Afghan Journal

Afghanistan’s cricketers rise to the world stage

Afghanistan’s cricketers are playing heavyweights India in their opening match in the 20-over World Cup on Saturday, capping an extraordinary journey from refugee camps to the game’s top table.

It couldn’t be a more unlikely pair walking out to the green in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia than captains Mahendra Singh Dhoni of India and Nowroze Mangal of Afghanistan to toss the coin at the start of the match.

Dhoni is just coming off the Indian Premier League, having made millions of dollars playing cricket’s richest tournament and the endorsements that come with it, even though some of the sheen is off because of allegations of corruption clouding the tournament.

Mangal, by contrast, learnt to play cricket in a refugee camp in Pakistan with a ball made out of cloth and shoes for stumps. When his team won an Asian Twenty20 competition in 2008 — the tournament that marked the start of their journey to the top — Mangal was given a parcel of land worth $60,000. His team each get a day rate of about $75 when they are on tour, according to the Times.

Unlike India or Pakistan, Afghanistan doesn’t have a cricketing history. Ten years ago cricket did not officially exist in the country. It was suppressed, like most things, by the Taliban, although the religious rulers later relented on the grounds that the sport had frequent breaks in it for prayers. In 2008, Afghanistan entered the lowest rung of cricket’s international ladder, playing the likes of Japan and Vanuatu. Now they are one of the top 12 nations competing in the T-20 World Cup.

They are not easily cowed down. With no player above the age of 26, they have the fearlessness of youth. As South Africa’s captain Graeme Smith said when told that an Afghan batsman had declared himself unafraid of Dale Steyn, one of the world’s fastest bowlers: “I wouldn’t be either, if I had grown up in a war zone,” according to the New York Times.

Timothy Albone, who is writing a book on the Afghan cricket team to be published in 2011, recalls that the day the team qualified for the World Cup in a play-off in Dubai earlier this year, foreign troops launched another huge military operation in Helmand.

Can India, Pakistan possibly back off in Afghanistan?

Now that India and Pakistan have agreed to hold further talks following a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries, are they going to step back from a bruising confrontation in Afghanistan?

It’s a war fought in the shadows with spies and proxies, and lots of money. Once in a while it gets really nasty as in deadly attacks on Indian interests for which New Delhi has pointed the finger at Pakistan.

It’s not clear what subjects Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani touched on during their meeting on the sidelines of a regional summit in Bhutan, but Afghanistan clearly is an important subtext, arguably the most pressing one at this time.

Both countries are positioning themselves for an eventual U.S. withdrawal from the country, with Pakistan clearly holding the better cards at the moment, both as a result of its geography and long-standing links with a resurgent Taliban.

Like much else in their tormented relationship each fears the other’s involvement in Afghanistan. Pakistan worries that Kabul will end up with close links to New Delhi, allowing India to essentially “surround” Pakistan; India fears that if the Taliban return to power, it will face more attacks at home.

Can Singh and Gilani bridge the trust deficit that Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke of? Influential Indian foreign policy analyst C. Raja Mohan suggested a couple of months back that New Delhi should take the initiative and call for a trilateral summit involving India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to look for ways for lasting peace in the region.

Killing more efficiently: America’s violin-sized missiles

The CIA is using smaller, advanced missiles – some of them no longer than a violin-case – to target militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt, according to the Washington Post.

The idea is to limit civilian casualties, the newspaper said quoting defence officials, after months of deadly missile strikes by unmanned Predator aircraft that has so burned Pakistan both in terms of the actual collateral damage and its sense of loss of sovereignty.

With the new missiles you are talking of precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare, U.S.  officials say. Last month, a small CIA missile, weighing about 35 pounds, tore through the second floor of a house in Miram Shah, a town in South Waziristan.

The projectile exploded, killing a top al-Qaeda official and about nine other suspected terrorists, the newspaper said. The mud-brick house collapsed and the roof of a neighbouring house was damaged, but no one else in the town of 5,000 was hurt, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed after-action reports.

Besides the obvious gains from such “clean killings”, you are also getting more bang for your buck. The drones were earlier mounted with Hellfire missiles with a 100-pound warhead designed to destroy a main battle tank. To fire such a missile at a car or a compound in the Pakistani northwest is surely overkill, as the military-focused Danger Room blog notes.

A whole range of small missiles are being developed to be launched from the Predator, such as Lockheed Martin’s Scorpion weiging 35 pounds and with a diameter of a coffee cup. It causes far less destruction than a Hellfire, and it can be fitted with four different guidance systems that allow it to home in on targets as small as a single person, in complete darkness.

Very clinical, very precise. There is almost  a seductive element to it and it goes back to the whole debate about trying to make war as cost-free as possible. A painless war ?  But what about the people on  the ground where this great advance in warfare is being played out.

Afghanistan’s grisly new museum

A new museum has opened in the western Afghan city of Herat honouring the exploits of the mujahideen who pushed back the mighty Soviet army following the invasion in 1979.  Many consider it to be Afghanistan’s finest hour  when a coalition of guerrillas variously commanded by regional warlords and, of course, heavily subsidised by the United States, fought the Soviet and Afghan government forces.

Reuters correspondent Golnar Motevalli  takes a walk through the museum showing gory scenes of the corpses of Red Army soldiers slumped over tanks  or burqa-clad women cheering the downing of a helicopter from the famously deadly Stinger missiles shoulder-fired by the mujahideen.   

 It’s a stomach-churning reminder that Afghanistan continues to bleed and is still hosting tens of thousands of foreign troops.

Here’s her story.

Reporting on the Afghan war: Lies and Truths

“How can you live with your conscience reporting Taliban propaganda?”

This is what a senior German general for the NATO-led force asked my colleague at a recent meeting at the alliance’s headquarters in Kabul, where a few journalists were invited to speak to top brass, including the overall commander, General Stanley McChrystal, about improving relations with the media. The question was echoed by others in the room.

Reporting on the “war” in Afghanistan objectively is difficult, mainly because it is not a war in the traditional sense. It is an insurgency that is present in nearly every part of the country. There are more dangerous places than others of course, but there are no conventional “frontlines”. This makes travel to much of the country, especially the south and the east where the insurgency is strongest, particularly dangerous. A handful of journalists, mainly freelance reporters, do travel unaccompanied to the country’s most dangerous areas and even spend time with insurgents — but at great risk. Journalists have been kidnapped and even killed, some are still missing. Most of us have to rely on the “embed”, where we are attached to a foreign military unit, which obviously comes with its own set of problems in terms of objective reporting.

What is absolutely essential, however, is to present all sides as much as possible regardless of who you agree with or not. With travel in Afghanistan clearly restricted, this often means relying simply on what each side says, which brings us back to the German general’s question.

We are almost in daily contact with the Taliban through two of the group’s spokesmen who answer their mobile phones from undisclosed locations. Their names are most likely not their real names and one of their voices changes from time to time suggesting there are more than two people. We also monitor the group’s websites. As with any source, we treat everything with suspicion and if we are not sure, then we don’t report it. If we did report everything the Taliban said, there would be almost no foreign troops left alive in Afghanistan and the insurgents would be in control of the whole country. An example of what I mean can be seen here.

Some of my Afghan colleagues have even received death threats from the Taliban after their spokesmen felt we had not reported accurately what they had said, when we had. But despite these problems, it is imperative that we report their side as much as is possible under the circumstances. This inevitably means sifting through the exaggerations, fabrications and outright lies.

But while much of what the Taliban say may be propaganda or completely false, the German general may be surprised to know that this does not only apply to the Taliban.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

On tipping points and Taliban talks

One of the issues that seems to arouse the strongest emotions in the Afghan debate is the question of when the United States and its allies should engage in talks with the Taliban.  Some argued that the moment was ripe a few months ago, when both sides were finely balanced against each other and therefore both more likely to make the kind of concessions that would make negotiations possible.  It was an argument that surfaced forcefully at the London conference on Afghanistan in January. Others insisted that U.S.-led forces had to secure more gains on the battlefield first.

If you go by this survey carried out in December by Human Terrain Systems (pdf) (published this month by Danger Room) the people of Kandahar province were convinced at the end of last year of the need for negotiations: (as usual health warnings apply to any survey conducted in a conflict zone):

"Reconciliation is a popular concept in Kandahar province. There is almost universal agreement that negotiation with the Taliban is preferable to continued fighting. Specific approaches such as calling a Loya Jirga and a jobs training program for former fighters are both widely supported. The desire for reconciliation is likely driven by the perception that the Taliban are part of Afghan society; a significant majority of respondents view the Taliban as 'our Afghan brothers'. This opinion is unsurprising considering the ethnic makeup of the Taliban - highly Pashtun - and the movement's history in Kandahar Province," it says.

Since December/January both sides have faced setbacks.  The arrest in Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, for whatever reason, has at the very least sent a message to the Afghan Taliban in the so-called Quetta Shura that they can no longer count on Pakistan as a safe haven.  At the same time, the U.S.-led military campaign seems to be running into problems, if the latest spate of negative press reporting about the forthcoming offensive in Kandahar is to be believed (see Martine van Bijlert at the Afghan Analysts Network on her recent visit to Kandahar; The Guardian for a useful round-up of links; or follow these blogs by Kandahar residents Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn)

Does that mean we have now reached a new point of balance where both sides stand to gain more from talking than fighting?  Not necessarily. Wars have a way of gaining a momentum of their own in which some developments - for example the planned offensive in Kandahar - become unstoppable.

But perhaps equally importantly, how are we to recognise when this point has been reached? Where is the tipping point?

A report just published by the RAND Corporation,  "How Insurgencies End" (pdf), based on a survey of 89 different insurgencies, has some worrying pointers for anyone who thinks they will know for sure when is the right time to open talks:

The Taliban, an enigma wrapped in a riddle ?

Anne  Stenersen  of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment has published by far one of the most detailed studies of the Taliban, their structure, leadership and just how they view the world.  Its interesting  because even after all these years  they remain a bit of an enigma beginning with the reclusive founder and supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

As Stenersen notes,  a lot of the attention within NATO has been on defeating the insurgency or how best to manage it. Less attention has been given to trying to understand who the insurgents are, and what they are fighting for. Even the way we describe them is not very defined. The insurgents are often lumped together as “al Qaeda and the Talban” , even though in many fundamental ways they could be vastly dissimilar,  or described as OMF (Other military Forces) as NATO tends to do in militaryspeak, perhaps in the belief that denying them a  proper name  diminishes them.

On the ground, soldiers often describe the enemy as “anyone shooting at us”  making it even more vague. Obviously the nature of the insurgency has something to do with this : the great diversity in Afghanistan’s demography and geography means the insurgency can vary from region to region, or even from one village to the other. You could be fighting a Taliban commander in one, and a warlord linked to them in the other.

But the insurgency in Afghanistan is certainly not a collection of small, locally based militas with no overall leadership or structure. And neither do the insurgents themselves  see it that way and its important to hear their view of themselves, both in the event of trying to seek reconciliation or to crush them militarily.

Today Mullah Omar’s Taliban movement describes itself as a resistance movement with a leadership, organisation structure, a defined goal and strategy and even an official “code of conduct” for its members. And it has made clear repeatedly it  likes to be referred to as The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the official name of the regime which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

A link to Stenersen’s 85-page report is available on jihadica.com but here are some of the other  big  take-aways :

(more…)

Kandahar trusts Taliban more than govt – US army poll

The people of Kandahar province have greater trust in the Taliban than in the local government and an overwhelming majority consider them to be our  “Afghan brothers” according to a poll commissioned by the U.S.  army ahead of an impending offensive in the Taliban’s spiritual capital.

How is the offensive,  intended to be the turning point in the nearly nine-year war to proceed then, especially when U.S. army commanders have said they need the people’s support before any major operation can be launched in the southern province ?

Danger Room, a military-focused blog, said the unclassified report by the army’s Human Terrain System was a warning that a lack of confidence in the Afghan government “sets conditions for a disenfranchised population to respond either by not supporting the government due to its inability to deliver improvements in the quality of life or, worse yet, by supporting the Taliban.”

The survey draws on a total of 1,994 interviews covering nine of Kandahar Province’s 16 districts. But it leaves out seven crucial districts because they were considered too dangerous for the pollsters to visit. Still as the blog notes the results are telling. Here is a PDF of the report.

Among the findings : Security on the roads is a major issue for residents of Kandahar.  At least half of those polled in eight out of 10 districts said they felt unsafe travelling within their district or around the province.  Worse, they said the  biggest threat to security while travelling in the province were Army and police checkpoints.

A  sudden spike in incidents involving civilian casualties  in recent days has underscored the continuing threat to ordinary Afghans  even though the overall number of civilian casualties has fallen following new guidelines introduced by the commander of  U.S and NATO forces,  General Stanley McChrystal, as part of his strategy to win back the trust of the people.

This week NATO said troops opened fire on a vehicle in southeastern Khost province killing four unarmed Afghans.  The father of two of the victims said three of those killed were teenagers and the fourth was a policeman.  They were returning from a volleyball match.

from Tales from the Trail:

New poll shows boost for Afghan war strategy

A new national poll by Quinnipiac University shows that the Obama administration’s new strategy in Afghanistan is gaining some favor among voters.

Conducted April 14-19, the poll of American voters found that 49 percent of the respondents approved of the way President Barack Obama is handling the situation in Afghanistan versus 39 percent who disagreed.

In another bit of good news for the White House, 56 percent of voters polled agreed that the United States was doing the “right thing” fighting in Afghanistan against 36 percent who did not.

Asked whether eliminating the threat of  militants operating from Afghanistan was a worthwhile goal for American troops to fight and possibly die for, 61 percent of voters said it was while 31 percent said it was not.

The latest survey must be welcome since poll after poll last year showed the eight-year war was becoming increasingly unpopular among voters.

The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,930 registered voters nationwide. It has a margin of error of plus/minus 2.2 percentage points.

Photo credit: Reuters/Asmaa Waguih ( A man rides a motorcycle past a U.S. Marine from Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines near Marjah District)

Challenging the myths of Pakistan’s turbulent northwest

Reuters’ journalist Myra Macdonald travelled to Pakistan’s northwest on the border with Afghanistan  to find that some of the Kiplingesque images of  xenophobic Pasthuns and ungovernable lands may be a bit off the mark especially now when the Pakistani army has taken the battle to the Islamist militants.  Here’s her account :

                               By Myra MacDonald

KHAR, Pakistan – I had not expected Pakistan’s tribal areas to be so neat and so prosperous.

These are meant to be the badlands, mythologised as no-go areas by Kiplingesque images of xenophobic Pashtuns, jezail musket in hand, defying British troops from rugged clifftops.

They are the “ungovernable” lands where al Qaeda took sanctuary after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan; the bastion of Islamist militants said to threaten the entire world.

Yet to fly by helicopter for the first time into Bajaur tribal agency is to challenge the more wildly imagined cliches about this little-visited region on the Pakistan-Afghan border.