Pakistan: Now or Never?
Perspectives on Pakistan
Solving Afghanistan and Pakistan over a cup of tea
I have never read “Three Cups of Tea”, Greg Mortenson’s book about building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I tried to read the sequel, “Stones into Schools” and gave up not too long after the point where he said that, “the solution to every problem … begins with drinking tea.” Having drunk tea in many parts of South Asia – sweet tea, salt tea, butter tea, tea that comes with the impossible-to-remove-with-dignity thick skin of milk tea – I can confidently say that statement does not reflect reality.
So I have always been a bit puzzled that the Americans took Mortenson’s books so much to heart. Yes, I knew he boasted that his books had become required reading for American officers posted to Afghanistan; and yes, there is the glowing praise from Admiral Mike Mullen on the cover of ”Stones into Schools”, where he wrote that “he’s shaping the very future of a region”. But I had always believed, or wanted to believe, that at the back of everyone’s minds they realised that saccharine sentimentality was no substitute for serious analysis. Just as hope is not a strategy, drinking tea is not a policy. (To be fair to the Americans, I have also overheard a British officer extolling the virtues of drinking tea in Afghanistan.)
As a result of my scepticism on the miracle powers of tea-drinking, I find I am learning an awful lot more about the thinking of the U.S. administration than I ever did from Mortenson from the fall-out from the allegations of inaccuracies in his books. (Mortenson rejects these allegations in a statement on the website of his Central Asia Institute charity.)
Take for example the detailed account by Jon Krakauer (pdf) charting not only inaccuracies but also alleged irregularities in the finances of the Central Asia Institute. In his opening paragraph, Krakauer notes that President Barack Obama donated $100,000 of the award money from his own Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 2009, to the Central Asia Institute. I had not known about the Obama connection until I read advance stories on Krakauer’s piece.
During his presidential election campaign, Obama made Afghanistan and Pakistan his foreign policy priority. So you might expect that he would have had foreign policy advisers who would have questioned the wisdom of associating publicly with one man. After all, it was quite clear — whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of Montenson’s philanthropy — that the narrative used to describe his schools in Baltistan as a bulwark against the Taliban and Islamist militants was a bit awry.
I have only been to Baltistan once, on a brief trip organised by the Pakistan Army to visit the Siachen region, the world’s highest battlefield, where Indian and Pakistani troops have faced off against each other since 1984. Yet even under the watchful gaze of my army minder, a group of Balti intellectuals who I met in the regional capital Skardu were able to tell me (over several cups of tea) that they felt neglected by Islamabad and excluded from power in Pakistan. Baltistan is part of the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan, and because of its disputed status, the people there have never been integrated into Pakistan and nor have they been given voting rights.
The political and security issues in Baltistan are related to the rivalry between India and Pakistan, to the dispute over Kashmir, and to the electoral dispossession of a people who have been frozen in time since the partition of the subcontinent since 1947. They are nothing to do with the Taliban, militant Islam, or the war in Afghanistan. That should have been easy enough to find out – have U.S. diplomats never been to Baltistan? Indeed even without going there, the information was available for free on the Internet. Why did nobody ask any questions?
From Afghanistan to Libya; rethinking the role of the military
In a report this month calling for faster progress on a political settlement on Afghanistan, the influential UK parliamentary foreign affairs committee was unusually critical of the dominance of the military in setting Afghan policy.
“We conclude that there are grounds for concern over the relationship between the military and politicians. We further conclude that this relationship has, over a number of years, gone awry and needs to be re-calibrated … we believe that problems in Afghanistan highlight the need for a corresponding cultural shift within Whitehall to ensure that those charged with taking foreign policy decisions and providing vitally important political leadership are able to question and appraise military advice with appropriate vigour,” it said.
During its enquiries, based on interviews with regional experts and officials, “we gained the impression that the sheer size and power of the U.S. military ensured that the U.S. military remained largely in control of U.S. Afghan policy,” it added.
It also quoted former UK special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, as saying that conversations between the U.S. and British military “end up with things being pre-cooked between the U.S. and the UK militaries before they are subject to political approval back in London …”
“In Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’s view, the war in Afghanistan gave the British Army a raison d’être it has lacked for many years, new resources on an unprecedented scale and a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of the U.S. following criticisms about the army’s performance in Basra, Iraq.”
The comments in the report struck me as interesting, primarily because they were included at all – “civ-mil” relations are not usually a hot topic for political debate in Britain. Otherwise they seemed to be largely a reflection of a far more heated discussion in Washington over the extent to which the U.S. military has come to dominate American foreign policy in the years following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks and during two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For recent articles on the subject see Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy or Franz-Stefan Gady at the Small Wars Journal (pdf)
For some time now, it has become conventional wisdom that the military has dominated strategy in Afghanistan — when the army asked President Barack Obama for more troops, they got them. And the pundit consensus has been that Obama, after sacking two generals, had little room for manoeuvre even if he wanted to challenge the decisions made by his commander, the politically powerful General David Petraeus.
Umair,
You have a limited perception of democracy in Pakistan! Pakistan Democracy has time and again faled to give dignity to the people of Pakistan. Pakistan military were more sensitive to dignity, but also failed after taking the civilian Govt. task of administeration and development of the Nation. Today Pakistan is no different than it was half a century before and the state of limbo has dragged on. India is its enemy No.1, with full diplomatic relations, and the the Americans are there to help maintain the military and provide weaponry, but in real time Pakistan military has never admitted defeat at the hands of Indian miliary, though unconditional surrender is a historical document, no different from the surrender of the Third Reich. Shame on today’s Generals who are visiting Washington and calling on Colin Powel who threatend Musharaf Din the stone age. The General of Ayub’s calibre, who was the first to remove the civilian head and took over the reins of the Govt. could never have stooped down so low that today’s Pakistan has even lost the meaning of the word ‘DIGNITY’. Nor would the military continue to support clandastine operations against India and the Pashtoon Nation, almost half of them live in todays Pakistan and the other half in Afghanistan. Pakistan Govt. today is as unpopular in Afghanistan as it used to be in sixties! What Pakistan needs is the direct democracy for the people, so that legislations are made with people’s participation and not military participation. Pakistan military should be confined to barracks outside the cities.
That Pakistan future still hangs in the middle of Sardari and sharif Bros on one side and the military on the other side which is equivalent to a permanent Babylonian prison.
Rex Minor
Pakistan:the unintended consequences of U.S. pressure
U.S. pressure on Pakistan has always led to deep resentment within the Pakistan Army, which has taken heavy casualties of its own fighting Pakistani Taliban militants on its side of the border with Afghanistan. But there are signs that this resentment is now spiralling in dangerously unpredictable ways.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency has denied it was responsible for revealing the name of a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official in Pakistan, forcing him to flee the country after threats to his life. But the suspicion lingers that the ISI, which falls under the control of the Pakistan Army, is flexing its muscles in response to U.S. pressure.
In an article for Time magazine, former CIA officer Robert Baer said that even if you accepted the ISI denial, “what can’t be dismissed is a lawsuit filed by a Pakistani tribesman in which he accuses the CIA of murdering his brother and his son in a drone attack. According to press reports, none of which have been confirmed by the CIA, it was the appearance of the station chief’s name in a filing in this suit, along with unspecified threats, that caused him to be pulled. Regardless, the suit itself could be an ominous sign that the Pakistanis may be coming to the end of their rope in the ‘war on terror’.”
His assumption was that the ISI, which until now is believed to have given tacit support to the U.S. drone strikes, had supported the case by the Pakistani tribesman.
Even more alarming are Pakistani press reports suggesting that fake WikiLeaks cables planted in the Pakistan media were deliberately designed by Pakistani intelligence to whip up public opinion against U.S. pressure to “do more”. (h/t Five Rupees).
“The fake story is not an isolated incident,” Azhar Abbas, the managing director of GEO News, wrote. “Political and security observers believe a concerted effort is once again being made to encourage and promote a typical extremist mindset. Some analysts-cum-anchors have re-emerged from quasi-oblivion. Many journalists and analysts are briefed and encouraged to take an aggressively anti-West, especially anti-US, stance. Experts, who ‘preach’ extremism in disguise, are encouraged to participate in talk shows.”
Maintaining the support of the Pakistani people has been essential in Pakistan’s own battle against the Pakistani Taliban - a widely circulated video of a girl being flogged in the Swat valley rallied public opinion behind the army when it launched a military operation there last year to drive out militants from the region. The authenticity of that video is a subject of much debate in Pakistan. But be that as it may, if public opinion were to turn decisively against military operations, no amount of American pressure would be able to convince the Pakistan Army to launch a new ground assault to assert control of areas now held by militants, including North Waziristan.
@Rex: I realize that I was somewhat harsh on you, my apologies!
Are the Taliban distancing themselves from al Qaeda?
The question of whether the links between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda can be broken has been discussed at length over the past year or so, and will be a major factor in any eventual peace settlement with insurgents in Afghanistan.
So it’s interesting to see this post by Alex Strick van Linschoten highlighting what he calls the first semi-official acknowledgement from a Talib – former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef - of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
He cites the following quotes from an interview with Zaeef, in response to a question about bin Laden and his relations with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar after Sept. 11:
“Following the September events, the Commander of the Faithful Mullah Omar met with Bin Laden in the presence of a large number of Taliban leaders and Al-Qaeda members, and asked him if they were behind the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon.
“Osama denied the allegations but I now believe that Bin Laden planned the attacks without informing the Commander of the Faithful and then lied to him by denying his involvement in the attacks after they took place.”
According to Alex, who co-edited Zaeef’s memoirs, “this admission is a crucial first step in tackling the issue of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Let’s hope it’s part of a larger political development.”
Last week I asked senior Pakistani politician Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, who is sympathetic to the Taliban, what would happen to al Qaeda in the event of a political settlement.
@theinsaneo
Think simple and straight, analyse the words and psyche of the people. Iraq war was not a strategic blunder per say or a thoughtful project. Wars are always crimes against the humanity. You suddenly had a phony billy the kid, who admired the wild west and believed in the stories of the good succeeding against the bad one. George w believed in the CIA info about Sadam Hussain plot to have his father the Bush senior killed. George W went into Iraq for vengance, come what may and to prove to his father that he is worthy to be his son. The Bush senior thought very high of his younger son, the texas Governor, and was not proud of George W’s poor military service.
Comprando! The AQ org. and money and the rest are all made up stories and meant for the birds or people like you and me. This is just one of the make believe stories. Innocents and always innocents and straight forward people get hurt and loose their lives. Saudis have nothing to do with it. They are feeding America every single day, they are also keeping the capitalist system going with the money they earn from the oil sales, and return it to the american and European industry.
They are supporting Pakistan existance, providing aid to many other countries and charity organisations in the world. They are not controlling the actions of any who receive their help. They are no different than the Christian Countries and ngo’s who are equally helping the needy regardless of their religion or political affiliations. The love for the next one is the teaching of Islam,christianity and Judaism.
People who undertook the violent mission in NY .. were arabs and not saudis only. mr Ata was an egyptian. They were studying in Hamburg and some had completed the Engineering course. They were not trained to be terrorists in Afghanistan, nor did they study several years engineering to throw it away and take the mission to take innocent lives of the people. Sometimes things occur and there is no logical explanation. People loose lives, George W was advised that this was a revenge from AQ boss wgho was earlier the target of bill Clinton ordered missiles, which failed. If you have the experience of war, then you should know that if your enemy fires at you and misses, then he is not going to expect mercy form you. This is the game which is being played now. let us hope that the struggle ends in a truce!
Now we have the new President who is in love with the American dream philosaphy and reckons that he is a better chief for decisions. On a personal level I do not blame George W intent to punish Saddam Hussain but why cause the death of so many.
The new President has misunderstood the fall of the so called taliban govt. Mr Karzai is a Pashtoon leader and is an integral part of the Pushtoon taliban family. All of the Pashtoons have a dislike for foreigners unless they are their guests and speak with them at an equal level. They do not accept any Mr above them. Also they do not expect the Govt to handle their private affairs including security. They nominate and elect the Govt. to organise services, schools(yes schools) and essential services such as roads, hospitals etc etc. But this is separate subject.
Rex Minor
Between the lines: Obama’s comments on Kashmir
President Barack Obama’s words on relations with Pakistan were always going to be carefully scripted during his visit to India, where even to say the word “Kashmir” aloud in public can raise jitters about U.S. interference in what New Delhi sees as a bilateral dispute.
So first up, here’s what he had to say during a news conference in New Delhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in response to a question about what role the United States could play in resolving the Kashmir dispute (NDTV has the video).
“With respect to Kashmir, obviously this is a long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan; as I said yesterday, I believe that both Pakistan and India have an interest in reducing tensions between the two countries. The United States cannot impose a solution to these problems but I have indicated to Prime Minister Singh that we are happy to play any role that the parties think is appropriate in reducing these tensions. That’s in the interests of the region; it is in the interests of the two countries involved and it is in the interests of the United States of America.
“So my hope is that conversations will be taking place between the two countries; they may not start on that particular flashpoint; there may be confidence building measures that need to take place, but I am absolutely convinced that it is both in India’s and Pakistan’s interest to reduce tensions and that will enable them I think to focus on the range of both challenges and opportunities that each country faces.”
“I do want to make this point though, that I think Prime Minister Singh throughout his career and throughout his prime ministership has consistently spoken out both publicly and privately on his desire, his personal commitment to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan and for that I very much commend him. I think Prime Minister Singh is sincere and relentless in his desire for peace. And so my hope is that both sides can, over the next several months, several years, find mechanisms that are appropriate for them to work out what are these very difficult issues.”
A quick reading between the lines suggests that he is unfraid of referring to Kashmir in public and keeping it on the agenda, while also acknowledging that resolving the dispute may take years rather than months, and that the two countries might need to build confidence by agreeing on other issues first. He also steered a middle course between Pakistan’s insistence that Kashmir is the core issue, and India’s demand that ”cross-border terrorism” must end before it will agree to talk.
Obama has moved quite some distance since his 2008 election campaign, when he raised hackles in India by suggesting a resolution of the Kashmir dispute could help in the war in Afghanistan by convincing Pakistan to focus on tackling militants holed up on its border rather than its traditional enemy.
Rex
I do not expect anything concrete from you. So don’t sweat.
Have fun!
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.
Rex Minor: ” Slowly but gradually the Pashtoons would calm down and go about looking after the orchids, agriculture and fruits export business, leaving their klashnikovs in their homes, the words of the President of Afghanistan, not mine.”
You forgot opium. That gets the most money now-a-days in the glorious land of the Pashtuns.
Will Obama refer to Kashmir in public in India?
Will President Barack Obama make some public remarks on Kashmir during his trip to India next month?
At a White House press briefing, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes refused to be pinned down on specifics, beyond saying that the United States would continue to express support for India and Pakistan to pursue talks.
“I wouldn’t — I don’t want to get into prefacing with precision what his comments are, in part because he’ll be answering a lot of questions there in the town hall and press conference and we haven’t — we’re still working through his remarks on certain things,” he said.
Yet it is a question that cannot — and will not — be left to chance.
Indian is deeply sensitive about foreign visitors talking about Kashmir — as British foreign ministers have learned to their cost on earlier trips. It regards Kashmir as an integral part of India and refuses even to recognise the territory at the heart of more than 60 years of enmity with Pakistan as disputed. Moreover, it has consistently rejected outside interference, saying that its disputes with Pakistan must be settled bilaterally.
Obama, who raised hackles in India during his presidential election campaign by suggesting the Washington should try to help resolve the Kashmir dispute, is hoping to use the trip to help U.S. business tap into India’s growing economy. With a flagging economy at home, he cannot afford to offend his hosts.
But at the same time, the biggest foreign policy challenge of his administration is over how to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan cannot be ended without Pakistan’s help. And Pakistan itself faces serious instability — potentially a much bigger worry than Afghanistan with its 180 million people and nuclear bombs. Pakistan’s identity in turn is intimately bound up with India – its past support for Islamist militants was driven by its belief that this was the only way to neutralise the influence of its much bigger neighbour both in Kashmir and in Afghanistan. Depending on who you listen to, it either will not, or can not, tackle Islamist militants based in Pakistan without a peace settlement with India, including on Kashmir.
Myra,
Refer Kashmir in public? Why?! Should Manmohan ask Obama about the Alaska secessionist party in public? What nonsense write up is this?
“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”.
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.
Rex Minor,
A meaningful and intelligent discussion with you is obviously impossible – flogging a dead horse. Period.
Taliban names removed from U.N. list – how times have changed
In all the noise about the war in Afghanistan over the last week, including the WikiLeaks uproar and a spat between Pakistan and Britain over remarks made by Prime Minister David Cameron about Pakistan’s links to Islamist militancy, one piece of news carries real significance.
On Friday, five Taliban members were struck off a U.N. Security Council list of militants subject to sanctions in a move designed to smooth the way for reconciliation talks with insurgents. Among those, two of the five were dead. The other three - Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, a former Afghan ambassador to the United Nations, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the last Taliban ambassador to Islamabad before 9/11, and Abdul Satar Paktin – are no longer subject to the asset freeze and travel ban imposed on those on the list.
To get a sense of quite how significant a change this is, consider how Mullah Zaeef – who now lives in Kabul and says he is no longer an active member of the movement – describes his treatment when he was arrested in Pakistan in early 2002, according to his book “My Life with the Taliban“. The Pakistani official who arrested him told him: “Your Excellency, you are no longer an Excellency! America is a superpower. Did you not know that? No one can defeat it, nor can they negotiate with it. America wants to question you and we are here to hand you over to the USA.”
Turned over to the Americans near Peshawar after being driven there from Islamabad, he says he was attacked and his clothes ripped with knives. “The Pakistani soldiers were all staring as the Americans hit me and tore the remaining clothes off my body. Eventually I was completely naked, and the Pakistani soldiers — the defenders of the Holy Koran — shamelessly watched me with smiles on their faces, saluting this disgraceful action of the Americans.”
“That moment,” he says, ”is written in my memory like a stain on my soul.”
That was followed by long years of humiliation and degradation in jails first in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo. Finally freed from Guantanamo without charge on Sept. 11 2005, he returned to Kabul where he has lived under government protection.
The decision by the United Nations, with American support, to remove the names of Mullah Zaeef and others from the sanctions list is possibly the closest Washington has come since 9/11 to offering some kind of legitimacy to the Taliban movement which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
The rats have started leaving the sinking ship. A good news, but be careful the USA military is still there in force most probably to find a place in the neighbouring country.
Rex Minor
‘That said, the question about why nobody clearly challenged the thinking behind Montenson’s books needs to be answered.’
The Answer is ‘scrubbing’ or rewriting history, literally and metaphorically. Erasing the old story and creating a new narrative about the motivations and effects of American intervention in the region. Three decades ago state-sponsored American education radicalized the local schoold children and created the Jihadis whose daughters Mortenson is trying to educate. See here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn /A5339-2002Mar22?language=printer