Afghan Journal

Afghan Taliban snipers the bigger enemy in Marjah

                                                          By Golnar Motevalli

When thousands of U.S. Marines swept into the centre of the southern Afghan town of Marjah this month, they had prepared for a huge improvised explosive device (IED) threat and sporadic Taliban gun attacks.

Instead, they found Taliban snipers with fatally accurate shots and some of the worst examples of home-made explosives they had ever come across.

Corporal Thomas Gibbons-neff, a 22-year old sniper from Darien, Connecticut spends most days in a single position in the village of Koru Chareh in the town of Marjah, looking down a scope on his rifle watching for Taliban gunmen.

“We have never experienced this level of threat, this trained foe. In 2008 it was a completely different time of fight,” said Gibbons-neff, who was deployed to Helmand in 2008.

The Marines are reluctant to use the term “sniper” to refer to Taliban gunmen, preferring to call them “trained marksmen” because, while their skills have markedly improved since last year, they are bad at covering their tracks.

Empty bullet shells have been found littered outside a mosque the Marines believe one sniper used as a position in the village of Koru Chareh.

Afghan offensive : When the Marjah “pork chop” turns into a “lamb chop”

                                                              By Golnar Motevalli

All militaries are notorious for their use of jargon, acronyms and code names to describe people, places and operations. The village of Koru Chareh in the centre of Marjah and a key area in the U.S. Marines’  objective to seize the town in Operation Moshtarak was also given a moniker.

 Koru Chareh is a cluster of unevenly planned low-rise mudbrick dwellings surrounded by small canals. From an aerial map it is shaped like an oblong which tapers at the end. So the Marines called it the “pork chop”.

Officers would radio in suspicious sightings in the “pork chop”,  such as  a bomb-like device  or a suspected   Taliban sniper. About a week later it occurred to them that the reference to a cut of meat from an animal seen as “haraam” or forbidden in one of the world’s most conservative Muslim countries may be inappropriate. So one evening, as some Marines were turning into their sleeping bags while others kept watch on outposts, it was decided that the “lamb chop” should replace the pork chop.

“Well, no one in the States eats lamb” one officer said, to explain why the moniker was chosen in the first place. It is also highly doubtful if any Afghans in Marjah, most of whom had fled the town before the offensive, had any idea that their U.S. allies were using the name at all.

America attempting a more “humane war” in Afghanistan

One of the reasons the big U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan’s Marjah area has slowed down is because the Marines are trying to avoid civilian casualties at all costs, according to military commanders. So use of air power, the key to U.S. battle strategy, has been cut back because of the risk of collateral damage from strikes.

Lara M. Dadkhah, an intelligence analyst, in a New York Times op-ed says troops under heavy attack in Marjah have had to wait for an hour or more for air support so that insurgents were properly identified. “We didn’t come to Marjah to destroy it, or to hurt civilians,” Dadkhah quotes a Marine officer as saying after he waited 90 minutes before the Cobra helicopters he had requested showed up with their Hellfire missiles.

The new approach flows from U.S. and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy that the war in Afghanistan can only be won by winning the full support of the Afghan people, not just by killing or capturing militants. As  he says in this counter-insurgency guidance issued last year,  ”security may not come from overwhelming firepower, and force protection may mean more personal interaction with the Afghan people, not less.”  Thus the use of air power and long range artillery, which can lead to civilian casualties, can only be authorised under very limited and prescribed conditions.

The new strategy has already unfolded on the ground, and Marjah is no exception. Dadkhah says analysis of U.S. military data shows that while the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has more than doubled since 2008, the number of close air support sorties which are usually in aid of troops under fire grew by only 27 percent. It can only mean 1) troops are calling for air support less often than before McChrystal’s directives  2) that even when they do, their requests are denied.

While killing innocents or destroying towns cannot be an objective of the operation to take Marjah, Dadkhah says the emphasis on civilian protection is putting U.S. soldiers on the defensive in what is intended to be the war’s biggest offensive. No army, not even the United States, can expect to win if it gives up its advantages, and air power is certainly one of them. Over a longer term, the whole idea that war can be conducted in  a just manner and without causing any civilian casualties is dangerous.

“General McChrystal’s directive was well intentioned, but the lofty ideal at its heart is a lie, and an immoral one at that, because it pretends that war can be fair or humane, ” says Dadkhah. “Wars are always ugly, and always monstrous, and best avoided. Once begun, however, the goal of even a ‘long war’ should be victory in as short a time as possible, using every advantage you have.”

But there are others who say that criticism of General McChrystal’s approach is itself short-sighted. While there can be a tactical logic for continuing the use of air power and heavy artillery to win the immediate battle, this is a high-risk strategy over the longer term. It’s a game of perceptions and McChrystal is right in trying to win it that way, argues Julia Mahlejd writing in Registan, a blog focused on Afghanistan and Central Asia. “The use of air power causes the least number of civilian casualty incidents and kills or wounds the least number of Afghans per year. But when such incidents do occur they are invariably spectacular. No wonder they cause the most outrage. And that outrage diminishes Afghan support for the mission,” she writes.

Ex-Guantanamo Bay prisoner the next Afghan Taliban commander?

It is a measure of the shadowy nature of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan that it is hard to come up with even a couple of names of senior figures who could possibly succeed  top commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader following his capture in a joint U.S.-Pakistan raid.

Such is the diffused leadership structure - more like a franchise down to the villages – that the only thing you can say for certain is that the Islamist movement is still led by the one-eyed Mullah Mohammad Omar, although according to reports  he hasn’t been seen even by his own followers in the past three years.

It’s a risky business then to hazard a guess as I wrote in this story, but one of the names that is doing the rounds of the security blogs/newspapers is that of Abdul Qayum Zakir, a Taliban fighter from the 1990s who has spent time in Guantanamo Bay. His is an interesting story. He surrendered to U.S. and Afghan forces in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif as the regime was collapsing in 2001.

He spent the next several years in custody, was transferred to Guantanamo around 2006, then to Afghanistan government custody in late 2007, and was eventually released.  It’s not clear why he was released but he lost no time in re-joining the insurgency. He quickly rose to take charge of the operations in the key provinces of Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan.

The Rand Corporation’s Seth Jones in  a profile of Zakir last year  said that American officials wouldn’t say why he was let go and wouldn’t release a photograph of him. In a memorandum prepared for his administrative review board at Guantanamo, Zakir apparently said he  ”felt it would be fine to wage jihad against Americans, Jews, or Israelis if they were invading his country.”

Now as the Marines move through Helmand in the biggest offensive yet, they will be looking for Zakir, the operational foe.  But then again it may not be him setting out the Taliban’s military strategy.

Singapore’s Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research said Mullah Mohammad Hassan, the shadow governor of Kandahar province, may well step into Barader’s shoes.  Very little is known about Hassan, except that he fought during the Soviet jihad in the 1980s.

Afghanistan’s operation Marjah: taking on the Quetta shura

U.S.-led NATO and Afghan forces are in the third day of their offensive to establish control over the town of Marjah and surrounding areas in southern Afghanistan.

The soldiers were making steady progress, facing little resistance from the Taliban in many parts of Marjah, the military said, while picking their way through a terrain littered with roadside bombs.

Several experts in the run-up to Operation Moshtarak, flagged weeks in advance, have questioned both its military and political logic.

Norrine Macdonald, writing in Foreign Policy’s AFPAK  channel blog , dismissed it as a minor operation, more symbolic than anything else, given that the Taliban control large parts of the country and losing Marjah is not going to dramatically change the ground situation.

Others have questioned the build-up to the operation with Registan, a blog focused on Afghanistan and Central Asia, running  a piece by Joshua Foust headlined: “Mythbusting Marjeh”.  He questions the description of Marjah as  an “opium capital”  and points out that last year NATO was calling Garmsir as Helmand’s  “main opium bazaars”. Before that it was Sangin.

Likewise is it really necessary to describe Marjah as a Taliban stronghold, he asks. “Almost by definition, anywhere the U.S. sends troops, whether it’s a nearby village, a previously abandoned district, or a new area the U.S. has never been, is going to be called a Taliban Stronghold.”

What really is the U.S. logic in going into Marjah guns blazing? The Long War Journal has a very detailed report on the U.S. military strategy over the next 12-18 months as formulated by U.S. and NATO commander Gen. Stanley M.McChrystal and approved by the Obama administration and its clear that Marjah is part of the U.S. resolve to take the fight to Taliban central or the Quetta shura.

Afghanistan: the battle of Marjah

U.S-led NATO forces launched early on Saturday an offensive against a Taliban stronghold  in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, said to be one of the biggest  since the fall of the Taliban in 2001  While the operation to clear and “hold forever” the town of Marjah may not be the turning point in the eight-year Afghan war, it’s the first big test of President Barack Obama’s troop surge strategy.

Reuters correspondent Golnar Motevalli is embedded with the troops and here’s her report.  And here’s a bit more detail on Marjah.   Above is a picture of British troops on their way to battle, shot by Reuters photographer Ho New.

Pakistan still the greatest worry, says Biden

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told CNN this week that his biggest worry was not Afghanistan, not Iraq and not even Iran which is hurtling into a fresh confrontation with the West over its nuclear programme.  The big concern was Pakistan with  its nuclear weapons and  a radicalised section of society.

“It’s a big country. it has nuclear weapons that are able to be deployed.  It has a real significant minority of radicalised population. It is not a completely functional democracy in the sense we think about it.  And so….. that’s my greatest concern.”

Biden’s remarks are unlikely to go down well in Pakistan, which bristles at being  lumped with dangerous countries .  Indeed the vice-president has spoken just when reports were emerging that the United States and Pakistan were starting to feel more comfortable with each other after a rocky couple of years.  Pakistan has won praise from U.S. military leaders for its successful operation in the difficult terrain of  South Waziristan. It has  also sought a key role in a resolution of the Afghan war, offering to mediate with Taliban factions operating from its soil.

Indeed, a top expert has suggested that this is perhaps the time to offer Pakistan a civilian nuclear  deal on the lines of the one agreed to with India, to win its complete cooperation in the war on terrorism.  C. Christian Fair, a professor at Georgetown University, says  nuclear cooperation could deliver results where billions of dollars of American aid have failed. “More so than conventional weapons or large sums of cash, a conditions-based civilian nuclear deal may be able to diminish Pakistani fears of U.S. intentions while allowing Washington to leverage these gains for greater Pakistani cooperation on nuclear proliferation and terrorism,”  she wrote in an article in The Wall Street Journal

The two criteria that Pakistan would have to meet is, first,  provide access and cooperation on nuclear suppliers’ networks such as the one that was run by A.Q. Khan  and dismantle them.  Second, it  would have to demonstrate sustained and verifiable commitment in combating all terrorist groups on its soil, including those groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba that Pakistan often calls “freedom fighters” acting on behalf of Kashmir and India’s Muslims.

It will be a long haul, given that the thing that terrifies America the most about Pakistan is the ” nexus of nuclear proliferation and Islamist militancy”  as Fair says. Indeed, even the Indian deal has taken five years to go through and its a long way off before there is movement on the ground.  

America and Pakistan have long had a complicated relationship but what does one make of these contradictory signals ?

from UK News:

How chaplains find peace during wartime

A British military chaplain prepares a Remembrance Day ceremony at the British cemetery in Kabul November 11, 2009/Jerry Lampen

Dozens of chaplains from the Church of England are serving with British armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are there when soldiers seek redemption around the time of battle, and they there are, standing in the operating theatre, waiting until the surgeon can do no more.

They serve the needs of soldiers sent to war, and they also serve God.

While they adminster balm on the battlefield, their peers preach peace from the pulpit. Which is the more important for the CoE at a time of war?

A recruitment advert for the Royal Air Force in a Christian publication recently said it needed chaplains "to take the church to where it's needed most" - moving with troops and air-crew, providing support on the front line and at the altar back at base.

Some vicars in the shires and cities would say they are most needed in the pulpit, preaching pacifism.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

“My Life with the Taliban” – on study and Islamic values

In  "My Life with the Taliban",  Abdul Salam Zaeef -- who fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and later served in the Taliban government before it was ousted in 2001 -- writes of how he longed to escape the trappings of office and instead follow in the footsteps of his father as the Imam of a mosque, learning and teaching the Koran.

"It is work that has no connection with the world's affairs. It is a calling of intellectual dignity away from the dangers and temptations of power. All my life, even as a boy, I was always happiest when studying and learning things. To work in government positions means a life surrounded by corruption and injustice, and therein is found the misery of mankind," he writes in his memoirs, newly translated and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn.

Zaeef became best known as the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks -- he was then arrested and sent to Guantanamo -- and his memoirs provide a unique insight into the developments which led to the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.  That alone makes it a must-read, providing an alternative and very personal account to set alongside Western concepts of the Taliban -- more closely associated with their human rights record, their treatment of women, and their refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States after 9/11.

But the ideological heart of the book lies in his belief in the value of study (Talib means student) and his unswerving faith that only an Islamic system based on the implementation of sharia can drag Afghanistan out of its current misery.  Given the current discussion about whether a political settlement can be reached with the Taliban, it is perhaps his representation of this internal faith, as much as the outward trappings of jihad, that merit the most serious attention.

Zaeef was born in 1968 to a poor but educated family in Afghanistan, was orphaned as a boy, and later fled with his relatives to Pakistan shortly before the Soviet invasion in 1979.  At the age of 15, without telling his family, he ran off to join the jihad against the Soviets.  Countering the commonly held view that the movement emerged -- or was created by Pakistan -- only in 1994, he writes that the Taliban were very much present and active in the 1980s.

A group of religious scholars and students, they stood out from the other mujahideen because of their piety and their commitment that those who fought with them must continue their studies even on the battlefield. "The Taliban were different," Zaeef writes. "Jihad was not just about fighting; in our view there had to be a strong educational perspective as well as a provision for justice."

Despite the gruelling conditions, the injuries and deaths, these early years had an innocence to them, forging bonds among the Taliban that would endure through decades of war.  "It's hard to believe, maybe, but we were happy."  One night, he remembers Mullah Muhammad Omar, who lost an eye in the fighting and later became the leader of the movement, singing a "ghazal" - a form of poetry more commonly associated nowadays with Sufi Islam than with the austere brand of Islam represented by the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s very public offensive : teasing out the Taliban or walking into a trap ?

(U.S. Marines in a dust storm in a camp near Marjah. Photograph by Reuters’  Goran Tomasevic) 

Reuters  correspondent Golnar Motevalli is on an embed with U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province ahead of a  widely-flagged operation against the Taliban.  Here’s her account,  going into battle.

                                                           By Golnar Motevalli

Back in December, we were told about an operation, at some point in the near-future, which will target a Taliban hotspot in Afghanistan’s dangerous and restive southern Helmand province.

 The U.S. Marines had been in Helmand since May and had already completed one major operation, Operation Khanjar, which saw them advancing into parts of Helmand where NATO forces, specifically the British, had until that point been struggling to break a stalemate with insurgents. Khanjar was very well covered by the media and it was touted as the biggest Marine offensive since the battle of Fallujah in Iraq in 2004 and the biggest airborne assault since the Vietnam War.

Operation Moshdarak, we have been told for the past two months, will apparently trump Khanjar in size and scale. It involves less Marines but more Afghan troops and more British troops.  Moshdarak, which aims to take Marjah, a town said by Marine commanders to be one of the few left in Helmand still under total Taliban control, has been promoted by the U.S. military and NATO with enthusiasm and zeal.