All posts tagged: Afghanistan

Dealing with brutal Afghan warlords is a mistake

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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 …

Mercenaries, Robot Planes and the CIA Produce Lethal Mix for Secret Afghan War

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Mercenaries, Robot Planes and the CIA Produce Lethal Mix for Secret Afghan War By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted January 11, 2010. In Afghanistan, a militarized mix of CIA operatives and ex-military mercenaries as well as native recruits and robot aircraft is fighting a war in the shadows. It was a Christmas and New Year’s from hell for American intelligence, that $75 billion labyrinth of at least 16 major agencies and a handful of minor ones.  As the old year was preparing to be rung out, so were our intelligence agencies, which managed not to connect every obvious clue to a (literally) seat-of-the-pants al-Qaeda operation.  It hardly mattered that the underwear bomber’s case — except for the placement of the bomb material — almost exactly, even outrageously, replicated the infamous, and equally inept, “shoe bomber” plot of eight years ago.

Obama’s Af-Pak War is Not Just Deadly and Counterproductive: It’s Illegal

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By Marjorie Cohn Some 30 percent of all U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have occurred during Obama’s presidency. His escalation of that war is not what the Nobel committee envisioned. President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize nine days after he announced he would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. His escalation of that war is not what the Nobel committee envisioned when it sought to encourage him to make peace, not war. In 1945, in the wake of two wars that claimed millions of lives, the nations of the world created the United Nations system to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The UN Charter is based on the principles of international peace and security as well as the protection of human rights. But the United States, one of the founding members of the UN, has often flouted the commands of the charter, which is part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

For Every Decent Human Being

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By Bilal Qureshi Isn’t it time? For every decent human being, it is sickening to see people being butchered the way human beings are slaughtered in Pakistan these days. Human life has no respect or value for barbaric animals responsible for these bombings and suicide attacks. And if the news of bombings and killing was not enough, I was horrified to learn that Lahore’s commissioner (incorrectly) blames India for these attacks while Punjab’s law minister (correctly) believes that the thugs being smoked out from Swat and Wazirstan are actually behind these attacks to force the government to back down. Isn’t it time for Pakistan to get united? Isn’t it time stop obsessing about India? Isn’t it time to be realistic?

Post-American scenarios in Afghanistan

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By Ilhan Niaz After three decades of turmoil, violence and killings, Afghanistan is still at war. A powerful foreign occupation force continues to hold in place a local collaborationist dispensation with few roots and even less demonstrable competence. Democratic development has replaced despotic Islamic rule which earlier replaced a socialist paradigm as the slop of the day dished out for public consumption. The Islamic warriors who blunted and frustrated the armies of the ‘Evil Empire’ are now the ‘evil doers’. The other great enemies of the ‘Evil Empire’, namely the United States and its allies, once the benefactors of today’s terrorists have replaced the Soviets as the occupying force. As guns and drugs boom, the writ of what is generously called the Afghan government is practically non-existent outside Kabul. Warlords, mafias and insurgents control 80 per cent of the territory and feed off the presence of the occupation forces. The reality is that a failing occupation is trying to prop up a failed state.

A dream turned nightmare

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Samson Simon Sharaf When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto entrusted Major General Naseerullah Babar to create a student dominated resistance in Afghanistan, he ignored a very important lesson of power politics. Hans Joachim Morgenthau in his book, Politics Amongst Nations, had observed: “The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers.” Was this ignorance or deliberate? Determined to create a new Pakistan, Bhutto was riding a wave of diplomatic successes. It seems he decided to taste the forbidden fruit. Negotiations with India had been successful. The OIC Summit at Lahore ended Pakistan’s international isolation. The Arab oil embargo upset the Western cash flows. Foundations of the nuclear programme were laid and Pakistan was ready to pay any price (also eat grass) for its independence and development. Next, in his calculus of an overbearing India, it was important to eliminate the spectre of a two-front war by resolving the Durand issue. He decided to exploit the fault lines of Parcham and Khalq and force Sardar Daud to a negotiated settlement.