Global News Journal

from Afghan Journal:

Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?

Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America's rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don't see it that way.

They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.

These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen - and since last month in Somalia - should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are either unable to or unwilling to fight the militants operating from their territories.

They are precise, limited, strikes aimed at taking down specific individuals, and in that sense are more like the police going after criminals, rather than a full-on military assault. Ricks writes: 

"Police work involves small arms used precisely. Drones aren't pistols, but firing one Hellfire at a Land Rover is more like a police action than it is like a large-scale military offensive with artillery barrages, armored columns, and infantry assaults."

It is a bit of a stretch, though, to compare a police action in a rough part of town with the kind of devastation that the laser-guided Hellfire missile can rain down when fired from unmanned aircraft as scores of Pakistani civilians in the troubled northwest region  discovered in the initial days of the programme launched by the Bush administration.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan vs U.S. Dumbing down the drones debate

If there was one thing the United States might have learned in a decade of war is that military might alone cannot compensate for lack of knowledge about people and conditions on the ground.  That was true in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may also turn out to be the case in Libya.

Yet the heated  debate about using Predator drones to target militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan - triggered by the spy row between the CIA and the ISI - appears to be falling into a familiar pattern - keep bombing versus stop bombing. Not whether, when and how drones might be effective, based on specific conditions and knowledge of the ground, and when they are counter-productive. 

Combined with that is a tendency to discuss the use of drones in isolation without taking account of the historical context (Pakistan and the United States have been rowing about this for several years - it is not new)  or indeed the broader political context (a botched drone attack by the CIA is guaranteed to enrage all the more if it comes at a time when American diplomats are trying to convince Pakistan they want to improve relations.)  

Consider, for example, the case of a tribesman with a performing monkey who gathered an audience of turban-clad, rifle-bearing men around him in a village in 2005. The U.S. controllers of the drone mistook the event for a weapons-training session or military briefing and dropped a missile, killing many in the audience.  That story was recounted by General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, now head of the Pakistan Army, and quoted by Brian Cloughley in his book “War, Coups and Terror”. “This, said the General, was an example of lack of cultural understanding,” wrote Cloughley.

Then there was the botched drone attack on Damadola in Bajaur agency in 2006 - by some accounts it was intended to target al Qaeda deputy Ayman al Zawahiri.  According to the Pakistani version, many women and children were among the victims of the strike, enraging the local population, driving them into the arms of local Taliban militants and fuelling a ferocious insurgency which took the Pakistan military several years to contain.

In language that could have been written today (and it has) the Guardian reported at the time that Pakistan had lodged a strong protest with the Americans over the attack and "the strained relation between Pakistan and the U.S. has been pushed to breaking point." It blamed the botched attack on faulty intelligence on the ground.

Compare that, though, to the killing of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a drone strike in 2009.  His death was welcomed by Pakistani authorities, and indeed by many ordinary Pakistanis who blamed him for bomb attacks in Pakistan. Good intelligence. Specific target. And probably the high point of cooperation between the United States and Pakistan over the use of drones.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

The “sound and fury” of U.S.-Pakistan ties

With the release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, the United States and Pakistan have put behind them one of the more public rows of their up-and-down relationship.  It was probably not the worst row -- remember the furore over a raid by U.S. ground troops in Angor Adda in Waziristan in 2008, itself preceded  by a deluge of leaks to the U.S. media about the alleged duplicity of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in its dealings on Afghanistan.

But it was certainly one which by its very nature was guaranteed to get the most attention - an American who shot dead two Pakistanis in what he said was an act of self-defence, denied diplomatic immunity and ultimately released only after the payment of blood money. Adding to the drama were two intelligence agencies battling behind the scenes.

It was also the first serious row since the Obama administration began to build what it promised would be a new strategic relationship with Pakistan.

As I wrote earlier this month, overall relations between the United States and Pakistan were rather better than they looked (or at least than they appeared at the height of the Davis row).  Compared to two years ago, Pakistan is more likely to talk now about the need for stability in Afghanistan than strategic depth (the extent of this shift is open to debate). The United States has also moved closer towards meeting Pakistan's calls for a political settlement in Afghanistan by holding direct talks with representatives of the Taliban, according to several official sources with knowledge of those contacts.

On the subject of Taliban talks, the New York Times noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a speech to the Asia Society last month, "appeared to recast longstanding preconditions for talks: that the insurgents lay down their arms, accept the Afghan Constitution and separate from Al Qaeda. Instead, she described them as 'necessary outcomes'. "

According to the NYT, "officially, the State Department played down the change in language, but a senior Western diplomat in Washington, who was familiar with the strategy behind Mrs. Clinton’s speech, said: 'It was not intentional to explicitly make preconditions into outcomes. But the text now leaves room for interpretation, which opens doors.'”

The other half of that story is to look at who first suggested that the United States focus on outcomes rather than preconditions for talks  -- Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who wrote a detailed letter to President Barack Obama last year outlining how he saw the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

U.S.-Pakistan relations better than they look

Given the high-decibel volume of the row over Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore in January, it would be tempting to assume that overall relations between Pakistan and the United States are the worst they have been in years.

At a strategic level, however, there's actually rather greater convergence of views than there has been for a very long time.

In a speech last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a step closer towards meeting Pakistan's own call for a political settlement in Afghanistan through negotiations with Taliban insurgents which would force al Qaeda to leave the region. It was time, she said, "to get serious about a responsible reconciliation process, led by Afghans and supported by intense regional diplomacy and strong U.S.-backing."

"Now, I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace," she said.

Her speech coincided with a report that the United States had begun secret face-to-face talks with representatives of the Taliban for the first time since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Clinton also acknowledged Pakistan's concerns about Indian influence in Afghanistan.  "We look to them – and all of Afghanistan’s neighbours – to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty, which means agreeing not to play out their rivalries within its borders, and to support reconciliation and efforts to ensure that al-Qaida and the syndicate of terrorism is denied safe haven everywhere. Afghanistan, in turn, must not allow its territory to be used against others." Her choice of language was unusual in that it equated both India and Pakistan -- traditionally Islamabad has been condemned for unhelpful interference in Afghanistan, while New Delhi has insisted it is interested only in helping Afghan development.

Western officials also say they believe Pakistan, which once looked to use Afghanistan for "strategic depth" against India, has scaled back its ambitions into seeing stability there as an end itself. Pakistani officials have been saying for a while they would settle for a "stable" rather than "friendly" Afghanistan.

from Afghan Journal:

‘Obama’s Wars’ and clandestine operations

Bob Woodward's new book "Obama's Wars" is making waves for laying bare the policy divisions and the personality clashes within the administration over the U.S. President's Afghan policy. The author, according to the excerpts published by the New York Times and the Washington Post ahead of the book's release next week, exposes the colliding egos of senior political and military figures in even more stark detail than Rolling Stone's profile of General Stanley McChrystal that cost the U.S. commander his job.

But what may turn out to be even more explosive in the theatre where America's longest war is being waged is the revelation that the CIA is running a 3,000-strong Afghan army to carry out clandestine operations in not just Afghanistan, but more importantly over the border in Pakistan. The idea that an Afghan army is fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants inside Pakistan is not something that Islamabad can tolerate easily. Or at least the public disclosure of it.

Firing missiles from unmanned U.S. drone aircraft patrolling over Pakistan's northwest region at a rate that has far outstripped the Bush administration's record is bad enough ; to now have a brigade-size paramilitary unit operating inside the country marks a significant expansion of the covert war that the Obama administration has waged there.

The Washington Post says Woodward characterizes this previously undisclosed Counter Terrorism Pursuit Teams as "elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there." The New York Times advancer of the book says the "covert army" captures and kills Taliban fighters and seeks support in tribal areas.

The CIA directs and funds the force.

U.S. officials didn't just confirm the existence of the counter terrorism force, they bragged about it. "You're talking about one of the finest Afghan fighting forces, which has made major contributions to security and stability," CNN quoted an unnamed U.S official as saying in a report following the publication of the book excerpts.

Allah, Antarctica and Ancient Inca-The best reads of 2009

When I have time to lavish on reading something other than news, I want to spend it on stories that leave me saying, “Wow!” A great read should tell readers something they don’t already know, enlighten them about the world and its people, inform them about the human condition. Readers should be moved to laughter, tears, anger, action through superb writing and extraordinary reporting.  Here are my picks for the best reads of 2009.

As Spain’s jobless lose homes, tensions mount

A packet of cigarettes is enough to cause a fight among the Spaniards and immigrants shivering in the dark outside an emergency homeless shelter in Madrid, set up for a bitter winter and depression-era unemployment. Police push past jobless Romanian and Hungarian construction workers.  ”One day this place is going to explode,” says unemployed waiter Miguel Roa, a Spaniard.

Pakistani newlyweds live in fear of honour killing

Pervez Chachar and his young wife live in the police headquarters in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Their crime? They fell in love and married without their families’ permission. In traditional rural society in Pakistan, getting married without permission is such a serious slight to the “honor” of a family or a tribe that death is seen as fitting retribution. They share a cramped room with another young couple in the same position.

from Africa News blog:

Eritrean passions

I hesitate to blog again on Eritrea, given some of the vitriol that greeted a post last year. For some, Reuters was an apologist and mouthpiece for Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki, simply for interviewing him in May 2008. For others, we were doing the CIA’s work by taking some awkward lines of questioning to Asmara.

The passion on both sides reminded me of the torrent of deeply felt responses I used to receive when reporting on Fidel Castro from Cuba between 1998 and 2002.

Yet here I am again in Asmara, in May 2009, fresh from another lengthy interview with Eritrea’s ever-controversial leader. Whereas last year, he was quite formal with me, this time he was much more relaxed as we sat down for several hours in the colonial-era presidential palace, even poking fun before the interview at my old-fashioned tape-recorder.

We politely discussed hiking before getting down to business.

I questioned the president closely on plenty of issues, including Eritrea’s economic prospects and his views on various hot issues around the region. I was also able to discuss some of President Isaias’ life philosophy and thoughts on the past and future. Before I mentioned them, he anticipated inevitable questions on human rights and his own political longevity, saying he was used to visiting journalists raising such questions due to ‘misinformation’ from outside.

The interview was one of two dozen or so Eritrea’s leader has given in recent days in the run-up to Independence Day, mainly to African and Arab media. Eritrea feels it gets a raw deal in the international arena, and especially from the Western media. The marathon of interviews was an attempt to redress that.

I must have asked 20 or so questions over a 2 ½-hour period. Soon they’ll be playing the interview on state media here.