Afghanistan « Tikkunista!

2. Pakistan and Afghanistan

Jun-17-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Alt.Muslim offers a fascinating perspective on the shared victim mentalities of these two countries. Juan Cole (whom the New York Times reported this week was illegally targeted by the CIA for reaching conclusions out of sync with the US government!) looks at the Pakistani Government’s arrest of the spies who told the US where Osama was hiding. Gee, why is Pakistan angry with the US? Meanwhile the Karzai Government (the one NATO is fighting to save), cuts off free media and is rated the worst place to live for women in the world. As Kenny Rogers sang, “You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them….”

* Afghanistan & Pakistan: Going Beyond Victim Narratives altmuslim –

More interesting than the rights and wrongs of my colleagues’ viewpoints was the fact that the Afghan narrative about Pakistan was uncannily similar to the Pakistani account of US foreign policy. Much in the same way that Afghans see a Pakistan hand in all their problems, Pakistanis have wholeheartedly subscribed to a fraught fantasy of American omnipresence and omnipotence.

…The point is not to reiterate the complicated dynamics of Pakistan-Afghanistan and Pakistan-US bilateral ties; it is to show that both Pakistan and Afghanistan seem to have subscribed to narratives of victimhood. When faced with their country’s myriad, growing security, political and economic challenges, they simply place the blame elsewhere. This was not a problem of our own making, the logic seems to imply, and therefore we can’t possibly be asked to fix it.

Such narratives of victimhood are dangerous for a variety of reasons. They allow governments to defer responsibility for contemporary problems, and dwell in the past, rather than plan for the future. And they are devastating when it comes to strategic planning: for a nation to define strategic, social, economic and political goals, it must articulate a vision of the future and single-handedly pursue it. However, if the nation is suffering from a victim complex, its strategic planning becomes reactive rather than active. Instead of setting targets for achievement, it dithers about, waiting for the professed villain (whether Islamabad or Washington) to make a move. Only then does it respond, and that too in a defensive manner.

* Pakistan Arrests CIA Informants in Bin Laden Case Juan Cole Informed Comment

The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence has arrested five Pakistani informants who gave the CIA information leading to the raid on Usamah Bin Laden’s compound at Abbotabad, according to the NYT. …From an American point of view, that Pakistan arrested the informants rather than giving them medals suggests perfidy. But from a Pakistani point of view, they can’t be having nationals working for a foreign intelligence agency and enabling foreign special operations raids into the country from outside.

…US bad relations with Pakistan at the moment derive from using the CIA in paramilitary ways in a no-man’s land of covert action that lacks any framework of international or bilateral law. If Washington goes on like this, it will push Pakistan altogether into the arms of the Chinese and it will set up a negative situation for its likely withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which Islamabad has powerful perceived interests that the US has not respected. The US-Pakistan relationship is important and can be repaired, but it must be by the two countries acting like democracies, not cartoon spies.

* Gained By Blood, Threatened By A Declaration Al Jazeera (thanks, Gabe)

On June 1, Afghanistan’s Council of Religious Scholars known as the Ulema Shura met with President Karzai and unequivocally demanded the shutting down of two of the country’s most prominent media outlets.

Their crime? “Publishing material that is against religion, against national unity, and against the high interest of the nation,’’ declared the Council. Karzai’s office not only announced that the president listened to these demands carefully and praised the role of the Ulema, but also sent out their declaration to the media through its own channels.

Over the past two weeks, the two outlets - Tolo TV and Hasht-e-Subh Daily - have been locked in a battle for survival. While this is not the first time the closure of these outlets – and many others – has been demanded, the clear-cut nature of the demand by a social organisation extending its mandate speaks to the vulnerabilities of the press in Afghanistan.

* Afghanistan Worst Place In The World For Women The Guardian

Targeted violence against female public officials, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, according to a global survey released on Wednesday.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pakistan, India and Somalia feature in descending order after Afghanistan in the list of the five worst states, the poll among gender experts shows.

The appearance of India, a country rapidly developing into an economic super-power, was unexpected. It is ranked as extremely hazardous because of the subcontinent’s high level of female infanticide and sex trafficking.

Others were less surprised to be on the list. Informed about her country’s inclusion, Somalia’s women’s minister, Maryan Qasim, responded: “I thought Somalia would be first on the list, not fifth.”

2. Afghanistan

Jan-21-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Why are we in Afghanistan? Why are Afghanis being killed by Western soldiers? Was it to stop them from hating us, or to get a more just government than the Taliban? Why are we still there when it’s clearly such an unmitigated disaster from any goal perspective? Juan Cole gives an excellent overview on dominant myths that we tell ourselves, Counterpunch looks at why we’re following a failing policy, and new (to Tikkunista) blog Registan (All Central Asia, All The Time) explores a specific story of how a village was razed, to protect it from the Taliban.

* Top Ten Myths about Afghanistan Juan Cole Informed Comment

10. “There has been significant progress in tamping down the insurgency in Afghanistan.”

Fact: A recent National Intelligence Estimate by 16 intelligence agencies found no progress. It warned that large swathes of the country were at risk of falling to the Taliban and that they still had safe havens in Pakistan, with the Pakistani government complicit. The UN says there were over 6000 civilian casualties of war in Afghanistan in the first 10 months of 2010, a 20% increase over the same period in 2009. Also, 701 US and NATO troops have been killed this year, compared to 521 last year, a 25% increase. There were typically over 1000 insurgent attacks per month in Afghanistan this year, often twice as many per month as in 2009, recalling the guerrilla war in Iraq in 2005.

* Killing Peace in Afghanistan Conn Hallinan Counterpunch

In spite of a White House declaration that “progress” is being made in Afghanistan, by virtually any measure the war has deteriorated significantly since the Obama Administration surged troops into Kandahar and Helmand provinces. This past year has been the deadliest on record for U.S. and coalition troops. Civilian casualties are on the rise, and, according to the Red Cross, security has worsened throughout the country. U.S. allies are falling away, and the central government in Kabul has never been so isolated. Polls in Afghanistan, the U.S. and Europe reflect growing opposition to the nine-year conflict.

So why is the White House pursuing a strategy that is almost certain to accelerate a descent into chaos, and one that runs counter to the Administration’s stated goal of a diplomatic solution to the war? It is not an easy question to answer, in part because the major actors are hardly being straight with the public.

*The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing Joshua Foust Registan.net

Translated from obnoxious mil-speak, she is describing the village being intimidated by the Taliban, who are chased away by soldiers, then “cleared” by special forces, and leveled by massive aerial bombardment, apparently with no casualties. Nowhere in this account is there a sense that the villagers felt any ill-will toward the Americans beforehand—rather, Broadwell explicitly describes the village as being victimized by the Taliban first, then being completely obliterated by the Americans. In other words, rather than actually clearing the village—not just chasing away the Taliban but cleaning up the bombs and munitions left over—the soldiers got lazy and decided to destroy the entire settlement… “to give the men confidence.” This sounds bad enough—like a nightmare from before there was a Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibited the collective punishment and expulsion of civilians from conflict zones—but it gets worse.

4. Those Scammers

Nov-26-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: How did they think they’d ever get away with that? From the negotiations with the “Taliban” of Afghanistan to the “study” on climate change in the US Congress, to the “values” of the Canadian Conservative party, to the ultimate loser thieves in Oregon, we look at recent scams, and when they did (or didn’t) get away with. The Coyne piece from Macleans is particularly good, if you have any interest in Canadian politics.

* Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor NYTimes

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little. “It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

* Congressional “Study” Attacking Climate Change Found to be Plagiarized, Error-Ridden Juan Cole Informed Comment

A USA Today investigation of a 2006 congressional “study” attacking climate change reveals that 35 of the 91 pages are plagiarized from a textbook by Raymond Bradley; but the authors didn’t content themselves with stealing another’s prose– they systematically introduced errors into it!

…The Lalaland inhabited by the American Right, producing bizarre beliefs about things like climate change bewilders other countries, who don’t let rich people dictate to them what they should think. What they have to understand is that the United States is one big Company Town, where workers get shot down if they step away from the company line. What is truly bewildering is why the super-rich in the United States would want to deny reality. Climate change is real, and it has implications for lots of stocks, and if you are picking stocks without taking it into account, you are going to take a bath…

* Politics All The Way Down – Andrew Coyne Macleans

The story is told of the farmer who had an axe: a fine, handsome axe, of which he was very fond. Why, it had been in his family for generations. Mind you, over the years they’d had to replace the head twice and the handle three times, but to the farmer it was still the same axe his grandad split logs with.

The reaction to the Conservatives’ now extensive history of replacing their principles with something more convenient strikes me as similar. After each abrupt reversal of field, each casual discarding of the principles of a lifetime, the discussion centres on how hard this decision must have been for the Tories, how it “went against their principles.”… This is a remarkable feat. Stephen Harper’s Tories can run $56-billion deficits, raise spending to all-time record levels, and grease every Conservative riding with layers of pork; they can abandon Afghanistan, coddle Quebec, and adopt the NDP approach to foreign investment; and still there exists in people’s minds another Conservative party, somewhere, for whom these policies are anathema.

I suppose it’s possible these other Conservatives exist in theory, as a kind of Platonic ideal form. And so the principles commonly ascribed to them may also be said to exist, as abstractions. But if they never actually act on them, of what real-world significance are they? How is it meaningful to talk about them?

* And Here Come the Judges’ Scores…. Colorado Springs Gazette

Three Fort Carson soldiers had a perfectly good explanation for allegedly breaking into a pot dispensary in Colorado Springs early Saturday. It was a public service.

“We were just trying to get rid of all the marijuana,” Pfc. Ramone Hollins told officers after the trio were arrested inside Rocky Road Remedies at 2489 S. Academy Blvd. on the city’s southeast side, according to an arrest affidavit. Hollins, 22, Pfc. Darius Thomas, 23, and Pvt. Cory Young, 22, were arrested on suspicion of second-degree burglary after police say they accidentally locked themselves inside the dispensary during a burglary-gone-bad.

7. Talking With the Enemy

Oct-15-2010 | Comments (2)

Bird’s Eye: Conflicts start down the road to resolution when people on opposite sides talk to each other. So it’s a pleasure to offer three stories that are good news, as three major areas of conflict start to have enemies communicating. Every step forward helps.

* India Makes Major Shift in Policy in Kashmir New York Times

The Indian government announced a major policy shift in Kashmir on Saturday, calling for the release of jailed student protesters, easing security strictures in major cities, reopening schools and universities, and offering financial compensation to the families of the more than 100 civilians killed since the restive region erupted in protests in June.

Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, who led a parliamentary delegation on a fact-finding trip last week, also said a high-level government committee would be established to open a dialogue with political parties, students and civil society groups in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian-controlled part of the disputed region.

* Settlers replace Korans burnt in West Bank mosque Haaretz

Settlers on Tuesday gave new copies of the Koran to Palestinians in a West Bank village whose mosque was burned in an attack blamed by Palestinians on settlers.

Several copies of Islam’s holy book were scorched in the arson attack and threats in Hebrew were scrawled on the wall of the mosque of Beit Fajjar early on Monday.

“This visit is to say that although there are people who oppose peace, he who opposes peace is opposed to God,” said Rabbi Menachem Froman, a well-known peace activist and one of a handful of settlers who went to Beit Fajjar to show solidarity with their Muslim neighbors.

* Taliban In Talks With Karzai Government Washington Post

Taliban representatives and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai have begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, according to Afghan and Arab sources.

The talks follow inconclusive meetings, hosted by Saudi Arabia, that ended more than a year ago. While emphasizing the preliminary nature of the current discussions, the sources said that for the first time they believe that Taliban representatives are fully authorized to speak for the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan, and its leader, Mohammad Omar. “They are very, very serious about finding a way out,” one source close to the talks said of the Taliban.

2. Wikileaks

Aug-06-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, an organization devoted to revealing what’s really going on behind the curtain of government secrecy. As Clay Shirkey says, “WikiLeaks has had more scoops in three years than the Washington Post has had in 30.” This past month, Wikileaks released 90,000 previously secret documents about Afghanistan. Some media found nothing new there (Slate: “Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many Afghan officials and police chiefs are corrupt and incompetent. Certain portions of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service have nefarious ties to the Taliban. If any of this startles you, then welcome to the world of reading newspapers. Today’s must be the first one you’ve read.”) Other media did see important material there. and praised (or dammed) Assange for releasing them. What do the files really show? Who is this Assange guy anyway? Why hasn’t the CIA killed him yet? We answer those questions below.

* Massive Leak Of Secret Files Exposes Truth Of Occupation The Guardian

A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers’ website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Timesand the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.

* Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks | Video on TED.com

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

* WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File Wired

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.” The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site.

… Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the new file added days later may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.

3. Afghanistan seen in a McChrystal Ball

Jun-25-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: After a Rolling Stone article (which we have) in which he calls VP Biden “Bite-me” and dismisses Obama’s advisors as “a bunch of wimps”, McChrystal has been removed from command of American troops in Afghanistan. As Znet points out, you don’t get that kind of in-fighting when wars are going well. The UK envoy to Afghanistan has also been recalled for pointing out unpalatable truths, and whoever gets to command the Titanic, the iceberg is still dead ahead. Juan Cole looks at the core Afghani problem: there is no achievable goal worth fighting for.

* On The Ground With The Runaway General Rolling Stone

‘How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?” demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It’s a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies…..”The dinner comes with the position, sir,” says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn.

McChrystal turns sharply in his chair. “Hey, Charlie,” he asks, “does this come with the position?” McChrystal gives him the middle finger.

* From Great Man to Great Screwup: Behind the McChrystal Uproar by Norman Solomon ZSpace

When the wheels are coming off, it doesn’t do much good to change the driver.

Whatever the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.

But the most profound aspects of Rolling Stone’s article “The Runaway General” have little to do with the general. The takeaway is — or should be — that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is an insoluble disaster, while the military rationales that propel it are insatiable. “Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further,” the article points out. And “counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war.”

* UK Special Envoy To Afghanistan Quits The Guardian

Britain’s special envoy to Afghanistan, known for his scepticism about the western war effort and his support for peace talks with the Taliban, has stepped down just a month before a critical international conference in Kabul….Cowper-Coles, a veteran diplomat who has served in Saudi Arabia and Israel, served as ambassador to Kabul between 2007 and 2009. He attracted controversy in 2008 when a leaked French diplomatic cable suggested he had been sharply critical of Karzai and US policy. While insisting Britain should support the US, he was quoted as saying in the Canard Enchaîné: “We should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one.”

* McChrystal Drama is Sideshow; Can Obama define a realistic Goal? Juan Cole Informed Comment

Obama cannot expect NATO allies to go on making these sacrifices in a distant, obscure country without obvious strategic importance for Europe and the United States. A Dutch government has already fallen over the issue, and the Canadians have announced an intention to depart.

Obama needs to define an attainable goal in Afghanistan and then execute it swiftly. As it is, when he is pressed about what in the world we are doing there, he retreats into Bushisms: “So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That’s the goal that must be achieved.”

Well that isn’t a good enough reason to be in Afghanistan. There is no al-Qaeda to speak of in Afghanistan. And although insurgents and Taliban probably control about 20 percent of the country, they have not let al-Qaeda set up shop in their territory. If they don’t now, when they obviously need all the help they can get, why would they in the future?

Tikkunista! April 30th, 2010 (Year Seven; Issue 14)

Apr-30-2010 | Comments (0)

Followups

* The Niqab Laws: “A firm believer in women’s rights, the only thing Afghan lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail finds as appalling as being forced to wear a burqa is a law banning it. “What is the difference between forcing women to wear a burqa and forcing them not to? It is discrimination.”

RSS Feed

2. Pakistan and Afghanistan

2. Afghanistan

7. Talking With the Enemy

3. Afghanistan seen in a McChrystal Ball

Tikkunista! April 30th, 2010 (Year Seven; Issue 14)

Categories

Blog Roll

Tags