US commander warns American troops will be in Afghanistan for years

by Peter Symonds

The top US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, warned on Wednesday that the huge boost to US troop numbers announced this week would have to continue for years. His comments underscore the fact that the Obama administration is preparing for a dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan that will inevitably heighten tensions throughout the region, especially in Central Asia.


In a bid to shore up the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, President Obama announced on Tuesday that an additional 17,000 US soldiers would be sent there. McKiernan told the media that the troop buildup was "not a temporary force uplift" and would "need to be sustained for some period of time," adding that he was looking at "the next three to four to five years". The US already has 36,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan, along with about 30,000 other foreign soldiers operating under NATO command.


The latest troop increase will not be the last. McKiernan repeated a previous request for an extra 10,000 in Afghanistan on top of those already announced. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates did not rule out additional US forces, but noted that no additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan until the Obama administration had completed its current strategic review.


At a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Poland, Gates pressed NATO allies for further support for Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned that NATO could not "afford the price of failure in Afghanistan" and urged "all members of the team... to pull closer together and pull harder in 2009". But the commitments made were cosmetic, underlining the continuing deep tensions inside NATO between the US and European powers such as Germany and France.


UK Defence Secretary John Hutton complained that Britain was already doing its share, saying that "the European members of NATO need to do more". Italy promised 500 soldiers. Germany indicated that it may send an additional 600 troops, but to the largely peaceful north of Afghanistan to assist with elections due in August. France committed no extra soldiers. While expressing his disappointment at the lack of extra forces, Gates urged NATO members to contribute economic aid and to the training of Afghan security forces.


The NATO summit highlighted the intersection of the war in Afghanistan with growing rivalry in Central Asia. One day before the meeting, the Kyrgyzstan parliament voted to shut down a key US air base needed to supply US and NATO forces in land-locked Afghanistan. As supply lines through neighbouring Pakistan have come under fierce attack from anti-US insurgents, the Pentagon has been seeking alternative routes through Central Asia.


Russia, however, has made clear that any shipment of US supplies through the region will depend on its support and will involve US concessions, particularly over the positioning of US anti-ballistic missiles in NATO-allied countries in Eastern Europe. Before the decision to shut down the Manus Air Base, Moscow announced a substantial aid package to Kyrgyzstan. At the same time, Russia has permitted some non-military US supplies to pass through Latvia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—the first trainload left on Thursday.


The issue is creating divisions within NATO. The US-based think tank Stratfor commented: "The lack of enthusiasm for the Afghanistan surge was matched by growing questions among the Europeans over the military plan itself—both the overarching strategy and the lines of supply. Moreover, the Europeans are anxious to know how and to what extent the US plan involves the Russians." While France and Germany support a rapprochement with Russia, Eastern European countries are opposed to any deal that would weaken US protection against Moscow.


The US confronts a deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan. Commenting on the boost to US troop numbers, General McKiernan said: "What this allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated." He added: "I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be a tough year."


Other US analysts are less cautious in their warnings. John Nagl, from the Centre for a New American Security, told the British Observer that the number of US soldiers in Afghanistan could eventually rise to 100,000. "The immediate problem is to stop the bleeding. The 30,000 troops is a tourniquet... but that is all we have. If Obama is a two-term president then by the end of his time in office there may only be marine embassy guards in Iraq. But there will still be tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan."


In a detailed statement to a US Congressional committee last week, Anthony Cordesman from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies bluntly warned that "we are losing the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and we have at most two years in which to decisively reverse the situation". He cited military statistics for 2008 pointing to a 33 percent rise in military clashes with insurgents, an increase in roadside bombs of 27 percent and in surface-to-air fire of 67 percent.


Cordesman stressed, however, that such details were secondary to the growing influence of the Taliban and other anti-occupation militias in Afghanistan. He cited in some detail the results of an ABC poll, released this month, which demonstrated falling support in Afghanistan for the occupation, and for its puppet President Hamid Karzai. Just 18 percent supported any increase in US and NATO troops and 44 percent wanted a reduction.


Support for the Taliban was strongest in the south and east of the country, where Pashtun tribes have been subjected to more than seven years of searches, arbitrary detention, military attacks and bombing. Overall, 25 percent of Afghans felt that violent attacks on occupation forces were justified; in the top five high-conflict provinces, the figure rose to 38 percent.


The survey also provided evidence of deteriorating living standards. The proportion of Afghans who characterised their economic opportunities as "very bad" doubled from 17 percent in 2006 to 33 percent. More than half reported an income of less than $US100 a month and 93 percent less than $300. Many registered complaints about fuel prices, lack of electricity, medical care, roads and other infrastructure. Nearly three quarters of respondents were worried about the impact of the global economic crisis.


Far from addressing any of these issues, the surge in US troops in Afghanistan will compound the anger and resentment that is providing a steady stream of recruits to the anti-occupation insurgency. Most of the fresh troops will be assigned to south of the country, where control by US forces and the Karzai government is tenuous, and to the border with Pakistan in an effort to halt the infiltration of Taliban fighters from bases in Pakistan.


The US war in Afghanistan has already spread across the Pakistani border, destabilising the government in Islamabad. The Obama administration has continued US missile strikes from unmanned drones on targets inside Pakistan's tribal areas along the border, killing scores of civilians and inflaming local anger. Proof that at least some of the US drones are operating from a base inside Pakistan will compound the political difficulties facing the government, which has previously disclaimed any knowledge or involvement. The London-based Times and the Pakistani News have both published Google Earth images of three drones parked at the Shamsi air field in southwestern Pakistan.


Under pressure from Washington, the Pakistani army has been fighting a war to suppress anti-US militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Some 120,000 troops have been involved, and more than 1,500 have been killed in the fighting. The army, which has received around $10 billion in US aid, has laid waste to towns and villages, causing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. The insurgency has also spread beyond the FATA to areas of the North West Frontier Province, including the Swat Valley, and is even touching on the Punjab, Pakistan's most populous state.


Pakistan announced this week that it had struck a shaky deal with insurgents in the Swat Valley to introduce Islamic Sharia law to the area as part of a ceasefire. Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the media that the Obama administration was concerned that "the truce does not turn into a surrender". He said he had spoken to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari who had assured him that was "not the case" and described the deal as "an interim arrangement".


US Defence Secretary Gates took a slightly different tack, saying on Friday that the agreement was acceptable if it led to reconciliation and the disarming of the insurgents. He made clear that the US was looking to similar arrangements with sections of the anti-occupation forces in Afghanistan, seeking to replicate the tactic used in Iraq to buy off local tribal leaders and use them against hard-line insurgents. "We have said all along that ultimately some sort of political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in Afghanistan," Gates said.


Washington's neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan, however, is confronting widespread hostility and a burgeoning armed resistance. Asked about the ability of the US to succeed where the British army in the nineteenth century and the Soviet military in the 1980s had failed, General McKiernan simply said that it was "a very unhealthy comparison". The comparison is perfectly apt. Like the British Raj and the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy, Washington is pursuing a criminal war for the subjugation of Afghanistan and the pursuit of US economic and strategic ambitions in Central Asia. Now, thousands more US soldiers are being sent into a quagmire that shows no signs of ending.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12396

10,000 British troops to be fighting Taliban in Afghanistan within 12 months

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
More than 10,000 British troops will be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan within 12 months
Defence chiefs believe the 8,300 troops currently serving in the south of the country need to be bolstered by an extra battle group of between 1,500 and 1,800 men within a year.

The deployment will push the Britain's Armed Forces to the very limit of its fighting capability and will raise fears that the entire operation has now fallen victim to "mission creep".

It is understood that the Army's top generals have given their support for the plan and are now awaiting approval from the Treasury and other areas of government.

The so-called "mini-surge" has been ordered in a direct response to a decision by President Barack Obama to send an extra 17,000 combat troops to counter the growing threat posed by the Taliban.

Although the figure was less than the 30,000 which had been called for by the US military, defence sources believe the move has sent a direct message to the US's and Britain's Nato partners that they must do more to help win the war in Afghanistan.

The new British battle group will consist of an infantry battalion, composed of around 700 troops, bolstered by at least one rifle company of 120 troops. The force will be supported by signallers, medics, engineers and elements of the Royal Artillery.

The Army has notched up a series of major successes against the Taliban, including the retaking of Musa Qala in northern Helmand, a former insurgent stronghold, as well as the operation to create a functioning hydro-electric power station at Kajaki.

But the much vaunted plans to bring reconstruction to the region have stalled, following the deterioration of security in the province.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has now increased troops numbers in Helmand every six months since 2006, when just 3,300 troops were sent to southern Afghanistan to secure the area and to allow reconstruction to begin.

John Hutton, the defence secretary, has persistently called on Britain's allies to do more of the "heavy lifting" in Afghanistan but, apart from France, virtually all have refused to do so.

There are around 56,400 Nato troops in Afghanistan and of those 24,900 are from the US. Britain has the second largest contingent with 8,300, followed by Germany which has 3,460, although most of these are based in the relatively peaceful north.

Canada, one of Britain's major allies in southern Afghanistan, has 2,830 troops based in Kandahar province and has lost 108 soldiers in battle. However, the Canadian government confirmed last week that it plans to withdraw all its troops from the country within two years, a move which will create a vacuum that can only really be filled by the US or Britain.

Mr Hutton said last week that he had not yet received any request from the US for extra troops but added that UK force levels were kept under constant review.

He said: "We haven't received any such request yet, and we obviously keep our force levels in Afghanistan under literally constant review, because we have an obligation… a duty of care, if you like, to make sure that our operations are being conducted as safely as possible; and if there's a need, either for more troops or for more equipment, obviously we look very, very seriously at that."

The arrival of the extra battle group will follow the deployment of a special 300-strong force of bomb disposal troops, which is expected to arrive in Afghanistan in the next few weeks. Details of the deployment are to be announced by Mr Hutton in Parliament next month.

It is understood that extra ammunition technical officers (ATOs), who specialise in bomb disposal, will work closely with troops from the Intelligence Corps to try and discover supply routes of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) into Helmand and the location of bomb factories.

Taliban IED attacks now account for around 70 to 80 per cent of all casualties suffered by British troops, according to defence sources.

Viagra Used to Entice Afghan Warlords

A CIA officer gave an Afghan chieftain Viagra in an attempt to obtain information about Taliban movements.

The bearded Afghan, looking to be in his late 60s, returned enthusiastically with information and asking for more pills, after receiving the four blue Viagra pills from a CIA officer earlier.

According to officials involved in Afghanistan, this is how some battles are won, through novel incentives and creative bargaining in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods.

The officials say that to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the agency's operatives have used a variety of personal touches. These include pocket knives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos.

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people – whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra," said one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours. Like other field officers interviewed for the story, he spoke on condition of anonymity when describing tactics and operations.

These inducements are necessary in Afghanistan, where warlords and tribal leaders expect to be paid for their cooperation, and where, for some, switching sides can be easy as changing tunics, according to officials. If the Americans do not offer incentives, there are others who will, including Taliban commanders, drug dealers and Iranian agents.

Cash and weapons are the usual bribes of choice, but are not always the best options, Afghanistan veterans say. Guns often fall into the wrong hands, and showy gifts such as money, jewelry and cars tend to draw unwanted attention.

"If you give an asset $1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone," said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive officer of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company . "Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it."

Smith said, that the key is to meet the informant's personal needs in a way that keeps him firmly on your side but leaves little trace.

"You're trying to bridge a gap between people living in the 18th century and people coming in from the 21st century," he said, "so you look for those common things in the form of material aid that motivate people everywhere."

There is a long tradition of using sex as a motivator among the world's intelligence agency. A retired CIA officer and author of several books on Intelligence, Robert Baer, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.

"The KGB has always used 'honey traps,' and it works," Mr. Baer said.

He said that for American officers, a more common practice was to offer medical care for potential informants and their loved ones. Some U.S. operatives in Afghanistan said, Western drugs such as Viagra are just one of the long list of enticements available for use in special cases. Veteran officers familiar with such practices said Viagra is offered rarely, and only to older tribal officials to whom the drug would hold special appeal.

While these drugs are generally unavailable in the remote areas where the agency's team have operated, they have been sold in Kabul street markets since 2003, and are known by reputation in other places.

"You didn't hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones," said one retired operative familiar with the drug's use in Afghanistan. Afghan tribal leaders often have four wives – the maximum number allowed by the Quran – and some village patriarchs are easily sold on the pill.

Not everyone in Afghanistan's hinterlands has heard of the drug, making it awkward when Americans try to explain its effects.

This was the case with the 60-year-old chieftain who received the four pills from a U.S. operative. The operative, now retired, said he talked to the clan leader for a long time through an interpreter, finding ways to secure loyalty.

A conversation of the man's family and wives provided inspiration. Once it was established that the man was in good health, the pills were offered and accepted.

When the Americans returned four days later, the gift had worked its magic, the operative said.

"He came up to us beaming," the official said. "He said, 'You are a great man.' "

"And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area."

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1615693/viagra_used_to_entice_afghan_warlords/index.html?source=r_health

Amid wide Taliban rule, a NATO supply line in Pakistan is clogged

By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Pir Zubair Shah Published: December 25, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: This frontier metropolis boasts a major air station and Pakistani Army and paramilitary unit garrisons. But the 200 Taliban insurgents were in no rush as they methodically plundered a North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply terminus here two weeks ago.

The militants began by blocking off a long stretch of the main road, giving them plenty of time to burn everything inside, said one guard, Haroon Khan, who was standing next to a row of charred trucks.

After ascertaining the overmatched bodyguards they wouldn't be popped — if they consorted never to work there again — the militants screamed "God is great" through bullhorns. They then seized jerrycans and made numerous trips to a nearby filling station for fuel, which they dumped on the freight trucks and Humvees before setting them afire.

The assault furnished the up-to-date evidence of how extensively militants now rule the vital region east of the Khyber Pass, the narrow cut across the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that's been a strategic trade and military gateway since the time of Alexander the Great.

The area encompasses what is officially known as the Khyber Agency, which is adjacent to Peshawar and is one of a handful of lawless tribal districts on the border. But security in Khyber has deteriorated further in recent months with the emergence of a brash young Taliban commander who calls news conferences to thumb his nose at NATO forces, as well as with public fury over deadly missile attacks by American remotely piloted aircraft.


In hard times, flow of money from migrant workers stallsAmid wide Taliban rule, a NATO supply line in Pakistan is chokedA foreign face beloved by Afghans from all sidesKhyber's downward spiral is jeopardizing NATO's most important supply line, sending American military officials scrambling to find alternative routes into Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia. Three-quarters of troop supplies enter from Pakistan, most of the goods ferried from Karachi to Peshawar and then 40 miles west through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.

A half-dozen raids on NATO supply terminals here have already destroyed 300 cargo trucks and Humvees this month. American officials insist that troop provisions have not suffered, but with predictions that the American deployment in Afghanistan could double next year to 60,000 soldiers, the pressure to secure safer transportation is even more intense.

For NATO the most serious problem is not even the terminals in Peshawar but the safety of the road that winds west to the 3,500-foot Khyber Pass. The route used to be relatively secure: Afridi tribesman were paid by the government to safeguard it, and they were subject to severe penalties and collective tribal punishment for crimes against travelers.

But now the road is a death trap, truckers and some security officials say, with routine attacks like one on Sunday that burned a fuel tanker and another last Friday that killed three drivers returning from Afghanistan.

"The road is so unsafe that even the locals are reluctant to go back to their villages from Peshawar," said Gul Naseem, who lives in Landi Kotal, a town near the border.

The largest truckers' association here has gone on strike to protest the lack of security, saying that the job action has sidelined 60 percent of the trucks that normally haul military goods. An American official denied that the drop-off had been that severe.

"Not a single day passes when something doesn't happen," said Shakir Afridi, leader of the truckers' group, the Khyber Transport Association. He said at least 25 trucks and six oil tankers had been destroyed this month. "Attacks have become a daily affair," he said.

There are new efforts to deter Taliban raids, including convoy escorts by a Pakistani paramilitary group, the Frontier Corps. But now militants are attacking empty — and unguarded — trucks returning to Pakistan. The road from Peshawar to the border has become far more perilous than the route on the other side in Afghanistan, truckers say.

"Our lives are in danger and nobody cares," said Shah Mahmood Afridi, a driver who was in the returning convoy attacked on Friday. "They fired at the trucks and killed three men inside. There is no security provided when we are empty."

Escalating violence on the Khyber road has paralleled the rise of Hakimullah Mehsud, a young Taliban commander and lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the main Pakistani Taliban faction.

Earlier this year, Hakimullah Mehsud's forces took control of Orakzai Agency and instituted the strict Islamic laws known as Shariah. At a news conference there one month ago, Mehsud declared his intention to intensify attacks on NATO supply convoys. Some security officials say they believe that he was behind the assassination in August of a rival militant leader, Hajji Namdar, in Khyber.

At the same time, another powerful Khyber warlord, Mangal Bagh, who officials say has not been attacking the convoys, has seen his influence shrink somewhat, easing the path for Mehsud's authority to expand inside Khyber. "I have no love for Mangal Bagh, but the fact remains that Mangal Bagh does not do these attacks," said Tariq Hayat, the Khyber political agent, the top government official in the region.

Increased missile attacks by American remotely piloted aircraft — like one that killed seven people in the South Waziristan Agency on Monday — have enraged residents in Khyber and other tribal areas near the border, increasing sympathy for attacks on convoys. Afridi, of the truckers' association, condemns the strikes and blames them for increased assaults on his drivers. "We are a tribal people, and if the Americans hit innocent people in Waziristan, we also feel the pain," he said.

Raising the prospect of an even wider threat to the convoys, an influential Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, staged a rally last week in Peshawar, turning out thousands to condemn the missile strikes. The marchers demanded that Pakistan end the NATO convoys, and they vowed to cut the supply lines themselves.

Taliban militants have also moved into Khyber after Pakistani military campaigns in nearby areas like Bajaur Agency. Their migration is reminiscent of a tactic that bedeviled the American military in Iraq for years — dubbed "whack a mole" by combat officers — in which guerrillas eluded large American combat operations and moved to take up positions in areas with understaffed troop contingents.

All those factors have been amplified, in the view of some officials, by the torpor of the Pakistani government. Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal regions, said the government had the manpower to drive militants out of Khyber but had mounted only a weak response.

He recounted a recent conversation with a senior Pakistani government official. "You have the chance to wake up," he said he told the official. "But if you don't wake up now, there is a good chance you won't wake up at all."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/asia/25khyber.php?page=2

Australian SAS Units Function as Death Squads in Afghanistan

By James Cogan
December 11, 20008 "WSWS" --- An Australian Defence Department (ADD) report published in October, and highlighted on November 26 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Lateline" program, provides a rare account of the shameful operations being performed by the Australian military as part of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan.

The units most involved are from the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) and the Fourth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (4RAR), the Army's designated commando battalion. These are highly trained troops and their ostensible role in times of war is to carry out long range reconnaissance, surveillance, harassment or raids on enemy targets. In the so-called "war on terror", they are being used as little more than death squads.

The ADD report presents the findings of an inquiry into a September 17 Australian operation that resulted in the mistaken killing of Rozi Khan, the pro-occupation governor of Chora district in Uruzgan province and a long-time colleague of Afghan president Hamid Karzai. The intended target, codenamed "Musket" by the Australian military, was an alleged member of the Islamist Taliban movement. While much of the mission statement remains censored, it is apparent that a squad was sent out to storm into the man's house in the dead of night and execute him in cold blood.

The possibility for things to go wrong is inherent in such operations in civilian areas, and on September 17, they went terribly wrong. Just days before the hit on "Musket" was ordered, the Taliban had issued threats against residents of a village, which lay on the route being taking by the Australians. Rozi Khan had encouraged the villagers to resist any attack and promised to come to their aid with his armed followers.

As the Australian troops moved close to the village, sentries atop houses spotted them and assumed they were Taliban intruders. Within minutes, dozens of villagers were firing on the Australians from the east, west and north. Khan and his men, alerted by the gunfire, began moving toward the fighting, as did local Afghan police.

Troops in an Australian back-up unit, who had manoeuvred to try and flank what they believed to be Taliban, engaged Khan's group and, the inquiry found, most likely inflicted fatal wounds on the district governor. It was not until a police vehicle arrived that the Australians made efforts to communicate with the men they were attacking.

After realising their mistake, the Australian troops aborted their "Musket" mission—at the cost of two dead and five wounded Afghans. The Defence Department inquiry ruled: "That Rozi Khan was among the casualties is resultant of his unfortunate intervention into a complex situation, albeit with altruistic motives."

The September 17 mission was no isolated incident. It was part of a broader and ongoing operation codenamed "Peeler" that tasks the Australian special forces with "disrupting i.e., killing or capturing Taliban leadership or improvised explosive device facilitators".

Not all missions result in the target's assassination. Last month, the alleged Taliban "shadow" governor of Uruzgan, Mullah Bari Ghul, was detained in a raid that was most likely conducted by Australians.

Other missions result in massacres. On November 23, 2007, Private Luke Worsley of 4RAR was killed during an assault on a residence in Chenartu village in Uruzgan. Because of the Australian fatality, details of the incident were made public. The target was Taliban leader Mullah Baz Mohammed, who was expected to be at the house that night.

Australian troops crept up under the cover of darkness, blew the outer doors off the housing compound and rushed in. They left the Daad family—three men, two women and one female child—dead on the floor. A neighbour, Faiz Mohammed, told Time magazine: "There was blood everywhere." Worsley was shot as he entered the house. Mullah Baz Mohammed was not there.

"Lateline" commented that the Defence Department report "prompts questions about the legality and the ethics of targeted killings, even in the dusty and chaotic battleground of Afghanistan".

Tim McCormack of Melbourne University, a professor of Humanitarian Law consulted by the program, provided reassurances. "International law is not pacifist law," he said. "It does allow the killing of enemy combatants and civilians who take a direct part in hostilities—just as it's also legal for the Taliban to hunt down an Australian SAS person or anybody on the Australian side or any of the allied side".

McCormack's remarks, however, serve only to obscure the essential issues. They ignore the thoroughly predatory and, therefore, criminal motives behind the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. The September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were utilised as the pretext to deploy military forces into the desperately impoverished country with the aim of securing long term bases in the very heart of Central Asia, a region rich in untapped resources. Over the past seven years, the Afghan war has evolved into a component of the struggle for regional dominance between the US—supported at present by its European NATO allies—and Russia and China.

The existence of Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan had nothing to do with the decision to send in troops. Not only did the Bush administration reject offers by the Taliban to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country if evidence were presented of his involvement in 9/11, but virtually no steps were taken by the US military to prevent the bulk of Al Qaeda simply moving across the border into Pakistan's tribal agencies—where it has largely operated ever since.

Australia's involvement in the war was the result of the most cynical calculations. By sending troops to fight in Afghanistan and then Iraq, the former Howard government hoped to cement Washington's backing for a series of military operations that would secure Australian strategic and economic interests in the South Pacific, as well as a free trade agreement with the United States. The Rudd Labor government is continuing the same policy.

There is a stark difference—both politically and morally—between the activities of citizens resisting the invasion of their country and those of the invading army. Afghans are fighting for the right to determine their own future free from foreign domination. The Australian military in Afghanistan is an instrument of imperialist aggression. It is conducting a campaign of terror throughout Uruzgan province to force the population to accept a US puppet government.

One obvious parallel to the Afghanistan operation is the Vietnam War's Operation Phoenix. Over a five-year period, American and South Vietnamese death squads assassinated tens of thousands of Vietnamese on the grounds they were supporting the Viet Cong (VC) liberation movement. Only the most craven apologist for US imperialism would claim that such atrocities were "legal" on the basis that many of the victims belonged to the VC.

The Labor government repeatedly tries to ennoble the Afghan war with flowery descriptions of Australian soldiers as "heroes" who are "putting their lives on the line for the rest us". The truth is they are killing and maiming people, including entirely innocent civilians, of an oppressed country for a thoroughly reactionary, neo-colonial cause.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21430.htm

How the Taliban Hopes to Choke U.S. Afghanistan Mission

By Mark Thompson / Washington
Tuesday, Dec. 09, 2008

A man looks at Afghanistan-bound vehicles gutted by alleged militants on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan on Monday, Dec. 8, 2008.
Perhaps the Taliban are observing the old military axiom that amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics. In a pair of attacks over the weekend in northwest Pakistan, militants destroyed more than 150 Humvees and other vehicles bound for U.S. troops and allies fighting in Afghanistan — the third attack on NATO supply lines inside a month. Those attacks have highlighted an ongoing vulnerability along the overland routes through mountain passes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier that are used to transport more than 75% of the supplies sent by the U.S. to its 32,000 troops in Afghanistan. So, as President-elect Barack Obama prepares to send more troops to join the fight in Afghanistan, Pentagon planners are scrambling to figure out how to keep those already there — and the anticipated reinforcements — supplied with food, fuel, bullets and everything else a modern army needs.


"Without adequate sustainment, the operational deployment cannot maintain constant pressure on the enemy," Lieutenant Christopher Manganaro, a young U.S. officer in Afghanistan has written in the professional journal Army Logistics. And the Pentagon can't do it all with airplanes. "Few airfields in Afghanistan can support aircraft larger than a C�130," Manganaro added, "limiting the number of high-value items that U.S. Army units can transport by air." (View images of NATO troops in Afghanistan

There is no sharper contrast between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than their supply routes. In Iraq, the U.S. military basically owns the skies and roads that run from Kuwait into Iraq, through which nearly all supplies flow. But that's hardly the case in Pakistan, where most goods arrive at the Indian Ocean port of Karachi and then are shipped over land, often to Peshawar. Then they're funneled through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, 40 miles away. Pakistan is plagued with hit-and-run militancy even in some of its major cities, and everything west of Peshawar is pretty much enemy territory.

Militants hijacked a convoy of more than a dozen vehicles nearly a month ago, and last week 22 trucks were destroyed by fire at a truck stop. U.S. military officials downplay the impact of recent attacks, noting that about 350 supply vehicles a day travel the route. Still, they're nervous enough to have begun looking for alternatives. �

���That's because the choke-point in the Khyber Pass is an attractive target for the enemy. Marine General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was asked in September how much trouble his forces in Afghanistan would be in if Islamabad shut down supply lines through Pakistan. "It would be challenging to sustain our presence," he answered. "It is very difficult then to get to this landlocked nation in a way that would provide the quantity of resources that we need, particularly as we see ourselves growing." Bearing in mind projected future deployments, the U.S. will need to deliver up to 70,000 shipping containers (15% of them refrigerated) a year to its troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. has recently tested alternate supply lines, and "we're working our way through to understand rail, pipelines, customs, what would it take, are they there in a sufficient scale to allow us to do this? And so we're working this one pretty hard," Cartwright added. The impact of a shutdown triggered by Taliban attacks would have the same result. �

And the logistical needs that will accompany the doubling of the U.S. troop contingent over the next year or so makes securing supply lines even more urgent. "The larger the force, the greater the need" for security, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a congressional panel September 23. But the challenges of Afghanistan's rugged terrain has long been a key weapon for locals eager to keep foreigners at bay. The Afghans drove the British out through the Khyber Pass more than a century ago, killing more than 16,000. And they forced out the Soviet Union in 1989, following a 10-year occupation that cost the Red Army 15,000 men.

� "The latest strike is going to embolden those who see the loss of 150 vehicles as a pretty big blow," says Anthony Zinni, a former Marine general who once headed U.S. Central Command, which includes Afghanistan. "It's going to inspire more bad people."

Stephen Biddle, a military expert with the Council on Foreign Relations who recently returned from Afghanistan, believes the militants' goal is to slowly bleed U.S. troops. But a complete shutdown of the Pakistani routes by the insurgents would force the Pakistan military to act more forcefully than it has until now.

"The Pakistan-based militants don't want to do anything that would bring the government down on them like a ton of bricks," Biddle surmises. "But it's entirely plausible they could ramp the violence up slowly in an attempt to squeeze the U.S. in Afghanistan." �

���The alternative supply routes being investigated by the U.S. military run through the Caucasus and the former Soviet Stans of Central Asia. "The route studies exist for alternative supply lines through the Caucasus, but they're wildly expensive," says a retired military officer now serving on Obama's Pentagon transition team. The U.S. Transportation Command issued a notice to transport companies in September, saying "strikes, border delays, accidents and pilferage" in Pakistan and "attacks and armed hijackings" in Afghanistan make the current route dangerous. �

���The Pentagon wants to require that 90% of the goods shipped over alternate routes be delivered by deadlines ranging from 30 to 45 days. It's also demanding a "cargo loss rate" of less than 1% due to "pilferage, accident, spoilage, attacks and acts of God." No doubt the Taliban will love that last category.

Thanksgiving Dinner with Baron Samedi and Al Qaeda in Wonderland

Well, it didn’t take long for Mumbai to get the Al Qaeda fingerprint. Never mind that there is no Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda must have done it. You are all familiar with Al Qaeda. Like The Scarlet Pimpernel, “they seek him here, they seek him there.” But they can’t find him anywhere.

It is a matter of great amazement to me that this Al Qaeda can be anywhere in the world, any time it wants to be and that it can strike at will under the orders of the Baron Samedi redux, Bin Laden, who routinely issues his commands from somewhere under the ground or the world beyond.



There’s never been a more amazing organization than Al Qaeda. They managed to get through ICTS, Israeli security at three U.S. airports and hijack four planes. Then they took two planes and crashed into two buildings in New York City. They did this while flying with a precision that few trained pilots could have achieved, without ever having flown such planes before. Then they managed to level three buildings at the speed of freefall where not even one similar building ever fell before though they burned hotter and longer. They didn’t even need a plane to level one of the buildings. That’s probably another Baron Samedi element and explains all the feathers and chicken blood that covered the streets of NYC in the aftermath.

The rest at :

http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/

What do you mean, bin Laden doesn't exist?

America's President-elect was being watched a lot closer to the front lines of the US War on Terror than he may have been aware on Saturday night.

As Barack Obama's face shone from a huge wide screen television into the officers' mess at a Pakistani army fortress in Khar, in the tribal area of Bajaur, the room shook to heavy artillery blasting from gun positions at the gates. Barely a mile up the road Pakistani troops traded fire with Taleban raiding parties.

“I want to increase non-military aid,” Mr Obama, interviewed on CNN, announced to a handful of officers between explosions. “But we also have to help make the case that the biggest threat to Pakistan right now is not India, which has been their historical enemy, it is actually the militants within their own borders.”

The officers did not look overly convinced, despite the shenanigan outside.

India is their old enemy, as key to the Pakistani military psyche as the Turks are to the Serbs and the Israelis are to the Palestinians. Most officers are convinced that Nato's involvement in Afghanistan will be fleeting and that India is set on dominating the vacuum created by a Western withdrawal. This fear causes the military to cling to its concept of Afghanistan as a place of “strategic depth” for Pakistan's interests. Hence their past overt support of the Taleban and the lingering accusations that elements of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, continue to support Afghan insurgents even now as a safeguard for the future.

Nato and America may not like this military thinking, and the strategy may have backfired on Pakistan but it is nevertheless an understandable result of the regional power games fought between the ISI and its Indian counterpart, the RAW.

Until there is a sea change in Pakistan's sense of enmity with India the discord between Pakistan and its nominal Western allies is set to run deep. As Mr Obama's interview finished, a major turned to speak to me. It was no coincidence that he, multilingual, charming and erudite, was a senior intelligence officer in the corps headquarters. Which made his words all the more alarming.

[B]“The trouble is I don't believe bin Laden exists,” he said. “I think he is a myth. A creation.”

It was not encouraging to hear this from an intelligence officer in Bajaur, reputed to be the hideout of bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and where for the past two months Pakistani troops have been locked in battle with thousands of insurgents, including foreign fighters. Since August 83 soldiers have died and more than 300 have been wounded fighting along a stretch of road just eight miles long.[/B]

That the major saw this bloodshed as in part the result of a US conspiracy testified to the extent of America's ill-conceived and muddled strategy in Pakistan, which so far has failed to secure a single security objective there since 2001. Al-Qaeda remains effective in the country. The tribal areas bordering Afghanistan are still a sanctuary for militants of every description who are enjoying a nationwide sense of ascendancy rather than diminution. The Pakistan Government is divided as to how to approach the problem, as is the Army. And the Pakistani population is utterly dubious about its role in the war. Many believe that the violence blighting their lives has been caused by US involvement in their affairs.

“This is not a war between Pakistan and the Taleban,” a teacher who fled to a refugee camp to escape fighting in Bajaur told me. “Our Government has made a monster out of the Taleban just to get money from America.”

There has been no lack of dollars thrown at Pakistan. The official figures state that the US gave Islamabad $10 billion in aid between 2002 and 2007. Yet in the militancy's heartland, the seven semi-autonomous tribal agencies - the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) - 96 per cent of US aid has gone to the military. Most of this has been spent through coalition support funds that reimburse the Pakistani Army for counter-insurgency operations. These funds have given many Pakistanis the impression that their soldiers have become little more than mercenaries fighting someone else's war.

Of American aid devoted to Fata, only 1 per cent has been spent on development. The 3.5 million Pashtun population that live there suffer the worst poverty in Pakistan. Literacy runs at barely 17 per cent, unemployment at 80 per cent. The education system, such as it exists at all, has collapsed and clinics and doctors are a rarity. Small wonder Fata has become a militant playground.

Mr Obama's victory offers a degree of hope. Joseph Biden, the Vice-President-elect, has been a longstanding critic of George Bush's policy in Pakistan, and is co-sponsor of the Enhanced Participation with Pakistan Bill. Due to be passed imminently by Congress, it will give Pakistan $7.5 billion in non-military assistance over the next five years and could be seen as the vanguard of a new, more holistic strategy.

If Mr Obama wants Pakistan to re-identify its enemies, he must get the Pentagon to redefine its aims too. So far there has been little evidence of unified military strategy between America and Pakistan. Pakistan and Nato accuse each other of allowing insurgents to cross the border into one another's territory for attacks. Both accusations are correct.

[B]US drones strike al-Qaeda and Afghan Taleban targets in Fata but ignore Taleban groups that stay within Pakistan to kill Pakistani soldiers. Similarly, Pakistan's forces show little inclination to attack militant groups based in Fata whose sole aim is to attack Nato in Afghanistan. If America's and Nato's war is to be Pakistan's too, then they should at least agree on who they are fighting.[/B]

And if that effort is to have any chance of success, it will have to incorporate long-term and intense regional diplomacy, massive financial assistance to develop Fata and encourage an overhaul of Pakistan's Army from within.

“We need a slow, steady evolution in the understanding of each other's limitations and constraints,” one general admitted. He seemed so reasonable I wondered if India had escaped his mind. It had not. “If you want us to deliver,” he added in sudden warning, “then you must build our country's capacity. If not, then we will go with our own threat assessment as to who is giving us the most heat.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5092906.ece

Europe could increase number of NATO troops in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON: European nations could contribute more to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan if Washington poured in more resources itself and provided a compelling strategy, the US ambassador to NATO said on Thursday.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since US-led forces toppled hard-line Taliban Islamist rulers after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States for harboring al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

The Taliban and other insurgent groups are particularly strong in the south and east of Afghanistan and enjoy safe havens across the border in Pakistan, officials say.

The United States has long called for its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to offer more troops for Afghanistan and to place fewer restrictions, known as “caveats” in alliance jargon, on their operations.

The United States has about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan. Approximately 13,000 of them are in the NATO-led force of more than 50,000 troops. Kurt Volker, the US NATO ambassador, told reporters he believed other members of the Western security alliance would contribute more to the NATO effort if reassured on the US strategy and commitment.

The Bush administration is engaged in a review of its Afghanistan policy, adding to uncertainty among its allies. “You right now have allies who are concerned about some developments in Afghanistan and they are not sure what the US is doing – people have talked about some review going on on Afghanistan policy,” Volker said. “Well the Europeans want to know what that’s about. Where does the US come out on this?

“If you have a clear U.S. commitment to Afghanistan and backing that up with U.S. resources and a strategy that makes sense to people ... then, yes, we could also get more input from our European allies as well,” Volker said.

Experts say it will take more than just troop increases to stabilize Afghanistan. Better governance, economic development and new efforts to tackle corruption and the opium trade are all widely seen as necessary. Volker declined to predict whether NATO foreign ministers would offer Georgia a membership action plan, or a formal pathway to joining the alliance, when they meet in December. Russia invaded Georgia in August after Tbilisi tried to retake the breakaway pro-Russian South Ossetia region. Moscow has since withdrawn soldiers from Georgia proper, but it has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The August war has led some allies to say NATO should delay putting Georgia and Ukraine on a formal membership track. reuters

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\10\25\story_25-10-2008_pg4_11

Afghans back Taliban, says abducted senator

KABUL // It was early one morning this summer when Abdul Wali Ahmadzai began to understand the true strength of the Taliban in his province.

As the senator for Logar travelled to a meeting, eight men armed with weapons including Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers stopped his convoy on a dirt road.

He was held hostage for more than two months and would come away having witnessed a reality some insist does not exist.

“The important point is that the people support the Taliban. This is the main problem: now the people do not like the government and they support the Taliban,” he said in an interview.

Logar province lies on Kabul’s southern border and after years of being portrayed as relatively safe, it has been thrust into the limelight by a number of brazen insurgent attacks.

Mr Ahmadzai’s kidnapping came in July, but the warning signs were around for a while. By the time he joined the senate as part of Afghanistan’s 2005 parliamentary elections, he was already noticing an alarming trend.

“When Hamid Karzai became president he made good relationships with commanders in the north and gave them lots of money and positions. But he did nothing for the south and east,” he said.

“I told [the government] please be careful because if the Taliban come back to Logar just once, it will be very difficult to stop them. But they didn’t care, they didn’t listen.
Now you can see everyone is upset with the government and they have stopped talking and started fighting.”

Mr Ahmadzai, 40, had been an aid worker and a pharmacist before opting – reluctantly, he says – for a career in politics. Despite the dangers involved in his new job, he travelled twice a week from Kabul to his home province until that fateful day in July.

He stayed in Logar on the eve of his kidnapping. Then, accompanied by three bodyguards and two cars full of elders, he set out the next morning for a meeting with local officials. At 8am the gunmen were waiting for him, their faces covered. He refused to put up a fight.

“The Taliban have good intelligence. They know who is going out from the upper and lower houses of parliament, where they are going and when they are going,” he said.

He was soon handed over to a second group of insurgents. Over the two months he would be held at five or six different locations, always moving under the shelter of darkness. He stayed in empty homes and on one occasion was detained for 15 days near the office of a district governor.

“The government’s control was just on the main road and the places surrounded by walls and wire,” he said.

With him throughout was his driver, who had also been abducted. In the second half of their ordeal they were transferred to an area bordering the provinces of Ghazni, Paktia and Logar. Mr Ahmadzai claims hundreds of Taliban were living openly there, holding public meetings, mingling with the population and using police vehicles.

When both men were eventually released, the insurgents said it was part of an exchange deal in which three militants were freed from prison. The senator denies this, but feels no animosity towards the men who took him hostage.

For Mr Ahmadzai the experience has simply confirmed what he had suspected two years ago, when he first noticed the Taliban re-emerging.

Now with his seven children in Kabul, he is afraid to return to Logar and doubtful that he will stand in the next parliamentary elections scheduled for 2010.

“We represent the people, they chose us, and we can solve their problems. But when we talk to the president he doesn’t listen. One Talib even came and said he voted for me, so I represent their side as well,” he said.

“If the situation continues like this, I don’t want to stand again. There are two reasons: one is security, the other is that I can’t work for my people. And the elections will not be fair because there is no one who can [safely] vote in the south and east.”

Mr Ahmadzai said he was angry with the government, not the insurgents.

“I have a good from memory from those Taliban because from the beginning until the end they treated me like a guest,” he said.

csands@thenational.ae

Pakistan cuts supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan

Posted September 5, 2008

In a move seen as the latest fallout from Wednesday morning’s US attack on South Waziristan, the Pakistani government has ordered that supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan be immediately severed for an indefinite period of time.

The move comes as thousands of protesters marched through South Waziristan’s capital of Wana chanting “death to America”. Officials cited repeated attacks which had made it difficult to provide security for transportation across the only border crossing, but Pakistani media cited other sources who said the move came as the government feared retaliation from South Waziristan tribesmen if they didn’t respond to the US attack.

The strike, which was the first confirmed use of US ground forces in Pakistan since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, killed 20 civilians and received widespread condemnation in Pakistan’s government. American officials have suggested that the attack is just the first of many cross-border missions to be expected in the coming months, as the US has expressed growing discontent with Pakistan’s inability to control its long and mountainous border with Afghanistan. The Defense Minister of key NATO ally Germany was also critical of the US attack during his visit to Pakistan, and warned that “Pakistan’s territorial integrity has to be respected”.

With Pakistan’s sole ground link to Afghanistan now closed to them, NATO may be more reliant than ever on Russia for the transportation of non-military supplies to the war-torn country at a time when US-Russian relations are at a post-Cold War low. And while Russia has promised not to block NATO’s overland transport, President Bush’s threat to “punish” Moscow over the recent war with Georgia may put the route in further jeopardy.

Attacks rise as Taliban close in on Kabul

THE Taliban ambush that killed 10 French soldiers is the latest in a series of deadly attacks near Kabul that show the rebels are gaining on the Afghan capital, say analysts.

The Taliban have mounted their most serious attacks in six years of fighting in Afghanistan this week, including a co-ordinated assault by at least 10 suicide bombers against one of the largest American military bases in the country, launched just before midnight on Monday.

That attack, on Camp Salerno in the eastern province of Khost, wounded three American soldiers and six members of the Afghan Special Forces.

It followed a suicide car bombing at the outer entrance to the same base on Monday morning, which killed 12 Afghan workers lining up to enter the base, and another attempted bombing that was thwarted later.

The attack on the French, which took place at Sarobi, 50 kilometres east of Kabul, added to the sense of siege around the capital and was the deadliest single loss for foreign troops in a ground battle since the US-led invasion chased the Taliban from power in 2001.

It prompted the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to leave Paris late on Tuesday for Kabul in a show of support for his country's troops, who had only recently taken over from American forces in the area as part of the expanded French deployment in Afghanistan.

Visiting the French troops yesterday at their base on the outskirts of the capital, he told them that their work was essential. "I have no doubt that we must be here …" he said. "Why are we here? It is because here we play a part in the freedom of the the world."

Taken together, these attacks are part of a sharp escalation in fighting as insurgents exploited a window of opportunity to press their campaign this northern summer. The wavering NATO commitment, a departing US administration, a flailing Afghan government and a Pakistani government in disarray has given the militants a freer rein across the border.

As a result, this year is on pace to be the deadliest in the Afghan war as the attacks show rising zeal and sophistication. The insurgents are using more suicide and roadside bombs, but are also mounting increasingly well-organised and complex operations using multiple attackers with different types of weapons.

NATO and American military officials blame much of the increased insurgent activity on the greater freedom of movement the militants have in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border. The turmoil in the Pakistani Government, with the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, has added to the sense of a vacuum of authority there.

THE Taliban ambush that killed 10 French soldiers is the latest in a series of deadly attacks near Kabul that show the rebels are gaining on the Afghan capital, say analysts.

The Taliban have mounted their most serious attacks in six years of fighting in Afghanistan this week, including a co-ordinated assault by at least 10 suicide bombers against one of the largest American military bases in the country, launched just before midnight on Monday.

That attack, on Camp Salerno in the eastern province of Khost, wounded three American soldiers and six members of the Afghan Special Forces.

It followed a suicide car bombing at the outer entrance to the same base on Monday morning, which killed 12 Afghan workers lining up to enter the base, and another attempted bombing that was thwarted later.

The attack on the French, which took place at Sarobi, 50 kilometres east of Kabul, added to the sense of siege around the capital and was the deadliest single loss for foreign troops in a ground battle since the US-led invasion chased the Taliban from power in 2001.

It prompted the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to leave Paris late on Tuesday for Kabul in a show of support for his country's troops, who had only recently taken over from American forces in the area as part of the expanded French deployment in Afghanistan.

Visiting the French troops yesterday at their base on the outskirts of the capital, he told them that their work was essential. "I have no doubt that we must be here …" he said. "Why are we here? It is because here we play a part in the freedom of the the world."

Taken together, these attacks are part of a sharp escalation in fighting as insurgents exploited a window of opportunity to press their campaign this northern summer. The wavering NATO commitment, a departing US administration, a flailing Afghan government and a Pakistani government in disarray has given the militants a freer rein across the border.

As a result, this year is on pace to be the deadliest in the Afghan war as the attacks show rising zeal and sophistication. The insurgents are using more suicide and roadside bombs, but are also mounting increasingly well-organised and complex operations using multiple attackers with different types of weapons.

NATO and American military officials blame much of the increased insurgent activity on the greater freedom of movement the militants have in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border. The turmoil in the Pakistani Government, with the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, has added to the sense of a vacuum of authority there.

But at least as important, the officials say, is the fact that Pakistan's military has agreed to a series of peace deals with the militants under which it stopped large-scale operations in the tribal areas in February, allowing the insurgents greater freedom to train, recruit and launch attacks into Afghanistan.

An Afghan historian and political analyst, Habibullah Rafi, said the Taliban were reaching Kabul step by step.

He said the militants were using "passages" to reach the city, such as Sarobi, Kapisa, Logar and Wardak.

Another analyst, Haroun Mir, said the tactic of closing in on the capital was something used by Afghan fighters during their resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.

"If you look at what happened during the Soviet times, Kabul was surrounded by mujahideen forces," said Mir, a co-founder of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies.

"Now you are seeing the same thing happening again … and the Government is unable to prevent it," he said. Attacks are increasing on the main roads into the city from Jalalabad in the east and Kandahar in the south, with growing focus on supply and fuel tankers, he said.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/attacks-rise-as-taliban-close-in-on-kabul/2008/08/20/1218911828445.html?page=2

Afghan troops and civilians surround Royal Irish Regiment base after child death

Afghan soldiers and civilians have confronted troops at a Royal Irish Regiment base in Afghanistan following the death of child.

Trouble flared in the already volatile Sangin area of Helmand Province in the south of the country after indirect fire weapons used by British soldiers from the Parachute Regiment struck a mother and daughter.

Despite receiving urgent treatment from Royal Irish medics at a nearby joint Afghan National Army (ANA) and Operational Mentor Liaison Team (OMLT) patrol base, the child died.

The death sparked outrage among local people and members of the ANA, who then surrounded the RIR base.

“Two ANA sergeants began to rally some of their fellow soldiers and direct their frustration towards the Royal Irish soldiers in the base,” an MoD spokesman said.

“As the evening wore on a crowd of local nationals gathered outside the patrol base, again fuelled by this small, discontented ANA group.

“Warnings were given by the locals for the ANA to move out of the base so they could deal with the UK troops left there.”

The Royal Irish troops pulled out to another base after coming under fire, where they remained until the situation had calmed down.

“A senior ANA officer was flown out to the patrol base and, having assessed the situation, placed the two ANA sergeants under arrest,” the MoD spokesman said.

“Once the ringleaders had been dealt with a meeting was arranged with the local elders to discuss the incident.

“This meeting concluded that the death of the child and the injuries to her mother were purely accidental and the Royal Irish soldiers in the patrol base had done all they could to assist those injured.”

The incident occurred at the end of June. Last month six RIR soldiers were injured in a roadside bombing. Another member of the regiment also lost a leg during an attack in the same area earlier in the month.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/afghan-troops-and-civilians-surround-rir-base-after-child-death-13935083.htm

Attacks in Afghanistan hit record high

Last Updated: August 01. 2008 2:13PM UAE / GMT
Afghan men walk outside houses believed to be destroyed by nomad fighters in the Behsud district of Afghanistan's Wardak province. Aid groups said today insurgent attacks were hampering the relief effort in the country. AFP
Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan have hit record highs this year with hundreds of civilians killed, including 19 aid workers, and spreading insecurity cutting back relief work, aid groups said today.

Unrest had spread to once stable areas and welfare agencies were forced to scale back aid delivery even as drought and food price hikes put millions of people in difficulty, the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) said.

“So far this year the number of insurgent attacks, bombings and other violent incidents is up by approximately 50 per cent on the same period last year,” said ACBAR, a grouping of about 100 Afghan and international non-governmental organisations.

There were 463 insurgent attacks in May and 569 in June, it said in a statement, citing figures from a range of sources including the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

This was “greater than the number of such attacks in any other month since the end of major hostilities following the international intervention in 2001,” it said.

“This year 2,500 people have reportedly lost their lives in the conflict and while exact figures are not yet available, this could include up to 1,000 civilians,” the group added.

Initial estimates were that more than 260 civilians were killed in July, which was higher than any other month in the past six years, it said.

July saw some of the worst violence of an insurgency by extremists launched after the Taliban were ousted from government in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

A suicide bomb at the Indian embassy in Kabul killed around 60 people and other attacks left dozens more dead. Military action, mostly air strikes on insurgents, killed nearly 80 civilians, according to Afghan and military officials.

ACBAR said two-thirds of reported civilian casualties could be attributed to insurgent activities, especially suicide bombings and the use of civilian property to launch attacks.

But the growing number of air strikes by international military forces, up by about 40 per cent on last year, had also contributed.

In addition, ACBAR said: “Aid organisations and their staff have been subject to increasing attacks, threats and intimidation, by both insurgent and criminal groups.”

“This year there have been over 84 such incidents, including 21 in June, more than in any other month in the last six years.

“So far this year 19 NGO staff have been killed, which already exceeds the total number of NGO workers killed last year.”

Violence had forced the closure of schools and health facilities in the south, it said. It was also hindering vital development projects.

Drought and higher food prices meanwhile put more than four million Afghans in “extremely difficult circumstances”, especially young children and breastfeeding or pregnant woman.

“Increasing and spreading insecurity is jeopardising the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance to these people and threatening their lives and livelihoods.”

ACBAR called on all parties in the conflict to prioritise the safety of civilians and observe “fundamental standards of humanity” and “the established international laws of armed conflict”.

This included distinguishing between civilians and combatants; never using civilians as a shield; and not attacking humanitarian, development and medical personnel or supplies.

The United Nations said in reaction to the group’s statement that growing insecurity was also affecting its work, with 12 UN humanitarian convoys attacked by criminal gangs in the past six months.

“Without a doubt the humanitarian challenge in Afghanistan continues to grow, insurgent and criminal attacks have prevented us from reaching some the country’s most vulnerable communities,” Aleem Siddique, a spokesman, said.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080801/FOREIGN/989158229/1002/NEWS

Mercenaries at work

By Chalmers Johnson

Most Americans have a rough idea what the term "military-industrial complex" means when they come across it in a newspaper or hear a politician mention it. President Dwight D Eisenhower introduced the idea to the public in his farewell address of January 17, 1961. "Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime," he said, "or indeed by the fighting men of World War II and Korea ... We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions ... We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications ... We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

Although Eisenhower's reference to the military-industrial complex is, by now, well-known, his warning against its "unwarranted influence" has, I believe, largely been ignored. Since 1961, there has been too little serious study of, or discussion of, the origins of the military-industrial complex, how it has changed over time, how governmental secrecy has hidden it from oversight by members of Congress or attentive citizens, and how it degrades our Constitutional structure of checks and balances.

From its origins in the early 1940s, when president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was building up his "arsenal of democracy," down to the present moment, public opinion has usually assumed that it involved more or less equitable relations - often termed a "partnership" - between the high command and civilian overlords of the United States military and privately-owned, for-profit manufacturing and service enterprises. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that, from the time they first emerged, these relations were never equitable.

In the formative years of the military-industrial complex, the public still deeply distrusted privately owned industrial firms because of the way they had contributed to the Great Depression. Thus, the leading role in the newly emerging relationship was played by the official governmental sector. A deeply popular, charismatic president, FDR sponsored these public-private relationships. They gained further legitimacy because their purpose was to rearm the country, as well as allied nations around the world, against the gathering forces of fascism. The private sector was eager to go along with this largely as a way to regain public trust and disguise its wartime profit-making.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Roosevelt's use of public-private "partnerships" to build up the munitions industry, and thereby finally overcome the Great Depression, did not go entirely unchallenged. Although he was himself an implacable enemy of fascism, a few people thought that the president nonetheless was coming close to copying some of its key institutions. The leading Italian philosopher of fascism, the neo-Hegelian Giovanni Gentile, once argued that it should more appropriately be called "corporatism" because it was a merger of state and corporate power. (See Eugene Jarecki's The American Way of War, p. 69.)

Some critics were alarmed early on by the growing symbiotic relationship between government and corporate officials because each simultaneously sheltered and empowered the other, while greatly confusing the separation of powers. Since the activities of a corporation are less amenable to public or congressional scrutiny than those of a public institution, public-private collaborative relationships afford the private sector an added measure of security from such scrutiny. These concerns were ultimately swamped by enthusiasm for the war effort and the postwar era of prosperity that the war produced.

Beneath the surface, however, was a less well recognized movement by big business to replace democratic institutions with those representing the interests of capital. This movement is today ascendant. (See Thomas Frank's new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, for a superb analysis of Ronald Reagan's slogan "government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.") Its objectives have long been to discredit what it called "big government", while capturing for private interests the tremendous sums invested by the public sector in national defense. It may be understood as a slow-burning reaction to what American conservatives believed to be the socialism of the New Deal.

Perhaps the country's leading theorist of democracy, Sheldon S Wolin, has written a new book, Democracy Incorporated, on what he calls "inverted totalitarianism" - the rise in the US of totalitarian institutions of conformity and regimentation shorn of the police repression of the earlier German, Italian, and Soviet forms. He warns of "the expansion of private (ie, mainly corporate) power and the selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry." He also decries the degree to which the so-called privatization of governmental activities has insidiously undercut our democracy, leaving us with the widespread belief that government is no longer needed and that, in any case, it is not capable of performing the functions we have entrusted to it.

Wolin writes:
The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture, from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributory elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled. (p. 284)
Mercenaries at work
The military-industrial complex has changed radically since World War II or even the height of the Cold War. The private sector is now fully ascendant. The uniformed air, land, and naval forces of the country as well as its intelligence agencies, including the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), the NSA (National Security Agency), the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and even clandestine networks entrusted with the dangerous work of penetrating and spying on terrorist organizations are all dependent on hordes of "private contractors". In the context of governmental national security functions, a better term for these might be "mercenaries" working in private for profit-making companies.

Tim Shorrock, an investigative journalist and the leading authority on this subject, sums up this situation devastatingly in his new book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. The following quotes are a precis of some of his key findings:
In 2006 ... the cost of America's spying and surveillance activities outsourced to contractors reached $42 billion, or about 70% of the estimated $60 billion the government spends each year on foreign and domestic intelligence ... The number of contract employees now exceeds the CIA's full-time workforce of 17,500 ... Contractors make up more than half the workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service (formerly the Directorate of Operations), which conducts covert operations and recruits spies abroad ...

To feed the NSA's insatiable demand for data and information technology, the industrial base of contractors seeking to do business with the agency grew from 144 companies in 2001 to more than 5,400 in 2006 ... At the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency in charge of launching and maintaining the nation's photo-reconnaissance and eavesdropping satellites, almost the entire workforce is composed of contract employees working for private companies ... With an estimated $8 billion annual budget, the largest in the IC intelligence community, contractors control about $7 billion worth of business at the NRO, giving the spy satellite industry the distinction of being the most privatized part of the intelligence community ...

If there's one generalization to be made about the NSA's outsourced IT information technology programs, it is this: they haven't worked very well, and some have been spectacular failures ... In 2006, the NSA was unable to analyze much of the information it was collecting ... As a result, more than 90% of the information it was gathering was being discarded without being translated into a coherent and understandable format; only about 5% was translated from its digital form into text and then routed to the right division for analysis.

The key phrase in the new counterterrorism lexicon is 'public-private partnerships' ... In reality, 'partnerships' are a convenient cover for the perpetuation of corporate interests. (pp 6, 13-14, 16, 214-15, 365)
Several inferences can be drawn from Shorrock's shocking expose. One is that if a foreign espionage service wanted to penetrate American military and governmental secrets, its easiest path would not be to gain access to any official US agencies, but simply to get its agents jobs at any of the large intelligence-oriented private companies on which the government has become remarkably dependent. These include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with headquarters in San Diego, California, which typically pays its 42,000 employees higher salaries than if they worked at similar jobs in the government; Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the nation's oldest intelligence and clandestine-operations contractors, which, until January 2007, was the employer of Mike McConnell, the current director of national intelligence and the first private contractor to be named to lead the entire intelligence community; and CACI International, which, under two contracts for "information technology services," ended up supplying some two dozen interrogators to the Army at Iraq's already infamous Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. According to Major General Anthony Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse scandal, four of CACI's interrogators were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for torturing prisoners. (Shorrock, p. 281)

Remarkably enough, SAIC has virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government. It is the NSA's largest contractor, and that agency is today the company's single largest customer.

There are literally thousands of other profit-making enterprises that work to supply the government with so-called intelligence needs, sometimes even bribing Congressmen to fund projects that no one in the executive branch actually wants. This was the case with Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican of California's 50th District, who, in 2006, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in federal prison for soliciting bribes from defense contractors. One of the bribers, Brent Wilkes, snagged a $9.7 million contract for his company, ADCS Inc. ("Automated Document Conversion Systems") to computerize the century-old records of the Panama Canal dig!

A country drowning in euphemisms
The United States has long had a sorry record when it comes to protecting its intelligence from foreign infiltration, but the situation today seems particularly perilous. One is reminded of the case described in the 1979 book by Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman (made into a 1985 film of the same name). It tells the true story of two young Southern Californians, one with a high security clearance working for the defense contractor TRW (dubbed "RTX" in the film), and the other a drug addict and minor smuggler. The TRW employee is motivated to act by his discovery of a misrouted CIA document describing plans to overthrow the prime minister of Australia, and the other by a need for money to pay for his addiction.

They decide to get even with the government by selling secrets to the Soviet Union and are exposed by their own bungling. Both are sentenced to prison for espionage. The message of the book (and film) lies in the ease with which they betrayed their country - and how long it took before they were exposed and apprehended. Today, thanks to the staggering over-privatization of the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence, the opportunities for such breaches of security are widespread.

I applaud Shorrock for his extraordinary research into an almost impenetrable subject using only openly available sources. There is, however, one aspect of his analysis with which I differ. This is his contention that the wholesale takeover of official intelligence collection and analysis by private companies is a form of "outsourcing". This term is usually restricted to a business enterprise buying goods and services that it does not want to manufacture or supply in-house. When it is applied to a governmental agency that turns over many, if not all, of its key functions to a risk-averse company trying to make a return on its investment, "outsourcing" simply becomes a euphemism for mercenary activities.


As David Bromwich, a political critic and Yale professor of literature, observed in the New York Review of Books:
The separate bookkeeping and accountability devised for Blackwater, DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and similar outfits was part of a careful displacement of oversight from Congress to the vice-president and the stewards of his policies in various departments and agencies. To have much of the work parceled out to private companies who are unaccountable to army rules or military justice, meant, among its other advantages, that the cost of the war could be concealed beyond all detection.
Euphemisms are words intended to deceive. The United States is



already close to drowning in them, particularly new words and terms devised, or brought to bear, to justify the American invasion of Iraq - coinages Bromwich highlights like "regime change", "enhanced interrogation techniques", "the global war on terrorism", "the birth pangs of a new Middle East", a "slight uptick in violence", "bringing torture within the law", "simulated drowning", and, of course, "collateral damage", meaning the slaughter of unarmed civilians by American troops and aircraft followed - rarely - by perfunctory apologies.

It is important that the intrusion of unelected corporate officials with hidden profit motives into what are ostensibly public political activities not be confused with private businesses buying Scotch tape, paper clips, or hubcaps.

The wholesale transfer of military and intelligence functions to private, often anonymous, operatives took off under Ronald Reagan's presidency, and accelerated greatly after 9/11 under George W Bush and Dick Cheney. Often not well understood, however, is this: The biggest private expansion into intelligence and other areas of government occurred under the presidency of Bill Clinton. He seems not to have had the same anti-governmental and neo-conservative motives as the privatizers of both the Reagan and Bush II eras. His policies typically involved an indifference to - perhaps even an ignorance of - what was actually being done to democratic, accountable government in the name of cost-cutting and allegedly greater efficiency. It is one of the strengths of Shorrock's study that he goes into detail on Clinton's contributions to the wholesale privatization of our government, and of the intelligence agencies in particular.

Reagan launched his campaign to shrink the size of government and offer a large share of public expenditures to the private sector with the creation in 1982 of the "Private Sector Survey on Cost Control." In charge of the survey, which became known as the "Grace Commission," he named the conservative businessman, J Peter Grace, Jr, chairman of the WR Grace Corporation, one of the world's largest chemical companies - notorious for its production of asbestos and its involvement in numerous anti-pollution suits. The Grace Company also had a long history of investment in Latin America, and Peter Grace was deeply committed to undercutting what he saw as leftist unions, particularly because they often favored state-led economic development.

The Grace Commission's actual achievements were modest. Its biggest was undoubtedly the 1987 privatization of Conrail, the freight railroad for the northeastern states. Nothing much else happened on this front during the first Bush's administration, but Bill Clinton returned to privatization with a vengeance.

According to Shorrock:
Bill Clinton ... picked up the cudgel where the conservative Ronald Reagan left off and ... took it deep into services once considered inherently governmental, including high-risk military operations and intelligence functions once reserved only for government agencies. By the end of Clinton's first term, more than 100,000 Pentagon jobs had been transferred to companies in the private sector - among them thousands of jobs in intelligence ... By the end of his second term in 2001, the administration had cut 360,000 jobs from the federal payroll and the government was spending 44% more on contractors than it had in 1993. (pp 73, 86)
These activities were greatly abetted by the fact that the Republicans had gained control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 43 years. One liberal journalist described "outsourcing as a virtual joint venture between House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich and Clinton". The right-wing Heritage Foundation aptly labeled Clinton's 1996 budget as the "boldest privatization agenda put forth by any president to date". (p 87)

After 2001, Bush and Cheney added an ideological rationale to the process Clinton had already launched so efficiently. They were enthusiastic supporters of "a neo-conservative drive to siphon US spending on defense, national security, and social programs to large corporations friendly to the Bush administration". (pp 72-3)

The privatization and loss - of institutional memory
The end result is what we see today: a government hollowed out in terms of military and intelligence functions. The KBR Corporation, for example, supplies food, laundry, and other personal services to our troops in Iraq based on extremely lucrative no-bid contracts, while Blackwater Worldwide supplies security and analytical services to the CIA and the State Department in Baghdad. (Among other things, its armed mercenaries opened fire on, and killed, 17 unarmed civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, on September 16, 2007, without any provocation, according to US military reports.) The costs - both financial and personal - of privatization in the armed services and the intelligence community far exceed any alleged savings, and some of the consequences for democratic governance may prove irreparable.

These consequences include: the sacrifice of professionalism within our intelligence services; the readiness of private contractors to engage in illegal activities without compunction and with impunity; the inability of Congress or citizens to carry out effective oversight of privately-managed intelligence activities because of the wall of secrecy that surrounds them; and, perhaps most serious of all, the loss of the most valuable asset any intelligence organization possesses - its institutional memory.

Most of these consequences are obvious, even if almost never commented on by our politicians or paid much attention in the mainstream media. After all, the standards of a career CIA officer are very different from those of a corporate executive who must keep his eye on the contract he is fulfilling and future contracts that will determine the viability of his firm. The essence of professionalism for a career intelligence analyst is his integrity in laying out what the US government should know about a foreign policy issue, regardless of the political interests of, or the costs to, the major players.

The loss of such professionalism within the CIA was starkly revealed in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. It still seems astonishing that no senior official, beginning with secretary of state Colin Powell, saw fit to resign when the true dimensions of our intelligence failure became clear, least of all director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.

A willingness to engage in activities ranging from the dubious to the outright felonious seems even more prevalent among our intelligence contractors than among the agencies themselves, and much harder for an outsider to detect. For example, following 9/11, Rear Admiral John Poindexter, then working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense, got the bright idea that DARPA should start compiling dossiers on as many American citizens as possible in order to see whether "data-mining" procedures might reveal patterns of behavior associated with terrorist activities.

On November 14, 2002, the New York Times published a column by William Safire entitled "You Are a Suspect" in which he revealed that DARPA had been given a $200 million budget to compile dossiers on 300 million Americans. He wrote, "Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every website you visit and every e-mail you send or receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book, and every event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as a 'virtual centralized grand database.'" This struck many members of Congress as too close to the practices of the Gestapo and the Stasi under German totalitarianism, and so, the following year, they voted to defund the project.

However, Congress's action did not end the "total information awareness" program. The National Security Agency secretly decided to continue it through its private contractors. The NSA easily persuaded SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton to carry on with what Congress had declared to be a violation of the privacy rights of the American public - for a price. As far as we know, Admiral Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness Program" is still going strong today.

The most serious immediate consequence of the privatization of official governmental activities is the loss of institutional memory by our government's most sensitive organizations and agencies. Shorrock concludes, "So many former intelligence officers joined the private sector during the 1990s that, by the turn of the century, the institutional memory of the United States intelligence community now resides in the private sector. That's pretty much where things stood on September 11, 2001." (p 112)

This means that the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, and the other 13 agencies in the US intelligence community cannot easily be reformed because their staffs have largely forgotten what they are supposed to do, or how to go about it. They have not been drilled and disciplined in the techniques, unexpected outcomes, and know-how of previous projects, successful and failed.

As numerous studies have, by now, made clear, the abject failure of the American occupation of Iraq came about in significant measure because the Department of Defense sent a remarkably privatized military filled with incompetent amateurs to Baghdad to administer the running of a defeated country. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates (a former director of the CIA) has repeatedly warned that the United States is turning over far too many functions to the military because of its hollowing out of the Department of State and the Agency for International Development since the end of the Cold War. Gates believes that we are witnessing a "creeping militarization" of foreign policy - and, though this generally goes unsaid, both the military and the intelligence services have turned over far too many of their tasks to private companies and mercenaries.

When even Robert Gates begins to sound like president Eisenhower, it is time for ordinary citizens to pay attention. In my 2006 book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, with an eye to bringing the imperial presidency under some modest control, I advocated that we Americans abolish the CIA altogether, along with other dangerous and redundant agencies in our alphabet soup of 16 secret intelligence agencies, and replace them with the State Department's professional staff devoted to collecting and analyzing foreign intelligence. I still hold that position.

Nonetheless, the current situation represents the worst of all possible worlds. Successive administrations and Congresses have made no effort to alter the CIA's role as the president's private army, even as we have increased its incompetence by turning over many of its functions to the private sector. We have thereby heightened the risks of war by accident, or by presidential whim, as well as of surprise attack because our government is no longer capable of accurately assessing what is going on in the world and because its intelligence agencies are so open to pressure, penetration, and manipulation of every kind.

(This essay focuses on the new book by Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.)

Chalmers Johnson is the author of three linked books on the crises of American imperialism and militarism. They are Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006). All are available in paperback from Metropolitan Books.


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