Here’s a great story by Jon Hemming (pictured left), Reuters Chief Correspondent in Afghanistan, on a recent trip he made to Kandahar with U.S. troops:

KABUL (Reuters) - Intelligence reports said insurgents planned an ambush or might have planted an Improvised Explosive Device under the bridge west of Kandahar so a patrol was sent to check it out. “Probably bullshit,” said the U.S. major. “But we got to go take a look.”

That meant driving four armoured vehicles through the centre of Kandahar, the Taliban’s former de-facto capital in southern Afghanistan and still a city where insurgents take pot-shots at international troops or blow themselves up in suicide attacks.

Normally as a reporter driving around Kabul, I take great care to avoid being anywhere near a foreign military convoy as they are the Taliban’s favorite target. But when you’re inside a Humvee, the tables are turned and you can’t help looking on every taxi driver or motorcycle rider as a potential attacker who might try to take your life with his.

“Watch the guy on the right,” the major sitting in the front seat tells the top cover gunner through the intercom. A taxi driver who was about to pull onto the road quickly slams into reverse and backs up to demonstrate his lack of evil intent.

“That kid just gave me the finger,” says the TC (top cover gunner). “Asshole. I swear I’m gonna slot one of these kids one day.” Silence, then: “I got a bad feeling about today.”

Something hits the windscreen. “Was that a piece of shit someone threw?” asks the major. “Don’t know sir,” says the driver, in a dead-pan tone. “There’s still some stuck to the hood though if you’d care to take a closer look.”

“Where is everyone today?” asks the colonel, coming through on the radio from another vehicle. “It’s time for their afternoon nap, sir,” replies the major.

We swing through town, cars, trucks, motorbikes and bicycles careering onto the verges as the top cover in the vehicle in front waves them aside and the major hits the police-style lights and sirens strapped to our Humvee. ”Hey did you see that?” the major says, obviously encouraged. “That little girl was pumping the well with one hand and giving us the thumbs up with the other.”

“I don’t see thumbs up anymore, sir,” says the top cover. “Only thumbs down.”

(full story continues here)

Last week the Canadians were soul-searching about their presence in Afghanistan after three female aid workers, two of them Canadian, were killed in an ambush. ”(The) Canadian deaths in Afghanistan underscore the most troubling aspect of the West’s strategy there,” said the Toronto Star. “Put simply, it isn’t working.”

Now it is the turn of the French to ask the same questions after the deaths of 10 French soldiers in a battle with Taliban fighters: What is happening in Afghanistan? Or, for some, what are we doing there?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was “determined to continue the struggle against terrorism for democracy and freedom” after the biggest loss of French soldiers in combat since the Algerian war that ended in 1962.  But French Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande demanded answers to the many questions he said were raised by the deaths. “What are the aims of this war?” he asked. “How many soldiers are needed to achieve the objectives?

Comments on the website of French daily Le Monde were tempered by mourning for the dead. Some blamed the United States for “this crazy war which the Americans have dragged us into”; others anguished about whether they were fighting a “just” war in line with French beliefs in human rights.

“We are talking about the defence of the free world,” wrote one person, “and these soldiers died for democracy fighting the Taliban, who want to send us back to the Middle Ages. The soldiers’ bodies are not yet cold and already the Taliban collaborators are reacting…”

But that in case, asked another, “when are we going to decide to go and defend Georgia against Russian aggression?”

“The invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001 was supported by a very broad international consensus,” was the reply. “W. Bush leaves in a few months. So what do we do? Pack our bags and leave the Afghans to go back to civil war?”

It is clear that the war in Afghanistan has climbed back up to the top of the agenda in countries which sent troops to fight a war which, unlike Iraq, had been supported by domestic opinion after 9/11.  But now seven years on, will the voting public change its mind? Or are people simply waking up to the reality of the Afghan campaign, which by many accounts is getting uglier by the day?

Spare a thought for the people inside Afghanistan. “Taliban are really close to capital nowadays,” wrote the blogger Afghan Lord last week. “Horror is spreading fast among the people; the residents of Kabul are really worry what will happen in the next coming weeks.”
     

A comment recently by Asif Zardari, the powerful head of the Pakistan People’s Party, that the country’s next president could be a woman has set off speculation that he might propose the name of one of his sisters, both members of his party, to succeed President Pervez Musharraf.

What better way to burnish Pakistan’s credentials as an enlightened democracy than have a woman as head of state at a time when the power of Islamist militants is growing, especially in the vital northwest region where they have been burning down schools for girls.

Besides, installing either Faryal Talpur or Azra Fazal Pechucho as president would help tighten Zardari’s grip on power with a handpicked president and prime minister, as The Pakistan Policy Blog notes. The name of National Assembly speaker Fahmida Mirza has also been mentioned as another possible woman candidate.

But then again, and reflecting the pressures on them, Zardari and coalition partner Nawaz Sharif might turn to the troubled North-West Frontier Province, choosing a candidate from there as one way to counter the expanding influence of the Islamists. One of the frontrunners would be Asfandyar Wali Khan, president of the Awami National Party, a regional group with liberal credentials, based in the NWFP. Candidates from Baluchistan, the other region where a low-key insurgency has raged, have also been mentioned in reports

Linked perhaps to the eventual choice is also a decision on whether the presidency should be returned to its ceremonial post as was traditionally the case, or continue with a much more powerful institution as was the case with Musharraf.

Under Musharraf, the president retained the authority to dismiss parliament and make top military and judicial appointments, source of much of the political turmoil that engulfed the final years of his rule. The president is also the head of the country’s nuclear command authority.

Given how little many people in the west seem to know about Pakistan — at most that it has nuclear weapons and, possibly, Osama bin Laden; rarely that it has 165 million people (not too far off three times the population of Britain) with individual day-to-day challenges of earning a living and bringing up children like anywhere else – it’s encouraging to see the range of debate in the U.S. blogosphere after President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation.

Here are just a few that caught my eye, in no particular order, and with apologies in advance to anyone I’ve mislabelled as U.S.-based:

Larisa Alexandrovna writes that Musharraf’s departure could lead to a “catch-22 of epic proportions” for the United States because of the threat of terrorism and the nuclear black market: “Forget the Russian-Georgian conflict for a moment. Forget Iraq for a moment. Forget everything for one moment and understand, that if Pakistan explodes into a power struggle, that struggle/conflict will be the match that lights a world war of epic proportions. A war that we are not equipped to deal with anymore,” she says.

The Punditburo agrees that Pakistan is “far more important than Iraq as far as the issue of terrorism and Al Qaeda go”  but draws a different conclusion: “Democracy managed to arise in Pakistan, even though the Bushies fought it tooth and nail, and failed to even embrace democracy even when it was clear that Musharraf had no future. This should be tonic for our arrogance.”

Sepia Mutiny highlights an article in counterpunch by Fatima Bhutto, the niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, from whom she was estranged. In it she attacks both Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif – who forced Musharraf to quit after their parties won elections in February.  ”We have options,” she says. “Zardari is not an option. Sharif is not an option. The army is not our one and only option. The mullahs have not become an option yet. There are close to 200 million of us: I’m sure we can think of something better.”

But it would be wrong to suggest that Musharraf’s departure for once overshadowed the U.S. presidential election. The Huffington Post used it to attack presidential candidate John McCain, arguing that he had been an “outspoken” supporter of the former army general.

While Pakistan and indeed much of the world has been transfixed by the political power play that has seen President Pervez Muaharraf go, a refugee crisis is unfolding in its troubled northwest.

The numbers fleeing escalating fighting between the Pakistan Army and militants holed up in Bajaur on the border with Afghanistan vary but they are all huge. The Daily Times said that the provincial government had set up relief camps for 219,000 people displaced in the latest wave of fighting.

Pakistani television has shown thousands of people streaming out of Bajaur, Mohmand and Kurram agencies, the Australian reported, calling it a “human tide.” Tens of thousands of people are camping on the perimeter of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Region Province, and some have reached Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad.

As one blogger noted the crisis unfolding in the troubled corner of Pakistan - seen as the staging ground for the next big attack on the West - deserves attention, all the more so given that the number of people affected rivals, if not exceeds, refugees from the conflict in South Ossetia this past week. The number of people displaced there is estimated at 100,000, according to this report in the Los Angeles Times.

Given the scale of the problem, Pakistan would be well-advised to seek international help, the News argued in an editorial . It said in the past Pakistan had tried to cover up problems by denying experts such the Red Cross access to internally displaced people. This is the time for the state to show a ‘kinder face” to people whose homes have been bombed, or ordered to be evacuated in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban, their maize crops cut down so that the militants didn’t hide in them to carry out ambushes, it said. 

UPDATE - President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation has been greeted with jubilation from supporters of the ruling PML-N and PPP parties (see picture right), and sparked a rally in the stock market. But reading through the comments on this and other blogs, I can’t see any clear theme emerging, with some praising and others condemning Musharraf’s legacy, some regretting and others welcoming his departure, and many fretting about the future.

I rather liked this comment on All Things Pakistan which seemed to sum up the many contradictions of people struggling to work out how to rally around a common cause:

“We celebrate on arrival and departure of the same person.
We praise those who left the scene.
Dead become heroes and living and serving are being accused.”

India, meanwhile, has been muted in its response. But Indian analysts who once derided Musharraf as the architect of the 1999 Kargil war are now fretting that his departure could unleash fresh tensions from Kashmir to Kabul if it is allowed to create a vacuum which can be exploited by Islamist militants.

There is much speculation too about what Musharraf will do next, and where he will go.  Some have read his feisty resignation speech — a long defence of his legacy — as evidence that he might eventually try to re-enter politics; others see in his final “Goodbye Pakistan” remarks , a sign he is preparing to leave the country. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Britain and Turkey have all been touted as possible destinations. (You can see some of the stories on his likely next home here, here and here.)

In the end, Musharraf has turned out to be as unpredictable in his departure as he was throughout his career both in the army and in politics. Looking through his memoirs, “In the Line of Fire”, for clues to his next move, I was struck by the following quote from another former general which Musharraf cites as a maxim in his own life:

“Napoleon said that two-thirds of decision making is based on study, analysis, calculations, facts, and figures, but the other third is always a leap in the dark, based on one’s gut.”

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President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation, ending months of speculation about the fate of the former army general after his political allies were trounced in an election in February.

But even before he said he would step down, analysts were already beginning to look to the challenges of a post-Musharraf era — spiralling inflation, food and fuel shortages; al Qaeda and Taliban militants on its border with Afghanistan; political in-fighting among the civilian politicians who took power in February. (You can see my last post on this here.)

So will Musharraf’s resignation help bring stability to Pakistan? Or are the problems faced by Pakistan — sandwiched between a turbulent Afghanistan and a resurgent India, both of which blame it for failing to curb Islamist militancy — too great?

How much will the three countries with the closest ties to Pakistan — China, Saudi Arabia and the United States — help or interfere? And what of the main domestic players in the unfolding drama: the judiciary, the civilian government and the Pakistan Army?

The last time I visited Kashmir, in November, I was struck by an apparent contradiction: it was more peaceful than it had been in years, at least in the capital Srinagar, and yet the overwhelming mood was one of gloom.  With the peace process between India and Pakistan going nowhere, there was a sense    that thousands of people had died for nothing in the violence that had convulsed the region since a separatist revolt erupted in 1989. Although the soldiers had disappeared from the streets of Srinagar, and tourists were flocking back, it retained the some of the same tinderbox atmosphere that I had known at the height of the violence. One spark, people told me, could ignite it again.

When that spark came, in the form of a land dispute between Hindus and Muslims that triggered some of the biggest protests since 1989 (you can see my last posting on this here), the surprise was perhaps not so much that it happened but that so few analysts in Delhi (or Islamabad for that matter) saw it coming.

The sheer size and unexpectedness of the protests have prompted some Indian analysts to ask a question that has been anathema  in Delhi for decades: Is it time to consider giving Kashmir independence, or at least to let Kashmiris vote on their future?

“If the experience of the last two decades has taught us anything, it is that the situation never really returns to normal. Even when we see the outward symptoms of peace, we miss the alienation and resentment within.  No matter what we do, things never get better, for very long,” writes Vir Sanghvi in the Hindustan Times.

“I reckon we should hold a referendum in the Valley. Let the Kashmiris determine their own destiny. If they want to stay in India, they are welcome. But if they don’t, then we have no moral right to force them to remain. If they vote for integration with Pakistan, all this will mean is that Azad Kashmir will gain a little more territory. If they opt for independence, they will last for about 15 minutes without the billions that India has showered on them. But it will be their decision,” he writes.

“Whatever happens, how can India lose? If you believe in democracy, then giving Kashmiris the right to self-determination is the correct thing to do. And even if you don’t, surely we will be better off being rid of this constant, painful strain on our resources, our lives, and our honour as a nation? This is India’s century. We have the world to conquer -the other- and the means to do it. Kashmir is a 20th century problem. We cannot let it drag us down and bleed us as we assume our rightful place in the world. It’s time to think the unthinkable.”

The Times of India runs an editorial along similar lines. ”I was once hopeful of Kashmir’s integration, but after six decades of effort, Kashmiri alienation looks greater than ever. India seeks to integrate with Kashmir, not rule it colonially. Yet, the parallels between British rule in India and Indian rule in Kashmir have become too close for my comfort,” writes columnist Swaminathan Aiyar.

“We promised Kashmiris a plebiscite six decades ago. Let us hold one now, and give them three choices: independence, union with Pakistan, and union with India. Almost certainly the Valley will opt for independence. Jammu will opt to stay with India, and probably Ladakh too. Let Kashmiris decide the outcome, not the politicians and armies of India and Pakistan,” he concludes.

For two such reputable columnists to make a suggestion like this in national newspapers is extraordinary. India has long maintained that Kashmir is an integral part of the country. It has argued that giving up Kashmir would encourage secessionist movements elsewhere in the country and undermine its commitment to secularism by acknowledging that Kashmir, as a Muslim-majority region, could have special treatment. And it has traditionally blamed Pakistan for stirring up trouble in the region, convinced that if only Islamabad could be persuaded to end what it called “cross-border terrorism”, the benefits of Indian democracy and financial support would eventually win the people of Kashmir over.

Of course, a couple of op-eds calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir does not mean it is going to happen. The issue is phenomenally complicated, not least because the much-vaunted U.N. resolutions passed in 1948 calling for a referendum were meant to apply to the whole of the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, now divided between India, Pakistan and China. The people were to be given the choice between acceding to India or Pakistan, but not of independence; while the resolution also required that Pakistan withdraw its troops first from its side of the region, followed by the bulk of the Indian forces, before a plebiscite were held.

And any vote, even within the Indian part of the former kingdom, could stir up bitter divisions between and within the three regions that make up the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir – Hindu-dominated Jammu, Muslim-dominated Kashmir and Buddhist- dominated Ladakh — that would dwarf the recent protests. Pakistan would also be faced with tough choices over how to handle the people on its side of the former kingdom, including Azad Kashmir and the strategic Northern Areas.

However, they do suggest a new thinking in India, which, determined to win its place as a global player on the political and economic stage, no longer wants to be dragged down by the Kashmir conflict. The question is whether this new thinking — coming at a time when Pakistan is struggling to reinvent itself as a civilian democracy —  could contribute to a genuine effort towards a durable peace. Or will it simply make an intractable problem even more complicated?

Amid the feverish speculation about when, how and where President Pervez Musharraf will go, analysts are already looking beyond to the future of Pakistan in a post-Musharraf era. One theme stands out: while the consensus appears to be that the Pakistan Army will not step in to save Musharraf, it might well intervene in the not so distant future if it believes it needs to save the country.

“Musharraf’s departure will highlight the problems that confront the country, which is in the grips of a food and energy crisis. Inflation is out of control,” writes Tariq Ali in the Los Angeles Times. ”The price of natural gas, used for cooking in many homes, has risen by 30%. Wheat, a staple, has seen a 20% price hike since November 2007 … According to a June survey, 86% of Pakistanis find it increasingly difficult to afford flour on a daily basis, for which they blame their new government.”

He adds that over the last 50 years the United States has preferred to work with the Pakistan Army rather than civilian rulers. ”Nothing has changed. The question being asked is, how long before the military is back at the helm?”

Shuja Nawaz, who has just published a book about the Pakistan Army, writes in the Washington Post that the military “would rather not be drawn into the current political squabble. They want to give the civilians the ‘time and space’ to operate government as best as they can.”

But he says the civilian government must take action quickly to restore stability in Pakistan. ”If it fails, there is talk in Pakistan of another cycle of military intervention in the offing, this time on the Bangladesh model: of a longer duration, and using a civilian facade to restore the country’s economic health.”

“With inflation running at 25 per cent, the economy is a shambles,” says an editorial in the TimesOnline. “Investors are fleeing Pakistan, and the rupee has fallen to a record low against the dollar. Separatists, Islamists and extremists are gaining ground in the restless border areas, and Islamabad now seems incapable of imposing its authority. Twenty years after the suspicious death of Zia ul-Haq, the former military ruler, feuding politicians are again set to squander their chances. A restless army is waiting.”

Less than a month ago, Senator Barack Obama was saying  that the U.S. war in Afghanistan would be made easier if the United States worked to improve trust between India and Pakistan. “A lot of what drives, it appears, motivations on the Pakistan side of the border, still has to do with their concerns and suspicions about India,” he told a news conference in Amman.

The logic was in line with thinking expounded by U.S. analysts at the time who argued that elements within Pakistan will never completely relinquish support for Islamist militants in both Pakistan and Afghanistan as long as they believe they can be used to counter Indian influence in the region. Therefore end Pakistan’s insecurity about India, and support for militants will melt away, making the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban much easier — or so the argument goes.  At least that was the thinking barely a few weeks ago, as I wrote in an earlier blog on this subject. 

The latest crisis in Kashmir has turned that logic on its head.  After a dispute over land snowballed into some of the biggest protests since a separatist revolt erupted in 1989, India and Pakistan are back at each other’s throats, hurling allegations at each other.  Rather than asking whether the two countries can be persuaded to make a durable peace, the question now is how bad the relationship can get. “India-Pakistan relations are getting perilously close to ground zero,” writes former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar in an Asia Times article.

Add in the domestic political instability in Pakistan, and relations between India and Pakistan have probably not been so combustible since they declared a ceasefire on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir in November 2003.

So where does that leave Obama’s plans for Afghanistan? How much does it assume U.S. efforts to “manage” Pakistan more effectively — including encouraging peace with India — will combine with his pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan to succeed in a campaign he has declared more important that Iraq? The blog New America Media went as far as to say that “Kashmir may be the key to Obama’s Counterterrorism Policy” – perhaps overstating the case but well worth reading to see how it all fits together.

And if India and Pakistan descend into the dark days before the 2003 ceasefire, and play out their rivalry across the region from Kashmir to Kabul, what is the fall-back plan? Sending even more U.S. troops to Afghanistan?

Five years after she vanished from her parents’ home in Karachi along with her three children, Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia  Siddiqui appeared in a New York court last week accused of trying to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan

Accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident differ. 

Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor’s office in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book “Anarchist’s Arsenal” and descriptions of New York City landmarks, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The next day when U.S. soldiers and FBI agents went to question  the U.S.-trained neuroscientist, she attacked them, the Justice Department said in a statement. She fired two shots using the rifle of one of the U.S.. army officers but nobody was hit. The officer then fired back at her, using his service pistol and at least one shot hit her, the Justice Department said.

Afghan police in Ghazni however, told a different story, according to a report filed by Reuters. Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behaviour and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor’s house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.

U.S. troops requested the woman be handed over to them, but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said.

U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The U.S. troops, the officer said, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and and took her”. The boy remained in police custody.

 Whatever the circumstance, Siddiqui was then flown to New York where she appeared in a wheelchair, looking frail and, according to her lawyers, in urgent need of medical attention.

The case bears recounting, not just because Siddiqui is a MIT  educated mother of three, but because it has roused strong passions especially in Pakistan.

Since the time of her disappearance in 2003  human rights groups have alleged Siddiqui had been taken into secret custody, one of thousands of Pakistanis who had disappeared in the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda and Taliban. They said they believed she was in Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities strongly denied Siddiqui was in custody, and according to the New York Times,  military and intelligence officials believed her to be in Pakistan until her arrest in Afghanistan last month.

Protests have taken place in Karachi, Lahore and even outside the court in Manhattan where Siddiqui appeared . The anger is directed as much, if not more, at the Pakistani government and its  agencies who are accused of handing over Siddiqui to the United States as at Washington itself.

There are online petitions seeking Siddiqui’s release and others warning this is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are many others at risk. Comments on blogs reflect  anger, shame and helplessness. to undo what many see as a terrible wrong done to her,

On Wednesday, the Pakistani Foreign Office said it had protested against the detention of Siddiqui’s three children and demanded their repatriation.