Afghan Journal

Flash, bang, but Afghan night raid comes up empty

Reuters correspondent Matt Robinson provides a rare glimpse of night raids by U.S. forces in Afghanistan that are again on the rise in an effort to break the back of the insurgency. Here’s his story from a village in Paktika province near the eastern border with Pakistan. (Picture by Matt Robinson)

First the men were separated from the women and children and made to crouch outside on the frozen ground, wrapped in blankets. Then the soldiers went room-to-room, torches shining from raised rifles.

It was night in Ateh Khaneh, a cluster of adobe houses ringed with high mud walls near Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan, and the U.S. army’s 101st Airborne Division had received a tip-off.

A man named Mullah Ibrahim, known to U.S. forces as a prominent Taliban commander in the Yahya Khel district of Paktika province, had gathered a small group of fighters for an imminent attack on a nearby U.S. military base.

A 15-year-old boy would blow himself up in the assault, the source said. Intercepted radio chatter pointed to the same village.

So after dark, soldiers of 1st Battalion, 506th infantry regiment landed by helicopter several kilometres from the target and approached on foot.

U.S. drones fall silent in Pakistan; only a brief respite?

For more than three weeks now, there has been no U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s northwest, triggering speculation that the pause may be related to the tensions between the two countries over the arrest of an American embassy employee for murder. Washington is seeking the release of Raymond Davis, a former Special Forces soldier who killed two Pakistanis on Jan 27 during what he said was an attempted robbery in a Lahore street, arguing he is covered under diplomatic immunity.

Pakistanis,  deeply resentful of the heavy U.S.  involvement in the country, are refusing to hand over Davis, saying he should face trial in Pakistan as he didn’t have immunity.

The matter is in court and given the surcharged atmosphere across Pakistan, the United States may well be holding off on its covert air campaign in order not to inflame  passions further. The last missile strike took place on Jan.23 in North Waziristan, where the raids have been concentrated in the hunt for the Haqqani network.  Ordinarily, the Predators and the more advanced Reapers controlled from the U.S. are in the Pakistani northwest at least two or three times a week, as part of a ramped-up campaign since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. “Drones in slumber after Davis incident,”  a headline read in The News.

But The Long War Journal which closely tracks the drone programme  said there have been periods of operational inactivity in the past and this latest pause is only the third-longest. The longest was in November 2009 when it lasted 33 days, followed by another in June of the same year when it ran for 28 days.

Weather is a primary reason for disruption of drone missions. Also, it may be a question of operational intelligence with missions dependent on the information flow. Even now in this surcharged atmosphere, if the CIA were to get information about a high-value target in the Pakistani northwest, it’s hard to see them passing up the chance to strike.

As CIA director Leon Panetta said in 2009, the drones were the “only game in town” to stop the al Qaeda , and it doesn’t seem likely the United States is about to give up its weapon of choice.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Afghanistan: Petraeus, personalities and policy

Buried in the Washington Post story on Marc Grossman taking over as the new U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan are some interesting references to the possible departure of U.S. commander General David Petraeus.

"... virtually the entire U.S. civilian and military leadership in Afghanistan is expected to leave in the coming months, including Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and the embassy's other four most senior officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S.-led international coalition, and Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, who runs day-to-day military operations there," it says.

"No final decisions have been made, but military officials said that Petraeus, who took command last July, will rotate out of Afghanistan before the end of the year," it adds.

Petraeus has been talked about for a while as a possible successor to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  (CJCS),  who is expected to retire in October.  Any move would be part of a broader shake-up in the administration, which will also see Defense Secretary Robert Gates retire this year.

The question is what this move, if confirmed, would mean for policy.  Petraeus, more than anyone else, has been identified with the intensified military campaign in Afghanistan which, according to critics of the policy,  has reduced prospects of a political settlement by alienating Taliban leaders who might otherwise be coaxed into peace talks. 

Petraeus has been a towering figure in Washington and difficult to challenge politically. He had what was seen in the United States as a good track record in Iraq. And he was backed by Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- making it very hard for those within the U.S. administration who disagreed with his assessment to win President Barack Obama over to their point of view. 

Moreover, Obama had already sacked two generals -- Generals David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal -- and could hardly dismiss a third. (If I remember rightly -- and no doubt someone will correct me if I am wrong -- no president since Abraham Lincoln has changed his generals so frequently in wartime.) Promoting Petraeus would be far easier.

India’s best and brightest at the UN

The foreign minister of India took the floor at a UN Security  Council meeting this week, but in a rather embarrassing faux pas he  began reading out from the speech of his Portuguese counterpart instead of his own. Three minutes into the address, Indian diplomats realised that S. M.Krishna was reading off the wrong speech, and stopped him from proceeding further. He began again, this time with the right script.

It’s not known what the Portuguese thought of the Indian official  reading their address as his own. Thankfully, the Portuguese minister had spoken earlier, or else Krishna might have been accused of stealing his thunder !

A small mix-up, the Indian foreign ministry later said, adding too much shouldn’t be made of it.. Krishna  went on to make a “well received” speech, it said.

But you have to ask how can you get even minor things  wrong at this level ?  Krishna was at the UN to push for reforms of the world body, a campaign that New Delhi is pursuing aggressively, with an eye on a permanent seat on the Security Council.  But you got to get your message right if you are playing for Great Power status whether it is in New York or trying to influence the end game in Afghanistan. Imagine if the foreign  minister had picked up the speech of his Pakistani counterpart to read.

That would have sent rather conflicting signals all around, with the Pakistanis likely the most  confused !

An American in Pakistani custody

Who exactly is Raymond Davis, the main at the centre of a flaming row between the United States and Pakistan that threatens to derail ties altogether ? It’s an obvious question to ask given the lengths the Obama administration has gone to secure the release of Davis held in Pakistan for shooting and killing two men who he said were trying to rob him. As Reuters reported this week, Washington had put on hold some bilateral engagements, and even hinted that a $7.5  billion civillian aid package could be jeopardised if Islamabad continued to hold Davis disregarding his diplomatic immunity. The New York Times and the Washington Post said a much-sought after state visit by President Asif Ali Zardari planned for the end of March was on the line now. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cancelled a meeting with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at an international security conference in Munich late last month, the Post said.

The Americans are saying Davis is a diplomat and hence arresting him is a violation of international norms and the Vienna Conventions.  The U.S. embassy had initially identified him as a staff member of the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Lahore where the incident occured.

Pakistanis on the other hand are outraged by the incident, seeing it as another case where the Americans are acting with impunity in their country. Not only are they conducting air strikes in an ever widening arc in the troubled northeast corner of the country, but they also operating in the streets of  the largest cities unchallenged, they feel.  Religious parties which have long condemned U.S. involvement in the country have hit the streets demanding that the government  stand firm against U.S. calls to release the man.

 A Lahore court has barred the government from handing over Davis to U.S. custody.  It says it will decide whether he had diplomatic immunity or not. On Friday the court extended his remand by another 14 days, infuriating the Americans further.

The facts of the case are so heavily disputed that its hard to say anything with finality The question is not only who Davis is but  there are also questions about the identity of the two men he killed. Katharine Tiedemann  of Foreign Policy’s AFPAK channel  recounts  the things that the United States and Pakistan disagree  over in this pareticular case. What does he do ? Who did he shoot ?. How did he shoot them ? Does he or does not have diplomatic status ?

And then why did he shoot them even if it was robbery ? And then of course as the Pakistanis are asking, how dare he shoot them ?

Slamming the door on reconciliation with Taliban

Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser Rangeen Dadfar Spanta has said that the Taliban would have to lay down arms, accept the constitution in its current form and run for elections if they wanted a share of power.  If the Taliban thought they could get cabinet berths for the asking in return for a peace deal, they have another thing coming, he told the McClatchy newspapers in an interview.

If that’s the Afghan government’s stand,  a deal with the insurgents seems to be a non-starter. Imagine the Taliban agreeing to take part in a Western-style election  campaign under a constitution they have long denounced as forced on the country following their ouster in 2001. The idea of the Taliban – more known for their brutal methods –  knocking on doors seeking votes seems a bit far fetched at the moment. Last week’s reports of the Taliban stoning a young couple to death in rather barbaric fashion in northern Afghanistan on charges of adultery have only reinforced the image of a group unyielding in its interpretation of sharia  law.

Not that the Taliban themselves have shown any willingness for talks.  They have made clear there is no question of any dialogue until all foreign forces leave their homeland, and the country is returned to them as it was pre-2001. Indeed all the talk about talks and the conditions that go with it have come from the Afghan government and some of  its backers in Europe, and not the Taliban. So you have a rather odd situation -  the Afghan government is repeatedly urging the Taliban to come for talks but in the same breath setting conditions that only a fatally weakened interlocutor would accept.

And the Taliban look far from a weakened enemy. Not only have they extended their reach into the north and west from their  southern and eastern strongholds, they are striking at Kabul again, breaching the Ring of Steel or the security cordon that was thrown around the capital during the elections last year.  Talks seem the farthest thing on their minds, although arguably you could be adopting tough postures in public while keeping the door open in private for some kind of engagement.

Indeed Spanta said there wasn’t any serious discussion going on with the Taliban contrary to reports that emerged last year. There might have been some contacts, but it wasn’t clear even these  tentative contacts had any kind of backing from the top Taliban.  It was possible, though, to bring out the ”simple countryside”  Taliban into the mainstream since they were driven by   the presence of foreign troops and bad governance. But the top leadership remained steadfast in their refusal for any kind of engagement..

Spanta is known to be a bit of hawk on political reconciliation with the Taliban, but he is a key aide of President Hamid Karzai. And if he’s setting the policy markers in such clear and non-negotiable terms,  this war doesn’t look like its ending anytime soon.