Too close for comfort

The Economist

In the war in Afghanistan it is not always obvious which side Pakistan is on

PAKISTAN REACTS WITH understandable resentment to criticism of its role in Afghanistan. During the long war there it has provided sanctuary to millions of refugees. It has lost far more troops fighting terrorists than has ISAF. After September 11th 2001 it swiftly repudiated the Taliban and threw in its lot with America and its “war on terror”. In 2004 it was named a “major non-NATO ally” by America. Its territory has provided ISAF with vital supply routes and bases for attacks on suspected terrorists by unmanned drone aircraft. Many of its civilians have also died in those and other attacks. It has provided intelligence that has led to the capture of a succession of al-Qaeda leaders. And the “American” war in Afghanistan has fuelled the rise of violent Islamist extremists in Pakistan itself, the “Pakistani Taliban”, bent on overthrowing the government.

America’s wars: the logic of escalation

Paul Rogers, 22nd September 2011

The United States’s political-military strategy for drawdown in Afghanistan is in trouble, even as Washington is tempted by increased high-tech military engagement in other theaters of war.

The killing of Afghanistan’s former president Burhanuddin Rabbani in a suicide bomb-attack at his home in Kabul on 20 September 2011 removes  a senior player who for decades was at the centre of the country’s political scene. A major incident in itself, which led the current Afghan president Hamid Karzai to return home from New York to attend the funeral, Rabbani’s death follows the concerted assault on key targets in central Kabul on 13-14 September that lasted twenty hours.

The exact responsibility for Rabbani’s death is still  to be established. But this and similar operations  – such as attacks on Kabul hotels, and on the offices  of the British Council in the city on 19 August – reflect the ability of the Taliban to hone tactics in recent months in response to the “surge” in United States troops into Afghanistan.

Cross Post AFGHANISTAN. US Budgetary Constraints

William Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security project at the Center for International Policy.
Copyright, Huffington Post, 2011. Original article available here.
President Obama’s long-awaited announcement of a troop drawdown in Afghanistan was in part driven by budgetary concerns.
Public opinion is turning against the war, and its immense costs are part of the reason. For example, a recent Pew poll found that 60% of Americans think that the two wars have contributed “a great deal” to the national debt, a significantly higher percentage than those choosing what they saw as the next most likely cause, the state of the national economy. And members of Congress are increasingly critical of a war with a tab that is now running at about $10 billion per month.

Cross Post : Myths & Realities about Afghanistan

 

By Afghanistan Study Group

1.    MYTH
If the Obama administration scales back the mission in Afghanistan, Republicans will portray it as “soft” and the Democratic Party will pay a big political price in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

REALITY
Our strategy in Afghanistan should be based on U.S. national interests, not partisan politics. Moreover, the war is increasingly unpopular with the American people. Voters will support a strategy that reduces costs, emphasizes counter-terrorism, and begins to bring U.S. troops home

Cross Post- Afghan Financial Death Match: IMF versus Central Bank

Edward Kenney Afghanistan Study Group
Last Fall I attended a conference by the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce with keynote speaker Dr Abdul Qadeer Fitrat, the Afghan Central Bank Governor.  The purpose of the conference was to reinvigorate foreign investment in Afghanistan in the wake of serious scandal involving Kabul Bank, one of largest Afghan financial institutions.

Calling America’s bluff

By Kurt Jacobsen and Sayeed Hassan Khan

Published in Dawn

HAS Obama unwittingly called his own bluff? The spooky so-called mastermind Osama Bin Laden is rubbed out, courtesy a Hollywood-style hit squad operation. What more is there to say?

Everything, actually. But nervous authorities want to curb jubilation so as not to give the exasperated American public any funny ideas about pulling their stupendously expensive military apparatus out of battered Afghanistan.

Bin Laden: An alternative view from America

We present two articles from United States that present views that are not part of mainstream media. A little realism rather than triumphalism.

Bin Laden’s Dead, But Our Long National Nightmare is Not Over

By Steven D. | Sourced from Booman Tribune  Posted on  May 2, 2011, 5:59 am

Ding-Dong the Witch is dead!

Well, that’s nice, I suppose. But after ten years of wars that we paid for on the National credit card, one of them (Iraq) clearly and unquestionably unnecessary, after trillions of dollars wasted killing hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and destroying the lives of millions more, we still ain’t back in Kansas, Dorothy.

Sham democracy

Fakir S Ayazuddin

Politics in Pakistan has come to a grinding halt with the lukewarm statement emanating from Raiwind that the Lion does not wish to disturb the system, for fear of bringing down the existing setup. It is a setup which allows the PPP to continue its rampage across the country with the help of the corrupt officials it has appointed at every level. We, for our part, have been trapped by the politicians, and nothing short of a radical change can remove them now.

Expeditionary Economics

By Carl J. Schramm

This article,  published in Foreign Affairs Journal, asserts that Washington’s method of reconstructing economies hit by conflicts and natural disasters is inadequate. It suggests that US military must build its competence in economics. And the object of economic reconstruction must be part of any successful  strategy of invasion, stabilization, and economic reconstruction. The writer calls this expeditionary economics. We are posting this article on our blog for our readers.

The United States’ experience with rebuilding economies in the aftermath of conflicts and natural disasters has evidenced serious shortcomings. After seven years of a U.S. presence in Iraq and over nine years in Afghanistan, the economies of those countries continue to falter and underperform. Meanwhile, the damage caused by the earthquake in Haiti early this year revealed deep economic problems, ones that had confronted earlier U.S. efforts to boost Haiti’s economy, and they will plague reconstruction efforts there for a long while.

Frustrated Strivers in Pakistan Turn to Jihad

By Sabrina Tavernise and Waqar Gillani

Published: February 27, 2010

Cross Post from The New York Times

LAHORE, Pakistan — Umar Kundi was his parents’ pride, an ambitious young man from a small town who made it to medical school in the big city. It seemed like a story of working-class success, living proof in this unequal society that a telephone operator’s son could become a doctor.

Lahore has enduring social problems like chronic unemployment.

But things went wrong along the way. On campus Mr. Kundi fell in with a hard-line Islamic group. His degree did not get him a job, and he drifted in the urban crush of young people looking for work. His early radicalization helped channel his ambitions in a grander, more sinister way.

Instead of healing the sick, Mr. Kundi went on to become one of Pakistan’s most accomplished militants. Working under a handler from Al Qaeda, he was part of a network that carried out some of the boldest attacks against the Pakistani state and its people last year, the police here say. Months of hunting him ended on Feb. 19, when he was killed in a shootout with the police at the age of 29.

Mr. Kundi and members of his circle — educated strivers who come from the lower middle class — are part of a new generation that has made militant networks in Pakistan more sophisticated and deadly. Al Qaeda has harnessed their aimless ambition and anger at Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, their generation’s most electrifying enemy.

“These are guys who use Google Maps to plan their attacks,” said a senior Punjab Province police official. “Their training is better than our national police academy.”

Battle begins to win over Taliban to Karzai’s court

Cautious interest as Afghan government seeks to draw all parties to the table

By Julius Cavendish in Kabul

AFP/GETTY IMAGES Taliban fighters are to be offered inducements to change sides, but they demand preconditions before talks

he Taliban fighter sitting in the front of the car was expressive, engaging, and dismissive of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s pleas for men like him to lay down their guns. Omar Khel, a tribal militant from Wardak province outside Kabul, is exactly the kind of reluctant rebel the Afghan government and the international community want to bring in from the cold.

“I am not in favour of fighting,” Mr Khel, a chubby man with strong features and grey-flecked hair, said. “I don’t have

enmity with the Americans. I have enmity with Fahim, with Khalili, with Dostum. We are fighting them.” He had named the three most notorious warlords in the new Afghan government.

Dealing with brutal Afghan warlords is a mistake

Nick Grono and Candace Rondeaux in the Boston Globe

Boston Globe

 

AS WASHINGTON rolls out its latest troop surge in Afghanistan, all eyes are on the violent south and east of the country to see whether the additional military muscle will bring stability. But outside observers are looking in the wrong place: They ought to focus on the backroom deals the United States is preparing to make with some notorious warlords, as these will determine the long-term effectiveness of President Obama’s strategy.

While the White House has paid lip service to the importance of good governance in Afghanistan, the reality is that co-opting violent warlords is at the heart of a plan that will likely result in further instability. One of the warlords who may soon star in the new US efforts to rebrand fundamentalists as potential government partners is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal Afghan insurgent commander responsible for dozens of deadly attacks on coalition troops. As a mujahedeen commander during the civil war in the 1990s, Hekmatyar turned his guns on Kabul, slaughtering many thousands of Afghans, with his militias raping and maiming thousands more.