Afghan Journal

from Photographers Blog:

Destination: Afghanistan

It all started out with a phone call from Reuters News Pictures Washington Editor In Charge Jim Bourg on Thursday night informing me there was a secret Presidential trip leaving on Saturday to an undisclosed destination which Reuters would like me to travel with the president on. I was told that this was very secretive and that I was not to mention it to anyone and that no details were available yet. I had been with President Obama on his secret trip to Baghdad last year, so it was pretty easy to figure out that the destination this time might be Afghanistan, a trip which had been highly anticipated since Obama became president 15 months ago. I was to expect to be contacted directly by the White House for a meeting to discuss the details. But I was to "open" the White House as the first Reuters photographer arriving there on Friday morning at 7am, my scheduled shift, and to go about my day as planned acting as if everything was normal. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That afternoon I was called in to meet with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in his office at 4pm, along with some of the other members of the 14 person media travel pool who would be going on the secret trip aboard Air Force One.

We were given a schedule of events and were sworn to secrecy. I headed home to pack and test out the BGAN satellite phone I had been provided by Reuters for the trip.

On Saturday night, I met up with the 2 other wire service photographers who were in the travel pool at a gate at Andrews Air Force Base at 7pm, an hour before our call time. But after sitting in the cars for an hour outside the Air Force base gate, and when no one else showed up, we figured that we better make a protective phone call to the White House staff. It seemed we were a half-mile from the correct entry point to the base. Whoops! The details we had been given were a little too secretive even for us!

Our names were checked off a list at the gate and we drove into a parking lot. We unloaded all of our gear and it was all turned over to the U.S. Secret Service. All electronics, cameras, and blackberries were to be loaded on to the plane by them and we would get not them back until we were in flight.

The full media pool then waited on a bus for about an hour until we were driven inside the aircraft hanger where Air Force One was parked. Normally we board Air Force One in broad daylight in the middle of an open air force base tarmac and climb up the rear stairs of the aircraft. But in this case, we were asked to board the plane after dark, inside a hangar, entering the plane from the front where the president does, which we never do, and we got to see a lot of the plane that I had never seen before.

from India Insight:

Afghan endgame and fears of rise in Kashmir violence

The Indian army says rebel violence will escalate in Kashmir in summer as hundreds of militants are waiting in the Pakistani part of Kashmir to infiltrate into the Indian side and step up attacks.

Even an internal assessment of the Home Ministry says the summer of 2010 will be as bloodier as or even worse than the mid-nineties.

In Kashmir, violence involving Muslim rebels and Indian troops was on the decline since India and Pakistan, who dispute the region, began a peace process in 2004.

Then why does New Delhi fear escalation of militant violence in Kashmir?

Analysts say after the failure of high-level talks between New Delhi and Islamabad, both are now locked in an escalating proxy war in Afghanistan, a war-torn region where both neighbours vie for influence.

"If no solution is found to reconcile Pakistani and Indian interests in Afghanistan, the coming months might see stepped up terrorist attacks against Indians in Kabul and the return of militants infiltrating Indian Kashmir from Pakistan," says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist.

Though the high Himalayan passes are still covered with a thick layer of snow, Pakistan-based militants have started pushing in their members into the Valley.

Standing by your friends:India, U.S. push ahead with nuclear deal

For all the hand-wringing in India over getting sidelined by the United States in its regional strategy,  the two countries have gone ahead and just completed an important deal on the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from reactors to be built in India.

The agreement is a key step in the implementation of the India-U.S.  civil nuclear pact which grants India access to nuclear fuel and technology, even though it has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Under the agreement India can reprocess U.S.-originated nuclear material under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards which in itself is a symbolic concession, according to the Washington Post. It said that the Indians were a bit concerned about the idea of American officials running around their  nuclear reactors , a sort of  “a symbolic, sovereignty issue” as  a source in the U.S. nuclear industry said. They would rather submit to oversight by the IAEA, which thus far is a model the United States has only followed for nuclear collaboration with  Europe and Japan.

Considering that America has gone to war in Iraq on the grounds that it was building weapons of mass destruction and is at this time pushing for tougher sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme, it is indeed a big deal. It can  also potentially reshape the strategic landscape in South Asia with the world virtually granting legitimacy to India as a nuclear weapons state while denying that to Pakistan.

Pushing the accord through in the U.S. has  been a “wrenching affair” as the Indian Express put it,  riding against the current of proliferation concerns worldwide. Why should the world be making an exception for India just as it is breathing down hard on Iran and North Korea to roll back their nuclear programmes ? Where, after all, is the iron-clad guarantee that India won’t divert some of the  plutonium extracted from the imported spent fuel to its strategic weapons programme, the experts ask.  Blatant double standards, the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

No wonder Pakistan asked for a similar deal at high-level talks in Washington last week aimed at putting their tempestuous ties on a more even keel.

And so in that sense, the India-US nuclear deal, really the crown jewel of a strategic partnership, will be the elephant in the room as Washington, Islamabad, and New Delhi tackle a complicated three-way relationship in one of the world’s most unstable regions.

India talking to Taliban?

If the news reports are true, India’s willingness to talk to the Taliban would represent a seismic shift in strategy for New Delhi and underlines the concern that the Congress-led government has over Pakistan’s influence in any Afghan end game.

India has always publicly opposed any attempts at talks by the Western powers with the Taliban to bring them into any stability plan for Afghanistan — chiding the idea there was such a thing as a “soft side” to the insurgents.

But an Indian Express report said New Delhi was now seeking out a “second generation” of Pashtun leaders like Nangarhar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai.

It also comes with a report that Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying that the group was not in direct conflict with India.

New Delhi has also been increasingly worried about Pakistan’s growing closeness with Washington, especially the meeting in Washington this month in which Pakistan reportedly pressured the United States to rein in Indian influence in Afghanistan.

By one account, Pakistan has also asked President Harmid Karzai to close two Indian consulates in Afghanistan. Islamabad says they harbour spies.

For years India has most relied on its contacts with the Northern Alliance and then Karzai to spread its influence in Afghanistan — its $1.3 billion of economic “soft power” aid.

Obama’s Kabul jaunt: Hello Afghans … and goodbye.

Press conferences at the presidential palace in Kabul can be tedious affairs but the frustration felt by the local press corp topped a new level when U.S. President Barack Obama came to visit Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday evening. Mainly because there wasn’t one — a press conference that is.

At around 4:30 in the afternoon, just when government ministries are wrapping up for the day,  a selected group of foreign and domestic journalists received a telephone call from palace officials: “Be at the palace at 5 o’clock.” That was it. No more details.

Having been to Karzai’s heavily guarded palace a number of times over the last two years, I am now familiar with the ritual. I emptied my pockets of anything unnecessary and rushed out the door.

Karzai’s palace, in the centre of the city, is probably the most heavily guarded and fortified compound in the country, bar a few foreign military bases dotted around the desert of course. Getting in, even if you are invited, is a long procedure.

After flashing our media badges half a dozen times to jumpy Afghan palace guards trained by a U.S. private security firm, a series of invasive pat-downs by palace officials in cheap suits, our belongings sniffed over by German Alsatian dogs, the same belongings then checked in two separate X-Ray machines, our mobile phones (and cigarettes) confiscated, we were finally in — two hours down.

Nothing unusual so far except that the palace media staff were particularly unforthcoming with information regarding the event. “We know nothing. You will find out soon,” one official told me. For security reasons journalists are normally given as little information as possible so as not to jeopardize a VIP visit. But this time it seemed even they didn’t know anything. I believed them.

When all the journalists were finally led into a grand room in the palace, not normally used for news conferences, we were pretty certain Karzai’s guest was not the Slovakian foreign minister. The U.S. flag behind the podium gave it away. “It’s got to be Obama. It has to be him,” journalists whispered to each other. With our connection to the outside world cut off now that our phones had been confiscated, all we could do was wait. Three hours down.

Obama’s secret trip to Afghanistan

For a leader who has come to own the Afghan war, U.S. President Barack Obama’s first trip to Kabul and the military headquarters in  Bagram since he took office 15 months ago was remarkable for its secrecy and surprise.

He flew in late on Sunday night, the blinds lowered on Air Force One all the way from Washington, and left while it was still dark.

It tells you more about the state of the eight-year war than anything else in recent weeks. Imagine visiting a country in the dead of the night, calling on its president sometime soon after and then flying out before the sun rises.

Here’s a Reuters story on how the six-hour trip was orchestrated.

One encouraging sign though: a Washington Post poll released just as Obama made the trip to the war-shattered nation showed that Afghanistan is still the one issue where Americans are behind  him.

Overall, 53 percent of those polled approved of the way he was dealing with the situation in Afghanistan with 35 percent expressing disapproval.

Hurt Locker in Afghanistan

“The Hurt Locker”, the Oscar-winning story of a U.S. army bomb disposal squad defusing explosives in the combat zones of Baghdad, may well have been shot in the riverine valleys of southern Afghanistan.

For it is in the Afghan theatre that Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs as everyone calls them, have become the bigger threat to U.S.-led forces, just as they taper off in Iraq. U.S. army Lieutenant General Michael L Oates told the House Armed Services Committee in a testimony earlier this month that Afghanistan had experienced a near doubling of IED attacks in the last year with a corresponding significant rise in U.S. and coalition casualties.

Conversely, the Iraq threat is roughly 10 percent of its 2007 peak, he said. Things have changed obviously in Iraq with a weakened militancy unable to mount the same level of challenge to coalition forces. Better intelligence/ detection have also played a role in lessening the IED threat, a major killer of security forces in insurgencies throughout recent history.

The rise in IED activity in Afghanistan, on the other hand, reflects the growing reach of the Taliban as they battle for control of large swathes of territory.

More worrisome, as Oates said, the kill ratio of the IEDs is growing.  Over the past three years in Afghanistan, casualty rates of U.S. troops have increased by roughly 50 percent. In other words, each IED attack is causing 50 percent more casualties on average today in Afghanistan, than at this same time three years ago. Iraq, by comparison, has a U.S. IED casualty rate that currently is about half that of Afghanistan.

The rural terrain of Afghanistan with its unpaved roads offers better cover for the crude devices than the urbanised environment of Iraq, You can put explosive charges in the middle of the road or in culverts, Oates said. Also the Taliban seem to be using low or non-metallic content fertilizer-based explosives which frustrate detection. Finally as part of the new operational strategy of getting closer to the people, U.S. forces are conducting more patrols on foot than behind the protection of an armoured vehicle. And that makes them vulnerable to an IED hit.

Banksy-style graffiti hits streets of Kabul

Kabul’s Shehr-pu district was once a poor area, but since the Taliban fell and the capital’s population of foreigners swelled with security companies, NGOs and media companies, Shehr-pu’s slums have been replaced with awkwardly proportioned and garish mansions, squeezed next to each other and surrounded by some of the worst roads in the city.

But even more striking  than the architecture in Shehr-pu is the sudden appearance of graffiti which looks like it could be the work of the anonymous British artist Banksy

Boys stand in front of a graffiti printed on a wall in Kabul March 24, 2010. (REUTERS/Ahmad Masood)

Statements such as “cost of war?”, sprayed-on helicopters framed with dollar signs and opium poppies, have been stenciled onto concrete blast barriers and fences, an imitation of Banksy’s style.

Banksy, who has a big following around the world, rose to fame in the mid 2000s with his distinctive street art in London and other big cities in Britain. His murals often carry political messages and subjects have included Guantanamo Bay detainees, London policmen embraced in a kiss and a serene, green landscape painted on a wall built by Israel to fence-off the West Bank from Jerusalem.

There are many westerners living in Kabul at the moment, the elections in August brought a wave of fresh faces onto a community of expatriates from Europe, the United States and other developed economies where Banksy’s name and work are familiar. But the graffiti looks like it’s more likely be the work of a copy-cat artist who thinks Banksy ought to apply his satire to Kabul. While there are similarities in the style and the objective of the murals appears to be the same as the reclusive Bristolian, they lack the finesse and scale of Banksy’s work. And whether the graffiti is Banksy’s or not, the cultural reference might be lost on many Afghans who may not have heard of him.

A Guantanamo Bay in Afghanistan?

(A protester outside the White House in Washington dressed as a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Photo by Kevin Lamarque)

The United States is considering a proposal to hold foreign terrorism suspects at the Bagram military base in Afghanistan,  the Los Angeles Times reported this week, a  new Guantanamo Bay just as it is trying to close down the original facility in Cuba.

Given the amount of trouble that Washington has run into for running  a detention centre where  prisoners have no access to the U.S. court system, it sounds like a bad idea to be setting it up in Afghanistan, say experts.

A “very bad idea”, actually, says human rights lawyer Sahr Muhammedally, to be doing this at a time when the U.S. military is trying to win the support of the Afghan people as the centrepiece of its strategy to reverse the tide of the eight-year war.

Guantanamo Bay is an ugly name in Afghanistan, with scores of Afghans held for anything from two to five years without any opportunity to defend themselves. To be now trying to create a  mini-Gitmo in the country must come as an affront to many of them, says Muhammedally in this article for Foreign Policy’s AFPAK Channel.

Anger over night raids and arbitrary detentions by international military forces ranks second to that of civilian casualties, the London-based lawyer says.  Expanding the Bagram detention centre, which already stands along with Guantanamo Bay and Iraq’s Abu Ghraib as a symbol of harsh treatment of detainees, must come as a further provocation.

Burying the Powell doctrine in Afghanistan

Early this month Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered what military experts are saying was the final nail in the coffin of  the Powell doctrine, a set of principles that General Colin Powell during his tenure as chairman laid out for the use of military force. A key element was that the military plan should employ decisive and overwhelming force in order to achieve a rapid result. A clear exit strategy must be thought through right from the beginning and the use of force must only be a last resort, Powell said, the experience of Vietnam clearly weighing on him.

U.S. military involvement overseas has deviated far from those principles since then but Mullen finally finished it off, according to Robert Haddick in this piece for Foreign Policy. The United States is faced with low-level warfare and the public must accept it as a way of life. The question no longer is whether to use military force; America’s enemies whether in Afghanistan or Iraq or Yemen have settled that issue, ensuring it remains engaged in conflict. The question is how should it use its vast power.

The nature of the threat from irregular warfare is such that it would often make more sense for the United States to turn to use of military force as a first option, according to the new Mullen doctrine. And you don’t need to assemble an armada before going in, as Powell did for Operation Desert Storm. You need to be precise and principled.

Last week another one of Powell’s principles came under withering attack and this goes directly to the heart of the issue of nation-building that the United States has been faced with in Afghanistan and Iraq after invading these countries.  Powell said America had a  moral obligation to countries it got militarily involved in, a sort of a “Pottery Barn rule” which meant  “you break it, you own it.”

Bernard Finel, a senior fellow at the America Security Project, rejects the Pottery Barn rule saying that while the U.S. must launch quick decisive operations in third countries,  it must not get subsequently involved in an open-ended military occupation.  In short, the U.S. military  must play to its strengths and not fight the asymmetric war that its adversaries want it to, as it has discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The U.S. military is a dominant fighting force, capable of rapid global power projection and able to defeat state adversaries quickly and at relatively low cost in American lives and treasure. Unfortunately, American leaders are increasingly trying to transform this force into one optimized for counterinsurgency missions and long-term military occupations,”  Finel writes in the Armed Forces Journal.

So if there is a rogue regime that needs to be removed in the interests of regional stability or for protection of basic human rights for example, the United States would be better off launching quick, decisive military attacks even repeatedly than staying on trying to repair the ”broken dishes.” In the cases of both Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States achieved its core objectives early on in the campaign, Finel argues. But in both wars it has stayed on, even though the benefits flowing from it are limited.