Afghan Journal

Taliban finding clarity as NATO struggles to deliver message

When almost 500 insurgents crawled their way to freedom this week through a dirt tunnel built by the Taliban under the walls of Kandahar’s main jail, news came fast — from the Taliban. And when an Afghan Air Force pilot shot dead eight American troops and a civilian contractor at Kabul airport on Wednesday, the earliest guide to what would be the eventual casualty count came also from the Taliban, hours ahead of NATO confirmations.

The insurgency seems to be making a concerted effort to improve the quality of its breaking news communications, perhaps recognising that the first word often hits hardest. And NATO, with its vast resources and innumberable media advisers, is struggling to keep up. The insurgency in the past has always cloaked its victories in hyperbole, making nonsensical claims of enemies killed or wounded, destroying the credibility of the message. It still does. But with the mass escape Kandahar, which itself seemed too fantastical to believe at first, the claims in unusually clear English of more than 500 fighters freed proved very close to the eventual security forces mark of around 488. And while it’s still uncertain how the insurgency knew of the pilot’s attack inside the military airport (was someone actually watching?), their early numbers for those killed were far closer than ISAF’s. NATO’s vast media machine feeds out a daily diet of the mundane, and at times vies with the Taliban for Orwellian claims. Try this selection of recent headlines: * “Attack on Ministry of Defence is no threat to transition. Despite public skepticism in light of the insurgent attack on the Afghan Ministry of Defense on Monday, MoD and International Security Assistance Force spokesmen say everything is on track for transition to begin. * “Taliban attacked on multiple fronts. As Taliban fighters increasingly intimidate and launch attacks on civilian populations, village elders and residents, known as Guardians of Peace, are reporting insurgent activities to the Afghan National Security Forces, Afghanistan’s True Protectors.” * “The first step towards a great cooperation. The first-ever Public Affairs meeting of Herat city was held today afternoon at Regional Command-West Headquarters at Camp Arena.” Buts ISAF’s unwillingness to provide timely information on attacks means it is the Taliban’s voice that is often heard first in early stories. NATO information often comes late in the day or even at night, well behind the news cycle. NATO claims often in its daily operational roundups to have killed Taliban or al Qaeda “facilitators”, a bizarrely vague description for insurgent organisers and weapons suppliers. But as the conflict in Afghanistan intensifies ahead of a transition to full Afghan security control from 2014, a little more media facilitation of its own would not go astray to help build international confidence in the course of the war.

US military surge: the view from Kandahar

The U.S. military has stopped the Taliban momentum in southern Afghanistan, and is probably starting to reverse it following the surge, according to a study we wrote about this week here. The view from the ground, though, is much less rosy.

Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy has published a paper under its Afghan Voices series looking at how ordinary Afghans view the current round of military operations centred around Kandahar.

Author Zabih Ullah spoke to people in Kandahar and its surrounding districts and they don’t seem particularly impressed with the surge. Most believe the offensive will end up like so many other operations in the past and that the only people to suffer will be ordinary Afghans. It’s the ordinary people with no links to the Taliban who end up losing lives, getting wounded or arrested in these operations, they believe.

That said, though, the people of Kandahar don’t want the coalition to leave. They see a role for foreign forces in the province, but one that is focused more on stabilisation and peace building rather than hunt down-the-Taliban operations that U.S. military generals have repeatedly mounted in the troubled region.

 Zabih Ullah lists five reasons why the U.S. cannot succeed in Kandahar. One, so long as the Taliban have a sanctuary in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province just over the border, they will be hard to defeat. Taliban commanders live securely in urban areas and there is even a separate hospital for injured fighters in the middle of the Baluch capital, Quetta, the author said.

 In addition, there are thousands of madrassas in Baluchistan where Afghan refugees are being indoctrinated to carry out attacks on Afghan forces seen as slaves of foreign forces. Pakistan, though, has consistently denied the existence of a Quetta shura, the name given to the Taliban leadership council supposedly based there.

Is the tide turning in southern Afghanistan ?

The American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War  has a new report out that says rather unequivocally that the United States is starting to turn the war around in southern Afghanistan following the surge. Since the deployment of U.S. Marines to Helmand in 2009 and the launch of an offensive there followed by operations in Kandahar, the Taliban has effectively lost all its main safe havens in the region, authors Frederick  W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan argue.  

The Taliban assassination squad in Kandahar has ben dismantled, the insurgents’ ability to acquire, transport and use IED materials and other weapons has been disrupted, and narcotics facilitators and financiers who link the drug market to the insurgency have been aggressively targeted.  Above all,  NATO and Afghan forces continue to  hold all the areas they have cleared in the two provinces, arguably the heart of the insurgency, which is a significant departure from the past.

The war is far from over, large parts of the country remain under insurgent control, and there is limited, if not negligent political  progress in the areas re-taken from the Taliban. But the momentum of the insurgency in the south has unquestionably been arrested and probably reversed, the authors say. 

Is the ground really shifting, and if so, what’s behind this breakthrough ? Part of the reason is the arrival of 30,000 U.S. troops under the surge  which military commanders said was necessary to make a dent in an insurgency at its deadliest since 2001.  Another 1,400  Marines  have just been ordered , all part of efforts to crush the Taliban so America can make an honourable ext from its longest war yet. But it is not just more troops that General David Petraeus has thrown at  the resilient Taliban.

 By all accounts, the war has turned ultra-violent as Danger Room blog called it a few months ago, with Petraeus bringing in the full weight of the U.S.. military to bear on the insurgents.  U.S.  Special Forces stepped up raids, taking out hundreds of militants, surface-to surface missiles were fired to clear the Taliban in Kandahar, and tanks deployed in Helmand to crush them.

Air strikes, the weapon of last choice under previous General Stanley McChrystal’s winning the hearts and minds strategy, rose to their highest level since the invasion in 2011, with 1,000 attacks in one month alone.  U.S. generals are again talking of ”shock and awe” to destroy the Taliban, a far cry from the population -centric-strategy pursued earlier with its stress on avoiding civilian casualties. The level of civil casualties in the past few months, though, doesn’t seem to have risen in proportion to the intensity of the war effort, which means operations are much more accurate probably because of better intelligence,  more involvement of the ANA, and perhaps foreign forces have just gotten better  over a period of time.

Bring on the tanks, they’ll come to like them in Afghanistan

The United States is introducing tanks into the fight against the Taliban in the Afghan south for the first time since 2001, but the logic behind the move is still being hotly debated.

One of the reasons advanced is that the arrival of the M1 Abrams tank, propelled by a jet engine and armed with a 120mm gun that can destroy a house  more than a mile away, is going to shake up the battlefield.   “The tanks bring awe, shock and firepower,”  The Washington Post  quoted a senior U.S. officer based in Afghanistan as saying. “It’s pretty significant.”

What is even more significant is the end-result that the U.S. military is hoping to achieve by unleashing such firepower in the Taliban stronghold. The aim is not just to destroy the Taliban, but also in a rather convoluted fashion show ordinary Afghans that the government and its Western backers call the shots in the countryside, not the Taliban. Over the past several months,  as Wired blog reports the US  has already stepped up air strikes, Special Operations raids, and artillery attacks, as part of General David Petraeus strategy to turn the heat on the Taliban with a view to forcing them to sue for peace.

And so while civilian casualties have been avoided, people have lost homes and farms in the U.S. military offensive in the south which clearly has been reshaped into a sustained series of deadly attacks, rather than a big-bang high profile  operation of the Marjah type earlier this year. In one operation alone last month, U.S. planes dropped two dozen 2,000-pound bombs near Kandahar, the Post reported. You can imagine the impact of such firepower on the countryside.  Trees, crops and huts – everything is going to be swept up under the weight of the assault.

Farmers have been asking U.S. military officers during community meetings why so many of their fields have been blown up in recent months. In public, the military has been apologetic about these attacks, but in private they are saying something else, the Post said.  The destruction of homes and farms is forcing people to file claims for damaged property with the provincial administration and that is seen as a big gain because it reasserts the power of the civilian authority. “In effect, you are connecting the government to the people,” the newspaper quoted a U.S. officer as saying.

A rather extraordinary way of fostering links between the people and the administration. First, their property has to be damaged which will in turn compel them to approach the administration for help. 

What if one, or several of them, turn to the Taliban for help,  or indeed join the group having lost their homes and farms ?

Lost in translation : the Afghan War

U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan will have to demonstrate basic proficiency in Dari, the lingua franca of the country, Mother Jones  reports. It’s the latest of the orders issued by commander of U.S. and NATO forces, General David Petraeus, in a late bid to bridge the gulf with citizens. “Even a few phrases really breaks the ice and just shows good intentions,” Petraeus says in an  interview on the U.S. army- run Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System. Here’s the video.

Is it too little, too late ? Some military experts point out that just about half of Afghanistan speaks Dari.  Over a third speak Pashto, followed by Turkic languages including Uzbek and Turkmen and then 30 minor languages according to the CIA’ Factbook.  Are the soldiers going to learn a smattering of these languages too, especially Pashto, the language of the original Afghan Taliban and other Pashtuns who straddle both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border ?

Or is there another, deeper purpose to it ?  Mother Jones points out there are reports that the U.S. military is laying the ground for withdrawal by shoring up the defences of major population centers such as Kabul and Kandahar. And so if troops were to be in these big cities, it makes sense to learn a few basics of Dari, the language still most used for political communication, Pashto by contrast is spoken by relatively more people  in the areas outside the big centres including Kandahar. Dari is not going to take a soldier far in some of these areas controlled by the Taliban, but if the idea is to pull out eventually from the countryside, why  bother learning the language – Pashto in this case.  

Hard to tell if that argument holds.   It’s all part of the “advance to the rear” strategy, some would argue in classic military spin. Tactical withdrawal perhaps. Whatever the gameplan, language is a barrier in multi-lingual Afghanistan and, as we wrote sometime ago, made worse by a shortage of interpreters. In fact you have to ask who is going to teach the soldiers ?

The changing face of war in Afghanistan

I was embedded with Western troops a few days ago. Beforehand I was warned of austere living conditions at the combat outpost. I thought about the agony — since I suffer from technophobia — of filing stories through a satellite phone in the scorching heat.

As I rolled out my sleeping bag I noticed all the soldiers had mosquito nets over theirs. Actually, they were there to keep camel spiders and scorpions away. It was remote as can be. Grape fields, mountains and villages with mud brick huts with, probably, no electricity.

What about troop morale? A sergeant said one of the problems he faces is trying to help his men cope with their girlfriends breaking up with them and family problems. I thought of that old movie image of the soldier getting his letter from the mail pouch and reading the Dear John notice.

 Not here. To my surprise, the combat post had wireless Internet. I walked by soldiers at night and there was that familiar Facebook screen. Love — and no more love — messages carried electronically.

I celebrated. I was able to file without the dreaded satphone. Has Internet changed the face of war? Is there such a thing as idle time anymore?

“Incoming,” the alert sounded, ” get off your computers and take up your positions.” I bet the soldiers can’t wait to get back to instant messaging, or the latest pictures of their girfriends on Facebook, after the Taliban stop firing their AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

Western army fights on its stomach;what about the Taliban ?

Walking into a mess hall at Kandahar Air  Field in Afghanistan can be confusing.

Soldiers from NATO countries, walking in  all directions, have plenty to choose from. Asian workers load heaps of food on plates as long rows of soldiers wait patiently. There is the salad bar. The fruit bar. The bread toasting area. In the centre of  mess  halls are short order cooks who make stir fry meals, for instance. The drinks section offers everything from apple to multi-vitamin juices to chilled milk.

 If  soldiers are still thirsty and need a  quick sugar boost they can always turn to refrigerators packed with soft drinks. For the greedy – a sign says only two cans per person.

After a dizzying look at all that is on offer, I remembered, for some reason, someone telling me long ago how the  Vietnamese lived on tiny amounts of rice fighting the Americans.  Did that make them even harder fighters?  Probably.

What do  the Taliban eat? Are they loading up on  staggering amounts of Afghan food,  including the local equivalent of ice cream  and cake?  Are they comforted by air conditioning and entertained by sports  channels at canteens on huge, heavily-guarded bases where sirens blare when a rocket is fired at them?

Unlikely. Their  leader, Mullah Omar, who lost an eye  fighting Soviet occupiers, is known as a  simple man, from a simple background devoid of what his fighters would surely see as  shocking luxuries enjoyed by his Western  enemies.

 Smaller helpings may be good for the warrior’s psyche.

Can NATO troops ever get their message across to Afghans?

I was with Western forces the other day as they tried to persuade a  group of Afghan farmers to come to them for help if they saw  Taliban militants plant an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or  intimidated them.

A NATO soldier had urgency in his voice. To prove his point,  he told the villagers that a Taliban IED had killed a  five-year-old boy a few days earlier .  Unlike many other NATO  soldiers, he had actually taken the time to learn the local  language. This made him popular. Many people smiled and shook his hand when he walked through villages – although he was constantly on the lookout for suspicious activity.

 He explained why NATO troops had arrived in their troubled  country in the first place – to punish the Taliban for sheltering  Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders after the 9/11 attacks. But the farmers said they did not know why Western forces  were here – after nine years of war.  Perhaps it was because they are used to turmoil and  uncertainty  after three decades of conflict. Maybe  they thought  it just another group of fighters commanded by powerful warlords  who had carved their own fiefdoms.

It seemed they were just nodding politely and making all the  right noises as the Canadian tried so hard to persuade them that  U.S.-led forces can protect them from what he called the bad  Taliban.

 I guess they had good reason to be cautious. One of the farmers  recalled how Taliban militants showed up in Western military  uniforms and slaughtered seven people. So the farmers are likely  to return to their grape fields to scratch out a living and maintain a low profile.

Taking sides has always been a dangerous  game in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s treasure trove: a reality check

A team of U.S. geologists and Pentagon officials have concluded that Afghanistan is sitting on untapped mineral deposits worth more than $1 trillion, officials said. The deposits of iron, copper, cobalt and critical industrial elements such as lithium are enough to  fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the war itself, the officials said.

Lithium is a key raw material for the manufacture of batteries for laptops and mobile phones, and the potential reserves of the metal are so huge that the country may well become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium”, a Pentagon memo said.

So is Afghanistan going to mine its way out of its current troubles ? For all the hope the finding has stirred in a landscape of death and destruction, unlocking Afghanistan’s mineral riches may be decades away, experts say.   The country has almost no mining infrastructure, is in the midst of a wrenching war and has a reputation for government corruption.  The risks are far too big for most companies to get involved, however enticing the deposits look.

The curious thing is this is not the first time Afghanistan’s mineral riches have been discovered. Back in  January 1984, the chief engineer of the Afghan Geological Survey Department published a report saying the country had reserves of a wide variety of mineral resources, including iron, chrome, copper, silver, gold, barite sulfur, talc, magnesium, mica marble and lapis lazuli.  The Afghan Chamber of Commerce has details of the report here. The Afghan government in the mid 1980s  was preparing to develop a number of the mineral resources on a large scale with Soviet technical assistance, the chamber said. But the Russians left in 1989 and Afghanistan descended into a war which has, more or less, continued  since then.The report also mentions abundant reserves of natural gas, so don’t be surprised if that too resurfaces as another silver lining in Afghanistan’s cloudy sky.

Even the U.S. military itself has known about Afghanistan’s mineral riches for years, the military-focused Danger Room blog pointed out.  Here’s  a 2007 report by the  U.S. Geological Survey  (USGS) and the navy which says   “Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered non fuel mineral resources,” including ”large quantities of accessible iron and copper [and] abundant deposits of colored stones and gemstones, including emerald, ruby [and] sapphire.”

Politico is quoting a retired U.S. official as saying the latest announcement sounded  a bit silly to old timers. “When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970’s the [U.S. government], the Russians, the World Bank, the UN and others were all highly focused on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposits. Cheap ways of moving the ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor,” the offiicial said.

So why is so much being made out of this particular find ? Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy says the timing of the “discovery” is interesting. It comes when the Obama administration is struggling to combat the perception that the Afghan campaign has made little progress despite the deployment of thousands of additional troops. The  drive to oust the Taliban from their spiritual home of Kandahar in the south is stalling and  two top Afghan security officials, widely respected for their integrity, have quit with one of them saying President Hamid Karzai had lost faith in the ability of western forces  to defeat the Taliban. Then comes a report that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence is deeply involved with the Afghan Taliban despite heated denials to the contrary.

Potential allies: Karzai, Pakistan and the Taliban?

If you still thought things hadn’t dramatically changed on the Afghan chessboard ever since U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to begin pulling out from mid-2011, you only need to look at President Hamid Karzai’s recent utterances, or more accurately the lack of it, on the Taliban and Pakistan, the other heavyweights on the stage.

For months Karzai has gone noticeably quiet on Pakistan, refusing to excoriate the neighbour for aiding the Taliban as he routinely did in the past, The Guardian quoted  a source close to the country’s former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh as saying.

Karzai, in fact, has lost faith in the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and is increasingly turning to long-time Taliban supporter, Pakistan, to end the deadly insurgency, it said. Saleh and interior minister Hanif Atmar resigned this week, which Karzai’s office said was because of lapses that led to a Taliban attack on a peace jirga last week in Kabul.

But Saleh himself told Reuters in an interview that he had quit because he opposed Karzai’s orders for a review of Taliban insurgents in detention, part of moves the president has launched to reach out to the hardline Islamists in a bid to end the nine-year war. The jirga, packed with tribal elders and notables considered loyal to Karzai, endorsed his plan to seek negotiations with the insurgents who have virtually fought U.S.-led NATO forces to a bloody stalemate nine years after they were ousted

So is this what a final settlement would look like in Afghanistan as the United States pulls back ? An unlikely partnership between Karzai, Pakistan and the Taliban? Quite a change from the time when Karzai and former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf levelled harsh accusations against each other.

The one problem though in this new game is that the Taliban don’t seem to be playing their part, despite the best entreaties from Kabul.  Indeed they have unleashed a torrid spell of attacks beginning from the time the jirga opened in a big tent in the west of the capital. The Taliban weren’t invited to the peace council; not that they were going to attend even if they were invited. Instead they showed up as a three-men suicide bomber squad dressed as women in a burqa.  The attack was foiled, but not before rockets landed barely 100 metres from the tent just as Karzai was speaking.

Then a suicide bomber killed at least 40 people, a quarter of them children and wounded 77 in a particularly savage attack on a wedding party in southern Kandahar province. That was followed by a report about the public execution of a seven-year-old boy in neighbouring Helmand province. The child was accusing of spying for U.S. forces and hanged from a tree. And on Friday came another attack, this time a roadside bomb blowing up a minibus killing nine people,  mostly women and children, again in Kandahar province. You would have to ask under what law, however orthodox, can you justify the execution of a child?