Afghan Journal

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

On either side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border: Bajaur and Kunar

What is going on in Kunar and Bajaur, two neighbouring regions on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?

NPR has a view from the Afghan side in this piece written from the perspective of U.S. troops fighting in Kunar. (h/t The Captain's Journal) Key takeaways are the level of mistrust about the Pakistanis, driven by the suspicion its military is supporting the Taliban, and the presence of a massive but newly abandoned CIA post there.

First the mistrust.  According to NPR, American officials acknowledge that the Pakistan Army had made significant gains in fighting the Taliban in Bajaur but still wanted them to do more to stop militants crossing over into Kunar. "Elements of the Taliban and al-Qaida are believed to cross the border at this point from safe havens inside Pakistan."

Yet having been to Bajaur in April, I have heard the same complaint from the Pakistani commander on the other side. In his view, the Americans need to do more to stop militants from using Kunar as a base from which to attack Pakistan. (The Pakistanis still seem to be making the same complaint, judging by this article in the Boston Globe.)

The two conflicting views give an interesting insight into how the narrative of mistrust in Kunar and Bajaur -- a microcosm of the strains in the wider U.S.-Pakistan relationship -- is constructed. In particular, you can see how distrust between Pakistanis and Americans is magnified by the mutual suspicion of Afghans and Pakistanis.

Look at this detail in the NPR story, presented under a bold-type sub-heading reading "Taliban in Their Midst?"

The Americans are invited to lunch by the Pakistanis. "The long lunch ends when the Pakistani colonel is called away, and the Americans walk back up the hill. Full bellies, heavy flak jackets, and the altitude at 7,000 feet have everyone moving a bit slowly, but then they get some information from their interpreter that makes them walk a little faster.  The interpreter tells the soldiers that some of the Pakistani commander's men are spies for the Taliban. 'So he suggests we get out of here quickly,' a soldier tells (Captain Thomas) Billig," the NPR reports. 

U.S. mid-terms and the Afghan war

It’s one of the biggest weeks in U.S. politics, with the mid-term elections to the Senate and the House of Representatives, and it may well eventually impact the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even though it’s not been a campaign issue. If the Republicans win big, as everyone expects them to, what happens to President Barack Obama’s war strategy for the two countries, increasingly operating as two full-fledged theatres, rather than a conjoined Af-Pak mission?

Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations says given the Republicans’ solid support for the war in Afghanistan, a defeat may not be such a bad thing for Obama so far as his Afghan mission is concerned in the near term. Support and funding for the war could be enhanced if they gained control, which may not be the case if the Democrats, who have serious doubts about the mission, were to return. Big Republican gains will also signal to Afghanistan and Pakistan that America remained serious and committed to the region, despite a deteriorating security environment on both sides of the Durand Line.

Indeed the one big reason why the war hasn’t made it as a campaign issue is because of the schisms it has opened in the two parties. Democrats are silent because many oppose the war but don’t want to run on an anti-Obama platform. Most Republicans, on the other hand, support the war but now find themselves uncomfortably aligned with a Democratic president whose every other policy they are bitterly opposed to.

But this may not be the situation for long. First off, carrying the argument further,  many Republicans who support Obama’s decision to send additional troops don’t like the idea of setting out  a withdrawal date as the president did when announcing the surge.  They argue that the July 2011 deadline for the withdrawal of troops to begin sends the wrong signals to U.S. partners in the region who question Washington’s commitment, as well as further emboldens the insurgents to simply wait out the U.S. departure from the region. They are also more likely, reflexively, to oppose any truck with the Taliban; certainly not at this point when the insurgency is at its strongest. They would rather General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces, were given more time to pound the militants into coming to the negotiating table.  As Politico blog says :

For starters, Republicans would almost surely press President Barack Obama to loosen the July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, as well as seek assurances that he would be willing to send in more troops if Gen. David Petraeus, his commander there, asks for them.

It quotes Republican strategist John Ullyot, a former staffer of the Armed Services Committee , as saying that putting deadlines on the mission is going to be a lot tougher to defend in a beefed-up Republican congress. “There is no question there will be a lot more pressure on the administration to give commanders as much time as they need; the summer deadline is going to be huge.”

Already, the administration has been insisting that no high-level talks with the insurgents are going on. On Friday, Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said while more Taliban foot soldiers were coming forward to lay down their arms, reports of peace talks were overblown. Official sources, though, say all parties in the conflict are considering ways to reach a political settlement, and have described cautious preliminary contacts between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Afghanistan cracks down on Internet cafes for allowing porn

Seventeen internet cafes have been shutdown in the Afghan capital Kabul, for allowing their clients to surf porn websites and access other unspecified “un-Islamic websites”, the local Pajhwok news agency reported.

The move comes a few months after a crackdown on sale of alcohol, banned for Muslims and only sold to non-Muslims in a handful of bars and restaurants — though there is still a thriving black market selling bottles at a price.

Some friends in Kabul have suggested the tightening could be part of government efforts to placate the Taliban and hold talks with them, by cutting back on some aspects of modern society that the hardline movement is likely to object to.

But Afghanistan is still a conservative country, and there are plenty of people with no desire to see the insurgents back in power, who would still welcome tighter controls on the internet, alcohol and other potential vices.

Pajhwok quoted one local resident happy about the shutdown of services that might “corrupt the youth”, although the cafes still have room to appeal so could prove their innocence and reopen.

There was no word from cafe users about their loss of access, although the genie might be out of the bottle as far as racy content goes, even if local TV is still pixilating out bare flesh on imported soap operas.

Obama in India next month; ripples in the region

U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to India is still a couple of weeks away and there is the huge U.S. election before then, but it has already set off ripples in the region. The Chinese have especially cottoned onto Obama’s Indian journey, fretting over what they see as a U.S. attempt to ring fence China by deepening ties with countries around it. And continent-size India with a population of over a billion and an economy growing at a clip just behind China’s is seen as a key element of that strategy of containment.

Qui Hao of the National Defense University, writes in the Global Times that while U.S. military alliances with Japan and South Korea form the backbone of the “strategic fence” around China, the “shell” is the partnership that Washington is building with India, Vietnam and other nations that have territorial disputes with China.

India, Qui cautions, would do well not to blindly follow America’s policies in the region, especially if it really wanted to be a global player. India, China and the United States were bound up in a triangular relationship, and as the two weaker parts of that relationship, it was important that they maintained stable ties so that Washington didn’t exploit their differences, Qui wrote.

Quite remarkable, since for decades and especially so in recent years, the Chinese have hardly seen India as little more than a regional player locked in disputes with its neighbours, much less an equal in a three-way relationship involving the United States.

Qui is not alone. Du Youkang who heads the center for South Asian studies at Fudan University said the rise of India and China was the 21st century’s biggest development, and both countries must work to deepen ties. Some Western countries and the media were trying to drive a wedge between the two neighbours , Du said in the China Daily, urging both to be vigilant against elements inside their countries and outside trying to stir trouble and derail a growing relationship. There was much that was common between the two countries, not least their desire to meet the challenges  globalisation in  a Western-dominated international  economic  system.

China and India share a lot of common views on many major international issues such as a multi-polar world, reform of the international economic and financial system, South-North relations, democratization of international relations, climate change and World Trade Organization talks. In recent years, the two sides have enhanced coordination and cooperation over these issues to protect their as well as the entire developing world’s interests.

China is not the only one watching Obama’s passage to India. Arch rival Pakistan will be closely following the trip, beginning from Mumbai and indeed the very hotel which was one of the centres targeted by Pakistan-based militants in deadly attacks in 2008.  Pakistan, and by extension Afghanistan, will by themselves be the elephants in the room when Obama sits down for talks with his Indian hosts. Any tilt, or a perceived slight or remarks such as the one made by British Prime Minister David Cameron when he was visiting India, saying Pakistan couldn’t look both ways in the fight against terrorism, run the risk of further souring U.S.-Pakistan ties.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

“Orientalism” in Afghanistan and Pakistan

In his must-read essay on the debate about the state of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, Amil Khan has one of the best opening lines I've seen for a while: "Much is said about Pakistan, but I'm constantly saddened that so many innocent pixels are lost without good cause."

Much the same can be said about the recent flurry of stories on the war in Afghanistan, from upbeat assessments of the U.S.-led military offensive in Kandahar to renewed interest in the prospects for a peace deal with Afghan insurgents.

There is a shade of "Orientalism" in all this, a modern-day equivalent of Edward Said's 1978 argument that the collective understanding of the Middle East, South Asia and Islam was skewed by the vested interests of European colonial powers.

Scroll forward to the 21st century and we have the United States keen to end a war that is increasingly unpopular at home, with a president who has committed to starting to bring home troops by July 2011.   That framework would be best suited by military success in Afghanistan, peace talks which would begin to show fruit by - let's choose a random date, July 2011 - and a willingness by Pakistan to stick to the U.S. timetable when it comes to tackling militants on its own territory.

Hence the "received wisdom" in the media - or perhaps more precisely, the consensus you would find if you averaged out all the stories on Google News - tends to fit neatly into that framework. 

The problem is that just as Said complained the "Orientalist" world view distorted the facts to suit European interests, the current U.S.-inspired narrative tends to overlook the very real people and countries which get in the way of its own deadlines.

Start with Afghanistan.  We have heard from non-U.S. sources that all insurgent groups are engaged in tentative "talks about talks" to try to agree the ground rules under which all Afghan factions could be brought together into "reconciliation" talks. The United States and NATO have meanwhile been talking up a separate effort  to win over individual insurgent fighters or commanders through "reintegration".

Too many butchers spoil the cow

Several years ago President Hamid Karzai likened balancing Afghanistan’s various internal pressures and the demands of external allies and foes with walking while holding a fragile dish. With no end in sight to the U.S.-led war now in its 10th year, he must feel as if he is juggling the entire dinner service.

For years Karzai has said that peace talks with the insurgents was key to the solution of the Afghan conflict and termed them as a priority since last year, but he also has to take on board the frequently conflicting interests of all the players.

The result is best summed up by an old Afghan proverb: “Too many butchers spoil the cow”.

The key stakeholder is Washington which has the bulk of some 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan fighting a war that Barack Obama has called the country’s top foreign policy priority.

The U.S. insists that insurgent leaders must renounce violence — and al Qaeda — accept the new Afghan constitution and lay down their arms as part of any peace deal. Other players, however, either demand otherwise or oppose any talks — as do their Afghan proxies and other opportunists who see their survival in Afghanistan’s chaos.

They want just enough peace to keep the Americans’ hopes up, but just enough fighting to keep the funds flowing, was a line a Western friend once said about those Afghan warlords.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan – a list too long

Pakistani journalist Mosharraf Zaidi had a good post up last week attempting to frame the many different challenges Pakistan faces in trying to deal with terrorism.  Definitely worth a read as a counter-balance to the vague "do more" mantra, and as a reminder of how little serious public debate there is out there about the exact nature of the threat posed to a nuclear-armed country of some 180 million people, whose collapse would destabilise the entire region and beyond.

Zaidi has divided the challenges into counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and counter-extremism.

Counter-insurgency is focused on targeting militants holed up in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the border with Afghanistan, with attention directed most recently on U.S. pressure to tackle militant hideouts in North Waziristan.  Pakistan has resisted U.S. pressure to move faster in launching military operations in North Waziristan, in part because it says it needs time to consolidate gains made elsewhere in FATA -- itself possible only if adequate governance can be introduced into areas cleared by the army.

"Thus far, Pakistan has fought the insurgency in FATA and earlier, last year, in Swat, using two instruments: negotiation, and conventional military warfare, including ground troops and aerial strikes. This is not how you fight an insurgency. That is how you fight India. To use a hackneyed and tired metaphor in Islamabad, you can’t keep using a jack hammer to try and kill agile, determined and poisonous flies. The approach to the FATA insurgency is all wrong," writes Zaidi.

Counter-terrorism covers action to prevent attacks across Pakistan including in its heartland Punjab province. "Repeated and sustained terrorist attacks in Pakistan suggest that the terrorist enterprise in Pakistan enjoys freedom of movement, freedom of procurement, freedom of training, freedom of information and communication, and, quite disturbingly, freedom from the course of law," he says.

"The third challenge is an obvious and unchallenged problem of religious extremism. The epicentre of religious extremism is the institution of the political articulation of faith in Pakistan. This means that physically there is no epicentre here. Religious extremism is a national problem, transcending demographics, class and ethnicity. Of the three problems, religious extremism is the one that has been around the longest, the one that has the deepest roots in Pakistani culture, the one that has enjoyed the patronage of the state, the one that has the demonstrated ability to undermine linear and rational public policy, and the one that will – because of all the aforesaid factors, take the longest to unpack and resolve."

Zaidi's framework is a strong one to use when trying to understand what is going on in Pakistan.

Gen Petraeus turns up the heat on Pakistan, Afghanistan

It’s not just Pakistan where the United States has stepped up air raids against members of  al Qaeda and the Taliban. Last month,  U.S-led NATO planes in Afghanistan conducted 700 missions, more than twice the number for the same month the previous year. It was also one of the highest single-month totals of the nine-year Afghan War, the military-focused Danger Room blog said, citing U.S. Air Force statistics.

September was also the month when missile strikes by unmanned U.S. drone planes in northwest Pakistan hit the highest level of 20 since America launched its secret war inside Pakistan, widely seen as the main battleground of the Afghan war because of the sanctuary provided to top al Qaeda and Taliban.  And as if that was not enough, NATO helicopters from Afghanistan crossed the border on at least three occasions, triggering a firestorm  of criticism in Pakistan which closed off the supply lines to the foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Is there a pattern to this ? Has America under new commander General David Petraeus turned up the heat on Pakistan and Afghanistan  ahead of  a strategy review in December and before next July’s planned beginning of a troop drawdown ?  While there have been spikes in the past, this looks like part of a creeping rise in the use of air power, which had been eschewed by former commander LieutenantGeneral Stanley McChrystal  because of the risk of  civilian casualties from the raids. NATO planes carried out 500 sorties in August, up from 405 for the same month the previous year.

Some of the rise in the use of air raids can be attributed to the surge itself – with more troops on the ground and in harm’s way, you can expect  them to call in air support more often. More troops means more hard fighting as they go out and engage the enemy where previously they didn’t. They will also go into areas they were earlier too stretched to enter.  All this means greater use of air power.

But its more than just the surge, says Noah Shachtman in that piece for Danger Room.  Since Petraeus took command in June, air strikes have gone up each month, and every increase has been greater than the previous month. Surveillance flights have increased three-fold since last year, reflecting a new, lethal phase of the Afghan war. There had been speculation that the new general would ease some of the restrictions that McChrystal had placed on the use of air power following  a series of raids gone wrong and which fueled Afghan anger.   Shachtman says :

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Taliban talks: “an iffy, high-level treaty”

In Obama's Wars, Rob Woodward attributes the following thoughts to U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on the prospects for a peaceful settlement to the Afghan war:

"He saw reconciliation and reintegration as distinct.  Reconciliation was esoteric, an iffy high-level treaty with Taliban leaders. Reintegration occurred down at the local level in villages and towns..."

It's a good place to start to frame the current wave of interest in the prospects for a deal with the Taliban.  As we wrote in this analysis, for the first time in the nine-year war all the main parties involved -- from the Afghan government to insurgents, from the United States to Pakistan are seriously considering ways of trying to reach a peace deal.

Official sources in different countries interviewed by Reuters said all the main insurgent groups -- the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar, the Haqqani network and the Hizb-ul-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- were involved in informal talks on how to open a more structured peace process. 

They also said the United States had given a far higher level of endorsement to these talks than before, while Pakistan was showing a slight shift in its approach to Afghanistan as it worries about increasing instability at home.

However, the whole thing came with a huge health warning - the current "talks about talks" are fragile, preliminary and liable to break down at any time.  Analysts and official sources caution that no one should expect an early result in a country which has seen more than three decades of war and many broken promises on all sides. And the whole process -- if indeed "process" is the right word for it -- is bedevilled by contradictions which could bring the whole thing tumbling down.

Here are just a few of them:

Afghanistan’s Taliban: cowards or fearless warriors?

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have often called the Taliban cowards for planting crude roadside bombs, the biggest killer of troops and civilians. They should come out and fight like men, instead of planting these improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and then slipping away into the countryside. If you are out on a patrol with the forces, that’s the kind of thing you often hear.

But some people are questioning this kind of labelling, asking if it is right to dismiss your enemies as cowards, especially one in this case that has fought the world’s most powerful military to a draw, if not a possible retreat.

Can you really call the Taliban who go to war wearing robes, sandals and turbans and armed with assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades and whatever else they can lay their hands on as cowards, asks NightWatch, an intelligence firm that produces regular assessments. They are fighting an army that comes with the most advanced  equipment in the history of warfare – body armour, tanks and armoured fighting vehicles, backed by helicopter gunships, artillery and surveillance aircraft.

And above all, the drones – the unmanned aircraft that hover over the skies for hours at a stretch beaming back high resolution pictures down to the numbers on the license plate of pick-ups that the Taliban use in the mountains that straddle Afghanistan and Pakistan. And these unmanned planes are being remotely controlled all the way from the United States.

What kind of  bravery is that, flying these planes from a tractor trailer in the Nevada desert, hunched over computer terminals and firing missiles like it was a video game, asks John Treep in a piece in The MinnPost. Except that in this case the death and destruction is real.

I do not criticize modern American warriors for choosing the close-to-home computer terminal over a tent and a Humvee on the Afghan-Pakistan border — I’d make the same choice in a flash. But does it really make sense to describe our warriors as brave and our enemies, people apparently eager to give their lives for what they believe in, as “cowards.”

Does it really matter what you call your enemies?  It can, actually, because you run the risk of underestimating them. Dismissing the Taliban as burqa-wearing cowards who strap explosives to their chests may not be the best way to tackle them, especially now that they control large parts of the countryside.