Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby 82_28 » Fri Jul 30, 2010 12:21 pm

I have noted a bit of weird "m$m" news since the wikileak thing here locally. Not sure what is going on in all y'alls neck of the woods.

The man who was captured by the Taliban and survived

SEATTLE -- Imagine being taken captive by America's fiercest enemy.

That's what happened to Jere Van Dyk, a journalist and author from Vancouver, Washington. He survived 45 days in a mud cell while being held by the Taliban, and has now written a book about his experience.

Van Dyk grew up in Vancouver with his younger sister and brother. He ran track for the University of Oregon and went through basic training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

He worked for the late Sen. Henry Jackson and called the experience "a wonderful grad school." It was in his office that Van Dyk became interested in world politics.

"Scoop Jackson introduced me to the world of international affairs," he said.

As a young man, he told the story of being in Germany with his brother. They called their mother and asked if they could buy an old Volkswagen and drive to Asia.

"Neither one of us understands to this day why she said, 'Yes!'" he said.

The Van Dyk brothers ran out of money when they got to Afghanistan. Jere Van Dyk fell in love with the country which he described as "peaceful, exotic and exciting."

He first learned about the ancient tribal code, which dictates that you always "protect your guest." It's that code he believes eventually saved his life.

Van Dyk went back to Afghanistan in 1981, as a correspondent for The New York Times. He traveled with the Mujahideen, trying to understand the fighters battling the Soviet Union. He developed contacts and knowledge that he thought would help him when he went back in 2008.

"I wanted to do the same thing with the Taliban, but it was also my own way of searching for who they really were. I began to think maybe, just maybe, I can cross that border. I can go and find out, using the contacts I had in this world that Americans don't understand.

"I would go to the very heart of al-Qaida and the Taliban to find out what others couldn't do. I didn't register at the U.S. Embassy. I didn't talk to other journalists. I would eat in Afghan restaurants. I was completely trying to pass as an Afghan, deep in that culture, in order to win them over to find the information I didn't think anyone else could get."

Van Dyk, his translator and body guards had been hiking for eight hours, deep in the mountains toward the border with Pakistan, when he was taken captive, the terror of which he describes in his book. He knew he was in trouble when he spotted a small movement of black. It was the turban of a Taliban fighter.

"It was the Taliban. They came swarming down the mountain, spreading out, shouting, 'Kenna, kenna!' 'Get down, get down!' holding their rifles and rocket launchers high. 'I'm dead, 'I said to myself. 'I'm dead."'

Blindfolded, Van Dyk and the three others were taken to a dark mud cell, just 12 feet wide and 12 feet long. They were held for 45 days and let out for three minutes a day.

"When I got into the room, the first thing I looked for when they untied my blindfold was blood on the walls to see if it was a torture chamber. And I saw chains on the floor, and I knew I was in a Taliban prison deep in the mountains of Pakistan where no one could find me. No American soldiers could come. I was done for.

"The room was all baked mud, dirt floor, wood cots with rope mattresses and a straw roof. And total darkness. I could make someone out if they were close, but another few feet - I couldn't make that person out. It was pitch black."

Van Dyk thought of Danny Pearl, the American journalist beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan just six years earlier. Van Dyk's captors also forced him to speak on camera and insisted he convert to Islam.

"You can't escape so you go deep deep into yourself, and you think about things you've never thought before. For me, it was, 'Would I rather be beheaded or shot? How do I want to die? Did I live my life as I wished? Could I have done things differently?"'

As Van Dyk's nightmare grew darker, his family, including his sister in Lynnwood, waited helplessly for word. M'ylss Fruehling says she was most worried about the possibility of torture. Even death, she said, would be easier to take.

"He had such a passion for this area. It was his life," she said. "If he died, that was tolerable because he was doing what he loved, and he was where he wanted to be. But if he was tortured - I couldn't cope with that."

That worry for his siblings and their families causes Van Dyk to get very emotional. Through tears he said, "I think the hard part is you think of yourself as selfish. You have pride, but you put your family at risk and you make your family worry."

In the darkness of his cell, Van Dyk was finally given a lantern and a pencil and paper on which he wrote about the terror and uncertainty of not knowing if his captors would kill him. In the cell, he grew to mistrust the other men and fought for turf. He said they walked back and forth, like bears in a cave, and he always tried to win the favor of his jailers.

"You try to not be a coward, but never show you're proud. I would always give them the power, but it was fine line between being a supplicant and a coward, because they would never respect a coward," he said.

To this day, he and his family don't know why the Taliban commander released him.

"He came in and sat three feet away from me. And his eyes are like cats eyes, gleaming staring at me and he said, 'Congratulations on escaping death,'" said Van Dyk.

His captors blindfolded him again, put him in a car and drove until they started walking. He became exhausted as they walked for hours.

"I could barely walk. I couldn't keep it up any longer, and they said, 'We're going to release you.' They said, 'Do not say anything to your government. We know where your family is. We will kill you."'

Finally they crossed a river and he met a man who worked for CBS, where Van Dyk had been working.

"A man came out of the darkness and handed me a CBS manager's card, and I knew then I might be OK," Van Dyk said through tears.

Van Dyk was brought to the U.S. Embassy, where the FBI took over.

"Within a day I was out of the country and on a plane. And the FBI brought me to New York and I thought, 'oh, the city is the same. People are living their lives.' They brought me back to my apartment, and I thought, 'Oh, it's still the same. But I'm different now."'

Van Dyk says the FBI negotiations for his release remain a mystery. His captors initially demanded $1.5 million and the release of three prisoners from Guantanamo. He doesn't know if those demands were ever met. He still gets threatening messages on his home phone. But he is finally coming out of a dark state of paranoia and isolation.

He was kidnapped in 2008, but Van Dyk says the FBI asked him to keep quiet about his release until now. His book is called "Captive, My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban."


http://www.komonews.com/news/local/99605434.html

Nice timing for a book called "Captive, My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban", no?

And the somewhat inexplicable "mystery" surrounding the "sailors" miles and miles away from their base:

Seattle sailor mourned amid mystery of fatal excursion

On July 23, Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, of Seattle, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley, of Colorado, got into an armored SUV and left the crowded roadways of Kabul for a 60-mile drive to a Taliban stronghold in Logar province.

The two sailors never returned, and why they decided to make that hazardous trip — without a protective convoy — remains a mystery.

McNeley's body was recovered in Logar on Sunday, the same day Taliban officials claimed to be holding a U.S. serviceman captive; on Wednesday evening, Newlove's body was recovered from a river, Afghan officials say.

"This is like a puzzle," said Abdul Wali, deputy head of the governing council in Logar.

The sailors were part of the international forces under NATO, which will lead the investigation into what happened. Though serving as trainers for Afghan forces, these were not front-line fighters but junior enlisted men in what were supposed to be noncombat jobs.

Officials at the NATO-led coalition headquarters in Kabul have not offered an explanation as to why the two ventured so far from their base at Camp Julien, a training facility on the western edge of the city.

A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case was under investigation, told The Associated Press it was unclear whether they were on official business.

At the Pentagon on Thursday, a senior defense official told McClatchy News that the sailors' actions "appear to be outside of the normal bounds of operation. And now we may never know why they left."

The official statement released by the Defense Department said only that Newlove's body was recovered by coalition forces, and made no reference to the circumstances around his disappearance or how he might have been killed.

From interviews with Afghan officials in Logar province, it appears that McNeley died in the initial ambush. But it is unclear whether Newlove died from wounds he suffered in that attack or from other wounds he sustained later.

Samer Gul, chief of Logar's Charkh district, said the two sailors, in a four-wheel-drive armored SUV, were seen Friday by a guard working for the district chief's office. The guard tried to flag down the vehicle, but it kept going, Gul told The Associated Press.

"They stopped in the main bazaar of Charkh district. The Taliban saw them in the bazaar," Gul said. "They didn't touch them in the bazaar, but notified other Taliban that a four-wheel-drive vehicle was coming their way."

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The second group of Taliban tried to stop the vehicle. When it didn't stop, insurgents opened fire and the occupants in the vehicle shot back, Gul said. A NATO official confirmed that the vehicle had been shot up.

Gul said there is a well-paved road that leads into the Taliban area and suggested the Americans may have mistaken that for the main highway — which is much older and more dilapidated.

Wali, the deputy head of the governing council in Logar, said the incident was not a plot by the Taliban. Initially, the insurgents didn't know if they should claim responsibility or not, he said.

"The Taliban were just joking around with each other and they suddenly saw a big armored vehicle coming toward them," Wali said. "They thought it might be a trick — that if it got too close, there might be an airstrike against them — so they opened fire."

Din Mohammed Darwesh, spokesman for the provincial governor of Logar, said the governor's office was upset because the two Americans left their base without notifying Afghan security forces in Logar, which is the normal protocol. He called their presence in Logar an "abnormal situation."

After the sailors' disappearance, the international force quickly launched a massive search, setting up checkpoints and distributing hundreds of fliers, with reprinted photos of the two missing men. The fliers offered a $20,000 reward for information about their whereabouts.

The Taliban did not claim responsibility for the missing sailors until more than 48 hours after the ambush. A message posted on their website late Sunday — the day McNeley's body was recovered — claimed one American service member had been kidnapped in Logar and another was killed in a shootout.

On Thursday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press that the Taliban, on Tuesday, left the "body of a dead American soldier for the U.S. forces" to recover.

Darwesh, the provincial spokesman, said Newlove had been shot once in the head and twice in the torso. But U.S. officials cautioned that this information had not been confirmed.

Mohammad Rahim Amin, local government chief in Baraki Barak, said villagers in the district called to report the body of a foreigner, clad in a uniform, in the river. He said coalition forces recovered it about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. He speculated the body could have floated downstream because the river was swollen by rain Tuesday night.

Amin said that in recent days security tightened around the Taliban, who were under pressure from Afghan forces, intelligence officials and coalition troops converging on the area in the massive search for the missing service member.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... or30m.html

Dudes and dudes have been dying in Afghanistan for quite some time now. Why these strange stories, of all times, now? Is this the limited hang-out everybody always talks about? Does any of this media magnification have anything to do with the wikileaks "revelations"? Were the leaks part of the plot, to then seed with these stories? Is this a response to the leaks? Or is this all happenstance? Ya got me. Weirdness about the handling of the Afghan "War" sure are seeming to get stranger by the day though.

I wonder what's up. . .
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Sweejak » Fri Jul 30, 2010 12:52 pm

Both McGovern and Ellsberg said privately that an Iran attack was imminent in, oh, I think it was 2005 or 06. It was around the time of the "Kennebunkport Warning". It didn't happen, but I still think their info was probably right and that it was imminent.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:10 pm

Sweejak wrote:Both McGovern and Ellsberg said privately that an Iran attack was imminent in, oh, I think it was 2005 or 06. It was around the time of the "Kennebunkport Warning". It didn't happen, but I still think their info was probably right and that it was imminent.


Was that the year of the missing nukes?
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Sweejak » Fri Jul 30, 2010 7:41 pm

Thinking back, It was before the Kennebunkport Warning which was around Aug 2007. Barksdale happened in Late Aug early Sept '07. I can't remember when I was told, I'd have to check with friends and may remember a date. I think it was '06.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Nordic » Fri Jul 30, 2010 7:59 pm

God, the opening line of that article is gag-inducing:

" Imagine being taken captive by America's fiercest enemy."

America's fiercest enemy is right here in America. They sure as hell aren't a bunch of tribal leaders in Afghanistan. Fucking ridiculous bullshit.

Oh yeah, and then there's this:

Van Dyk went back to Afghanistan in 1981, as a correspondent for The New York Times. He traveled with the Mujahideen, trying to understand the fighters battling the Soviet Union. He developed contacts and knowledge that he thought would help him when he went back in 2008.


Yeah, just an innocent bystander. Of course. Like anybody just happens to be hired by the NYT and sent to a CIA-controlled war zone. Sure, happens all the time.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby 82_28 » Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:22 pm

Nordic wrote:God, the opening line of that article is gag-inducing:

" Imagine being taken captive by America's fiercest enemy."

America's fiercest enemy is right here in America. They sure as hell aren't a bunch of tribal leaders in Afghanistan. Fucking ridiculous bullshit.

Oh yeah, and then there's this:

Van Dyk went back to Afghanistan in 1981, as a correspondent for The New York Times. He traveled with the Mujahideen, trying to understand the fighters battling the Soviet Union. He developed contacts and knowledge that he thought would help him when he went back in 2008.


Yeah, just an innocent bystander. Of course. Like anybody just happens to be hired by the NYT and sent to a CIA-controlled war zone. Sure, happens all the time.


Yeah. Utter load of shit. We're being hit with an insane amount of dissonance right now. They're either ramping something up, something is ramping up out of their control or the perceptions of both are being managed in such a way that the big ramp up is just over the horizon.

I do not recall, but before 9-11 what were the going themes? Chandra Levy? THE YEAR 2000. Etc. . .

All I know is that in 2001 we had an earthquake up here -- the first I'd experienced in my life and then "9/11". So my mind was kinda reeling a bit. There was Jerry Springer on TV. Fear Factor had just begun as had a number of the new fangled "reality shows". Girls Gone Wild commercials were everywhere -- now, they're strangely silent about girls gone wild. Not a lot of low income yokels had cell phones. WAP had just begun (accessing special cellphone made information sites on your cellphone). No myspace and of course no facebook. No twitter. I don't even think rss feeds existed back then. Blogging hadn't quite begun -- it was geocities and such. Every single ad you saw, whether on buses, billboards, TV etc was about some stupid fucking company with a dotcom after it. It just blew up over night. And then it collapsed. And then so did the towers. And then AMERICA WAS AT WAR! Basically every 20 something I knew from back then lost their like grandparents' inheritances and shit -- Unless! they worked for Microsoft. Those people did fine and I don't think even work anymore.

Just thinking of the dissonance then that I didn't see in the way I see things now. . .
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby wintler2 » Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:39 pm

Google-news shows the real push from MSM:

Wikileaks denies 'blood on hands'‎
BBC News - 1 hour ago
The founder of the website Wikileaks has rejected US claims he has blood on his hands after releasing 90000 leaked classified documents on the Afghan war. ...
Video: Probe into Wikileaks case NewsXWikileaks urged to stop publishing Afghan leaks‎ - ABC Online
WikiLeaks, the Pentagon and the War in Afghanistan‎ - Voice of America
The Age - The Guardian
all 2035 news articles »

Hey Wikileaks, We Were There‎
FOXNews (blog) - Greg Palkot - 9 hours ago
The 75000 classified documents about the Afghanistan war released by WikiLeaks have been dismissed by some as badly sourced, merely ground-level ...
Obama Facing New Pressure From Left on Afghanistan‎ - Voice of America
War council devotes little time to WikiLeaks‎ - USA Today
Move America toward the exit in Afghanistan‎ - Seattle Times
Huffington Post (blog) - RTT News
all 797 news articles »

Taliban in Afghanistan says they will target informants outed by ...‎
New York Daily News - Meena Hartenstein - 26 minutes ago
The Taliban is wired, and they're pouring over the military intelligence published by WikiLeaks earlier this week. ...
Wikileaks Afghanistan: Taliban 'hunting down informants'‎ - Telegraph.co.uk
Taliban Says It Will Target Names Exposed by WikiLeaks‎ - Newsweek (blog)
Taliban threatens to behead 'WikiLeaks' informers‎ - MSN India
Deccan Herald - CBC.ca
all 134 news articles »


i.e. shoot the messenger, minimise the significance, make wikileaks responsible for soldier deaths. Who benefits from each of those lies?
Making wikileaks integral to US's next war is just another version of shoot the messenger. I'm listening to the "blood on his [Assenge's] hands" lie being repeated on ABC National right now, and "wikileaks doesn't understand how complicated it is" got prominent placement in yesterdays Age newspaper, from a grinning 'former USAID manager in Afghanistan".
One of the things i like about discussion boards is that the evidence of who pushed what line is there for all to see.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Sweejak » Sat Jul 31, 2010 1:46 am

29 July 2010. Wikileaks has added a very large new file to the Afghan War Diary:
Insurance file: 1.4 GB

http://cryptome.org/0002/wl-diary-mirror.htm
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Nordic » Sat Jul 31, 2010 4:54 am

I do not recall, but before 9-11 what were the going themes? Chandra Levy? THE YEAR 2000. Etc. . .


Enron. It was blowing up, and would have, and should have, taken the Bush administration down with it.

The Bush administration was 100% complicit with Enron, and was involved in the manufactured California "energy crisis" which actually killed people.

The first of many people killed by the Bushies.

9/11 "changed everything" and Enron went down in flames with the Bushies getting off scott free because suddenly Bush and Cheney were our fearless leaders out of the black days of post 9/11.

Of course, plenty of others were thrown under the bus, but that's okay. That's how the gangsters work.

Back to topic ......
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sat Jul 31, 2010 7:27 am

wintler - I posted a rant about that Mahinadah (or whatever the fuck his name is) Khan at a crikey media blog the other day, and a link to the report of the attempted extortion attempt on the road to Tarin Kout. (or whatever its called).

Within 2 days there was a puff piece on the guy on lateline. It certainly didn't ask any of the questions raised by the TF Pegasus report. We possibly need to go to town on this...
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 31, 2010 8:38 am

Top Democrats Pressure White House on Afghan War as WikiLeaks Reveals Bloody Realities
Friday 30 July 2010
by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | Report


Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin). (Photo: Barack Obama / Flickr)
The Afghan war is coming under renewed scrutiny as web surfers across the world browse through the bloody battle scenes and military follies described in the thousands of classified military reports released by WikiLeaks, and now top Democrats are finally expressing concerns over the longevity of a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade.

On Wednesday Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) and Jim Webb (D-Virginia) sent a letter to the White House asking President Obama to refrain from make any major commitments to Afghanistan without the consent of the Senate. As a senator, Obama supported a similar request sent to President Bush in 2007 regarding Iraq.

The letter was sent just one day after the House finally approved $33 billion in additional spending for the war in Afghanistan. Feingold, whose amendment demanding the White House set a clear timetable for withdrawal was stripped from the supplemental, voted against the spending bill in the Senate, but Webb gave his approval. Obama is expected to sign it.

"We do not believe that a long-term, open-ended presence of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan serves our national interest," the senators wrote.

The letter is a softball compared to the efforts of anti-war Democrats in the House, but it suggests the senators are worried about war without end - and for good reason. The war has cost the US billions of dollars and thousands of lives, but if reports contained in the 90,000 WikiLeaks files are any indicator, the current US counterinsurgency effort to stabilize the region continues to face years of considerable challenges.

For instance, the WikiLeaks documents reveal that improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against coalition forces and civilians increased from 308 in 2004 in to 7,155 in 2009. It's a deadly reminder that guerrilla insurgents refuse to be pacified.

Wahid Monawar, an Afghan diplomat and former chief of the Afghan foreign ministry, said that most Afghans do not support the Taliban, but "it appears the Taliban is as strong as it's every been."

"And to successfully reverse that trend, it is going to be very important for us to depend on our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where in both places, we have no legitimate and effective one," Monawar said in an interview with Truthout.

The WikiLeaks files have added new fire to allegations that supposed US ally Pakistan has secretly supported the Taliban through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which has received billions of dollars in US funding, according to The Guardian UK, a British newspaper that was one of few media outlets allowed to analyze the leaked reports in advance of Monday's historic release. Pakistan has denied the allegations, but the leaks have dampened relations between Islamabad and Kabul.

"If the relation between Kabul and Islamabad does not improve, this insurgency can last as long as it takes," Monawar said. "When I was part of the Afghan government in Karzai's first term, we often raised Pakistan's involvement in Afghan insurgency but we seldom had any audience in the West, the faculty of listening was impaired. It is imperative that this must change."

Monawar has criticized Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government for being weak and corrupt, a major setback for the US counterinsurgency, which cannot risk withdrawing troops until a democratic government can provide stability for its citizens.

Monawar said Pakistan had benefited from conflict in Afghanistan for 30 years, first during the Soviet invasion and withdrawal and then from US outsourcing of Afghan resistance management to the ISI. Monawar said Obama must pursue a "quid pro quo" solution between Kabul and Islamabad.

A stable Afghan government requires stable support of Karzai and coalition forces from Afghan citizens, but Karzai's corruption has cost him popularity, and civilians have suffered thousands of casualties as war has ravaged their homeland. The United Nations reports that in 2009 nearly 6,000 Afghan civilians lost their lives due to armed conflict, the highest number since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Browsing the WikiLeaks war logs, however, provides a much more vivid account of the pain and trauma suffered by Afghan civilians. Some reports are dry and clinical, composed of jargon-filled accounts detailing dozens of civilians killed and wounded by an IED attack here, or a misguided 2,000 pound "smart bomb" killing 2 civilians and wounding 17 there.

Other reports are disturbingly vivid. On November 16, 2009, two Afghan toddlers were wounded during a firefight between US troops and insurgents that took place near farm fields in southern Afghanistan. The US troops reported that they did not see any civilians in the fields of corn and hemp, but later discovered that a boy named Esan Ullah, age 6, had been shot in the foot, and a 2-year-old girl name Shamsia had been shot in the stomach. It is unclear if the rural children survived.

Coalition forces often offer payments (usually around $2,000) to families and friends of civilians killed by friendly forces, but Monawar warns that the US can't just buy civilian support.

"We can build 1000 of schools and clinics, but if at the end of the day we inadvertently kill someone's cousin, brother or a family member, it will be impossible for us to win hearts and minds," Monawar said. "Afghans are a vindictive bunch, and they love to fight. There is a Pashto expression that translates 'Afghans buy/pay for a fight.'"

Even before the WikiLeaks release, mainstream military analysts were casting doubts that the war in Afghanistan will conclude with a decisive victory.

"Two critical questions dominate any realistic discussion of the conflict," analyst Anthony Cordesman wrote in a report for the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies earlier this year. "The first is whether the war is worth fighting. The second is whether it can be won. The answers to both questions are uncertain."

Both Cordesman and Monawar agree that setting artificial deadlines for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan could tend the Taliban's fire and hurt Afghan morale. Monawar suggested that the Obama administration insert a long-term commitment with the US-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership, which would ease tensions surrounding a 2011 withdrawal deadline and clarify that the US is not stuck in an open-ended commitment.

But Obama is already losing some support among voters and his own party. Support for the war in the US dropped from 91 percent in 2002 to 50-60 percent in 2008 and, by now, a majority of voters may be against the war, according to a Strategic Studies Institute report. The number of House Democrats who voted against the war supplemental nearly quadrupled to 102 since the first House vote on the bill, which had since been stripped of billions of dollars of aid and domestic spending.

After nine years of bloodshed, it appears that Americans and now Washington are beginning to lose confidence in US operations in Afghanistan. For Monawar, it's a vital time to remember how the US ended up in such a quagmire in the first place.

"My personal opinion is that for the past nine years, ever since 9/11, we have always chased to cure the symptoms and completely forgot about the cause," Monawar said. "All 19 hijackers were from Saudi [Arabia], we spent one trillion dollars toppling a regime in Iraq that did not like Al Qaeda, or [did] Al Qaeda [have] any hope of infiltrating Iraq. As long as the Saudi Kings finance these jihadists, American soldiers and Afghan civilians will die.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby jam.fuse » Sat Jul 31, 2010 10:01 am

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

7/30/2010

Afghanistan Is Our Welfare State: The Mundane Details of Occupation:

One of the less glamorous aspects of the release by Wikileaks of oodles of secret documents related to the sad circle jerk that is the Afghanistan war is the clear demonstration that the actual day-to-day existence of Afghans is dependent on the occupiers (or, you know, mostly us). Sure, it's important to talk about the other revelations (or confirmations): the collusion between Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban, the ill-equipped troops in battle, and the bullshit Afghan forces that have the discipline of a pack of brain-damaged cats. But, as Evan Hill writes for Al-Jazeera, the mundane and quotidian aspects of Afghan existence demonstrate a level of dependency on NATO and the United States that'd make an opium dealer jealous.

The NATO provincial reconstruction teams (PRT) essentially decide who has power and who does not, who gets paid with reconstruction cash and who goes home empty-handed, and you can bet that every one of those decisions simply leads to the inevitable creation of more enemies that need to be fought.

There are land disputes: "In 2005, men of the Nasir tribe then living in Pakistan came to the Zabul PRT, not the Afghan government, to seek help returning to land along the border they said had been granted to them decades before by the Afghan king."

There are financial decisions related to reconstruction: "In December 2006, NATO forces awarded a bridge-building contract in the village of Pitigal to the local shura. The provincial governor overruled NATO and picked another man for the project. He promised to inform the shura, but never did. Unaware, the shura spent its own money to hire an engineer to conduct an estimate, survey the site and begin supervising construction.

"During a meeting the following January, after the shura realized they had been shut out of the deal, they told NATO officials they felt deceived. Nato made no apologies for the governor's decision and refused to reimburse the shura for the work it had done.

"An attempt by the commanding American captain to 'refocus' the shura on other matters 'was met with disinterest,' the report states."

There's the question of who to trust at all: "In 2006, a PRT in the Paktia province met Colonel Qadam Gul, the chief of police.

"Gul, according to a report of the meeting, had earlier told contractors that he had signed a non-aggression pact with the local Taliban.

"During the meeting, Gul told the PRT that the Taliban were laying low, waiting for coalition forces to leave. He accused another man, a local shura member, of being a Taliban commander and receiving support from Quetta, Pakistan, the reputed headquarters of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed Omar."

There's a sad, Sisyphean hopelessness to the entire thing: "When an elder from a small farming village of 300 families made an unannounced visit one December to the Nuristan PRT to ask for help to prepare for the upcoming winter, the PRT brushed him off.

"They told the man to take his case to the district governor and that they would give supplies to the governor for distribution.

"The elder said he doubted that the governor would ever deliver the goods to the neediest people."

What you get from these less sexy documents is a portrait of soldiers and officials attempting to transform a country into something it is not. It's impossible. And what Wikileaks has forced us to see is that it's madness to continue.
'I beat the Devil with a shovel so he dropped me another level' -- Redman
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 31, 2010 10:13 am

jam.fuse wrote:http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

7/30/2010

Afghanistan Is Our Welfare State: The Mundane Details of Occupation:



Thanks jam, I love his Rudeness

Ever listen to him on the Stephanie Miller Show?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby jam.fuse » Sat Jul 31, 2010 11:36 am

seemslikeadream wrote:
Thanks jam, I love his Rudeness

Ever listen to him on the Stephanie Miller Show?


Haven't heard her, or him on her (pardon the expression) yet, seemslikeadream, thanks for the tip.

The rude one is also hawking tix for his upcoming play on his site, fifteen clams for seventy five minutes, sounds like a bargain for the nooyawkers amongst us.
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Re: Secret Archive Grim View of Afghan War - Wikileaks ONLINE

Postby Sweejak » Sat Jul 31, 2010 3:24 pm

This is about Pakistan, it's here because I think that the info is genuine and am bored by most of the spinning. Each side will have their outcome., which is not to say that It's not important to know about the how and who and why of the leaks.

By Imran Khan
How to clear the mess

Thursday, April 23, 2009
By Imran Khan

The reason why there is so much despondency in Pakistan is because there is no road map to get out of the so-called War on Terror - a nomenclature that even the Obama Administration has discarded as being a negative misnomer. To cure the patient the diagnosis has to be accurate, otherwise the wrong medicine can sometimes kill the patient. In order to find the cure, first six myths that have been spun around the US-led “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) have to be debunked.

Myth No. 1: This is Pakistan’s war

Since no Pakistani was involved in 9/11 and the CIA-trained Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, how does it concern us? It is only when General Musharraf buckled under US pressure and sent our troops into Waziristan in late 2003-early 2004 that Pakistan became a war zone. It took another three years of the Pakistan army following the same senseless tactics as used by the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan (aerial bombardment) plus the slaughter at Lal Masjid, for the creation of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). If our security forces are being targeted today by the Taliban and their suicide bombers, it is because they are perceived to be proxies of the US army. Iran is ideologically opposed to both Al Qaeda and the Taliban yet why are its security forces not attacked by terrorists? The answer is because their President does not pretend to be a bulwark against Islamic extremism in return for US dollars and support.

Michael Scheuer (ex-CIA officer and author of the book Imperial Hubris), writing in The Washington Post in April 2007, cited Musharraf’s loyalty to the US even when it went against Pakistan’s national interests by giving two examples: the first was Musharraf helping the US in removing a pro-Pakistan Afghan government and replacing it with a pro-Indian one; and, the second, for sending Pakistani troops into the tribal areas and turning the tribesmen against the Pakistan army. To fully understand Musharraf’s treachery against Pakistan, it is important to know that almost a 100,000 troops were sent into the tribal areas to target around 1000 suspected Al-Qaeda members - thus earning the enmity of at least 1.5 million armed local tribals in the 7 tribal agencies of Pakistan.

The most shameful aspect of the lie that this is our war is that the government keeps begging the US for more dollars stating that the war is costing the country more than the money it is receiving from the US. If it is our war, then fighting it should not be dependent on funds and material flowing from the US. If it is our war, why do we have no control over it? If it is our war, then why is the US government asking us to do more?

Myth No. 2: This is a war against Islamic extremists ó an ideological war against radical Islam

Was the meteoric rise of Taliban due to their religious ideology? Clearly not, because the Mujahideen were equally religious - Gulbadin Hekmatyar (supported by the ISI) was considered an Islamic fundamentalist. In fact, the reason the Taliban succeeded where the Mujahideen warlords failed, was because they established the rule of law - the Afghans had had enough of the power struggle between the warlord factions that had destroyed what remained of the country’s infrastructure and killed over 100,000 people.

If the Pushtuns of the tribal area wanted to adopt the Taliban religious ideology then surely they would have when the latter was in power in Afghanistan, between 1996 and 2001. Yet there was no Talibanisation in the tribal areas. Interestingly, the only part of Pakistan where the Taliban had an impact was in Swat where Sufi Mohammad started the Shariat Movement. The reason was that while there was rule of law (based on the traditional jirga system) in the tribal areas, the people of Swat had been deprived of easy access to justice ever since the traditional legal system premised on Qazi courts was replaced by Pakistani laws and judicial system, first introduced in 1974. The murder rate shot up from 10 per year in 1974 to almost 700 per year by 1977, when there was an uprising against the Pakistani justice system. The Taliban cashed in on this void of justice to rally the poorer sections of Swat society just as they had attracted the Afghans in a situation of political anarchy and lawlessness in Afghanistan. It is important to make this distinction because the strategy to bring peace must depend on knowing your enemy. Michael Bearden, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that the US is facing the same Pushtun insurgency that was faced by the Soviets in Afghanistan. According to him, as long as NATO is in Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a constant supply of men from the 15

million Pushtun population of Afghanistan and the 25 million Pushtuns of Pakistan. In other words, this Talibanisation is not so much religion-driven as politically-motivated. So the solution to the problem in the tribal belt today does not lie in religion and “moderate” Islam but in a political settlement.

Myth No. 3: If we keep fighting the US war, the super power will bail us out financially through aid packages.

Recently, the Government’s Adviser on Finance stated that the war on terror has cost Pakistan $35 billion while the country has received only $11 billion assistance from the US. I would go a step further and say that this aid is the biggest curse for the country. Not only is it “blood money” for our army killing our own people (there is no precedent for this) but also nothing has destroyed the self-esteem of this country as this one factor. Moreover, there is no end in sight as our cowardly and compromised leadership is ordered to “do more” for the payments made for their services. Above all, this aid and loans are like treating cancer with disprin. It enables the government to delay the much needed surgery of reforms (cutting expenditures and raising revenues); and meanwhile the cancer is spreading and might become terminal.

Myth No. 4: That the next terrorist attack on the US will come from the tribal areas.

First, there is an assumption, based purely on conjecture, that the Al Qaeda leadership is in the tribal areas. In fact, this leadership could well be in the 70 % of Afghan territory that the Taliban control. More importantly, given the growing radicalisation of the educated Muslim youth - in major part because of the continuing US partiality towards Israeli occupation of Palestinian land - why can it not follow that the next terrorist attack on the US could come either from the Middle East or from the marginalised and radicalised Muslims of Europe, motivated by perceived injustices to Islam and the Muslim World.

Myth No. 5: That the ISI is playing a double game and if Pakistan did more the war could be won.

If Talibanisation is growing in Pakistan because of the covert support of ISI in the tribal areas, then surely the growing Taliban control over Afghanistan (70 % of the territory) must be with NATO’s complicity? Surely a more rational understanding would be to see that the strategy being employed is creating hatred against the US and its collaborators. Aerial bombardment and its devastating collateral damage is the biggest gift the US has given to the Taliban. According to official reports, out of the 60 drone attacks conducted between 14 January 2006-April 8 2009, only 10 were on target, killing 14 alleged Al Qaeda. In the process almost 800 Pakistani civilians have been killed, while many lost their homes and limbs.

Despite its military surge effort, the US will eventually pack up and leave like the Soviets, but the “do more” mantra could end up destroying the Pakistan army - especially the ISI which is being targeted specifically for the mess created by the Bush Administration in Afghanistan.

Myth No. 6: That Pakistan could be Talibanised with their version of Islam.

Both Musharraf and Zardari have contributed to this myth in order to get US backing and dollars. Firstly there is no such precedent in the 15-hundred years of Islamic history of a theocracy like that of the Taliban, outside of the recent Taliban period of rule in Afghanistan. However, as mentioned earlier, the Taliban’s ascendancy in Afghanistan was not a result of their religious ideology but their ability to establish order and security in a war-devastated and anarchic Afghanistan.

In Swat, the present mess has arisen because of poor governance issues. Also, it was the manner in which the government handled the situation - simply sending in the army rather than providing better governance - that created space for the Taliban. Just as in Balochistan (under Musharraf) when the army was sent in rather than the Baloch being given their economic and provincial rights, similarly the army in Swat aggravated the situation and the present mess was created.

What Pakistan has to worry about is the chaos and anarchy that are going to stem from the radicalisation of our people because of the failure of successive governments to govern effectively and justly. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Battle for God, gives details of fundamentalist movements that turned militant when they were repressed. Ideas should be fought with counter ideas and dialogue, not guns. Allama Iqbal was able to deal with fundamentalism through his knowledge and intellect. The slaughter of the fundamentalists of Lal Masjid did more to fan extremism and fanaticism than any other single event.

Pakistan is staring down an abyss today and needs to come up with a sovereign nationalist policy to deal with the situation. If we keep on following dictation from Washington, we are doomed. There are many groups operating in the country under the label of “Taliban”. Apart from the small core of religious extremists, the bulk of the fighting men are Pushtun nationalists. Then there are the fighters from the old Jihadi groups. Moreover, the Taliban are also successfully exploiting the class tensions by appealing to the have-nots. But the most damaging for Pakistan are those groups who are being funded primarily from two external sources: first, by those who want to see Pakistan become a “failed state”; and, second, by those who wish to see the US bogged down in the Afghan quagmire.

What needs to be done: A two-pronged strategy is required - focusing on a revised relationship with the US and a cohesive national policy based on domestic compulsions and ground realities.

President Obama, unlike President Bush, is intelligent and has integrity. A select delegation of local experts on the tribal area and Afghanistan should make him understand that the current strategy is a disaster for both Pakistan and the US; that Pakistan can no longer commit suicide by carrying on this endless war against its own people; that we will hold dialogue and win over the Pushtuns of the tribal area and make them deal with the real terrorists while the Pakistan army is gradually pulled out.

At the same time, Pakistan has to move itself to ending drone attacks if the US is not prepared to do so. Closure of the drone base within Pakistan is a necessary beginning as is the need to create space between ourselves and the US, which will alter the ground environment in favour of the Pakistani state. It will immediately get rid of the fanaticism that creates suicide bombers as no longer will they be seen to be on the path to martyrdom by bombing US collaborators. Within this environment a consensual national policy to combat extremism and militancy needs to be evolved centring on dialogue, negotiation and assertion of the writ of the state. Where force is required the state must rely on the paramilitary forces, not the army. Concomitantly, Pakistan needs serious reforms. First and foremost we have to give our people access to justice at the grassroots level - that is, revive the village jury/Panchayat system. Only then will we rid ourselves of the oppressive “thana-kutchery” culture which compels the poor to seek adjudication by the feudals, tribal leaders, tumandars and now by the Taliban also - thereby perpetuating oppression of the dispossessed, especially women.

Second, unless we end the system of parallel education in the country where the rich access private schools and a different examination system while the poor at best only have access to a deprived public school system with its outmoded syllabus and no access to employment. That is why the marginalised future generations are condemned to go to madrassahs which provide them with food for survival and exploit their pent up social anger. We need to bring all our educational institutions into the mainstream with one form of education syllabus and examination system for all - with madrassahs also coming under the same system even while they retain their religious education specialisation.

Third, the level of governance needs to be raised through making appointments on merit in contrast to the worst type of cronyism that is currently on show. Alongside this, a cutting of expenditures is required with the leadership and the elite leading by example through adoption of an austere lifestyle. Also, instead of seeking aid and loans to finance the luxurious lifestyle of the elite, the leadership should pay taxes, declare its assets and bring into the country all money kept in foreign banks abroad. All “benami” transactions, assets and bank accounts should be declared illegal. I believe we will suddenly discover that we are actually quite a self-sufficient country.

Fourth, the state has to widen its direct taxation net and cut down on indirect taxation where the poor subsidise the rich. If corruption and ineptitude are removed, it will be possible for the state to collect income tax more effectively.

A crucial requirement for moving towards stability would be the disarming of all militant groups - which will a real challenge for the leadership but here again, the political elite can lead by example and dismantle their show of guards and private forces.

Finally, fundamentalism should be fought intellectually with sensitivity shown to the religious and heterogeneous roots of culture amongst the Pakistani masses. Solutions have to be evolved from within the nation through tolerance and understanding. Here, we must learn from the Shah of Iran’s attempts to enforce a pseudo-Western identity onto his people and its extreme backlash from Iranian society.

The threat of extremism is directly related to the performance of the state and its ability to deliver justice and welfare to its people.
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