Surging Towards Disaster in the "Afpak Theatre"

[American Dream]

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com ... afpak.html

Surging Towards Disaster in the "Afpak Theatre"


On February 18, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. Obama's announcement will result in a major escalation of America's bloody occupation of that war-ravaged country.

Currently, some 36,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, including some 6,000 sent in early January under orders by the outgoing Bush regime. In addition to U.S. forces, 32,000 troops from other NATO countries and a mix of "private military contractors" (armed mercenaries) occupy the Central Asian nation.

When coupled with increasingly bellicose rhetoric from the Pentagon and military strikes inside Pakistan, the prospects for regional war--with incalculable risks for the people of Central- and South Asia--have put paid Obama's electoral hyperbole that his would be a "change" administration.

In a brief written statement issued Tuesday by the White House, Obama declared that "the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border."

Responding to "a months old" request by "General McKiernan and supported by Secretary Gates, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander of Central Command," Obama will soon dispatch a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (8,000 troops), an Army Stryker Brigade (4,000 soldiers) and 5,000 support troops.

Claiming that increased troop levels "will contribute to the security of the Afghan people," the White House studiously ignores reports from the United Nations, international human rights organizations--and from NATO itself--that the number of civilians killed by all armed actors increased dramatically over the previous year.

A confidential report titled "Metrics Brief, 2007-2008," was published by Wikileaks. Prepared by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan, the 12 page dossier "reveals that civilian deaths from the war in Afghanistan have increased by 46% over the past year." According to the global whistleblowers,

The report shows a dramatic escalation of the war and civil disorder. Coalition deaths increased by 35%, assassinations and kidnappings by 50% and attacks on the Kabul based Government of Hamid Karzai also more than doubled, rising a massive 119%.

The report highlights huge increases on attacks aimed at Coalition forces, including a 27% increase in IED attacks, a 40% rise in rifle and rocket fire and an increase in surface to air fire of 67%.

According to the report, outside of the capital Kabul only one in two families had access to even the most basic health care, and only one in two children had access to a school. ("Wikileaks releases NATO report on civilian deaths," Wikileaks, Press Release, February 16, 2009)

While the majority of civilian deaths were attributed by the United Nations to the criminal actions of the Taliban and the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al-Qaeda, some 828 of 2,118 civilians killed in 2008 were the result of indiscriminate attacks by the Afghan military, U.S. Air Force bombing and berserker American Special Forces units engaged in "counterterrorism" and "counternarcotics" operations. According to The New York Times,

The report singled out special forces and other military units operating outside the normal chains of command. That means their presence and movements are not always known by regular field commanders.

Special forces groups like Navy Seals and paramilitary units operated by the CIA often conduct raids in Afghanistan, and often at night.

The report also said that airstrikes that went awry were often those that were called in by troops under attack.

The United Nations report helps shed light on one of the most divisive issues between the American-led coalition and the Afghan government of Mr. Karzai. (Dexter Filkins, "Afghan Civilian Deaths Rose 40 Percent in 2008," The New York Times, February 18, 2009)

The growing carnage on the ground reflects the political crisis facing the new administration as capitalism's economic meltdown compel our corporatist masters to grab as much of the world's resources as possible to stanch the economic bleed out.

But as in Iraq and the Middle East generally however, the Obama administration's "surge" across Central Asian will prove quixotic--and deadly.

Kyrgyzstan Gives America the Boot

As the politico-military situation rapidly deteriorates, how the Pentagon will keep "surged" troops resupplied is fast becoming a looming nightmare.

With critical supply routes from Pakistan cut by Afghan Talibs and Pakistani Taliban fighters, who have launched coordinated attacks with Central Asian and Arab al-Qaeda guerrillas, the virtual closure of the Khyber Pass in the North-West Frontier Province has fueled a growing logistical crisis. Prior to last December's offensive by insurgents, some 75% of supplies for NATO forces flowed into Afghanistan along this route.

Adding to NATO's headaches, on February 18 Kyrgyzstan's rubber-stamp parliament voted to close the Manas Airbase near the capital Bishkek. According to The Guardian, Wednesday's vote followed "a backroom deal two weeks ago between the country's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev."

The Americans have six months to pack up and vacate the premises.

The kleptocratic Bakiyev regime has been promised a $2.15 billion loan and a debt write-off by Moscow in a move intended to wrest concessions from the United States to keep the military hardware flowing. Asia Times reported February 20,

In the end, transit salvation for the US and NATO is indeed coming from no one else but Russia--but on Moscow's terms: this means Russia possibly using its own military planes to airlift the supplies. A deceptively charming Medvedev has been on the record identifying "very positive signs" in the new US-Russia chess match. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been on the record saying transit of US and NATO non-military supplies through Russia begins in effect only a few days after the 20th anniversary of the Soviets leaving Kabul. (Pepe Escobar, "Obama, Osama and Medvedev," Asia Times Online, February 20, 2009)

As investigative journalist Pepe Escobar points out, "the price" that the United States and NATO will pay to have their supplies arrive from Russia is being made painfully clear to Washington: "no more encirclement, no more NATO extension, no more anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland for protection against non-existent Iranian missiles. All this has to be negotiated in detail."

But in a potential move seen as a maneuver to bypass Moscow, The Independent reported that "the new US administration had indicated that it was prepared to talk to Iran about the Afghan situation."

No friend of the Sunni-based insurgency next door, nor of U.S.-backed jihadi groups such as Jundullah attacking from Pakistan, Tehran may be willing to cut a deal with Washington. Independent journalist Kim Sengupta writes that "Italy, which assumes the presidency of the G8 this year, said that Tehran would be invited to participate in a summit on Afghanistan. The Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said: 'We want to consider how to involve Iran, not whether to involve Iran'."

But how this will play out may be determined by America's stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East, Israel, and that country's "naval task force" in Washington, the powerful Israel lobby. And with Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right Likud party given the nod by Israeli President Shimon Peres "to take the lead" in forming the next government, it's an even bet that Bibi may cut a deal with Avigdor Lieberman's neofascist Yisrael Beiteinu party. Netanyahu and Lieberman have both threatened to bomb Iran's civilian nuclear facilities, and have called that nation Israel's number one "national security threat."

While Washington's chattering classes prattle on about the need to "fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them here," the sad reality for the Afghan people is that the Obama administration and their corporatist masters don't give a hoot about their suffering, the unprecedented "surge" in heroin production, the rise and rise of organized crime-linked "Islamic fundamentalists," or for that matter, bringing al-Qaeda to ground. It's all hot air designed to get the American people on-board as imperialism escalates the "right war" in Central- and South Asia.

With the 9/11 attacks as a backdrop--and pretext--for carrying out a long-planned military intervention to conqueror Afghanistan, either through proxies (remember the enthusiasm in petroleum board rooms when the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996!) or now, by installing a narco regime amenable to American demands, the unspoken project remains what it has always been: the "sole superpower's" hegemonic control over the vast oil and gas reserves of Central Asia.

Pakistan, Jihadis and America's Killer Drones

Meanwhile, on the "Pak" side of the "Afpak theatre" America's former "best friends forever," the Pakistani Taliban grouped under the banner of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, TNSM) have been doing some "surging" of their own.

Having successfully concluded a "truce" with the government of President Asif Ali Zardari in the North-West Frontier Province's Malakand District, the nominally secular Pakistan Peoples Party has ceded the political ground to Army and Inter Services Intelligence agency-linked militants with long-standing ties to international terrorist outfits and drug trafficking cartels. In other words, American allies.

But before the ink on the agreement had even dried, a television journalist with Pakistan's Geo network, Musa Khan Khel, covering TNSM head honcho Maulana Sufi Mohammed's triumphant entry into Mingora February 17, was brutally murdered. Riddled with bullets, his nearly decapitated body was found on the side of a road shortly after the TNSM leader announced that "peace" had come to the Swat Valley. Khel, according to reports, had been seeking an interview with TTP "emir" Maulana Fazlullah.

The News reported February 20 that TNSM leaders are meeting with their TTP counterparts to seal the deal to lay down their arms in lieu of the imposition of Sharia law in Malakand.

In 2001, the "peacemaker" and self-proclaimed "Sharia-lover" had led some 10,000 untrained volunteers across the border into Afghanistan to fight the American-led narcotrafficking Northern Alliance during the initial stages of the U.S. invasion. Drawn from madrassas across Pakistan as disposable cannon-fodder for the ISI, thousands were killed.

In the aftermath of the TTP and the Army's bloody operations Swat lay in ruins, its people terrorized and its infrastructure all but destroyed. Describing the region as a "hell-hole of bodies and ruin," The Sunday Times reports that

In the former mountain resort of Malam Jabba, where skiing thrived when the surrounding Swat Valley was an international attraction, one can still see the remnants of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation's flagship hotel. The building was blown up by the Taliban because it was being used for "un-Islamic activities".

Hundreds of other hotels in the valley have been destroyed or forced to close after threats from the militants. (Daud Khattakis, "Into a Taliban wasteland of blood and fear," The Sunday Times, February 22, 2009)

But the destruction of critical infrastructure that fueled the region's economy is but the visible manifestation of a virtual reign of terror that grips Swat Valley. Khattakis writes:

What I found in Swat was a hell-hole. Suicide bombings, car bombs and artillery have scarred the valley's roads and buildings. The charred remains of hospitals and even a madrasah (seminary) litter the landscape.

Nearly 200 schools have been destroyed, all girls over the age of eight are banned from lessons and, in a symbol of the Taliban's hatred of learning, the public library in Mingora has been wrecked.

The Taliban have banned music and dancing, television and internet cafes. Women cannot leave home without wearing a burqa, the all-encompassing robe. Justice has been enforced with floggings and public executions. (The Sunday Times, ibid.)

In the heart of Mingora's bazaar, Green Square is now known as Khooni Chowk, or bloody square "because of the public executions carried out there by Taliban who leave the bullet-riddled bodies of police and soldiers for all to see."

One wonders what justification "Sharia-lover" Sufi Mohammed and his sociopathic son-in-law Fazlullah have for butchering whole families, including children, who simply wish to be left in peace?

According to multiple reports in the Pakistani media, since the TTP's violent take over of the region, organized crime gangs have flourished and car-jackings, armed robberies, kidnappings, rapes and murders as well as an explosive increase in the drug trade have turned Swat into an post-apocalyptic landscape. Like their American counterparts in crime, the message of TTP "emirs" seems to be: "Kill 'em all, and let God sort them out."

But here as elsewhere, the rise of reactionary fundamentalism has far more to do with failing state structures than with religious enthusiasm. Incapable of providing food, employment, housing and health care to its citizens, Pakistani elites, like corporate grifters everywhere, undermine their position by selling-off economic assets to well-connected cronies and ceding educational and social welfare services to "faith-based" groups, as in the U.S.

In this context, The Nation reported February 18 that the Cabinet Committee on Privatization approved the (fire) sale sell-off of some 21 state-owned enterprises, including "four power companies and other state-owned entities including SME Bank, National Power Construction Company, Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Post."

Utterly bankrupt and bereft of imagination when its comes to ameliorating the horrendous economic and social hardships faced by Pakistani workers and farmers, the bourgeois PPP government following "advice" from their mentors in Washington, will instead line the pockets of their "constituents," the multinational corporations and the comprador elites who do their bidding.

The Swat truce follows revelations by The Times that the "CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan."

While the Pakistani government has demanded that the U.S. halt drone attacks in the area, The Times discovered "that the CIA has been using the Shamsi airfield--originally built by Arab sheikhs for falconry expeditions in the southwestern province of Baluchistan--for at least a year."

The New York-based whistleblowing intelligence and security website Cryptome published a series of satellite images as part of their "Eyeball" series on February 18. One image, captured in 2006 before construction of a huge hangar meant to conceal America's robot killing machines was completed, show Predator drones on the Shamsi air strip.

According to Cryptome's anonymous correspondent, "This is a very capable base facility with a large hangar in addition to the two Predator support hangars. Nearby is a large secured compound (appears empty) which could support up to a battalion of special ops and associated command and control. The large parking area inside the compound is perfect to land choppers and leave with relative security. All security measures seem fresh."

As I reported February 16, "U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dropped a bombshell when she revealed that CIA Predator drones are flown from an airbase in Pakistan." Feinstein's disclosure came during hearings February 12 before the Senate Intelligence Committee. While the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have refused to comment, unnamed "U.S. intelligence officials" described the senator's statement as "accurate."

Despite these revelations, Pakistan's Defense Minister Chaudry Ahmad Mukhtar continues to deny "that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is controlling drone attacks from the Shamsi base in Balochistan, and said Pakistan had no secret understanding with the US to use bases in Pakistan to carry out attacks in the Tribal Areas, according to a February 20 report in Daily Times.

Mukhtar said: "Certain news reports claiming that the CIA runs predator flights from the Shamsi Airbase in Balochistan are baseless ... Pakistan has no such understanding with the US to allow it to use its bases for predator attacks."

How the Defense Minister squares his denial with inescapable facts on the ground is another matter entirely. But revelations over the CIA's use of Shamsi Airbase may be the least of the Defense Ministry's problems.

"In a dramatic development," according to The News, "three prominent Pakistani militant commanders--Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazeer--on Friday set aside their differences and promised to jointly fight their enemy in future."

Two of the three Pakistani Taliban leaders were considered "pro-government" and had been recruited to fight Mehsud's TTP and their al-Qaeda allies but have since been alienated from the state due to persistent Predator attacks by the CIA from bases provided by Pakistan. The News reports,

If the three men, who now rule South and North Waziristan tribal region in true sense, got united, they could give a tough time to the government in future.

The militants from Wana said now they had understood Pakistan's divide and rule policy, and decided to get united and fight together against it in future. "Pakistan caused more losses to the Mujahideen than the US. It handed over 700 Arab Mujahideen to the US and jailed our people," the commander alleged. (Mushtaq Yusufzai, "Top militant commanders resolve rift," The News, February 21, 2009)

Islamabad's double-game with the imperialist Dracula on the one hand and the jihadi Frankenstein on the other demonstrates, if nothing else, the impervious nature of the existing political system to "change" on all sides of the "Afpak problem."

Barring a dramatic transformation of the political state of affairs, the bill for American and Pakistani duplicity is coming due, and it will be the people of South Asia who will pay a heavy price.

[American Dream]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/23/ ... terror.php


Pakistani commandos repelling a mock Taliban ambush in a demonstration on Sunday.

Secret U.S. unit trains commandos in Pakistan
By Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez
Monday, February 23, 2009

BARA, Pakistan: More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.

The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.

They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan's government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.

Pakistani officials have vigorously protested American missile strikes in the tribal areas as a violation of sovereignty and have resisted efforts by Washington to put more troops on Pakistani soil. President Asif Ali Zardari, who leads a weak civilian government, is trying to cope with soaring anti-Americanism among Pakistanis and a belief that he is too close to Washington.

Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends.

A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said.

Four weeks ago, the commandos captured a Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda here in this town in the Khyber Agency, one of the tribal areas that run along the border with Afghanistan.

Yet the main commanders of the Pakistani Taliban, including its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and its leader in the Swat region, Maulana Fazlullah, remain at large. And senior American military officials remain frustrated that they have been unable to persuade the chief of the Pakistani Army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to embrace serious counterinsurgency training for the army itself.

General Kayani, who is visiting Washington this week as a White House review on policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan gets under way, will almost certainly be asked how the Pakistani military can do more to eliminate Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the tribal areas.

The American officials acknowledge that at the very moment when Washington most needs Pakistan's help, the greater tensions between Pakistan and India since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November have made the Pakistani Army less willing to shift its attention to the Qaeda and Taliban threat.

Officials from both Pakistan and the United States agreed to disclose some details about the American military advisers and the enhanced intelligence sharing to help dispel impressions that the missile strikes were thwarting broader efforts to combat a common enemy. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the increasingly powerful anti-American segment of the Pakistani population.

The Pentagon had previously said about two dozen American trainers conducted training in Pakistan late last year. More than half the members of the new task force are Special Forces advisers; the rest are combat medics, communications experts and other specialists. Both sides are encouraged by the new collaboration between the American and Pakistani military and intelligence agencies against the militants.

"The intelligence sharing has really improved in the past few months," said Talat Masood, a retired army general and a military analyst. "Both sides realize it's in their common interest."

Intelligence from Pakistani informants has been used to bolster the accuracy of missile strikes from remotely piloted Predator and Reaper aircraft against the militants in the tribal areas, officials from both countries say.

More than 30 attacks by the aircraft have been conducted since last August, most of them after President Zardari took office in September. A senior American military official said that 9 of 20 senior Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan had been killed by those strikes.

In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of CIA operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said.

The newly minted 400-man Pakistani paramilitary commando unit is a good example of the new cooperation. As part of the Frontier Corps, which operates in the tribal areas, the new Pakistani commandos fall under a chain of command separate from the 500,000-member army, which is primarily trained to fight Pakistan's archenemy, India.

The commandos are selected from the overall ranks of the Frontier Corps and receive seven months of intensive training from Pakistani and American Special Forces.

The CIA helped the commandos track the Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda, Zabi al-Taifi, for more than a week before the Pakistani forces surrounded his safe house in the Khyber Agency. The Pakistanis seized him, along with seven Pakistani and Afghan insurgents, in a dawn raid on Jan. 22, with a remotely piloted CIA plane hovering overhead and personnel from the CIA and Pakistan's main spy service closely monitoring the mission, a senior Pakistani officer involved in the operation said.

Still, there are tensions between the sides. Pakistani F-16's conduct about a half-dozen combat missions a day against militants, but Pakistani officers say they could do more if the Pentagon helped upgrade the jets to fight at night and provided satellite-guided bombs and updated satellite imagery.

General Kayani was expected to take a long shopping list for more transport and combat helicopters to Washington. The question of more F-16's — which many in Congress assert are intended for the Indian front — will also come up, Pakistani officials said.

The United States missile strikes, which have resulted in civilian casualties, have stirred heated debate among senior Pakistani government and military officials, despite the government's private support for the attacks. One American official described General Kayani, who is known to be sensitive about the necessity of public support for the army, as very concerned that the American strikes had undermined the army's authority.

"These strikes are counterproductive," Owais Ahmed Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, said in an interview in his office in Peshawar. "This is looking for a quick fix, when all it will do is attract more jihadis."

Pakistani Army officers say the American strikes draw retaliation against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas, whose convoys and bases are bombed or attacked with rockets after each United States missile strike.

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/fitzgerald02242009.html

The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)
By PAUL FITZERGALD and ELIZABETH GOULD


It was hoped that t he election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States would bring a change of course to the beleaguered US effort in Afghanistan. But word that representatives of the Taliban and the infamous Afghan drug trafficker and extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar might be on the president’s list of possible solutions, looms as a clear sign that the United States is about to step into a trap of its own making.

Employing Afghanistan’s drug-dealing warlords is nothing new for Washington. The U.S. elevated Pakistan’s drug-warlords to beltway cult status vis a vis Charlie Wilson’s War during the Soviet occupation and insisted on including them in the new Afghan government in 2002. Numerous observers claim that Washington had a hand in the Taliban’s creation as well, standing by as they rolled over Afghanistan in league with Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Intelligence Service (ISI) in the late 1990’s.

But should Gulbuddin Hekmatyar be allowed to make a political comeback, the new administration may find that partnering with the devil himself might be a better choice than with Afghanistan’s longest running and most notorious holy warrior.

According to a Washington Post report, Hekmatyar’s Hesb-i Islami organization is gaining support in every province in Afghanistan. This news followed a Times of London report in which the British ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles reportedly stated that the best hope for Afghanistan was to install “an acceptable dictator.”

Should the Pashtun Hekmatyar emerge as Cowper-Coles’s suitably acceptable dictator, an increasingly desperate and financially impaired U.S. could be faced with a defacto extremist victory. Or could it be that within the serpentine meanderings of Washington’s foreign policy aristocracy, a Taliban/Hekmatyar ruled Afghanistan may have been the plan all along?

America’s multitude of policy mistakes in Afghanistan have mystified many from the beginning. In a February 2, 2009 Times of London Online article, the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown accepted responsibility for the Afghan fiasco admitting that “We are trying to win in Afghanistan with one twenty-fifth the troops and one fiftieth of the aid per head in Bosnia… [T]he real problem is not President Karzai, it’s us.” Yet, much of the ongoing discussion continues to lay blame on beleaguered Afghans while continuing to soft-peddle the Pakistani military’s central role in Afghanistan’s instability.

Throughout the Cold War Pakistan did everything in its power to destabilize a succession of Afghan governments while dismissing Afghanistan’s legitimate grievances regarding its arbitrary 19th century boundary known as the Durand line. Yet Britain’s former secretary of state for defense, Malcolm Rifkind wrote in The Independent in June of 2007 that the United States and Britain should pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to accept the Durand line. And should he not, what are the chances that an acceptable dictatorship of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar might accommodate British and Pakistani demands?

Thanks to Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson and his influential friend Joanne Herring, Hekmatyar received the bulk of U.S. and Saudi money during the 1980’s, despite dire warnings from some of Afghanistan’s most revered religious families that he was a “monster.” According to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tim Weiner even CIA and State Department officials referred to him as “‘scary,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘a fascist,’ ‘definite dictatorship material.’”

The post-9/11 American and NATO war against the Taliban was widely viewed at the time as a long overdue opportunity to correct the policy mistakes in Afghanistan embodied by the Taliban but beginning with Hekmatyar. But instead of helping Afghans rebuild their nation by providing the necessary security, the war has been turned against the Afghan people.

Today, as Pakistani Taliban, Arab Al Qaeda and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hesb-e Islami fighters once again swarm over the countryside, the western alliance that pledged itself to establishing an Afghan democracy scrambles madly to negotiate its way out of its commitment.

But in choosing his next step, President Obama should be warned that the record of decision making for American Presidents on Afghanistan is abysmal. Although those decisions presented the Soviet Union with its final test and brought it to its knees, it also planted dreams of conquest in the minds of America’s leaders that have led the United States to find itself caught in its own trap.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story, available from City Lights Books and Invisiblehistory.com

[American Dream]

Afghanistan: U.S. Escalates the Illegal Drug Industry
by John W. Warnock
Global Research, February 25, 2009



It is common knowledge that Afghanistan remains the primary source of the world’s supply of opium and heroin. A recent United Nations’ report claims that three quarters of the world’s heroin comes from the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. But there is also recognition that poppies are grown in almost all of the country’s 34 provinces.

The western media argues that most of the production of illegal drugs is being done by the Taliban or that the Taliban is protecting the farmers. The fact that there are well known drug lords in the government of President Hamid Karzai, and many are members of the parliament, is usually ignored. Yet the Asian press carries photos of "narco palaces" in Kabul and describes the local "narcotecture." The Afghan population is well aware of the close ties between the drug lords and the government.

Of course this is quite embarrassing to the U.S. government, which put Karzai in office and created the present Afghan constitution and system of government. Thus Hillary Clinton, nominated for Secretary of State, created quite a shock when she referred to Afghanistan as a "narco state" in her testimony before the U.S. Senate.

Forgotten in all this is the key role that the U.S. government played in the development and expansion of the illegal drug industry in Afghanistan. It goes back to the decision made in July 1978 by the administration of Jimmy Carter to give aid and assistance to the radical Islamists in their rebellion against the leftist government of the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

The CIA and the Afghan Drug Trade

The U.S. government devoted billions of dollars to the proxy war in Afghanistan. Most of this was funneled through the Pentagon’s infamous Black Budget, secret funds for secret operations. In 1981 this budget was estimated at $9 billion but rose to $36 billion by 1990. The CIA obtained cash to buy weapons and other equipment which was then channeled to the Islamist rebels.

In the Afghan operation the CIA provided cash to the Pakistan government, primarily through its accounts with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), best known for laundering illegal drug money. As John Cooley notes, "The CIA already had a history of using corrupt or criminal banks for its overseas operations." In the 1980s the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency were using the BCCI for covert operations. First American, in Washington, D.C., was one of the CIA banks of choice, and it had been acquired by BCCI.

BCCI had close links to the Pakistan government. During the Afghan jihad BCCI officials actually took control of the customs house at the port of Karachi where shipments of arms were sent by the CIA to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). They made cash payments to the ISI, part of which were payoffs, but large sums were also needed to finance the transportation of armaments to the Afghan border and beyond. As Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf reports, much of the CIA aid came in the form of cash. This was used to purchase hundreds of trucks and thousands of horses, mules and camels, in addition to the materials needed to build the training bases for the mujahideen fighters.

The CIA would inform the Pakistan government about the shipments. When the armaments and supplies were landed in Karachi they came under the control of the National Logistics Cell of the Pakistan army and the ISI. They trucked the materials north to the various bases. On the way back the trucks carried opium and heroin for export from Karachi, mainly to the United States. Some of the heroin factories were directly under the control of the ISI, and the whole operation had the support of Pakistan General Fazle Haq, the protector of the industry. President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had appointed him the military commander of the Northwest Frontier Province. He was also directly involved in the heroin trade and laundering money through the BCCI.

The Islamist Drug Lords

Many of the key Islamist commanders and warlords were heavily involved in the illegal drug industry. One was Yunas Khalis, a brutal commander who boasted of the slaughter of prisoners of war as well as defectors from the PDPA government. Based in Helmand province, he spent much of his time fighting with other commanders over the control of the poppy crop and the roads and passes from the poppy fields to his seven heroin laboratories at his headquarters in Ribat al Ali. As Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair point out, at this time around 60% of the crop was produced under irrigation in the Helmand Valley, developed with a grant from USAID. This is still largely true today.

The biggest producer of heroin was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the primary recipient of CIA funds, who maintained six heroin factories at Koh-i-Soltan. He was in competition with another favourite commander of the U.S. government, Mullah Nassim Akhundzada, for control of the poppy crop produced in the Helmand Valley. The cash from the sale of the opium and heroin was channeled through accounts in the BCCI.

In the north, poppy cultivation and heroin production were primarily under the control of commanders Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ahmad Shah Massoud, both of whom were key allies of the U.S. government, particularly after the fall of the Marxist government in 1992. The fruits of this industry were exported through the Central Asian Republics via Kosovo and Albania and into Europe. It was estimated that this source accounted for around 60% of the European market. To this day commanders in the North, now in the Karzai government and the parliament, engage in production and trade. But this is overlooked by the North American media.

It was not only the U.S.-backed radical Islamists who were in the drug business. One of the key players was Sayad Ahmed Gaylani of the moderate National Islamic Front, who was very close to the exiled King Zahir Shah. The Soviets argued that Gaylani produced and exported more illegal drugs than Hekmatyar.

Afghan poppy production tripled between 1979-82, and according to figures from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, came to dominate the heroin market in the United States and Europe. The DEA reported that by 1984 51% of the heroin supply in the United States came from the operations of the U.S. allies on the Pakistan border. The situation remains the same today. It is estimated that the illegal drug industry presently accounts for around 50% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.

John W. Warnock is author of Creating a Failed State: the US and Canada in Afghanistan. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008.

References:

Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair. 1998. Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. New York: Pluto Press.

Coll, Steve. 2004. Ghost Wars: the Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Books.

Cooley, John. 2002. Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, American and International Terrorism. London: Pluto Press.

McCoy, Alfred W. 2003. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books.

Potts, Mark, Nicholas Kochan and Robert Whittington. 1992. Dirty Money: BCCI - the Inside Story of the World’s Sleaziest Bank. Washington, D.C.: National Press Books.

Scott, Peter Dale. 2007. The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Yousaf, Mohammad and Mark Adkin. 2004. Afghanistan - The Bear Trap: the Defeat of a Superpower. Havertown, Pa.: Casemate.




The url address of this is: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=12460

[chlamor]

Obama’s War: US Involvement in Afghanistan, Past, Present & Future

ANJALI KAMAT: President Obama is speaking before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night in what is being described as the first State of the Union address of his presidency. While the economy is expected to dominate the agenda, Obama will also talk about his top foreign policy initiative: the war in Afghanistan.

Last week, Obama ordered an additional 17,000 US combat troops to Afghanistan. The new deployments will begin in May and increase the US occupation force to 55,000. Another 32,000 non-US NATO troops are also in Afghanistan, although at a meeting in Poland last week NATO allies seemed reluctant to contribute more than a few hundred new combat troops to Afghanistan.

The top US commander, General David McKiernan, in Afghanistan welcomed Obama’s announcement.

GEN. DAVID McKIERNAN: I am very delighted with the President’s decision yesterday to send additional US forces to reinforce our efforts in Afghanistan. I will use most of those forces in the southern part of Afghanistan, an area where we do not have sufficient security presence, an area that has deteriorated somewhat, an area where we need persistent security presence in order to fight a counterinsurgency and to shape, clear, hold and build in support of a rapidly developing Afghan capacity.


ANJALI KAMAT: General McKiernan added later that at least another 10,000 troops will be needed beyond the President’s call for 17,000 more troops. He said 60,000 US troops would have to remain in Afghanistan for the next three to four years.

Meanwhile, the US military admitted on Saturday that a recent missile strike in western Afghanistan killed a majority of civilians. Last Tuesday’s bombs hit the tents of nomads where about a hundred families lived. This is Karim Khan, a resident of the area.

KARIM KHAN: [translated] It was 4:00 in the morning when the aircrafts started bombing, and people were asleep. Thirteen people from the tents and three other visitors were killed.


ANJALI KAMAT: The US had originally said the strikes had killed fifteen insurgents but conducted an investigation following Afghan outrage over the attack. The US military now admits that thirteen of the sixteen killed in the strike were civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: News of the strike came as the UN said Afghan civilian casualties jumped by nearly 40 percent last year. US-led forces were responsible for nearly 40 percent of the deaths, killing 828 people out of a reported 2,100 casualties.

Last week also marked the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, after an occupation that lasted ten years, and was followed shortly thereafter by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today, nearly seven-and-a-half years into the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, we host a discussion on the US role there, past, present and future.

We’re joined by several guests throughout the hour. We’re going to start, though, with Anand Gopal, the Afghanistan correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He joins us on the line from Kabul.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Anand. Tomorrow, President Obama will address a joint session of Congress. He’ll be talking about the economy. He’ll also be talking about Afghanistan. Can you talk about the significance of the surge in Afghanistan?

ANAND GOPAL: Well, as you mentioned in the opening, the violence has been increasing here every year for the last two years. And so, a lot of people here in Afghanistan feel that we’re at a critical juncture. We’re at a point where large parts of the countryside are not under the control of the Afghan government or the international forces, and without a drastic policy change, that things might tip over the edge. So the surge is something that’s being debated widely here.

ANJALI KAMAT: Anand Gopal, what’s been the reaction inside Afghanistan to the rising civilian casualties?

ANAND GOPAL: This is something that’s weighing heavily on the minds of Afghans everywhere and especially in those areas where the fighting is happening. This is really bringing a lot of villagers to question whether they want more troops in the area. So, a lot of Afghans that I speak to in these southern areas where the fighting has been happening say that to bring more troops, that’s going to mean more civilian casualties. It’ll mean more of these night raids, which have been deeply unpopular amongst Afghans. And also, there’s a problem where whenever American soldiers go into a village and then leave, the Taliban comes and attacks the village. So a lot of villagers feel that they’re sort of being attacked on all sides here and don’t view the injection of more troops as necessarily a solution to that.

ANJALI KAMAT: Anand Gopal, can you explain how much of Afghanistan is under control of the Afghan government and how the Taliban, after being routed in 2001, is once again a powerful force in the country?

ANAND GOPAL: The latest US National Intelligence Estimate about Afghanistan that covered this question estimated that about ten percent of the country is under the control of the Afghan government. And this was about eight months ago, and I would suspect that that number has gone even less since then.

And the way it’s worked is, most of the small towns and urban areas are under the control of the Afghan government, but most of the rural areas, which is where the majority of people live here, are not under the control of the government. They’re either under the control of the Taliban or under the control of various warlords and militias. And the Afghan countryside has been extremely chaotic and lawless for many years. And so, the Taliban kind of rode back into power by—on a platform of law and order, saying that the Afghan government is not doing its job of keeping out criminals and then providing security, so we’re going to come in here and install sharia law and make this place safe from criminals and bandits.

AMY GOODMAN: Anand Gopal, Vice President Biden recently met with President Hamid Karzai. There has been a clear shift of pulling support from Karzai by the US government. I believe they were in the middle of a meal, and Biden just got up and left. Can you talk about Hamid Karzai’s power right now; elections that are supposed to be coming up; his brother, Hamid Karzai’s brother, the allegation that he is a drug dealer, a drug runner in Afghanistan; and what future there is for the man who’s been the US representative in Afghanistan for quite a long time now?

ANAND GOPAL: Karzai’s popularity here is at an all-time low. He’s associated with a government that’s viewed as anywhere between predatory and ineffective. And he—the Afghan government has not been able to deliver on the many promises over the last few years, and so Afghans are holding Karzai responsible for this. And as his power started eroding here, he’s lashed out against the Americans and has been very vocal in his criticism of the civilian casualties. And I think this is one of the reasons why the US administration is kind of thinking about cutting him loose, because you have his pretty open and demonstrated criticisms of US policy here.

With that being said, there is an election coming up in the next few months, and there isn’t a clear-cut alternative to Karzai. Karzai has been able to build a sort of network, patronage network, over the course of the last few years, with important tribal leaders and other such people. And there’s nobody else in Afghanistan at the moment who has a sort of national name that Karzai does. So he’s in an interesting bind, where he’s very unpopular, but at the same time isn’t really opposed by any significance either.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Anand Gopal, the last question I want to ask you is about—what are the different groups that sort of generally are thought to make up the Taliban? In this country, when we talk about forces fighting the US and NATO occupation in Afghanistan, they’re all generally called the Taliban. Can you give us a sense of who are the different insurgent groups in this country?

ANAND GOPAL: Yeah, the Taliban are sort of a catchall phrase for three or four different groups. The one is the group that’s led by Mullah Omar. These are the people that were in power back before 2001, sort of the old guard Taliban, and they make up the core of the insurgency. But they’re also flanked by various other groups. And one group is called the Haqqani network. This is run by a warlord by the name of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who’s based in Pakistan. He was a former American ally, who’s since—he’s then turned his guns on the Americans. And he’s closely aligned with al-Qaeda and has been behind a lot of the suicide attacks in Kabul and other places. There’s also another insurgent group led by a warlord by the name of Hekmatyar. He’s also somebody who was a US ally back in the ’80s during the Soviet war and has since turned against the Americans.

And these three groups are not the same, and they sort of have differing visions. Hekmatyar is—I’m sorry, Haqqani is more closely aligned to al-Qaeda, and they have more of a vision of global jihad, whereas the Mullah Omar’s Taliban usually restrict their fight and their ideology to within the borders of Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: And would you say they have been strengthened by the US occupation, by the US troops? Do you think their power would shift if the US troops were out?

ANAND GOPAL: Well, certainly, most of these groups—or none of these groups had any power at all six or seven years ago, and they’ve been able to—they’ve been able to take advantage of the widespread disillusionment and [inaudible] with the US forces and with the Afghan government. And you have to remember, the US has come in and made a series of promises to the Afghans, and most of those promises, such as reconstruction and jobs, development, haven’t been met. And so, the Taliban and these other groups haven’t made that many promises, but they’ve been able to point out to the Afghans, say, “Look, these Americans have come here and have not delivered, so you should put your allegiance to us.” So—and they have certainly been able to capitalize on this.

AMY GOODMAN: Anand Gopal, thank you very much for being us, Afghanistan correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, speaking to us from Kabul. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’ll continue our discussion on Afghanistan, past, present and future, in a minute.

[break]

Much more here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/23/o ... fghanistan

[JackRiddler]

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http://counterpunch.org/patrick02262009.html

February 26, 2009
We'll Fix Those Uppity Talibs Just Like We Did the Iraqi Shi'a

Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

By PATRICK COCKBURN

President Obama is likely to announce in the coming days that he will withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq by August 2010. Many of these soldiers will end up in Afghanistan where the Taliban is getting stronger and the US-backed government weaker by the day. How much has the US learnt from its debacle in Iraq?

One lesson not learnt in Washington is that it is a bad idea to become involved in a war in any so-called "failed state". This patronizing term suggests that if a state has failed, foreign intervention is justified and will face limited resistance. But the greatest US foreign policy disasters over the last generation have all been in places where organised government had largely collapsed.

There was Lebanon in 1983, when 242 US marines were blown up in Beirut, Somalia 10 years later, and Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The lesson, which applies to nowhere more than Afghanistan, is that societies with weak state structures devise lethally effective ways of defending themselves.

I remember an Iraqi neurosurgeon, who had just successfully defended his hospital in Baghdad against looters with a Kalashnikov in 2003, saying to me: "The Americans should remember that even Saddam Hussein had difficulty ruling this country." Iraq was never like an east European autocracy. Even under Saddam every Iraqi owned a gun. Iraqis would not fight for Saddam's regime, but they would fight for their own ethnic or sectarian community or their country. An error made by the US was to imagine that just because Shia and Sunni Arabs hated each other that Iraqi nationalism was not a potent force.

This conviction that a victory has already been won is leading American commentators to assume blandly that the US can leave behind 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq without any Iraqi objection. This would also be contrary to the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated with enormous difficulty and after prolonged wrangling last year.

The greatest source of error for the Americans in Iraq was not a policy mistake but an abiding belief that they alone made the political weather. Anything good or bad which happened was the result of American action. Thus if the Sunni insurgency against American forces started to come to an end in the second half of 2007 it must be because of the "surge", as the 30,000 extra US troops and more aggressive tactics on the ground were known. The real reason for the fall in violence had more to do with the Shia victory over the Sunni in an extraordinarily savage civil war, a reaction against Al-Qa'ida, and the ceasefire called by the Mehdi Army to which belonged most of the Shia death squads.

If the US intervention in Iraq proved anything it was that the Americans never had the strength to shape the political and military environment to their own liking. Yet well-reviewed books on Iraq still appear in which Iraqis have a walk-on role and when somebody pushes a button in Washington something happens in Baghdad. These misconceptions are important because the mythology about the supposed success of the "surge" is being promoted as a recipe for victory in Afghanistan.

This would not be the first time that false analogies between Iraq and Afghanistan have misled Washington. I was in Afghanistan during the war against the Taliban at the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002 and one of the most striking features of the conflict was the lack of fighting. The warlords and their men, who had previously rallied to the Taliban, simply went home because they did not want to be bombed by US aircrafts and they were heavily bribed to do so. There was very little combat. Yet when I went to Washington to work in a think-tank for a few months later that year the Afghan war was being cited by the Bush administration as proof of America's military omnipotence.

It is difficult to believe that the Obama administration is going to make as many crass errors as its predecessor. So amazed were the Iranians to see President Bush destroy their two most detested enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 that some theologians held that such stupidity must be divinely inspired and heralded the return of the Twelfth Imam and the Shia millennium.

The reinforced US military presence in Afghanistan risks provoking a backlash in which religion combines with nationalism to oppose foreign intervention. It is this that has been the real strength of movements like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Mehdi Army in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan which the US wants to eradicate.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006. His new book 'Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq' is published by Scribner.

http://counterpunch.org/sands02252009.html

February 25, 2009
"For This I Blame America"
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

By CHRIS SANDS

As the summer of 2005 began its slow fade into autumn, a piece of newspaper wrapped around a kebab said Osama bin Laden had moved to Iraq. It seemed everyone had forgotten there was a war on here. American soldiers used those remaining days of sunshine to buy carpets in Kabul’s Chicken Street bazaar, not caring when they were charged over the odds. Elsewhere, mercenaries downed cheap Russian vodka in phoney restaurants before wandering up a few stairs to sleep with Chinese prostitutes whose pimps bribed local government officials. The brothels were often in the same neighborhoods as the mansions that militia commanders were building themselves with CIA funds and drug money.

Back then, this beautiful city was the ideal place for a bit of post-conflict profiteering. Hastily-created NGOs continued to flood in, eager for a slice of the action. So did journalists determined to write about democracy, the suave English-speaking president and the local golf course. It was the calm before the storm. Victory had been declared and, while Afghans were starting to feel the weight of its baggage, the rest of the world was still having fun at their expense.

But the decadence and ignorance were never going to be allowed to last for long, and the Taliban knew their time was coming again. The warning signs were around for anyone who cared to look.

I’d been in Afghanistan less than a week when aid groups revealed that deteriorating security had put their projects under threat. They feared they had become targets for the insurgency. A little while afterwards, the governor of Maidan Wardak, a province bordering Kabul, told me all was okay there. Then the PR finished and he cut loose. A new generation of militants had shown its face, he said. They were young men disillusioned with the occupation and some were trained in Pakistan. Trouble was also evident near the eastern city of Jalalabad, where a villager complained that his cousin had vanished since being arrested by the Americans roughly three years earlier. We talked in a dirt yard full of kids and I think they were the only ones who expected his return.

The south, though, was where the pieces of the jigsaw began to fit together. Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and in late 2005 the movement was again drawing strength from its birthplace. There, for the first time, I caught sight of a reality our politicians had made us believe did not exist.

A man working at the football stadium reminisced fondly about the old days when executions happened on the pitch. If capital punishment was still common, he said, the new government wouldn’t be so crooked. This was something I would hear repeatedly, until eventually it was said by Afghans across the country. The police were the worst offenders, looking for bribes at every opportunity to supplement their low wages. Another Kandahari had joined the Taliban as a teenager in the 1990s. “At that time we were very happy,” he said. “It was like we were very poor and had suddenly found a lot of money.” Talibs are good people and they can never be beaten, he continued. Now they have no choice but to fight because otherwise the Americans will send them to Guantanamo Bay. Most importantly for the future, he revealed that a number of local religious clerics had just declared a jihad.

Insurgent attacks and violent crime were already a problem in Kandahar by then. It was like “living under a knife” said a 53-year-old in the city. Yet even as civilians died, the Taliban were rarely the subject of people’s fury. Directly or indirectly, they blamed the government and its allies.

Taliban on the Rise

In the spring of 2006 Kabul’s imams decided to speak out against all this and more. Officials were lining their own pockets and alcohol was easily available, they said. They were also angry at the house raids conducted by foreign soldiers in rural areas and accused them of molesting women during the searches. Most said the time for jihad was approaching and one announced that armed resistance was now the answer.

So when rioters tore through the capital on May 29, it was no big surprise. The spark for that particular day of unrest was a fatal traffic accident involving US troops, but the explosion had been primed long before. Protesters shouted “Death to America” and by the end of the anarchy at least 17 people had lost their lives. The situation was now ripe for the Taliban to harness national discontent and kick-start a major revolt, and this is exactly what they did.

When British troops had first arrived in Helmand that February, they had come ostensibly to allow reconstruction. The then defense minister John Reid said he would be “perfectly happy” if they did not have to fire a single shot. Instead, they soon found themselves bogged down in some of their worst fighting since the Second World War, at times being drawn into hand-to-hand combat. Over 100 have died in the ensuing years.

The Taliban’s remit also grew stronger in areas close to Kabul and two hours from the capital people were warning that the government might collapse. I couldn’t find anyone in Ghazni who admitted to taking the insurgents’ side: they usually said poverty and a lack of reconstruction were causing people to rebel. Looking at the broken roads and crumbling homes, it wasn’t hard to understand what they meant.

Not long before, police in one of the province’s districts had tried to stop the Taliban’s favorite mode of transport by banning the use of motorbikes. The militants responded by imposing travel restrictions on the whole of that area’s population. At night they would go to mosques and tell worshippers not to drive to the provincial capital. “They say ‘if you don’t cooperate with us we will kill you’,” was how one man described their tactics. “What would be the natural human response to that? Of course you will cooperate.”

An emerging pattern

A pattern was emerging. The more the Taliban turned to violence, the more they came to be regarded as an omnipresent force that could not be stopped. The bloodshed made people long for the stability of the old regime, if not its repressive laws. Villagers across the south and east had gained almost nothing from the US-led invasion and, in fact, many had lost the little they previously had: good security. Among people in Logar, another of those sad provinces bordering Kabul, the anger was palpable. “Our biggest problem is with the foreigners – we just hate them. Our families, our children, our women – everyone hates them,” said an elder. “Let’s pretend I’m a young man,” said someone else. “I have graduated from school but I can’t go to university and there is no factory to work in. So how can I feed myself? I can just join the insurgents – it’s easy.”

The Taliban first rose up in 1994 when Afghanistan was controlled by warlords still high from the CIA support they had been receiving a few years earlier. A similar thing was happening again and the movement’s original members were quick to see that.

Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil lost his father during the Soviet occupation and joined the Taliban, he said, “to give the country freedom”. He went on to become Mullah Omar’s spokesman and later his foreign minister. We talked on a freezing January morning in 2007 when Mutawakil was being kept under watch in Kabul. He knew his government had made mistakes, particularly in letting jihadis from across the world train and fight here. But he was adamant that the international community’s decision to isolate the regime had only made it more extreme. “The interesting thing from that time, and lots of people are remembering this now, is the tight security,” he said.

Kandahar was frightening that spring of 2007. The police were accused of carrying out kidnappings and robberies, and the scars of suicide bombings pockmarked the streets. There was a lot of anger, despair and black humor around. Residents expressed a grudging admiration for the old ways of the Taliban simply because the alternatives had come to appear so dire. To them, democracy meant virtual anarchy and, in the villages, a brutal occupation. “If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us,” said a father-of-two. He had fled Kandahar during the Taliban government because he was against its restrictions on education. “But I was never worried about my family,” he added. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried.”
Comments like this came thick and fast, mixed in with jokes. Some of the men insulted the president, Hamid Karzai, and his wife, laughing and swearing as they did so. A woman I met was sure the city had been better under the Taliban. “If we did not have a full stomach we could at least get some food and go to sleep,” she said.

Slipping into Chaos

On and on it went, a litany of complaints and stories that portrayed a nation slipping deep into chaos. A religious leader from the district of Panjwayi described how 18 of his relatives had been killed in an air strike. Then three Talibs from Helmand defended the insurgency as being a natural reaction to events. Basically, they felt they had nothing to lose.

Reports of civilians getting bombed from above came regular as clockwork that spring and summer. First some villagers or local officials would say innocent people were dead and the Nato or US-led coalition would deny it. Then all parties would agree civilian blood had been spilt, but argue over casualty figures. Hamid Karzai kept demanding that the carnage stop, but it never did.

In Kabul, a senator from Helmand said it was killing the entire country. He was among members of parliament’s upper chamber who had called for a ceasefire and negotiations with insurgent groups. They had also said a date should be set for the withdrawal of foreign forces. By then the parliament, supposedly the shining light of a new democracy, was actually a symbol of the Taliban’s resurgence. Police in riot gear stood watch and the building was falling to pieces, with paint flaking away and the walls starting to crack. Not only was there sympathy for the militants inside, there were also men whose viciousness had caused the movement to form in the first place. Most Afghans wanted the warlords brought to justice, but instead the international community had let them stand for election, and here they were showing off their power yet again.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef knew the impact that was having. He used to serve as the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan and, after initially being sent to Guantanamo, he was another of the old guard now living under constant surveillance in Kabul. He refused to talk about his stint in US custody, but he was quick to highlight that men with blood on their hands were now the West’s great hope. “At the time of the Taliban if someone killed another person it was possible to capture him, send him to court, punish him and execute him. Today, if someone goes to a village and kills 100 people, tomorrow he is given more privileges by the government,” he told me. “The Americans and the world community brought the warlords to power. They are supporting them for their benefit against the Taliban, but they know these people are not liked.”

By summer 2007 the horror could not be ignored, even in Kabul. Suicide bombings were the main weapon of choice and they struck fear into Afghans like nothing else, having been unheard of during the Soviet occupation.

For all their rhetoric about fighting for freedom, justice and the Almighty, it was also obvious that some in the Taliban were willing to murder anyone to achieve their aim.

This was clear in the pieces of charred flesh and hair that lay scattered in the dust after a bus was blown up near a police headquarters in the city on June 17. And it was evident amidst the smell of shit that filled Pul-e-Charkhi jail, where a prisoner was quick to declare his intentions. “I tell you, when I get out of here the first thing I will do is kill journalists and infidels,” he said. “I will kill journalists because they are all spies.”

‘For this I blame America’

As 2007 drew to an end, men who hated the Taliban were starting to resemble them. A former Northern Alliance commander from the province of Badakhshan summed it up nicely: “Now when any foreigner is killed every Afghan says ‘praise be to God’,” he told me. We were chatting at his home in an area of Kabul where the poor had been forced out so warlords and foreign contractors could move in. He owned a small house and, in front of that, a half-built mansion that he could not afford to finish off. Possibly, the only optimists left were the American ambassador and the locals who had the money to take long holidays in Dubai.

Afghanistan’s Sikh and Hindu community had been about 50,000 strong before 1992. Now it was down to 5,000. The exodus had been instigated by the Mujahideen, not the Taliban. With the same old faces back in power again, no one was happy. “The Taliban told us we had to do all our religious ceremonies in private, but they did not stop us from doing them. It was a government that was not recognised by the world, but it was better than now,” said a Sikh.

Even the section of society that should have benefited most from the US-led invasion was full of sorrow. Female MPs told me they felt ashamed for not being able to help their constituents. One said she was sure the time was approaching when she would be a prisoner in her own home again. “For all this I blame America. When the Russians were here the people picked up guns to fight them. Now people are picking up guns to fight the Americans,” she said. “Soon my daughter will finish school and then she wants to start private education,” said another. “But I cannot let her because I cannot give her a bodyguard.”

‘Everything is screwed up’

In January 2008 the streets were a bleak monochrome and the graveyards that dominate Kabul’s landscape gave me a glimpse of the future. I interviewed a judge at the Supreme Court who admitted what everyone already knew: certain people here are above the law. He was too scared to name names, but he described the control warlords have over his colleagues as “totally ordinary”. Barely had he spoken and the Taliban attacked a luxury hotel in the city. Foreigners were shocked. Afghans just shrugged.

Kandahar was so bad I felt sick before returning there in early spring. Luckily, a friend of mine reassured me that, as a Pashtun, he would offer unconditional protection. “Mullah Omar destroyed Afghanistan because of Osama bin Laden, but he didn’t give him up,” he said. A day later a Taliban commander from Helmand described how the resistance had struggled to find support in the early years. But after innocent people had been detained or killed the jihad had burst into life. Now even the Afghan army secretly gave them bullets and treated their wounded.

The story of the insurgency, though, no longer needed a great deal of travelling. In April I took the short drive from Kabul city to Paghman and all I found where the offices of Zafar Radio used to be was a pile of burnt trash. Masked men had torched the premises for being “un-Islamic”.

In the summer, it got worse. I met an Afghan American who said that “everything is screwed up”. Then on July 7, a car bomber attacked the Indian embassy. The huge explosion left corpses scattered around and the wounded dazed and bloodied. By the next morning people were venting their anger at the government, saying it was unable to provide security. When Barack Obama arrived during his presidential campaign, optimism was hard to find. In an area of the capital where Hamid Karzai had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the spring, a qualified doctor sold samosas from a roadside stall because it was the only job he could get. “The politics will not change,” he said.
2008 was the grimmest year since the invasion. On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, the annual death toll for US troops here had reached new heights: the 113 killed up to September were two more than for the whole of 2007.

Civilians are paying a heavier price. Caught between a rapidly developing insurgency and an occupation force over-reliant on air strikes, they are dropping like flies: according to the UN, 1,445 were killed from January to August 2008 alone.

The Taliban’s strength is growing on Kabul’s doorstep, in the provinces of Maidan Wardak and Logar. The main highway south is a turkey shoot that no one sensible travels along. In the east of the country, the rebels have taken new ground as they move freely across the border. In the north, warlords are reasserting their dominance – raping and beheading at will. The violence affects us all. Kabul is a claustrophobic, paranoid place. Rockets occasionally land in the streets, ugly concrete barriers have appeared and Afghans kidnap each other for ransom. Last autumn, on a bright October morning, a British aid worker was murdered in a part of the city regarded as safe.

More foreign troops are due to be sent. But they risk the kind of backlash experienced by the Soviets, and the long-term aim is unclear. After all these years, there are no firm ideas about the way forward. For now the bitter cold has brought the usual lull. But how much more violence will come this spring?

Chris Sands is a British freelance journalist, and frequent contributor to CounterPunch, who has been working independently in Afghanistan since August 2005. This article appears in the February edition of this excellent monthly, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

[American Dream]

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com ... ecial.html

As Political Crisis Deepens, U.S. Special Forces Secretly Train Pakistani Commandos


Wednesday's ruling by Pakistan's Musharraf-installed Supreme Court to bar former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother Shabaz, the chief minister of Punjab--the country's most populous and powerful province--from elected office, has widened that nation's growing political chasm.

The faux alliance between the two main parties of the capitalist grift, President Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), forged in the wake of the reemergence of Pakistan's pro-democracy movement in 2007, has definitively broken down, hurtling the country further along the bumpy road of political crisis.

Sharif, every bit as corrupt and venal as Zardari, for tactical reasons hitched the PML-N's political wagon to the mass movement launched by lawyers' groups, democracy activists and the labor movement to restore Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry to office.

The Sharif family, rich Punjabi industrialists, came to prominence during General Zia ul-Haq's military dictatorship during the 1980s. Sharif, a right-winger with close ties to the Saudi monarchy, spent a comfortable exile in Riyadh after being deposed by Musharraf. Indeed "democracy champion," the late Benazir Bhutto, had initially welcomed Musharraf's 1999 coup.

As socialist critic and historian Tariq Ali points out in The Duel, "neither Bhutto's daughter, Benazir, nor Zia's protégé, Nawaz Sharif, showed any ability to govern the country in interests other than their own. Clientilism, patronage, and corruption on a gigantic scale were the hallmarks of their weak regimes."

Dismissed by Musharraf when the General-President imposed emergency rule on November 3, 2007, Choudhry had challenged the Army, Police and intelligence agencies' practice of disappearing, torturing and murdering dissenting citizens. In the wake of the Court's removal and a clamp-down on independent media (described by analysts as a "coup within a coup"), the democratic secular movement launched by outraged lawyers and broad sections of the citizenry offered a potential opening for progressive political change in Pakistan.

Seeking to deflect popular opposition against Musharraf, the PPP and PML-N forged an unprincipled alliance based on their common desire to abort the popular movement against the dictatorship along "traditional," i.e., clientilist lines that would leave privileges in tact, while divvying up the spoils between the two parties; real power in other words, would remain in the hands of the comprador elites.

Sharif, as the World Socialist Website points out, "was viewed warily by Washington" because of his "intense personal hostility to Musharraf--who, it needs be remembered, had originally wanted to execute shim--and because of his connections to the Islamic fundamentalist right (sections of which are sympathetic to the Taliban.)"

The motivation for Zardari's judicial coup against the PML-N bigwigs, the brothers Sharif, was intended to preserve the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), a corrupt deal struck by Bhutto and Musharraf--under the watchful eyes of Bush administration "fixers"--whereby Musharraf would be "reelected" President in return for absolving the gross criminality and corruption of Bhutto and other PPP leaders. Sharif had been cut out of the deal, a point of considerable contention between the aggrieved parties.

Choudhry, under the "fix" worked out between Zardari and Sharif, would be restored to office, but Zardari, ever-fearful of provoking the all-powerful General Headquarters (GHG) of the Army which opposed judicial scrutiny of their actions under Musharraf, including the sordid NRO, reneged. This set the stage for the current confrontation.

But in a country viewed as a strategic ally of the United States, democracy, especially when it escapes "management" by elites favored by America, is always an iffy proposition. While the Obama administration has largely remained silent, it is well-known that the new regime in Washington, at least for the time being, has hitched its wagon to the Zardari government. Indeed, Army Chief of Staff General Asfaq Parvez Kayani, was in Washington this week for "comprehensive multilateral talks." The General told U.S. Congress members that the Army would not intervene in political affairs.

Kayani, a former chief of the shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI), vowed that GHQ "would not intervene even if the political situation deteriorated further," according to Dawn. The Karachi-based newspaper also reported that "on Thursday, General Kayani was inducted into the US military's international Hall of Fame in a small yet refined ceremony at Fort Leavenworth."

As a result of the Court's action Wednesday, massive protests have broken out in cities across the country. The main highway between the federal capital of Islamabad and its twin city, Rawalpindi, the site of Army Headquarters, were cut by thousands of protesters who burned tires--and police vehicles. The News reports,

Angry demonstrators virtually paralysed the federal capital to register their protest against the disqualification of the Sharif brothers. ...

At least 10 vehicles, including the cars of top officers of the district administration and police were burnt down on the Islamabad Highway. The official cars of deputy commissioner, senior superintendent of police (SSP) Islamabad, additional deputy commissioner general (ADCG) and additional deputy commissioner (ADC) West as well as jeeps of DSP (Shahzad Town) and SHO were torched. Banks, petrol pumps, government and private property and vehicles were damaged. (Muhammad Anis and Shakeel Anjum, "Protesters bring life to a halt," The News, February 27, 2009)

Since Zardari's ascension to the presidency in 2008, imperialism, having identified Pakistan as the "central front" in the "war on terror" has expanded military operations across the board. Since September, attacks by CIA Predator and Reaper drones have increased dramatically, indiscriminately raining high-tech death upon jihadi militants and ordinary citizens alike, sparking deep outrage and broad anti-American sentiments among ever-widening sections of the population.

And with the lawyers' and democracy movement planning a "long march" scheduled to kick-off March 12 in Lahore, culminating in what organizers hope will be a gigantic sit-in in the capital, there are signs that the Army and shadowy intelligence agencies with American "guidance," are growing restive and may soon come to believe they have "no choice" but to step in and once more, impose a martial law regime in order to "save" Pakistan--from its citizens.

In American parlance, this is referred to as "restoring order" and preventing the discredited and despised jihadi Frankenstein from "seizing power," an absurdist fantasy considering the jihadists' aversion to "un-Islamic" practices such as democracy and human rights. Indeed, the leader of the outlawed jihadi group Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, TNSM) Maulana Sufi Mohammed, told Daily Times, "I do not believe in democracy. ... That is impossible. Sharia and democracy clash with each other and one cannot bring in Islamic laws through a democratic set-up."

One cannot however, take American expressions of apprehension lightly. As The Atlantic Council, representing the views of the Obama administration and the Pentagon alike, claim in a new report widely trumpeted by the U.S. corporate media,

First, this report sounds the alarm that we are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure. The urgency of action has been brought home by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in late November that set Pakistan and India on a dangerous collision course. Simply put, time is running out for stabilizing Pakistan's economy and security. As Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari told the Atlantic Council during our December 2008 trip to Islamabad, "we--[the United States, Pakistan, NATO and the world at large]--are losing the battle" to keep Pakistan stable, at peace and prosperous.

Unlike Afghanistan--where the international community is losing the struggle because of its failure to reform the civilian sector--Pakistan has the manpower and infrastructure to win its battles. But Pakistan can only do so if it gets the necessary support urgently. And it is self-evident that a secure, stable, and prospering Pakistan is in the best interests of the international community.

We--meaning Pakistan and its friends--can and must win collectively. The starting point must be a full and objective understanding of today's Pakistan and the fact that it is on a rapid trajectory toward becoming a failing or failed state. That trajectory must be reversed now.

Second, this report provides a conceptual framework, strategy, and specific actions that are needed to begin the long process of bringing peace, prosperity, and stability to Pakistan and to the region. The issue is not Pakistan alone or Pakistan and Afghanistan. The issue is broader and is inextricably linked with India, the Gulf, and Pakistan's other close neighbors. As a senior Pakistani military officer told us: "If Pakistan fails, the world fails." (The Atlantic Council, URGENT. Needed: A Comprehensive U.S. Policy Towards Pakistan, Honorary Co-Chairs: Senator Chuck Hagel, Senator John Kerry, February 2009, emphases in original)

What "conceptual framework" and "specific actions" do these "friends" of Pakistan propose? Let's take a look.

U.S. Special Forces and the CIA "Lend a Helping Hand"

In a further sign that U.S. military intervention is increasing, The New York Times revealed that "More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's lawless tribal areas, American military officials said."

According to the Times, the Americans "are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics."

The secret task force, jointly run by United States Central Command (CENTCOM) and United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), began operating last summer "with the support of Pakistan's government and military." Allegedly, the task force is part of an administration effort to "root out" the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets also known as al-Qaeda, and Taliban units operating on both sides of the "Afpak" border.

That the New York Times has published information that can only be characterized as a controlled leak by the Pentagon, indicates that Washington is delivering a pointed message to the Zardari government: "Play ball, or else!"

The growing U.S. military presence, including operations by Special Forces and CIA paramilitary units in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and elsewhere, demonstrate the precarious nature--and hold on power--of Pakistan's civilian government vis-à-vis their American "allies" and the Pakistani Army itself. In this context, the dispute between Zardari and Sharif must be viewed as Washington's grave concern that the restoration of Chief Justice Choudhry may threaten the disreputable NRO, U.S. military operations and further discredit the Army were its high crimes against the Pakistani people revealed to the public at large.

The latest revelations follow multiple press reports that the CIA is flying Predator and Reaper drones from bases inside Pakistan, used to attack Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the NWFP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). While the Zardari administration has denied that the CIA operates from its territory, the latest Times' report should be viewed as a gesture by Washington to embarrass--and further pressurize--Zardari into accepting America's terms for waging the so-called "war on terror." The Times avers:

In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of C.I.A. operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said. (Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez, "U.S. Unit Secretly Lends Ally Support," The New York Times, February 23, 2009)

Throughout its sixty year history as a nation, the Pakistani Army and its intelligence services have been strategic assets of the United States. During the Cold War, Pakistan was a reliable anti-communist bulwark against the Soviet Union and, just as importantly, against the domestic left which a succession of military regimes--in cahoots with far-right Islamist parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI)--hunted down and smashed. In this, the Pentagon and Pakistan's ruling elites are fully in sync.

Citing unnamed "senior American military officials," the Times reports their "frustration" at having been "unable to persuade the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to embrace serious counterinsurgency training for the army itself."

However, in a move that will further undermine Pakistan's already tenuous civilian control over its military and intelligence apparatus, the Times reveals that a "newly-minted" 400-man Pakistani paramilitary commando unit vetted, trained and armed by U.S. Special Forces and CIA paramilitary "specialists," is now operating in NWFP and FATA.

"As part of the Frontier Corps," which falls under a separate chain of command from that of the Army, after undergoing seven months of "intensive training" from American Special Forces, the new unit is now primed for action. According to the Times, the commandos have "used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders."

As I reported in early February, operations such as those described above fall under the rubric of Pentagon Foreign Internal Defense (FID). Citing a USSOCOM manual, Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Operations, published by Wikileaks, we discover the following:

FID is the role the U.S. military plays in the overall effort of the USG to help a nation free or protect its society from an existing or potential threat. U.S. FID operations work on the principle that it is the inherent responsibility of the threatened government to use its leadership and organizational and materiel resources to take the political, economic, and social actions necessary to defeat subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, and terrorism. The U.S. military can provide resources such as material, advisors, and trainers to support these FID operations. In instances where it is in the security interest of the United States, and at the request of the HN [Host Nation], more direct forms of U.S. military support may be provided, to include combat forces. The following principles apply to FID:

* All U.S. agencies involved in FID must coordinate with one another (Figure 2-1, page 2-2) to ensure that they are working toward a common objective and deriving optimum benefit from the limited resources applied to the effort.

* The U.S. military seeks to enhance the HN military and paramilitary forces' overall capability to perform their IDAD [Internal Defense and Development] mission. An evaluation of the request and the demonstrated resolve of the HN government will determine the specific form and substance of U.S. assistance, as directed by the President.

* Specially trained, selected, and jointly staffed U.S. military survey teams, including intelligence personnel, may be made available. U.S. military units used in FID roles should be tailored to meet the conditions within the HN.

* U.S. military support to FID should focus on assisting HNs in anticipating, precluding, and countering threats or potential threats. (Headquarters, Department of the Army, Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Operations, FM 3-05.202, September 2007, p. 2-1, emphasis added)

And when the "demonstrated resolve" of the "Host Nation" hesitates when it comes to "assisting" the U.S. implementation of it's geopolitical agenda in "India, the Gulf, and Pakistan's other close neighbors," as The Atlantic Council avers? Then serious problems inevitably follow. This is further underscored by the Times, who again citing anonymous Pentagon officials, wring their hands over "tensions between the sides."

Those tensions, resulting from a lack of democratic institutions and a severe economic crisis that threatens to bring the entire house of cards crashing down, is the root cause of Pakistan's approaching zero hour.

Economic Crisis and Destabilization: Made in the USA

Across the planet, the global capitalist crisis is fueling social instability as broad masses of the world's population are plunged into poverty and despair. These tensions are compounded in Pakistan by the economic slow down, fueled in large measure by the militarization of society, the underdevelopment of social resources, epidemic levels of corruption and pressure by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In November, the Zardari government accepted the IMF's onerous terms in order to secure a $7.5 billion loan. While most bourgeois government's in the West have slashed interest rates, cut taxes on working people, small- and medium sized enterprises, expanded the state sector and funded spending on critical infrastructure in order to cushion the ravages of unemployment, Pakistan has done the opposite.

The effects have been as predictable as they are disastrous for Pakistani workers and farmers bled white by a corrupt and venal comprador elite. Demanding that the Central Bank control its deficits, inflation is nearly 20% per annum, and the country's economic output has slowed to a crawl. According to USA Today, "Pakistan's economy is slowing dramatically--from growth of 6% or more in recent years to just 0.6% in 2008 and a projected 2.4% in 2009, according to HSBC bank."

The economic "shock therapy" imposed by Washington is taking its toll. As I reported February 22, the Cabinet Committee on Privatization approved the sell-off of some 21 state-owned enterprises including "four power companies and other state-owned entities including SME Bank, National Power Construction Company, Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Post," according to The Nation.

The Lahore-based newspaper reported February 26, that the IMF has approved "a second tranche of 800 million dollars of its 7.6-billon-dollar programme to save Pakistan from defaulting on external payments, a senior official said on Wednesday."

Note the IMF's "second tranche" is not intended to ameliorate the horrendous economic straits faced by the majority of Pakistan's citizens but as a guarantee that the country won't default on external payments owed to financial grifters in Western banking and financial sectors!

With widespread power blackouts crippling industry and drastically curtailing the income of impoverished workers and farmers, unemployment and soaring prices have driven people over the edge; not that it matters to the IMF. According to The Nation,

The organisation said the country was on track to comply with its economic programme.

In a statement following a 12-day staff mission to review a $7.6 billion stand-by lending programme, the IMF said it was "impressed" by Pakistan's resolve to sustain prudent policies, strengthen the social safety net and pursue reform. ...

The IMF said Pakistan's current monetary policy stance was "appropriate and will continue to promote domestic and external stability". ("Fund okays $800m second tranche," The Nation, February 26, 2009)

With real wages falling precipitously due to inflation and spiraling unemployment, IMF policies and endemic corruption by ruling class elites has ceded the social and political ground to "faith-based" fundamentalists. Operating on the "Saudi model," rightist "charities" do provide social services to the poor. That health care and educational opportunities are largely absent due to state largesse towards "Military, Inc.," a decades-long vacuum has provided entrée to religious obscurantists and sectarians of all stripes who gladly fill the void.

In Pakistan Marx's apt phrase, "religion is the opium of the people," is rich with unintended irony. One Pakistani analyst told USA Today that despite the economic downturn, "militant groups draw donations from sympathizers across the country and the oil-rich Middle East." And when all else fails, criminal enterprises fill the breech. "Their economy doesn't go down--their narcotics, their smuggling, their kidnappings." Indeed!

Here, as elsewhere, speaking of organized crime and organized religion, the jihadi outfits bear a striking resemblance to their "adversaries" in Islamabad--and Washington. As Tariq Ali points out, "Throughout the nineties, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had scolded civilian governments for failing to keep their restructuring promises. Musharraf's regime, by contrast, won admiring praise from 1999 onward for sticking to IMF guidelines 'despite the hardship imposed on the public by austerity measures'."

One might reasonable ask, hardship for whom? Certainly not the clique formerly surrounding Musharraf and now, Zardari or the "opposition" Sharif brothers. And with nearly 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line, IMF structured debt repayment (theft) schemes will only further exacerbate and compound the problem. Ali avers,

A recycling of the country and its modernization is perfectly possible, but it requires large-scale structural reforms. To isolate Pakistan's problems to religious extremism and dual power in Waziristan or the possession of nuclear weapons is to miss the point, to become marooned in a landscape behind enemy lines. These issues ... are not unimportant, but the problems relating to them are a direct result of doing Washington's bidding in previous decades. The imbalance is glaring. In 2001, when U.S. interest in the country resumed, debt and defense amounted to two-thirds of public spending--257 billion rupees ($4.2 billion) and 149.6 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) respectively, compared to total tax revenues of 414.2 billion rupees ($6.9 billion). In a country with one of the worst public education systems in Asia--70 percent of women and 41 percent of men are officially classified as illiterate--and with health care virtually nonexistent for over half the population, a mere 105.1 billion rupees ($1.75 billion) was left for overall development. (The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, New York: Scribner, 2008, pp. 255-256)

In this context, The Atlantic Council's call for "a secure, stable, and prospering Pakistan" is a cruel joke designed to lull the American people into accepting imperialism's new geopolitical "mission" in South Asia. But as in Afghanistan and Iraq, such corporatist fantasies will prove short-lived; the consequences however, will be as disastrous as they are long-lasting.

[JackRiddler]

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Setting up for a perfect storm...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... efer=india

Karzai Orders Afghanistan’s Presidential Vote Held by April 21


By James Rupert

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai put himself at odds with his nation’s election commission by ordering presidential elections held by April 21 instead of the Aug. 20 date set by the voting authority.

A decree yesterday from Karzai, 51, would advance the vote by at least four months from the August date fixed by the Independent Election Commission in January. While the Afghan constitution calls for a date that would fall in March or April, the election panel declared that “most parts of Afghanistan are inaccessible due to harsh weather” in those months and that “fairness and transparency would be out of the question.”

Karzai’s decree ordered elections “according to the constitution,” which says the vote should be held 30 to 60 days before his term ends on May 21, presidential spokesman Siamak Herawi said by telephone from Kabul.

Karzai, who has faced criticism from the U.S. over alleged corruption in his government in the final months of his five- year term, will have a domestic political battle over the date, said Shukriya Barakzai, a member of parliament. Karzai’s rivals “say he is trying to move the date earlier to catch them unprepared,” she said by telephone from Kabul.

‘Widespread Corruption’

“Karzai will have to negotiate a solution with the election commission and the parliament,” said Barakzai. While the commission holds the legal authority to set the election date, its position is weakened “because it does violate the letter of the constitution,” said Barakzai.

Barakzai, an independent member of parliament, is best known as a women’s rights activist from Kabul, who has at times backed or opposed different policies of Karzai. She was a member of the committee that drafted the Afghan constitution in 2003.

President Barack Obama in February ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to battle the Taliban and allied Islamic militant groups. As Obama’s administration prepares an overhaul of U.S. policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, it has increased criticism of Karzai’s government, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in January is “plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption.”

Obama said success in Afghanistan is contingent on diplomacy and development as well as military efforts in an interview with Armed Forces TV.

“If we don’t have an Afghan government that can deliver for its people then this isn’t going to work,” Obama said in a Feb. 27 interview. “My goal is to have a comprehensive strategy of not just force, but also diplomacy and development that is all moving in concert to get the kind of outcome we want.”

Several political leaders seen as possible rival candidates to Karzai -- including provincial governor and former warlord Gul Agha Sherzai and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani -- visited Washington last month and met U.S. officials.

“We support the decision of the Independent Election Commission to hold the first round of elections in August,” the U.S. State Department said yesterday in an e-mailed statement after Karzai’s decree was announced. “The timing of elections must be resolved in a way that leads to credible, secure elections accepted by the voters,” it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: February 28, 2009 19:11 EST

[American Dream]

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com ... south.html

Taliban Truce and the Coming Storm in South Asia

With growing instability and political turmoil inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, due in no small measure to American efforts on both sides of the "Afpak" divide to "stabilize" the region for multinational energy companies, this spring will see the rise of combat operations inside both countries.

Pakistan is already feeling the heat generated by the imperialist Dracula and the jihadi Frankenstein.

Despite promises that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) would lay down their arms once the Army ceased operations in Swat Valley, the state's capitulatory compact has instead provided militants with an excuse to exact vengeance on their opponents whilst establishing new training camps for pressed-ganged "recruits."

Call it Pakistan's "Year Zero" when "everything changed." Not that the Americans, the state or the corporate grifters who preside over IMF-dictated privatization schemes and debt payments to foreign banks give a hoot.

The New York Times reported March 6, that just days after the truce was signed "a member of a prominent anti-Taliban family returned to his mountain village, having received assurances from the government that it was safe. He was promptly kidnapped by the Taliban, tortured and murdered."

Pir Samiullah, a moderate religious leader who took up arms against the Taliban--it should be noted against "advice" by the Army--organized a local militia that fought the TTP and booted the miscreants from their mountain village. His cousin told the Times, that after his abduction the man was held for five days before his body was dumped February 25. "There was no skin on his back," he said. "We had advised him, 'You shouldn’t go, you shouldn't trust.'"

On the ground, the situation for women is immeasurably worse. Dawn reported March 7: "Terrified, locked up at home and courting death if they go out alone, women oppressed by extremists in Swat have nothing to celebrate on International Women's Day."

Which is precisely the regime the purveyors of religious obscurantism and murderous sectarianism intend to impose throughout Pakistan, with or without blessings from Washington. After all, what better means to facilitate the drug trade or other illicit activities controlled, or "taxed," by TPP "emirs" chauffeured about in up-scale Land Rovers or Mercedes!

With death threats against "immoral" women proliferating like flies around a corpse, the prospects for education, health care, or even the simple pleasures of going shopping with friends have all but evaporated. One ninth grade pupil told Dawn, "My mother told me I can do anything, but my inner soul is shattered."

And with a recently concluded 17-point "peace" agreement with the TTP, the state and nominally "secular" parties such as the bourgeois Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Awami National League (ANL)--which trounced the fundamentalist Army clone, Jamaat-i-Islami party in last year's national elections--has agreed to close shops, ban music, "obscene" videos and in general, make life a living hell.

As the state's writ continues to contract in the face of the Taliban offensive, women, workers, religious minorities are under attack. On Thursday, a bomb partially destroyed the mausoleum of the 17th century Sufi poet Rahman Baba, in NWFP's provincial capital Peshawar. Why? Because "women were coming to pray there," according to the Los Angeles Times.

I. A. Rahman, the director of Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission told the L. A. Times, "They've given them a yard and now they're taking 2 kilometers."

Needless to say, the majority of Swat residents are terrified of TTP armed thugs and have voted on the compact with their feet, refusing to trek back to their homes, exiles in their own country. The prospects of ever returning to a semblance of a "normal" life are grim, particularly after TTP "emirs" announced in a local mosque "that every family in the village would have to contribute one young man to their ranks, according to the The New York Times. Some "peace."

Mullah Omar Enters the Frame

While corporate media have focused on last month's truce in Swat Valley, signed-off by the Zardari regime and the Army with the TTP's sociopathic "emir" Maulana Fazlullah, little mention has been made of the strategically far more critical agreement hammered out by Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

That pact, forged between the TTP and their on-again, off-again allies in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) will have far-reaching ramifications for both nations.

While the Obama administration plans to deploy 17,000 additional American troops between now and May in Afghanistan, with additional deployments possibly numbering 30,000 by years' end, Washington is desperate to wrest control of large swathes of territory controlled by the Taliban and the TTP. It would appear however, that Omar has other plans.

On February 21, The News reported that "three prominent Pakistani militant commanders ... on Friday set aside their differences and promised to jointly fight their enemy in future." A "senior militant commander" said that Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leaders,

had played a role in resolving differences among the three militant commanders. He said a 14-member Shura was formed after their final meeting that would comprise banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, Taliban commander in North Waziristan and Maulvi Nazeer, militant commander in South Waziristan. (Mushtaq Yusufzai, "Top militant commanders resolve rift," The News, February 21, 2009)

In a further sign that stepped-up attacks are in the offing, Mullah Omar and the "emir" of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, Osama bin Laden, demanded that allied jihadi outfits in North and South Waziristan "immediately stop their attacks on the Pakistani security forces," The News reported February 24.

According to the Lahore-based newspaper, Omar first sent an envoy and then wrote a letter to the TTP's leadership council led by Mehsud, admonishing the group for attacks on their "Muslim brethren."

He told them that if they really want to participate in Jihad, they must fight the US and Nato troops inside Afghanistan because their attacks on the Pakistani security forces are undermining the objectives of the war against the invaders and cause of the Taliban movement.

"If anybody really wants to wage Jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan," the source quoted Mullah Omar as having told the TTP leaders. "Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan is bringing a bad name to Mujahideen and harming the war against the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan." (Mazhar Tufail, "Mullah Omar orders halts to attacks on Pak troops," The News, February 24, 2009)

The elusive Taliban leader, a protégé of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI), was groomed by leading circles within the Army's military and intelligence bureaucracy to seize the initiative in the 1990s, and bring an end to the chaos stoked by internecine fighting amongst former mujahedin chieftains squabbling over the spoils of that destroyed nation.

By 1996, when the Taliban swept out of Pakistan's NWFP and seized Kabul, providing what Pakistan's elite (including the Bhutto and Sharif families) believed would be "strategic depth" vis-à-vis imperialist arch-rival India, the move was applauded by the Clinton administration and the multinational petroleum giants whom they served. It would appear that Omar is reprising that role today.

The Guardian reported March 3 that as a result of February talks, the warring factions that previously fought over lucrative smuggling routes have launched a new organization, the Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council of United Holy Warriors, SIM).

According to Daily Times, SIM issued a pamphlet late last month vowing to target the militant groups three enemies: "Obama, Zardari and Karzai". While Mehsud and the others have promised to stop attacking the Army, Daily Times points out that "the announcement of 'Zardari' as a target while letting the Pakistan army off the hook is a menacing signal for Pakistani politics."

Pakistan is already under heavy pressure by the United States to crack down on the host of jihadi groups threatening to spread the TTP's writ outside the tribal areas into major population centers. This will prove a daunting task considering that many alleged "holy warriors" are creatures of the ISI and organized crime-linked outfits who profit from the heroin trade, illegal logging, as well as lucrative extortion and kidnapping rackets.

In this context, Omar's demand that jihadists cease attacks on Pakistani security and police and concentrate their fire instead on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, may represent maneuvers within ISI and the Army to pressurize the weak Zardari administration into doing their bidding, i.e. supporting the return of a fundamentalist Afghan government that would provide Pakistan with its ever-elusive "strategic depth." This was hammered home by Omar:

"Our aim is to liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces and death and destruction inside neighbouring Pakistan has never been our goal," he added. The source said according to Mullah Omar, the US was devising a new strategy and adopting new tactics to crush Mujahideen in Afghanistan so the Taliban, too, must forge unity in their ranks, and instead of operating in Pakistan, they must concentrate on actions against the US and Nato forces. (The News, ibid.)

The United States, ever-eager then as now, to secure oil and gas pipelines across Afghanistan for U.S. energy companies once courted the fundamentalists. Despite the upcoming "surge," America may do so once again if dictated by ubiquitous "facts on the ground."

On February 20, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, said that the U.S. would be willing to accept a similar deal in Afghanistan if the Swat pact succeeded.

Gates, speaking at last month's NATO conference in Krakow, Poland said: "If there is a reconciliation, if insurgents are willing to put down their arms, if the reconciliation is essentially on the terms being offered by the government, then I think we would be very open to that. We have said all along that ultimately some sort of political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in Afghanistan."

How would such a "reconciliation" play itself out?

Al Jazeera reported February 27, that "secret negotiations are under way to bring troops fighting alongside the Taliban into Afghanistan's political process." Negotiations between "Taliban-linked mediators, Western officials and the Afghan government," might see the return of none other than Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the narcotrafficking leader of the ISI and CIA's favorite gang during the anti-Soviet jihad, Hezb-i-Islami.

Believed to be directing attacks against NATO and American forces from northwest Pakistan, Hekmatyar "would first be offered asylum in Saudi Arabia, under the proposal being backed by the British government." Indeed, Al Jazeera reveals the talks have progressed to the point that

Ghairat Baheer, one of Hekmatyar's two son-in-laws released from the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in May last year after six years in custody, is involved in the process, according to reports.

Baheer, an ambassador to Pakistan in the 1990s, was given a visa to travel to London by British authorities last month.

Humayun Jarir, a Kabul-based politician and son-in-law of Hekmatyar, is also said to have been involved. ("Secret talks with Taliban under way," Al Jazeera, February 27, 2009)

This is rich though unsurprising, given the Americans' love affair with a man once described as the world's most powerful drug trafficker. And considering alleged ties between President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali and the heroin trade, perhaps a deal with Hekmatyar isn't as crazy as it seems at first blush.

According to The New York Times, "several American investigators said senior officials at the D.E.A. and the office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter."

So, if Hekmatyar is ready to come on-board and kick his al-Qaeda pals to the curb--as the U.S. is preparing to do with former "best friend forever" Hamid Karzai--why not let bygones be bygones? Stranger things have happened.

Whose Hand Is Behind the Lahore "Cricket" Attacks?

Inside Pakistan however, it appears some militants haven't gotten Omar's memo. On March 3, 12 heavily-armed gunmen staged a brazen attack in Lahore, Punjab's capital and Pakistan's second largest city.

While the bare facts are known, the question of who the perpetrators are--and from a parapolitical perspective, who controlled them--remains as of this writing a mystery. There are however, any number of likely suspects. To recapitulate Tuesday's events:

A convoy transporting Sri Lanka's national cricket team to a Test match against Pakistan's cricketers was ambushed by AK-47 toting terrorists who fired rockets and grenades at the entourage, killing six policemen as well as the driver of another van. 20 people were wounded including six of the athletes, two of whom remain hospitalized with bullet wounds.

Dawn reports that all of the attackers escaped and that police reinforcements from a nearby police station "only a couple of minute's walk" from Qaddafi Stadium, arrived only after the gunmen had fled. Large quantities of hand grenades, rockets launchers, AK-47s, suicide jackets, plastic explosives, pistols and walkie-talkies were recovered near the scene of the attack. The paper avers,

The large arms cache indicated that the attackers were prepared to hold out law enforcers for a longer period and raised suspicion that it might actually have been an attempt to hijack the bus carrying the Lankan cricketers.

If the ambush, however bloody, was all that the attackers were looking for they did not need to burden themselves with all the weapons they were carrying. Even though the police later on displayed the large seizure of the weapons, they refused to comment on the possibility of it being an attempt at kidnapping. (Muhammad Faisal Ali, "Sri Lankan team narrowly escape terror attack," Dawn, March 3, 2009)

Television images of backpack-toting assailants firing at the convoy bore striking similarities to last November's Mumbai terror attacks by Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) militants, aided and abetted by Dawood Ibrahim's ISI-linked organized crime gang.

Indeed, on February 26, The Guardian reported that India named a high-ranking Pakistani Army officer, Colonel Sadatullah attached to the Special Communications Organization (SCO, Pakistan's NSA), implicating him in last November's assault. Citing an 11,509-page charge sheet filed by Mumbai police, investigators claim that "a total of 284 calls totalling 995 minutes were made to Pakistani handlers by the terrorists using mobile phones from the Taj Mahal hotel, Oberoi-Trident and Nariman House, a Jewish centre."

While the origin and the motives of the Lahore attackers remain a mystery, Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizer, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, a retired ISI chief, was quick to blame India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for the attacks. Gul said on Pakistani television according to IPS that "India wants to declare Pakistan a terrorist state" and that the Lahore assault "is related to that conspiracy."

Similar charges were made, though more circumspectly, by Rehman Malik, the Prime Minister's Interior adviser, who claimed that the LET had "no links" to the attacks. He did however, manage to imply according to Dawn, that "the involvement of foreign hands in the incident cannot be ruled out." However, Asia Times reports,

Rather, judging by what was shown on Pakistani television, the attack is the hallmark of those that were waged by militants (many of them Punjabi) against Indian security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir up until a few years ago. They were trained by the Indian cell of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

In 2005-06, these militants joined forces with the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan resistance after Pakistan closed down their training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a move that changed the dynamics of the war theater in the region. (Syed Saleem Shahzad, "'Cricket' attack marks a shift in Pakistan," Asia Times Online, March 4, 2009)

And considering the uncanny similarities to other recent attacks, The Independent avers,

The numerous failings fuelled speculation that the attack might have been, at least in part, an "inside job". In previous terror attacks in Pakistan, the perpetrators appeared to have considerable intelligence about their targets. Car bombers have struck at army and anti-terror police headquarters in the past two years without the slightest hindrance. (Omar Waraich, "Suspicions grow that attack was an 'inside job'," The Independent, March 5, 2009)

Stressing the close interconnections amongst Pakistan's security services, organized crime outfits and the shadowy networks of allied jihadi groups, security analyst Robert Emerson told The Independent, "There are various elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence set-up who appear to have special relationships with militant groups. There are also links between political and criminal organisations. It is a complex and shadowy world with conflicting agendas."

Lashkar also has connections to the murky world of Pakistani cricket. Dawood Ibrahim, a Muslim gangster boss in Mumbai, is believed to have been responsible for organising a series of bombings at the Indian city in 1993, killing 250 people, after which he fled the country for Pakistan. Ibrahim, named by the US State Department as a "global terrorist with links to al-Qa'ida and Lashkar-e-Taiba", and a major trafficker of Afghan opium, has also been accused of playing a part in the last Mumbai attack.

Victor Ivanov, the head of the Russian counter-narcotics service, said: "Evidence suggests that the regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network to prepare and carry out the Mumbai terror attacks." (Kim Sengupta, "Strike had hallmarks of Mumbai massacre," The Independent, March 4, 2009)

What is not mentioned however, is that Ibrahim's D-Company enjoyed historical ties with the American CIA and was an asset who assisted Washington's arms smuggling to Afghan "holy warriors" during the anti-Soviet jihad. After the CIA's favorite criminal financial institution, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) went belly-up in the early 1990s, Dawood took over "management" of the port of Karachi from BCCI's "Black Network" of enforcers and assassins.

As I reported in mid-December, D-Company enjoys protected status afforded by the ISI and that Ibrahim's extensive smuggling networks along the Indian coast were in all probability used to infiltrate LET thugs into Mumbai.

Asia Times investigative journalist Raja Murthy was told by Lahore-based journalist Amir Mir that "Dawood's underworld connects and business ventures are extensive. And he sublets his name in Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, to franchises in the fields of drug trafficking and gambling dens."

With contacts amongst serving and retired ISI officers, LET, other jihadi outfits and the near boundless riches afforded by his drug trafficking, smuggling and gambling empire, one cannot discount Dawood's hand as a "plausibly deniable" asset capable of providing the Lahore attackers with intelligence, arms and the means to escape the area after Tuesday's brazen assault.

Other analysts suggest that Tuesday's attack was carried out to free LET and other militant leaders arrested in the wake of the Mumbai atrocities. Investigative journalist Amir Mir writes that authorities "are trying to ascertain whether it was an attempt by the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants to hijack the bus carrying the team and to bargain the release of their chief operational commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi."

Lakhvi is currently detained in a Rawalpindi jail for his alleged role in the Mumbai attacks. Mir reports,

The authorities say the Lashkar militants involved in the Lahore assault might have in their mind the successful hijacking of an Indian passenger aircraft in 2000, which eventually compelled the BJP government in India to release Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad who had been serving term in an Indian jail on terrorism charges. (Amir Mir, "Was attack on Sri Lankan team a bid to release Lakhvi?", The News, March 5, 2009)

In December 1999, Indian Airlines flight 814 was hijacked and flown to Afghanistan where 155 passengers were held hostage for eight days. In return for the release of three militants incarcerated in Indian prisons, the hostages were finally freed although one passenger was brutally murdered by the assailants.

In addition to JEM leader Azhar, Omar Saeed Sheikh, a reputed ISI-MI6 asset was also freed. Sheikh, currently under a death sentence in Pakistan for the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was a former student at the London School of Economics. In the early 1990s, he joined Harkat ul-Ansar (Movement of Supporters of the Faith, HUA) and fought in Bosnia in support of U.S.-NATO destabilization operations against the former Yugoslavia.

But as with the multitude of shadowy jihadi factions operating in Pakistan, JEM and HUA were creatures of the ISI and the Army. Indeed, The History Commons reports that HUA was "a Pakistani militant group originally formed and developed in large part due to Pervez Musharraf in the early 1990s." After their release, Azhar and Sheik both returned to Pakistan, received a hero's welcome and toured the country "for weeks under the protection of the ISI."

Shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, it is alleged that Sheikh, an ISI asset and al-Qaeda operative wired $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. Some versions hold that Sheikh did so with express authorization by ISI chieftain Mahmoud Ahmad. The History Commons avers,

In 2001, the flight's captain, Devi Sharan, will say that the hijackers of his plane used techniques similar to the 9/11 hijackers, suggesting a common modus operandi. The hijackers praised Osama bin Laden, had knives and slit the throat of a passenger, herded the passengers to the back of the plane where some of them used cell phones to call relatives, and one hijacker said he had trained on a simulator. ("Profile: Maulana Masood Azhar," The History Commons, no date.)

All of which begs the question: If the Lahore commando which attacked the Sri Lankan cricketers employed an operational script similar to Mumbai's, and are connected to LET or other militants yet unknown, what role did ISI, retired officers or other elements of Pakistan's deep state, including organized crime assets play in the terrorist atrocity?

Just as importantly, with the obvious motive of destabilizing the country and sowing chaos, it cannot be ruled out that the United States will seize on the attack and the Swat compact with the TTP, to pressure the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and particularly Chief of Staff General Asfaq Parvez Kayani, newly returned from "comprehensive multilateral talks" in Washington, to once again leave the barracks.

The emergence of a highly-trained and motivated far-right jihadi base in major population centers is an ominous development for Pakistan's democratic opposition. With the weak and increasingly isolated, Zardari government planning to take stern administrative and police measures against pro-democracy protesters planning to shut Islamabad down next week, the potential for attacks by Army-backed provocateurs, under color of the "enforcement of Islamic law," cannot be discounted.

[JackRiddler]

dupe.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/po ... wanted=all

Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of the Taliban
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

President Obama talking with members of the Ohio Congressional delegation aboard Air Force One on Friday during a trip to Ohio.

By HELENE COOPER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: March 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.

Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.

In a 35-minute conversation with The New York Times aboard Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Obama reviewed the challenges to his young administration. The president said he could not assure Americans the economy would begin growing again this year. But he pledged that he would “get all the pillars in place for recovery this year” and urged Americans not to “stuff money in their mattresses.”

“I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future,” he said. “I don’t think that people should suddenly mistrust all of our financial institutions.”

As he pressed forward with ambitious plans at home to rewrite the tax code, expand health care coverage and curb climate change, Mr. Obama dismissed criticism from conservatives that he was driving the country toward socialism. After the interview, which took place as the president was flying home from Ohio, he called reporters from the Oval Office to assert that his actions have been “entirely consistent with free-market principles” and to point out that large-scale government intervention in the markets and expansion of social welfare programs began under President George W. Bush.

Sitting at the head of a conference table with his suit coat off, Mr. Obama exhibited confidence six weeks into his presidency despite the economic turmoil around the globe and the deteriorating situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He struck a reassuring tone about the economy, saying he had no trouble sleeping at night.

“Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t have that luxury, and I don’t think the American people do, either.”

The president spoke at length about the struggle with terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, staking out positions that at times seemed more comparable to those of his predecessor than many of Mr. Obama’s more liberal supporters would like. He did not rule out the option of snatching terrorism suspects out of hostile countries.

Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Mr. Obama replied flatly, “No.”

Mr. Obama said on the campaign trail last year that the possibility of breaking away some elements of the Taliban “should be explored,” an idea also considered by some military leaders. But now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan intended to find a new strategy, and he signaled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq.

“If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said.

At the same time, he acknowledged that outreach may not yield the same success. “The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex,” he said. “You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.”

For American military planners, reaching out to some members of the Taliban is fraught with complexities. For one thing, officials would have to figure out which Taliban members might be within the reach of a reconciliation campaign, no easy task in a lawless country with feuding groups of insurgents.

And administration officials have criticized the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, where Islamic law has been imposed and radical figures hold sway. Pakistani officials have sought to reassure administration officials that their deal was not a surrender to the Taliban, but rather an attempt to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists.

During the interview, Mr. Obama also left open the option for American operatives to capture terrorism suspects abroad even without the cooperation of a country where they were found. “There could be situations — and I emphasize ‘could be’ because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known Al Qaeda operative that doesn’t surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,” he said.

“I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario,” he added. The president went on to say that “we don’t torture” and that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges.”

Aides later said Mr. Obama did not mean to suggest that everybody held by American forces would be granted habeas corpus or the right to challenge their detention. In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court.

Instead, aides said Mr. Obama’s comment referred only to a Supreme Court decision last year finding that prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

Mr. Obama signaled that those on the left seeking a wholesale reversal of Mr. Bush’s detainee policy might be disappointed. Mr. Obama said that by the time he got into office, the Bush administration had taken “steps to correct certain policies and procedures after those first couple of years” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He credited not Mr. Bush but the former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael V. Hayden and the former director of national intelligence Mike McConnell, who “really had America’s security interests in mind when they acted, and I think were mindful of American values and ideals.”

Turning to domestic affairs, Mr. Obama indicated that the end was not in sight when it came to the economic crisis and suggested that he expected it could take another $750 billion to address the problem of weak and failing financial institutions beyond the $700 billion already approved. Maintaining support for the additional costs of bailouts is quite likely to be among Mr. Obama’s biggest challenges, given the anger that many Americans feel toward Wall Street executives who they believe are being unduly rewarded with bailout money.

The budget plan he released last month included a placeholder estimate of $250 billion for additional bank bailouts — an amount that represents the projected long-term cost to taxpayers of a $750 billion infusion into the financial sector — and in the interview Mr. Obama indicated that those figures were what he was likely to seek from Congress.

“We have no reason to revise that estimate,” he said.

Addressing the fear and uncertainty among Americans as job losses mount and stock markets sink, Mr. Obama urged Americans to “be prudent” in their personal financial decisions, but not to hunker down so much that it would further slow the recovery.

“What I don’t think people should do is suddenly stuff money in their mattresses and pull back completely from spending,” he said.

Still, he avoided guessing when the situation might begin to turn around. “Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year,” he said. “How long it will take before recovery actually translates into stronger job markets and so forth is going to depend on a whole range of factors.”

He added that “part of what you’re seeing now is weaknesses in Europe that are actually greater than some weaknesses here, bouncing back and having an impact on our markets.”

Mr. Obama’s uncertain forecast about when the economy will begin to rebound contrasted with the projections embedded in the budget he recently released.

That plan rested on the assumption that the economy would shrink by 1.2 percent this year, a projection that many economists, including some in his administration, consider overly optimistic because it implies the economy would bounce back in the second half of this year.

As he settles into his new job, Mr. Obama said he spent much of his time reading briefing books, but still tried to stay in touch by perusing newspapers and thumbing through weekly newsmagazines. But he said he did not watch much television, except basketball games.

Mr. Obama rode to the White House partly on his savvy use of new technology, and he has a staff-written blog on his presidential Web site. Even so, he said he did not find blogs to be reliable, citing the economy as one example.

“Part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs,” he said, “is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully, then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another — well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine.”

Jeff Zeleny and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

[JackRiddler]

Afghan election: Getting confusing. What does Karzai really want, which date gives him advantage, who are his backers at this point? Why do the internationals want the later election? Who rules from May to August? Oi.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 74_pf.html

Karzai Agrees to Delay Election

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 8, 2009; A13


KABUL, March 7 -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he would agree to postpone the presidential election until August, bowing to pressure from election officials and Afghanistan's international backers who do not believe that fair and safe polls can be held by spring as scheduled.

But the president left unclear what would happen after his term expires in May. He declined to clarify whether he would seek to remain in power until the election and whether he would seek reelection after seven years at the helm.

In accepting the date proposed by the independent election commission, Karzai appeared to resolve a dispute that has thrown Afghanistan's political transition into turmoil and raised doubts about the stability of this fragile, insurgent-plagued democracy.

But the president's confusing comments about whether he plans to continue leading the country until August and whether he intends to be a candidate left unresolved a second issue that could turn preparations for a smooth and orderly transfer of power into a political free-for-all.

"I accept the decision of the election commission," Karzai said at a news conference in his heavily guarded palace, reversing a decree he issued two weeks ago calling for elections to be held by April to comply with the constitution.

As for what would happen after May, Karzai said, "I am willing to accept either the constitution or a national consensus." However, he appeared to dismiss suggestions for an interim government, saying it was not envisioned in the constitution.

"If I continue in office, it should be legal," he said. "If it is not legal, my term ends and my work is over and I say goodbye to the people." When asked whether he would seek reelection, Karzai said he would do so "only if I can be a factor for stability and legitimacy, only if my candidacy makes people happy."

According to the constitution, elections must be held before the president's term expires, but there is wide agreement among Afghans and the country's international backers that the lack of security, funds and preparations make it impossible to hold credible polls until late summer or early fall.

Karzai's political opponents, who fear he will use his power in office to secure reelection, first complained that delaying the polls would give him an advantage. They have since accepted the postponement but say he should step down in May and establish a temporary form of rule until August.

"We think Karzai should end his term and be replaced by a neutral person. It's an opportunity to have more of a level playing field," said Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, a former central bank president who resigned to run for president. "It's great that he has accepted the commission's decision. It solves one crisis, but the second one is still looming. We need to be discussing who will replace him, not whether."

© 2009 The Washington Post Company[/b]

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/lee03092009.html

Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
By PETER LEE

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—a brutal, capricious, and violently anti-American warlord—may be the West’s best hope for its faltering adventure against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Hekmatyar is fighting alongside the Taliban against the Karzai government and ISAF and U.S. forces.

Nevertheless, over the last five years, he has been the object of escalating blandishments by the Karzai government, Saudi Arabia, NATO, and perhaps even the United States, seeking to lure him away from the Taliban camp and into the Karzai government.

On February 20, al Jazeera reported on the most recent status of talks between the Afghan government and Hekmatyar, Mullah Omar…well, probably everybody, as Karzai tries to shore up support for his rule in the run-up to snap parliamentary elections and in the face of growing U.S. hostility to his rule.

The Hekmatyar talks, encouraged by the UK, have apparently gotten to the point where Hekmatyar is being offered asylum in Saudi Arabia and the chance to return to public life in Afghanistan, at least Hamid Karzai’s part of it, with a pardon.

A key sticking point that al Jazeera didn’t go into a great deal is that Hekmatyar insists on a departure of foreign troops as a precondition for engaging with the Karzai government.

That’s a major, probably insurmountable obstacle for Karzai, and one wonders if Hekmatyar is negotiating or just playing for time as he preps for the latest iteration in Afghanistan’s twenty-year civil war.

Certainly, trusting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is not a recipe for a long and happy life.

Paradoxically, in the eyes of the West, Hekmatyar’s bottomless appetite for betrayal and his ruthless willingness to inflict violence and suffering on the Afghan people may perhaps be considered his greatest asset.

Hekmatyar’s career as a revolutionary and warlord far pre-date the Taliban.

When Afghanistan was still a sleepy, pro-Soviet satellite in the 1970s, Hekmatyar, a student at Kabul University, fell under the influence of the Islamist politics of the Muslim Brotherhood, propagated inside the university by professors who had trained in Egypt.

Hekmatyar, who still uses the honorific “Engineer” in recognition of his studies at KU, became a paragon of Islamist militancy, reportedly carrying a vial of acid to fling into the faces of coeds not veiling themselves with suitable modesty.

The university, and Afghan political life in general, was split between secularist, socialist pro-Soviet and Islamist factions. The strife was not just verbal, it was physical. Hekmatyar murdered a Maoist student and was forced to flee Afghanistan for Pakistan.

There, Hekmatyar formed a lasting alliance with Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islaami (JI) political party and, through it, with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate.

When the Soviet Union sent its 40th Army to prop up the pro-Soviet regime of Babrak Karmal, Hekmatyar became the preferred face of the Afghan resistance. Hosted by the JI, patronized by the ISI, funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia to the tune of US$ 600 pmillion, and armed by the Chinese, Hekmatyar was given carte blanche to run the massive Shamshatoo refugee camp near Peshawar that fed fighters into the jihad, and directly controlled the main Pashtun mujahideen force inside Afghanistan, Hezb-i-Islami.

After the Soviets left and, after three more years of struggle, the pro-Soviet regime of Muhammad Najibullah finally fell in 1992, Hekmatyar was finally ready to cap his political career with the formation of an Islamicist, pro-Pakistan government in Kabul.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the Afghan presidential palace.

A combination of Tajik and Uzbek forces from Afghanistan’s north ensconced themselves in Kabul first under the leadership of Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Massoud, subjecting Hekmatyar to the frustration of on-again off-again negotiations to allow him to enter the government as Prime Minister.

In order to improve his bargaining position, Hekmatyar engaged in several campaigns of indiscriminate shelling of Kabul over the next two years that killed 20,000 civilians but did not seal his political ascendancy.

This dismal record, combined with Hekmatyar’s reputation for savage political infighting especially with royalist and socialist factions of the Afghan resistance, gave birth to the trope that “Hekmatyar has killed more Afghans than he did Russians”.

Hekmatyar’s bloody and ineffectual intransigence convinced Pakistan that he couldn’t lead Afghanistan. Fatally, the ISI prevailed upon Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to provide clandestine to support to another Pashtun force instead—the Taliban.

With the assistance and coordination of the ISI, the Taliban swept into Kabul in 1992.

Hekmatyar, who had chosen exactly the wrong time to enter the Kabul government and fight the Taliban, fled to Iran (backers of the Rabbani/Massoud government), where he rusticated under the watchful eye of the Iranian intelligence services.

Hekmatyar was expelled from Tehran after 9/11. Some reports attribute his expulsion to Iranian desire to placate the United States; others call it payback for President Bush’s provocative labeling of Iran as a member of the “Axis of Evil”.

As Hekmatyar journeyed into Afghanistan in May 2002, reportedly bereft of $70 million he had deposited in Iranian accounts but was confiscated by the Tehran government, he was targeted for assassination by a CIA drone as his convoy approached Kabul; the Hellfire missile somehow missed.

Once back in Afghanistan, instead of being a spent and discredited force, Hekmatyar raised the banner of jihad against the United States, NATO, and the Karzai regime. He was able to rebuild his army and take credit for several high-profile outrages, including an assassination attempt against Karzai in 2002 and the bloodiest defeat suffered by NATO forces—the killing of ten French troops in an ambush north of Kabul in 2008.

It is difficult to escape the suspicion that, post 9/11, Hekmatyar still enjoyed the clandestine support of elements inside the ISI as a counter to the Taliban.

It is also possible to look at the mysterious circumstances of his expulsion from Iran and the failed assassination attempt by the CIA (which was, as Gary Leupp pointed out, the Global War on Terror’s first announced targeted assassination attempt against a figure unrelated to the 9/11 attacks) as possible efforts to reintroduce him into Afghanistan without undermining his anti-U.S. credibility (The idea of a deeper-than-deep black op initiative to reintroduce Hekmatyar into Afghanistan is not out of the question. Sometime around the end of 2003, the United States released Abdullah Mehsud from Guantanamo; Mehsud returned to Pakistan and started up a Pakistan Taliban force, but was suspected by other factions of being a double-agent.)

Even as Hekmatyar re-established himself inside Afghanistan, the Karzai government made repeated attempts to lure him back into the government.

After all, there is virtually no convergence between Hekmatyar’s Islamicist militancy based on the Leninist and elitist doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the obscurantist fundamentalism of the Taliban, nurtured in the Deobandi madrassas of Pakistan’s west.

The suspicion, rivalry, and fundamental differences in theology and strategy that militate against a genuine alliance between the Taliban and Hekmatyar were described in a report by the “Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies”:

An Afghan political analyst and head of the affairs of the Middle East and African countries during the Taliban regime, Waheed Muzda while talking to journalists said, “The alliance between the Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami is impossible as they have differences over many issues. Gulbadeen Hikmatyar believes in democracy and elections but Taliban oppose it. They say such elections in which every person even corrupt people also take part are not justified according to the Shariah. Similarly, Hizb-e-Islami favors education and jobs of women whereas Taliban do not like it. Another different thing between the both groups is that Taliban are closely linked with al-Qaeda and their movement is separate from those of other Islamist organizations. For example, Taliban regime did not heed the chief of Tanzeem Ikhwanul Muslimoon and other religious leaders when they were demolishing historical statues in Bamian. Taliban had also rejected Hizb-e-Islami’s request for allied government. In 2001, when threats of attack on Afghanistan mounted, Taliban had formed a delegation to meet Hikmatyar but it was too late. During the talks between Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami in 2005, the former had said that they would change war strategy in 2006 and they proposed Hizb-e-Islami to accept responsibility of all the strikes. They also offered political leadership to Hizb-e-Islami. But Hizb-e-Islami rejected this offer as, in this way, Taliban wanted to eliminate chances of Hikmatyar’s possible alliance with the Afghan government."[emph. added]

Hamid Karzai has been wooing Hekmatyar for years to abandon the Taliban and join the Kabul government. The Hizb-i-Islami “Decision Making Council”, a splinter group which has disavowed Hekmatyar but is still suspected of being directed by him, joined the Afghan political process in 2005 with the permission of the Karzai government and won 34 seats in the parliamentary elections.

It is not unreasonable to think that Hekmatyar, the most significant Pashtun power not beholden to al Qaeda muscle, would embody the hopes of Pakistan for a strongman to cut the Taliban down to size—or at least neutralize the Taliban on the battlefield and create a bloody stalemate.

Clearly, the United States is also thinking in these terms—despite the multi-million dollar price it reputedly keeps on Hekmatyar’s head.

In June of 2008, Hekmatyar’s son-in-law (who served as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan in the brief, pre-Taliban period) was transferred from Bagram Air Base to an Afghan prison and released—a move that could have happened only with U.S. acquiescence.

Asia Times’ Syed Saleem Shahzad fills in the story:

Ghairat Bahir is the son-in-law of veteran mujahid Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and a top leader of the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA). He was arrested by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad in 2002 on American pressure when he was making desperate moves to activate the HIA's jihadi network in favor of the Taliban. He was handed over to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and kept in various secret locations before being moved to Bagram. He was recently sent to Pul-i-Charki jail in Kabul after apparently agreeing to cooperate with the administration of President Hamid Karzai.

Immediately after his release, Ghairat Bahir was received at the presidential palace in Kabul and offered powerful ministries for the HIA if he agreed to act as a power-broker between top insurgent commanders, including Jalaluddin Haqqani and Hekmatyar, on one side and the US-backed Karzai administration on the other.

When Saudi Arabia hosted exploratory talks between the Taliban and the Karzai government in July 2008, a representative of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was there, apparently as a free agent unaffiliated with either delegation:

The talks were also attended by a representative of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hezb-e-Islami party who was a former military commander during the Afghan-Soviet war. Hekmatyar is wanted by the United States on charges of terrorism.

In October, Hekmatyar appeared in the unlikely role of champion of democracy, differentiating himself from the remorselessly theocratic Taliban while restating his precondition of withdrawal of foreign troops in an assertion of his jihadi credibility.

From the Pakistan Daily Times:

“The only solution to the existing crisis is the withdrawal of foreign troops, the holding of fair elections, the transfer of power to elected representatives and the establishment of an Islamic government in Afghanistan,” Hekmatyar said in a statement released on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the United States attack on Afghanistan.

Then, in a November 2008 article entitled Afghan Rebel Positioned for Key Role, the Washington Post gave a hint that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar might be the kind of guy we can do business with:

[W]ith casualties among foreign forces at record highs, and domestic and international confidence in Karzai's government at an all-time low, U.S. and Afghan officials may have little choice but to grant Hekmatyar a choice seat at the bargaining table.

Top U.S. military officials have indicated in recent weeks a willingness to cut deals with rebel commanders like Hekmatyar to take insurgents off the battlefield.

This was despite Hekmatyar claiming responsibility (despite Taliban’s efforts to take the credit) for the ambush that killed 10 French soldiers north of Kabul in a few weeks previously.

Then, in January of this year, Hekmatyar’s brother (who resides in the NWFP capital of Peshawar) was released from Pakistani custody after five months’ detention.

Clearly, there is a lot of action on the Hekmatyar reconciliation front.

The Chinese might be willing to give this channel a try as well, given the fact that the Taliban seems to have abandoned its traditional deference to Chinese interests and may decide to abet Uighur separatists undermining public order and Chinese rule in the PRC’s vast Muslim province of Xinjiang.

After all, although the Chinese role was never as highly publicized as the efforts of the United States and Saudi Arabia, China was a major participant in the mujahideen network sponsored by the ISI to battle the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The Soviet-backed government in Kabul accused the Chinese of providing $400 million in military aid, though it might be more accurate to say that the Chinese did $400 million in business, paid for by the CIA.

When the covert campaign to supply the Afghan fighters, in particular Hekmatyar, got so big that the CIA had exhausted the traditional sources of clandestine weaponry, China happily took on the profitable duty of providing guns and bullets from its factories. China even provided mules to ease the famous transport shortage engendered by the flood of material.

The Pakistan-ISI-JI-Hekmatyar channel is certainly familiar and comfortable for the Chinese government, and Beijing has been in contact with Hekmatyar for years.

When Hekmatyar reemerged in Afghanistan in 2002, Asia Times’ Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote:

Sources within the HIA say that the organization has recently reestablished contact with the Chinese government. In the past, Beijing has blamed the HIA for stirring a religious uprising in in the northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang, but Hekmatyar made concerted efforts to placate China, as well as to urge the Muslim leaders in Xinjiang to stop their separatist agitation. Beijing was said to be appreciative of these efforts, but it is yet to be seen how far China will go in supporting the new Afghan freedom struggle against foreign troops, if at all.

As conditions in western Pakistan have deteriorated, China has responded by reaching out to the JI, hosting a top level delegation from the Islamist political party in Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai this February. A memorandum of understanding confirming the principle of non-interference in Chinese internal affairs i.e. Xinjiang was inked, and the head of the JI returned to Pakistan full of praise for the PRC.

As to the significance of this initiative, it should be pointed out that the JI’s influence on the Taliban is virtually non-existent. JI’s political rival in west Pakistan, the JUI, run the Deobondi madrassas that nurtured the Taliban and has been the ISI’s designated interlocutor with the Taliban.

Now, even the JUI is forced to take dictation from the increasingly assertive and intimidating militants.

The JI would be of practical value to China if the Zardari government fell, and the JI entered the ruling coalition with its political ally, the Nawaz Sharif’s secularist PML-N. A close JI link also be of use if China wanted to have the option of funneling aid to Hekmatyar in an anti-Taliban effort.

Hekmatyar’s consistent position has been that he wants foreign military forces to exit Afghanistan, and he will then mix it up with his chosen enemies.

Indeed, it would appear politically impossible for Hekmatyar to fight the Taliban in alliance with U.S. and NATO forces and a Western-backed regime.

In 2002, Time Magazine quoted him as saying, “"We prefer involvement in internal war rather than occupation by foreigners and foreign troops".

Hekmatyar’s uncompromising militancy—especially his willingness to fight the Taliban and his consequences-be-damned approach to Afghan collateral damage--may turn out to be the music that the region’s interested powers want to hear.

However, a choice between conducting an unpopular counterinsurgency campaign reliant on foreign troops or unleashing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to take on the Taliban by himself is not much of a choice at all.

It remains to be seen if the aging Hekmatyar can stand up to the Taliban, which routed his forces in 1996, by himself.

In contrast to Hekmatyar’s bull-headed exploitation of the traditional channels of muscle and money—a Pashtun insurgency powered by foreign money and ISI expertise—the Taliban has shown itself to be frighteningly protean and potent.

The Taliban under Mullah Omar is not just a group of narrow-minded fanatics led by a charismatic leader who fancies himself an instrument of Allah on earth.

The Taliban is a supremely adaptive military force, exploiting the friendship, assets, and expertise of Pashtun smugglers, southern Afghan drug dealers, the ISI, officers of the Khalq faction of the old Afghan government and, of course al Qaeda, to entrench itself as the dominant power in a broad swath of Pashtun central Asia, from the poppy fields of the Iranian border to the Pashtun high valleys less than 100 miles from Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad.

As the Taliban grows in strength, Hekmatyar fades, and the hopes for a native Afghan government able to dictate terms to Mullah Omar fades with him.



Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs. Lee can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ma ... on-leaders

Pakistan arrests opposition leaders ahead of planned rallies

Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan to be placed under house arrest as government cracks down on protests
Haroon Siddique and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 March 2009 14.26 GMT
Article history


Nawaz Sharif is the head of the Pakistan Muslim League N party. Photograph: Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty images


The crisis engulfing Pakistan deepened today after the government issued orders for opposition leaders, including Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif, to be placed under house arrest ahead of planned rallies against the ruling administration.

Hundreds of lawyers and opposition activists have been arrested today and, according to reports on Pakistani television, orders have been issued for the detention of Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League N party (PML-N), his brother Shabhaz Sharif, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Jamat-e-Islami leader, and Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain who is the head of Tehreek-e-Insaf.

Many opposition leaders are said to have gone into hiding. Pakistani lawyers, supported by opposition leaders, are due to begin a protest tomorrow dubbed the long march to demand the restoration of judges removed from office by the former president Pervez Musharraf.

President Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has failed to fulfil a pledge to restore the justices since being elected last year.

The clampdown will increase fears for the stability of the country as the government struggles to contain violent extremists.

Six Pakistani policemen and a bus driver were killed, and six Sri Lankan cricketers and two team officials wounded last week when heavily armed men attacked a bus carrying the visiting team to the venue for the second Test against Pakistan.

Rao Iftikhar, the home secretary in eastern Punjab province, said he issued orders for a ban on public gatherings there "so that terrorists cannot take any advantage by targeting political gatherings".

The ban, which gives authorities the right to arrest any protesters, will remain in force for three months, he said.

The Sindh province home secretary, Arif Ahmed Khan, announced a 15-day ban on public gatherings today to "prevent a bad law-and-order situation". Sindh is the main stronghold of the ruling PPP.

But opposition activists have vowed to press on with the planned long march, which will see protesters gather in cities around the country tomorrow before leaving for the capital, Islamabad. They have vowed to stage a sit-in at the parliament building until the judiciary is restored.

Addressing thousands of supporters at a rally in the North West Frontier Province, Sharif said: "I cannot rest when Pakistan is being taken toward disastrous circumstances. We cannot compromise when all institutions are ruined and the system is on the verge of collapse."

Last week's attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team came amid protests following a court ruling banning the former minister Sharif and his brother, who was the chief minister of Punjab, from political office.

In August last year Sharif pulled his party out of a coalition with Zardari's Pakistan People's party (PPP), because of the failure to restore the judiciary. His supporters saw the latest court ruling as a political move engineered by Zardari.


A spokesman for Sharif's party, Sadiqul Farooq, said he received reports from party offices across the country that members were being arrested, but he had no accurate numbers.

Munawar Hassan, a Jamaat-e-Islami leader, said: "Nearly two dozen of our supporters have been detained."

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Zardari, said 18 people had been arrested and would be released once the situation calmed down.

"Some people have announced they are going to defy the ban on public meetings," he said. "It is sad, but this is what the law says."

In the Punjabi city of Multan the senior police officer, Fayyaz Ahmad, said 42 Sharif supporters were arrested and "would be dealt with according to the law".

[American Dream]

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com ... liban.html

America's Search for the "Good Taliban"


Reminiscent of a casting call for "America's Next Top Model," the Obama administration has embarked on a search for the ever-elusive "good Taliban" with whom it can negotiate a partial military climb-down.

In an exclusive--and revealing--March 8 interview with The New York Times, President Barack Obama declared that the United States "was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq."

Reflecting desperation and ignorance when it comes to the war-scarred Central Asian nation, like its Republican predecessor, the Democratic administration has failed to come to grips with ubiquitous facts on the ground.

A rapidly-expanding Taliban insurgency against the U.S.-led NATO occupation and the warlord-dominated Karzai regime has brought imperialism's regional domination project to a screeching halt.

After seven years of occupation and the slow bleed-out of a protracted war, the Pashtun populated southern Afghan provinces and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are effectively controlled by a melange of far-right Islamist Talibs and drug-linked militias loyal to the Hezb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

First reported February 27 by Al Jazeera, the now not-so-secret talks amongst Afghan officials, European diplomats and Hekmatyar-aligned forces have progressed to the point that the puppet Karzai regime "has been exploring the potential for negotiations with the Taliban leadership council of Mullah Muhammad Omar," according to The New York Times.

In a March 13 follow-up article, the Times previewed the new product line that the administration will soon be rolling-out to a sceptical public tired of imperial wars and self-inflicted economic crises:

The plan reflects in part a conclusion within the administration that most of the insurgent foot soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan are "reconcilable" and can be pried away from the hard-core organizations of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least 70 percent of the insurgents, and possibly more, can be encouraged to lay down their arms with the proper incentives, administration officials have said.

However, other unnamed "officials" were far less sanguine of the prospects for the plan's success and told the Times,

Several European officials said that the overarching theme behind the Afghanistan review was that NATO was looking for a way out of Afghanistan, and that everything done now was toward that end. "The goal now is simply to get to a point to prevent Afghanistan and Pakistan from becoming a place from which you can launch attacks on the West," a senior European official said. (Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker, "Obama Afghan Plan Focuses on Pakistan Aid and Appeal to Militants," The New York Times, March 13, 2009)

While U.S. imperialism continues to dream of pipelines and military bases stretching from Baku to Karachi and beyond, the fact is that boat has long set sail.

America's Search for the "Good Taliban"

Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that "at least 70%" of Islamist Taliban guerrilla fighters were "mercenaries" who could be persuaded--with what else--cold, hard cash, to lay down their arms and join the "peace process."

According to Biden, "Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25% or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. Roughly 70% are involved because of the money."

Memo to the Vice President: that "incorrigible" five percent comprise the top leadership of the far-right Islamist movement, including al-Qaeda-linked commanders such as "Mullah Bradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwarul Haq Mujahid. These three have pledged their allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who has transformed the Taliban into an ultra-conservative force compared to a few years ago when the Taliban were a Pashtun tribal movement," Asia Times reports.

In other words, nothing short of a complete U.S./NATO withdrawal from the Central Asian "battlespace" will satisfy Mullah Omar and his minions. And what of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, suddenly everyone's newest "best friend forever"?

Dubbed the "Michael Corleone of jihad" by Asia Times, the sociopathic former Afghan Prime Minister who pulverized Kabul during the post-Soviet fall-out amongst mujahedin thieves in the early 1990s, is positioning himself for whatever he can grab.

Biden certainly knows that late last year a select group of Afghan diplomats plus Karzai's brother, Ahmad Wali, finally talked to some Taliban, good or bad, with mediation by notorious Taliban-enabler Saudi Arabia. That means, with US approval. ...

Recently in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Karzai people thought they had handed Hekmatyar the famous "offer he can't refuse": asylum in Saudi Arabia first, then return to Afghanistan with full immunity. They forgot that a proud Hekmatyar does not want asylum. He wants a piece of the action in Kabul--preferably the meatiest part. (Pepe Escobar, "Taliban set to burn the Reichstag?", Asia Times Online, March 13, 2009)

Lest we forget, this former darling of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) during the anti-Soviet jihad received the bulk of CIA-Saudi largesse as America's plan to hand the Soviet Union "its own Vietnam" worked splendidly--for the international narcotics trade and American-linked terrorist jackals.

As Alfred W. McCoy pointed out, it was none other than Hekmatyar, with Hezb-i-Islami as the "beard" for rather profitable operations on both sides of the "Afpak" border, who pioneered refining heroin inside Afghanistan.

A piece of work from the get-go, Hekmatyar was a former engineering student and founder of Afghanistan's Muslim Brotherhood. This brave mujahid cut his political teeth by throwing vials of acid in the faces of Kabul University women who refused to wear the veil. Accused of murdering a leftist student, Hekmatyar fled to Pakistan where he continued his activities with "guidance" from ISI handlers. When the Carter administration began its destabilization campaign against Kabul's socialist government at the behest of current Obama foreign policy éminence grise, Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Hekmatyar was waiting in the wings. McCoy writes:

Instead of arranging a meeting with a broad spectrum of resistance leaders, ISI offered the CIA's envoy an alliance with its own Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the small Hezb-i-Islami guerrilla group. The CIA accepted the offer and, over the next decade, gave more than half its covert aid to Hekmatyar's guerrillas. It was, as the U.S. Congress would find a decade later, a dismal decision. Unlike the later resistance leaders who commanded strong popular followings inside Afghanistan, Hekmatyar led a guerrilla force that was a creature of the Pakistan military. After the CIA built his Hezb-i-Islami into the largest Afghan guerrilla force, Hekmatyar would prove himself brutal and corrupt. Not only did he command the largest guerrilla army, but Hekmatyar would use it--with the full support of ISI and the tacit tolerance of the CIA--to become Afghanistan's leading drug lord. (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991, pp. 449-450)

And as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed in their 2008 World Drug Report, with Afghanistan currently producing 92% of the world's supply of illicit opium, that would give Hekmatyar literally billions of reasons to "get back into the game" as they say.

Although you wouldn't know any of this if you relied solely on The New York Times. In fact, Carlotta Gall, a journalist who certainly knows better, will only report that "Mr. Hekmatyar, a ruthless, hard-line fundamentalist known for reneging on past agreements, is widely rumored to reside in Pakistan," while glossing over his documented history as a world class drug lord fully the rival of Colombia's late, though unlamented, Pablo Escobar. And so it goes.

These however, are pipe dreams bound to end in abysmal failure for the United States. As Asia Times reports, "the Taliban have a virtual siege all around the capital Kabul" and as I write, are busily preparing their spring offensive. And with the Pakistan' Army's truce with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the newly-launched jihadi outfit, Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council of United Holy Warriors), planning to "surge" an estimated 15-20,000 fighters of their own across the border, one can expect a horrendous increase in violence.

In a prescient article published by Asia Times, independent journalist and researcher Anthony Fenton cites the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on "the anticipated effect of the war's expansion on Afghans."

The anti-fundamentalist and anti-occupation women's rights group states: "The very first outcome of the surge for Afghan people will be increase in the number of civilian casualties ... In the past seven years, thousands of innocent people have been killed or wounded by the US/NATO bombardments. In the past weeks under Obama's rule, around 100 Afghan civilians have been killed."

RAWA adds that "The surge in level of troops will also [result in a] surge in protests against the US/NATO in Afghanistan and it will also push more people towards the Taliban and other terrorist groups as a reaction against occupation forces and their mistreatment against people."

Despite these dire predictions, many of which have already been bourn out on the ground--and on the bodies of ordinary Afghans caught in the crossfire--any discussion of a complete U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is "off the table."

Fenton writes, "Contrary to the elite, bipartisan consensus inside North America that supports the war's escalation, and echoing fears that are common among Afghans, RAWA argues that 'We think the 30,000 extra troops will only serve the US regional strategy in changing Afghanistan to its military base, it will [have] nothing to do with fighting the terrorist groups, as they claim'."

If history is any judge of the present American trajectory, particularly as imperialism embarks on its quixotic quest for the elusive "good Taliban," if successful, Washington would insure they were "trained-up fierce" and deployed as a new armed force for global destabilization operations in Central, South Asia and the Middle East.

As I documented in "Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers" (Antifascist Calling, December 19, 2008), the Pentagon's field manual (FM 3-05.130) titled Unconventional Warfare lays it out in black and white:

Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political "undesirables." (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-3)

"Paging Mullah Omar, white courtesy telephone!"