Before President Hamid Karzai arrives in Washington next month, President Obama has to make clear key decisions on the course of war and peacemaking in Afghanistan.
Neighboring countries and most Afghans believe that the endgame has begun for a post-U.S. Afghanistan. There are just 14 months for the U.S. military surge to show results while Washington simultaneously prepares to begin its July 2011 troop withdrawal and handover to the Afghan government. Already, efforts to jockey for future control of Afghanistan have been seen among Pakistan, India, Iran and even Russia. Several NATO countries eager to withdraw forces are frustrated. It is clear in the region that someone will have to mediate with the Taliban, but in the absence of U.S. leadership, a tug of war is taking place over who will do it, when, how and where.
Washington: Arguing that some tactical successes will not defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, a top US thing tank has sought opening of talks with the militant group but said India should not be included in any such parleys as it would antagonise Pakistan, in particular its Army.
“The negotiating framework should be determined during a secret contact phase mediated by the Pakistani Army prior to the strictly diplomatic phase conducted under UN auspices,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a report yesterday.
Angry words lately between Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and the administration of Barack Obama have raised questions about whether they can work together to stabilize the war torn country.
The relationship between Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama has come to resemble a loveless marriage succumbing to the strain of keeping up public appearances.
An imminent split seems unlikely. The US remains Afghanistan’s chief international backer and the Obama administration’s ambitious plan to transform the war-torn country needs Mr. Karzai if it’s going to succeed.
But the angry words tossed between Kabul and Washington lately have amply demonstrated the strain between a US administration that says it is committed to political reform in Afghanistan and an Afghan leader empowered by an election widely thought to have been marred by fraud.
There is a window of opportunity for peace in Afghanistan. It has to be grabbed. For the first time in a decade the U.S. and the U.K. are acting in concert with Pakistan to proffer real solutions for Kabul. The former allies, turned protagonists, turned friends are once again on the same side–this time working for peace.
Mr. Karzai is once again calling his favorite friends for a big powwow which he calls a “Jirga” or tribal council. It is to be held in Kabul in two weeks. Pakistan is working with the UK and the US to ensure that this Loya Jirga represents all the Pakhtuns so that it becomes a vehicle for peace in West Asia. Islamabad has offered to hold a joint Loya jirga between the Afghan and Pakistani Pakhtuns. The last time Mr. Karzai hijacked the societal consensus for ending the war through the traditional means of a consultative assembly. Mr. Karzai used the grass-roots method to rubber stamp his own brand of government. Obviously the corruption, lack of peace, and loss on the ground has proven that a repeat of the previous methodology will not work.
World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.
They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.
In the middle of it all was Obama — occupant of an office once informally known as “leader of the free world” — putting on a clinic for some of the world’s greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.
The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama’s eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: “I’m going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session.”
WASHINGTON: Pakistan has said that it has acquired advanced nuclear fuel cycle capability and can offer it to the rest of the world under IAEA safeguards.
The offer, contained in a national statement presented at a two-day summit which concluded in Washington on Tuesday, reflected Islamabad’s desire to gain recognition as a nuclear state.
“As a country with advanced fuel cycle capability, Pakistan is in a position to provide nuclear fuel cycle services under IAEA safeguards, and to participate in any non-discriminatory nuclear fuel cycle assurance mechanism,” the document said.
At the summit, Pakistan also reiterated its proposals for establishing a strategic restraint regime in South Asia.
The policy paper released during the conference stressed that such a regime would “promote nuclear and missile restraint, a balance in conventional forces, and conflict resolution”.
Henry Kissinger once observed that it was more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy.
The latest example: the U.S.-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is in serious hot water with his really angry patrons in Washington.
The Obama administration is blaming the largely powerless Karzai, a former CIA “asset,” for America’s failure to defeat the Taliban. Washington accused Karzai of rigging last year’s elections. True enough, but the U.S. pre-rigged the Afghan elections by excluding all parties opposed to western occupation.
Washington, which supports dictators and phoney elections across the Muslim world, had the chutzpah to blast Karzai for corruption and rigging votes. This while the Pentagon was engineering a full military takeover of Pakistan.
KABUL — Senior Afghan officials are now criticizing as counterproductive the arrest in Pakistan this year of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the No. 2 Taliban official. Its main effect, the Afghan officials say, has been to derail Afghan-led efforts to secure peace talks with the Taliban, making that peace ever more remote.
The episode offers a window into the mutual suspicions that still divide Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly because of Pakistan’s long history of support for the Taliban, as well as differences between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States about how best to seek reconciliation between insurgents and the Afghan government.
Senior Afghan officials in the military and presidential palace accuse Pakistan of orchestrating the arrest of Baradar and others to take down Taliban leaders most amenable to negotiations. Some of them say that Afghans had been in secret contact with Baradar before his arrest and that he was prepared to join the 1,400 people descending on Kabul next month for a peace conference. Despite Afghan requests, Pakistan has refused to hand over Baradar and other Taliban leaders.
Pakistani officials flatly deny that they intended to derail Taliban talks. Such an allegation, one Pakistani intelligence official said, is a “slur on us.”
MARJA, Afghanistan — Since their offensive here in February, the Marines have flooded Marja with hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. The tactic aims to win over wary residents by paying them compensation for property damage or putting to work men who would otherwise look to the Taliban for support.
The approach helped turn the tide of insurgency in Iraq. But in Marja, where the Taliban seem to know everything — and most of the time it is impossible to even tell who they are — they have already found ways to thwart the strategy in many places, including killing or beating some who take the Marines’ money, or pocketing it themselves.
Just a few weeks since the start of the operation here, the Taliban have “reseized control and the momentum in a lot of ways” in northern Marja, Maj. James Coffman, civil affairs leader for the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, said in an interview in late March. “We have to change tactics to get the locals back on our side.”
KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened over the weekend to quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform, according to several members of parliament.
They said on Monday that Karzai made the unusual statement at a closed-door meeting on Saturday with selected lawmakers — just days after kicking up a diplomatic controversy with remarks alleging foreigners were behind fraud in last year’s disputed elections.
Lawmakers dismissed the latest comment as hyperbole, but it will add to the impression the president — who relies on tens of thousands of US and NATO forces to fight the insurgency and prop up his government — is growing increasingly erratic and unable to exert authority without attacking his foreign backers.
“He said that ‘if I come under foreign pressure, I might join the Taliban’,” said Farooq Marenai, who represents the eastern province of Nangarhar.
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said he is confident that Pakistan has secured its nuclear weapons.
Obama, however, reiterated that he was concerned about global nuclear security, not just in Pakistan.
In an interview with the New York Times, President Obama said his new approach to nuclear non-proliferation is different from that of the Bush administration.
Obama is scheduled to announce the new US policy for non-proliferation later Tuesday.
When asked what he had done specifically to ensure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’ safety, Obama said he was not going to divulge details about Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
Obama explained that his biggest concerns were about securing loose nuclear material, which the terrorists were more likely to obtain
A nuclear summit is scheduled to be held in the US capital on April 12 and 13, aimed at achieving a global consensus on limiting proliferation and preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear technology.
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is actively lobbying for more pressure on New Delhi to ease tensions between India and Pakistan, the Wall Street Journal has reported. It has also revealed that US President Barack Obama had issued a secret directive to intensify diplomacy towards that aim and to win Islamabad’s cooperation in Afghanistan.
Asserting that without détente between the two rivals, US efforts to win Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan would suffer, the directive in December concluded that India must make resolving its tensions with Pakistan a priority for progress to be made on US goals in the region, the daily said citing “people familiar with its contents”.
A debate continues within the administration over how hard to push India, which has long resisted outside intervention in the conflict with its neighbour. The Pentagon, in particular, has sought more pressure on New Delhi, the influential daily said citing US and Indian officials.
SISTANI: The tribal elders gathered in the desert outside Marjah, the frontline of the US-led battle in southern Afghanistan to provide services and security after years of Taliban control.
Around 20 sat in a circle, waiting for Lieutenant Colonel Brian Christmas, US Marine commander in northern Marjah who has – so far – kept American troops out of the small village of Sistani to the northwest.
Nearly two months after US Marines led what was billed the biggest offensive against the Taliban in more than eight years of war, troops still come under daily fire from insurgents and bombs are still exploding.
Four recent bomb attacks wounded at least nine US or Afghan service personnel and clashes between Marines and insurgents are frequent.
Mohammad Moqim watches in despair as his men struggle with their AK-47 automatic rifles, doing their best to hit man-size targets 50 meters away. A few of the police trainees lying prone in the mud are decent shots, but the rest shoot clumsily, and fumble as they try to reload their weapons. The Afghan National Police (ANP) captain sighs as he dismisses one group of trainees and orders 25 more to take their places on the firing line. “We are still at zero,” says Captain Moqim, 35, an eight-year veteran of the force. “They don’t listen, are undisciplined, and will never be real policemen.”
Poor marksmanship is the least of it. Worse, crooked Afghan cops supply much of the ammunition used by the Taliban, according to Saleh Mohammed, an insurgent commander in Helmand province. The bullets and rocket-propelled grenades sold by the cops are cheaper and of better quality than the ammo at local markets, he says. It’s easy for local cops to concoct credible excuses for using so much ammunition, especially because their supervisors try to avoid areas where the Taliban are active. Mohammed says local police sometimes even stage fake firefights so that if higher-ups question their outsize orders for ammo, villagers will say they’ve heard fighting.
“Why would U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan go out of their way to smear a journalist”
“Because he told the truth about a night raid that killed Afghan civilians, including pregnant women!”
Last week, I spoke with Afghanistan-based journalist Jerome Starkey about his reporting on special forces raids that killed civilians and NATOs surprising–and disappointing–response. This video contains disturbing images, and an even more disturbing story of violence, and an attempt to silence a truth-teller. It shows why its absolutely essential that we keep pushing back against the Pentagon’s message machine.
(CNN) — Talking to the Taliban leader in Afghanistan may help bring peace to the country, according to a former Pakistan spy chief once referred to as the “father of the Taliban.”
Retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI spy agency, worked with the CIA through the 1980s to fund and train the Afghan Jihad against the Soviets.
Many of the Mujahedeen went on to govern Afghanistan as the Taliban, who are led by Mullah Omar.
“The best situation would be to talk to Mullah Omar,” Gul said. “But then, put up your own conditions where I would say it is legitimate … I think they will accept. I know their psychology.”
Face-to-face talks would work best, Gul added.
“You have to engage him. You have to talk to him,” Gul said. “There is no one else, for heaven sake, why beat around the bush?”
Last year, Gul said Omar was the only person who can improve U.S. interests in Afghanistan.
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Muslim League (Q) Secretary General, Mushahid Hussain Sayed on Tuesday said that Pakistan should not repeat its mistakes and must not have any favourite in Afghanistan.
The US needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs the US; therefore, Pakistan should play its cards intelligently, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed stated this while speaking at a seminar on ‘Pakistan’s Geo-strategic Challenges and Response’, which was organised by the NUST Business School of the National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST). It was held in connection with a series of the talks to celebrate Pakistan Day.
Speaking on the subject, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed stated that Pakistan had been facing crisis for the last three decades. He identified five major developments that took place in the region over the last three decades, which influenced the geo-strategic environment of Pakistan. Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan made Pakistan a central point for the international diplomacy.
Insurgents claim they are ready for coming NATO offensive
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Deadly bomb attacks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar were a warning to NATO’s top general that the Taliban are ready for a coming offensive in their heartland, the insurgents said Sunday.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the bombings show the insurgents are still able to operate despite the buildup of Afghan and international troops in the south in preparation for a push into Kandahar province.
A separate, Taliban-linked Web site called the attacks a “warning” to Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The top NATO general has said Kandahar province is the next target for coalition forces who recently drove the insurgents from a key stronghold in neighboring Helmand province.
“Gen. McChrystal has said that soon they will start their operations, and now we have already started our operations,” Ahmadi said by telephone. “With all the preparations they have taken, still they are not able to stop us.”
In a recent interview with the New York Times, the once renowned Colonel Imam made some very insightful remarks and dire predictions. For those unfamiliar with the name, Colonel Imam was an ISI operative who played a prominent role in recruiting and training resistance fighters during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His list of students includes prominent ‘mujahideen’ commanders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Masood. The Colonel worked closely with the Americans and Saudis to train, arm, and support the mujahideen throughout the Soviet occupation and beyond.
Following the emergence of the Taliban, he provided crucial tactical advice and training to this new and potent force, helping them sweep across the rugged country in a series of decisive battles. By his own admission, Colonel Imam was very close to Mullah Omar and spent a considerable amount of time with the Afghan Taliban leader following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A U.S. government report has cast doubt on the future success of the civilian side of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, with diplomats stretched to the limit and morale challenged at the embassy in Kabul.
The State Department inspector general’s office, in a report completed last month and posted on the department’s website, listed 89 formal recommendations for the embassy as well as 42 “informal ones,” from greater oversight of government spending to a more realistic workload for staff.
“Even with the able leadership of Kabul’s senior officers, the best of intentions, and the most dedicated efforts, Embassy Kabul faces serious challenges in meeting the administration’s deadline for “success” in Afghanistan,” said the report.
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – With his white turban, untrimmed beard and worn army jacket, the man known uniformly here by his nom de guerre, Col. Imam, is a particular Pakistani enigma.
A United States-trained former colonel in Pakistan’s spy agency, he spent 20 years running insurgents in and out of Afghanistan, first to fight the Soviet Army, and later to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Today those Taliban forces are battling his onetime mentor, the United States, and Western officials say Colonel Imam has continued to train, recruit and finance the insurgents. Along with a number of other retired Pakistani intelligence officials, they say, he has helped the Taliban stage a remarkable comeback since 2006.
In two recent interviews with The New York Times, Colonel Imam denied that. But he remains a vocal advocate of the Taliban, and his views reveal the sympathies that have long run deep in the ranks of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services.
The Obama administration plans to spend nearly $50 million on Pakistani media this year to reverse anti-American sentiments and raise awareness of projects aimed at improving quality of life, confirms a Washington insider.
After the Kerry-Lugar Bill debacle, the Obama administration had struggled with the idea of ‘branding’ aid and many within the State department and the USAID had argued that identifying projects may backfire.
“By announcing that a school was built and is being maintained – partly because of the aid received from America – you can alienate people,” said someone who had proposed not ‘branding’ the aid.
The US Special Representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke believes that a substantial amount of monies spent on media- especially private TV channels will reduce tension and may even bring Pakistan-US relations back on the right path.
The American Dream: A Terror-Sponsoring Nefarious Terrorist State!
Shouldn’t the United States of America be declared a hostile terrorist state?
The captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, has confessed that the US administration had assured him of unlimited military aid and funding for waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
