brain damage due to repeated explosions and bombs,and was developing Alzheiner like syndromes.He finally shot himself in despair because of lack of medical help from US military authorities.Apparently 48,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from similar brain damage.The foll.article shows how desperate the medical situ is as the UK is struggling to provide the required medical help.

It is also an issue that we in India must provide those in our services and paramiliatyr forces who dela with terrorism,etc.the proper medical help and post-coonflict assistnce and rehabilitation if they are similarly affected.

Notwithstanding the plethora of presidential candidates (41) the contest is likely to boil down to one between the incumbent Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister. This is a pity because by far the more cerebral and attractive candidate is Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister. Listening to him on CNN the other day one could not help being struck by the coherence of his views and of his vision for Afghanistan’s future. Alas, it is ethnic identity and money, not ability or vision, which will determine the outcome. Hence Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan (40 per cent) with dollops of lucre to spread around and a servile local administration at his call is the clear favourite.

By replacing Pakistan’s pervasive influence in Afghanistan by that of India Karzai obtained for his country more Indian largesse ($1.5 billion) than any Afghan regime in history. To spite Musharraf for teaming up with the Taliban (and bare-facedly denying it) Karzai forged a military alliance with India which, according to some, poses a significant threat to Pakistan’s security. We are in danger, our military pundits warn, of being outflanked. Provoked further, by Musharraf’s policy of turning a blind eye to the safe haven Mullah Omar and his ilk enjoyed in the tribal areas, Karzai is accused of conniving with India to destabilise Balochistan and fund elements within the Pakistani Taliban to attack our forces.

Alas, Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister and a one-time Ahmed Shah Massoud adviser, harbours, if anything, an even greater antipathy for Pakistan than Karzai. His hatred stems from the days when Hekmatyar, our favourite mujahidin commander, was at daggers drawn with Massoud, Pakistan shunned Massoud and supported Hekmatyar because we felt that the Pashtun Hekmatyar would be a better and more pliable tool. We were wrong, but then we often are. Indeed, the destruction wrought by Hekmatyar on Kabul in his vain attempt to oust Massoud from the capital was far greater than all of the damage Kabul endured during the entire period of Soviet occupation or subsequently.

While Pakistan failed in its delusionary policy of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan, India is gaining broad and deep influence there. Investments of $1.6 billion and its dominance of every economic sector of Afghanistan will give India long lasting influence. And Pakistan’s Taliban proxies may not be a sufficient policy tool to balance Indian influence.

India has already constructed the 218-km Zaranj-Delaram highway to use as an alternative for Indo-Afghan trade in case Pakistan does not allow its territory to be used for the purpose. Besides building the Afghan Parliament, India has donated three Airbus airliners to Ariana, 400 buses for the public transportation system, and 105 vehicles for the Kabul municipality. India has heavily invested in several power generation projects as well, including a solar plant for the electrification of a hundred villages.

In the field of communications, India has established a modern TV studio, a 1000W TV transmitter in Jalalabad; and is setting up a mobile TV satellite uplink and five TV relay centres in Nangarhar province. In addition, India has leased a slot on its INSAT 3A satellite for RTA transmissions since 2004.

Afghanistan has also received significant amount of food aid from India. Besides rebuilding hundreds of schools and providing English teachers throughout Afghanistan, India has constructed the Maulana Abulkalam Azad Block for the Hindi and English language departments of the Languages and Literature College at Nangarhar University.

The list of Indian reconstruction ventures in Afghanistan is very long. More importantly, Indians have taken over many public service functions like the postal service and electricity distribution. Indian domination of the Afghan economy and social sector is so comprehensive that it would be almost impossible for crisis-stricken Pakistan to pose even a modest challenge.

India has been growing in double digits and has huge foreign currency reserves. Therefore, it can afford to invest a few billion dollars to further its foreign policy goals. In contrast, the Pakistani economy, much smaller in size to start with, has been stagnating or shrinking despite claims of make-believe positive growth. In addition, dealing with a civil war-like situation and anarchy all around the country, Pakistan cannot even imagine competing with the Indians in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani allegation that India is aiding subversive groups in Balochistan and other parts of the country may be well supported, but India is gaining without playing naughty. It is a universal truth that economic domination is the most powerful tool. The US, and before that the UK, dominated the world because of their economic superiority. Indian domination in the region is playing out on the same basis.

As a matter of fact, Indian economic influence in Afghanistan is surpassing the US. There are several reasons for this. Indian personnel can better adjust to Afghanistan’s environment than Americans. In addition, Indians can provide material and services at a much lower cost than the US. India has another unique edge: most of the ruling elites of Afghanistan have been educated at higher education institutions in India. Unlike Pakistan which provided madrassa education to religious minded Afghans, India provided training in modern and technical fields.

Pakistan cannot undo what is already done but it can accept the incontrovertible situation and vie for its share through streamlining its own system and genuinely compete with Indians in providing goods and services. Pakistan has a certain potential edge over India because of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the border. However, Pakistan will have to use the Pashtun card differently than it has done in the past.

Instead of seeking control over Kabul through a crude Pashtun force, religious or otherwise, Pakistan will have to consolidate and modernise its own Pashtun belt, bordering Afghanistan. If FATA and other backward Pashtun areas have better educational institutions and industrial infrastructure, Pakistan can better compete with India in providing goods and services because of geographical proximity and ethnic similarities. However, if Pakistan fails to recognise its past mistakes and continues with the same strategy, it will have an enemy country on its western borders: the Indian military may follow its economic domination in Afghanistan, and that would not be without historical precedent.

'Too little parking' to boost Afghanistan helicopter numbers
Britain can only send a limited number of helicopters to Afghanistan because of a shortage of “parking” spaces, Air Cdr Simon Falla, a senior officer, has disclosed.

By Nick Allen and James Kirkup

British troops in Helmand have the use of 10 Chinooks and five Lynxes
Air Cdr Falla, Deputy Commander, Joint Helicopter Command, said that finding extra facilities to transport, park and maintain helicopters on Nato bases there would be a problem.

Ministers are under intense pressure after military leaders said that more helicopters would cut the number of British soldiers killed by roadside bombs - 196 British personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

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They have promised to add to the fewer than 30 helicopters that are there, starting with Merlins, the last of which returned from Iraq yesterday.

However, Air Cdre Falla warned that there were logistical constraints.

“There is this cry for more helicopters,” he said. “Where are you going to park them? Because they all have to park somewhere. It’s quite a small place we are flying in. There is pressure on space and you have to be careful in deploying extra helicopters.”

British troops in Helmand have the use of 10 Chinooks and five Lynxes while US forces in Afghanistan have access to more than 100 Chinooks. The British often borrow US helicopters, but the American aircraft may also be limiting the scope for British deployments.

“We talk about America having lots of helicopters; they have to park somewhere,” Air Cdre Falla said. More helicopters also meant more ground crews and transport planes to carry parts, he said. An increase in the fleet could only be gradual.

British forces operate from two main bases in the country, Camp Bastion and Kandahar Air Station. Camp Bastion’s runway is dominated by a US fleet which is operated “inefficiently” according to some British commanders. A second tarmac runway is due to be completed this year. At Kandahar, another parking area will soon be required and will be complicated by the need for protection from regular Taliban rocket attacks.

The number of British helicopters that can be sent to Afghanistan is also limited because no more than 25 per cent of the total can be on operations at one time, it was disclosed. The others are being serviced or used for training in the UK.

Air Cdre Falla said: “When you get a headline saying there are more helicopters in Hampshire than Helmand, there might well be, but there’s a bloody good reason for that.”

Just six of the fleet of 28 Merlins will be in Afghanistan at any one time. Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, indicated that they would not be armour-plated, despite pilots telling The Daily Telegraph that a lack of protection from bullets and rocket-propelled grenades would endanger the lives of passengers and crew. He said he was confident the helicopters were “perfectly capable of the job”. He added: “We can’t compete with America. People need to accept we are part of a coalition. We share their helicopters and they share ours.”

It was also confirmed that eight Chinooks grounded by computer problems since 2001 will be in service next year but only two will be in Afghanistan at any one time.

Philip wrote:"Too little parking space" in Afghanistan,the British excuse for not sending in more helos to support their troops there!!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... mbers.html

Anti-corruption ‘Mr Bean’ candidate Ramazan Bashardost eyes presidency
Tom Coghlan in Kabul

While his rivals tour the country in armoured Land Cruisers surrounded by retinues of armed retainers, Afghanistan’s greatest anti-corruption maverick and political eccentric is campaigning to become the country’s next president in “Mr Bean’s car”.

The tiny black Suzuki with a puttering 40mph top speed and a large rust hole in the floor is a well-known oddity on Afghan roads and is frequently compared to the Mini driven by Mr Bean, a character much loved in Afghanistan. But its humble pedigree is rather the point as far as the Afghan MP Ramazan Bashardost is concerned.

“Yes it is a small car, like Mr Bean, but I refuse to spend international money for a luxury life when people are hungry,” he said. Before the presidential polls on August 20, Dr Bashardost has taken the car to 21 Afghan provinces in two weeks. While his opponents write him off as a populist and even question his mental stability, Dr Bashardost is showing support in opinion polls that could yet prove to be one of the most telling features of Afghanistan’s elections.

“Ninety nine per cent of Afghans are unhappy. This is my big chance,” he said as the Suzuki chugged along the streets of Kabul, attracting hoots and waves. “Absolutely, there is a change taking place in the old Afghan politics.”

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Selling himself on a platform of opposition to the well-documented corruption of the administration of Hamid Karzai, Dr Bashardost says that Afghanistan is witnessing the dawn of a new issues-led political landscape, replacing the patronage-based system of regional warlords commanding the votes of their supporters — a claim that many observers would dispute.

While he may be alone in imagining that he will be the next president, private opinion polling suggests that his message has resonance. In one poll this year he was fourth and just 5 per cent behind President Karzai, the favourite to win. Dr Bashardost has spent the past five years living and breathing his election message. The former Planning Minister, who resigned from the Karzai Government in 2004, lives a life of extreme frugality in “The Freedom Tent”, which is pitched next to parliament.

Members of the public are invited to go to the tent to air their views. When The Times met him there were half a dozen poor Afghans with him.

“They say Ramazan Bashardost is crazy, a populist,” said Dr Bashardost, who often refers to himself in the third person. “These were the same allegations they used against Gandhi, against Martin Luther King, against John F. Kennedy, against Lincoln. I am not Kennedy or Lincoln, but you cannot find a corrupt man who says that Bashardost is good.”

His companions nodded and offered a prayer

Afghanistan: The Los Angeles Times reported today,

“The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have concluded that the amount of drug money flowing to the Taliban in Afghanistan is far lower than widely estimated but remains critical to the insurgents' ability to survive, according to a Senate report released Tuesday.”

“The two spy agencies believe that Taliban leaders receive about $70 million a year from Afghanistan's lucrative poppy crop -- far lower than the $400-million estimate released last year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.”

“Al Qaida's dependence on drug money is even less, according to the report by the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which found that "there is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds go to Al Qaida."

“The lower estimates suggest that other avenues of funding -- including money from wealthy donors in Arab states in the Persian Gulf region -- remain important sources of support for insurgent and terrorist networks straddling the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nevertheless, the report notes that "the insurgency is a relatively cheap war for the Taliban to fight," meaning that the militants do not need significantly larger subsidies from drug trafficking to finance their operations.”

NightWatch read the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. The Los Angeles Times article misrepresents the substance and tone of the report. The Report presented the intelligence estimate as the lower figure in a range up to $500 million estimated by yet another source, not as new information.

The Report is, in part, a commentary on the Obama administration’s de-emphasis on drug eradication in favor of a new US strategy to break the link between drug money and the Taliban, rather than destroy drugs.

Nevertheless, the policy and military operational implications of the Report are enormous. It is explicit that the Coalition has been wasting money and military lives in a failed drug eradication program. It tends to cheer lead the new strategy, but it is difficult to discern from the Report the “new” in the new strategy, including its calls from more civilian law enforcement efforts. The Report is rambly, strays off point repeatedly, and falls short as a serious study.

For example, the Report states a shop worn intelligence estimate that the Taliban war effort only costs about $125 million to sustain per year. That means the $70 million from drug taxes represents more than half the revenue the Taliban receive. That suggests eradication is not such a bad idea, after all.

Cutting off the flow of the money is a good idea, to be sure, but it is hardly a new idea and was the primary purpose of eradication. No body knows how to cut off the money flow, despite eight years of effort, without destroying the drugs -- a state of affairs that the Report admits by implication.

One of the many digressions in the report states the Taliban earn $10 a day and double or triple that if a Taleb plants a roadside bomb. NightWatch has argued repeatedly that the US can buy peace, doing what it does best – make and spend money.

Consider, the US could put all the Taliban fighters on its payroll at twice the daily rate, withdraw all its forces except those needed to guard the paymasters, and buy the insurgency at less cost than maintaining forces, Burger King, Popeye’s, defense contractors and nautilus equipment in Bagram.

The savings in ordnance alone would be enough to buy loyalty of a sort of the insurgents, their families and their clans for as long as the US was wiling to pay. If the Taliban can buy fighters, the US should be able to out bid the Taliban for the same men. This comment intends no disrespect to Afghans; it acknowledges they are among the poorest people on the planet.

Expanding the payroll is precisely the strategy that worked to neutralize the 100,000 anti-US fighters in the Awakening in Iraq, at $300 a month per man for two years. That is the going rate for the Taliban fighter too, it seems. The good news about Afghanistan is that the Taliban have far fewer fighters than the 100,000 Iraqi Sunni tribal fighters … or they would already be in Kabul.

Finally, for all the British and allied soldiers and policemen who died trying to eradicate drugs in Helmand Province in the past five years, the Report might have bothered to apologize or sympathize for their sacrifices.

A link to the Report may be found on Senator John Kerry’s Senate home page.

...
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has made protecting Afghan civilians his top priority. The approach is a shift away from a military mindset whose traditional first response has been to kill as many militants as possible. By holding fire, McChrystal hopes to avoid the massive civilian casualty cases of past months and years and help win over Afghan villagers.
...
Each country in the more than 40-nation NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan has its own rules of engagement that apply to specific battle situations, but McChrystal's order to protect civilians applies to all forces in the country.

"Sure, that's frustrating, but we've got to deal with it," said Capt. Zachary Martin, commander of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines.
...
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RaviBg wrote:Order to protect Afghans frustrates U.S. troops

A shadowy office in Kabul houses the Taliban contracts officer, who examines proposals and negotiates with organizational hierarchies for a percentage. He will not speak to, or even meet with, a journalist, but sources who have spoken with him and who have seen documents say that the process is quite professional.

The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.

If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated.

One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project.

“I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”

An emerging view is that the two men {Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani, the two candidates behind in polls after Karzai} will team up to take Karzai down – possibly before the election on 20 August, or certainly afterwards during a run-off if Karzai fails to gain the 51% of the vote required to win outright.

SSridhar wrote:Competing in Afghanistan

While Pakistan failed in its delusionary policy of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan, India is gaining broad and deep influence there. Investments of $1.6 billion and its dominance of every economic sector of Afghanistan will give India long lasting influence. And Pakistan’s Taliban proxies may not be a sufficient policy tool to balance Indian influence.

India has already constructed the 218-km Zaranj-Delaram highway to use as an alternative for Indo-Afghan trade in case Pakistan does not allow its territory to be used for the purpose. Besides building the Afghan Parliament, India has donated three Airbus airliners to Ariana, 400 buses for the public transportation system, and 105 vehicles for the Kabul municipality. India has heavily invested in several power generation projects as well, including a solar plant for the electrification of a hundred villages.

In the field of communications, India has established a modern TV studio, a 1000W TV transmitter in Jalalabad; and is setting up a mobile TV satellite uplink and five TV relay centres in Nangarhar province. In addition, India has leased a slot on its INSAT 3A satellite for RTA transmissions since 2004.

Afghanistan has also received significant amount of food aid from India. Besides rebuilding hundreds of schools and providing English teachers throughout Afghanistan, India has constructed the Maulana Abulkalam Azad Block for the Hindi and English language departments of the Languages and Literature College at Nangarhar University.

The list of Indian reconstruction ventures in Afghanistan is very long. More importantly, Indians have taken over many public service functions like the postal service and electricity distribution. Indian domination of the Afghan economy and social sector is so comprehensive that it would be almost impossible for crisis-stricken Pakistan to pose even a modest challenge.

India has been growing in double digits and has huge foreign currency reserves. Therefore, it can afford to invest a few billion dollars to further its foreign policy goals. In contrast, the Pakistani economy, much smaller in size to start with, has been stagnating or shrinking despite claims of make-believe positive growth. In addition, dealing with a civil war-like situation and anarchy all around the country, Pakistan cannot even imagine competing with the Indians in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani allegation that India is aiding subversive groups in Balochistan and other parts of the country may be well supported, but India is gaining without playing naughty. It is a universal truth that economic domination is the most powerful tool. The US, and before that the UK, dominated the world because of their economic superiority. Indian domination in the region is playing out on the same basis.

As a matter of fact, Indian economic influence in Afghanistan is surpassing the US. There are several reasons for this. Indian personnel can better adjust to Afghanistan’s environment than Americans. In addition, Indians can provide material and services at a much lower cost than the US. India has another unique edge: most of the ruling elites of Afghanistan have been educated at higher education institutions in India. Unlike Pakistan which provided madrassa education to religious minded Afghans, India provided training in modern and technical fields.

Pakistan cannot undo what is already done but it can accept the incontrovertible situation and vie for its share through streamlining its own system and genuinely compete with Indians in providing goods and services. Pakistan has a certain potential edge over India because of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the border. However, Pakistan will have to use the Pashtun card differently than it has done in the past.

Instead of seeking control over Kabul through a crude Pashtun force, religious or otherwise, Pakistan will have to consolidate and modernise its own Pashtun belt, bordering Afghanistan. If FATA and other backward Pashtun areas have better educational institutions and industrial infrastructure, Pakistan can better compete with India in providing goods and services because of geographical proximity and ethnic similarities. However, if Pakistan fails to recognise its past mistakes and continues with the same strategy, it will have an enemy country on its western borders: the Indian military may follow its economic domination in Afghanistan, and that would not be without historical precedent.

Afghanistan bombing: suicide attack at Nato base in Kabul kills seven
A suicide bomb has exploded outside the main gate of the Nato headquarters in Afghanistan, killing at least seven people and wounding around 90.

Published: 9:18AM BST 15 Aug 2009

Previous1 of 2 ImagesNext A driver apparently penetrated at least one security checkpoint and detonated the vehicle about 30 yards from the entrance.
Taliban insurgents have vowed to disrupt the elections and have stepped up their attacks in recent weeks. Photo: AP
Personnel with the International Security Assistance Force — ISAF — were among the casualties, who included passers-by and dozens of workers in the Transportation Ministry opposite.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes just five days before Afghanistan’s nationwide elections.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... seven.html

Rishirishi wrote:From a very credable source. Former CIA boss comments om indian activity in Afganistan.
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/ ... +9699.aspx

(Pay attention to the comments on India after 25 min)

TSP would go banana if more Indian troops were allowed into Afghanistan.

IA engieners posing as civilinas to build higway along the border with TSP.

Bloody weekend as five British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, taking the number of UK personnel killed since operations began in 2001 to 204. The three latest casualties were from The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.