Karzai Says - We Were Only In It For Ourselves

I don't like Hamid Karzai but he might have a point when he complains that our Afghan War wasn't waged on behalf of Afghanistan but for our interests, not his country's.  Then again I'm not that sure it was fought for our interests either.  What did we get out of it?  It seems like it was more just a murderous game of "Whack-a-Mole" or at least it became that after Bush/Cheney lost interest in al Qaeda and moved on to play in the sandbox of Iraq.

"Afghans died in a war that's not ours,' Karzai said in the interview published on Sunday, just a month before an election to pick his successor.

He was quoted as saying he was certain the 12-year-old war, America's longest and launched after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was "for the U.S. security and for the Western interest."

...the Afghan leader said he was deeply troubled by the war's casualties, including those in U.S. military operations, and felt betrayed by what he described as an insufficient U.S. focus on going after Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan rather than in Afghan villages.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan dissipated his country's "common cause" with the United States, Karzai told the newspaper.
 
The Post said Karzai told his interviewers as he escorted them out of his office on Saturday night: "To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the U.S. government, give them my anger, my extreme anger." 

A good deal of the blame does lie with us.  We never established a coherent narrative for our Afghan War.  As 'victory' became increasingly elusive we kept moving the goal posts.  We kept watering down our objectives.  The war we left was not the war we went in to fight and win.  Context went out the window.  We may have had, as Karzai claims, 'interests' going in but we had damned few interests left at the end other than getting to hell out.

Obama, Time to Wash Your Hands of Afghanistan

If the United States cannot come up with one scenario in which it would return American troops to Afghanistan in large numbers, it should fold its tent and leave by the end of the year.  Put another way, what does the U.S. think it can achieve in Afghanistan with a meagre force of 3,000 soldiers when it accomplished next to nothing over more than a decade with 112,000 ISAF troops and another 60,000 American soldiers?

Karzai, even though he's on his way out, isn't playing ball with the Americans, refusing to conclude a new bilateral security agreement (BSA).  Perhaps Karzai's successor will be more agreeable but that still doesn't leave the Americans much time if they're to keep the option of a complete departure by the end of 2014. 

Maybe this is all a matter of optics.  Nobody in Washington, either on Capital Hill or the Pentagon, wants to be tagged with another "last chopper out of Saigon" moment.  Yet that's the very scenario they might be creating if they leave behind a face-saving, token contingent that could be run out of the country in the ensuing civil war.

Obama should bear in mind the warning of a British general a century ago:

“When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire.”

So wrote British general, Andrew Skeen, in the early 1900s in his guide to military operations in the Pashtun tribal belt. 

He Said What?

Poor Hamid Karzai.  The old bugger has to run the assassins' gauntlet until 2014 when he can step down and di di mau his sorry ass and his loot the hell out of Afghanistan.   In the meantime he'll need plenty of protection, as much as he can get, and US forces are vital to Hamid's continued well being.  So why does Karzai keep saying really stupid things?

The latest gaffe was a remark Karzai made during an interview when he said that, if there was ever a war between Pakistan and the US, Afghanistan would side with Pakistan.

"If conflict breaks out between Pakistan and the US, we will be beside with Pakistan."

Afghan government officials quickly backtracked, arguing the remark was taken out of context.

It's All How You Look At It, Hamid

If you want to make million-dollar bribes sound good, come straight out and admit the fact and then say it's all perfectly okay.

The Top Dog in the criminal enterprise we call the government of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai himself, says sure he gets bags full of cash from Iran.   A million dollars a shot.   Twice a year, maybe more, who's counting?   Sure the money's paid right to his office.  And what is the money for?

"They have asked for good relations in return, and for lots of other things in return,”says wily Hamid.

And what exactly does Hamid do with the loot?   He says it all goes, “to help the presidential office and to help dispense assistance in various ways to the employees here and to people outside.”

And just what is wrong with that?   After all, he quickly retorts, the Americans have been sending him bags of cash for a long time.  The Americans, "give us bags of money.  Yes, yes they do.  It's all the same.  So let's not make this an issue."

Silly me.  All this time I thought Afghan bosses got all the cash they needed from the narcotics trade.   Somewhere, in some little offshore tax haven, there are probably a bundle of discrete accounts growing steadily larger by the month as highly placed Afghans wait for the day their western enforcers get fed up and leave.  I'll bet that Hamid and his brother, Ahmed, won't be waiting to hop the last plane out either.

Karzai Courts Hekmatyar? Let's Just Pack Up and Leave Now.

The Times of London reports that Afghan president Hamid Karzai is offering a power sharing deal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. GulHek is a lot like a monster without the Hollywood special effects.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on America’s “most wanted” terrorist list, is to hold talks with the Kabul government within the next few weeks.

Hekmatyar is the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, which has been fighting Nato troops alongside the Taliban. The hardline group is responsible for many attacks in the eastern and central regions, including the massacre of 10 French soldiers in Sarobi last year. It controls Kapisa province, just 50 miles north of Kabul.

The party is expected to be offered several ministries and provincial governorships in return for laying down its arms and agreeing not to disrupt the presidential elections due in August.

Hekmatyar is, how can I put this, an evil bastard. From http://www.warlordsofafghanistan.com/:

In a Hollywood movie Hekmatyar would be the evil foil to the heroic Masud. He would be an angry Islamic fundamentalist dressed in black, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women and assassinating local tribal leaders that might rival his power. He would be the pawn of foreign secret service paymasters like the ISI, CIA, and Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He would unfeelingly sacrifice peasants for his cause, rocket the helpless civilians mixed in with his enemies, and his ruthless ambition would prevent the creation of a new peace. Unfortunately, in real life Hekmatyar was all these things.

...When Masud finally defeated Najibullah in 1992, all the mujahideen factions converged on Kabul. Masud outwitted Hekmatyar and slipped into the city before him. A round robin of side-swapping, backstabbing, and massacre among Hekmatyar, Masud, Dostum, and Mazari followed. The citizens and buildings of Kabul were the big losers. The problem was that Masud could not be president as he was a Tajik, not a Pashtun. Afghan kings had been Pashtun for hundreds of years. Hekmatyar was the most powerful Pashtun, and had he not been such an evil sod, Masud might have accepted some kind of deal. In the end neither prevailed. The ISI switched support from the stalemated Hekmatyar and backed Mullah Omar, the new leader of the Taliban.

After years in exile in Iran, Hekmatyar returned to Afghanistan and raised another militia once the Taliban were run out of Dodge. This time, however, he threw his hand in with his former rivals, the Taliban. It should be nice having Hek back in his old stomping grounds (he really did stomp the place), Kabul.

This is it, folks. The warlords have won.

What's the Holdup in Afghanistan?

This doesn't make any sense. NATO officials announced today that registration for the Afghan national elections is complete. According to the Associated Press report, 15.6-million people have been registered to vote, up from the 12.6 registered for the 2005 vote.

If voter registration is finished in mid-March, it's hard to understand why the general elections had to be postponed from May (the date under the Afghan constitution) to August (the date picked by the electoral commission).

It does sound like the fix is in. There has been speculation that the three-month delay is intended to allow potential rivals to Hamid Karzai to come forward and campaign.

Hurry Up or Get Out - Karzai

Oh poor Hamid. He's getting so desperate you can never tell what will come pouring out of his mouth from one day to the next. Here's the latest from our man in Kabul, President Karzai himself, from the Toronto Star:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a visiting United Nations Security Council delegation Tuesday that the international community should set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan.

It appeared to be the first time Karzai has called for such a deadline to defeat Taliban militants and raise a stable and competent Afghan security establishment.

"If there is no deadline, we have the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations," Karzai was quoted as saying in a statement from his office.

Now wait a minute, Hamid. You want us to promise to destroy the Taliban by, oh I don't know, let's pick next June 17th and, if we don't eliminate them by then, you'll be free to negotiate a settlement.

I've got an idea. How about we make the deadline midnight, December 31, 2008? That deadline is about as meaningful as any other we could possibly set. Then, starting on New Year's Day we'll begin packing up our tanks and trucks, artillery and, most important of all, our soldiers so we won't get in the way of your negotiations. After all, the Taliban have said repeatedly they won't negotiate while we're still in your country.

Oh yeah, as for that "stable and competent Afghan security establishment" well we'd better just let that one slide. You can't even hope for a stable and competent security service if it works for a thoroughly corrupt government, something you haven't even tried to clean up.

Canada's Troubles in Afghanistan Start at the Top

Here are a few home truths to keep in the back of your mind while weighing our progress in this maniacal war without end on terror:

1. An otherwise winnable war can be lost by bad military leadership.

2. An otherwise winnable war can be lost by bad political leadership.

3. Wars are rarely lost at the 11th hour. The groundwork for failure is often laid early in the game.

4. Wars are usually lost long before the losing side realizes it has failed. The outcome of a war may be conclusively decided long before the losing side has sustained enough damage to acknowledge the fact.

5. Superior technology and firepower are a poor substitute for competent political and military leadership.

6. Time is a precious and limited commodity in warfare. Fatigue sets in quickly and can be fatal.

7. Rarely are wars fought for the reasons fed to the public.



Pretty much each of these truths comes to bear on the way in which we perceive the war in Afghanistan. Our military leadership has been haphazard - at best. Read General Petraeus' counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24. This eye opener essentially digests the experiences and lessons of asymmetrical warfare since the days of the Romans. The players change, their weapons change, but the core principles survive. Then, having read that enlightening work, apply its recommendations to what we've been doing in Afghanistan. Sorry, I can 't do that for you, there's far too much material involved. Just, please, don't tell me we have the slightest hope of "winning" in Afghanistan until you've at least read the manual (which is, by the way, available, at no charge, in PDF format on the internet).

You don't need to take some measly 4-star American combat general's word for it. Read Caesar, read T.E. Lawrence or so many others. You'll find it all there. But - don't argue Afghanistan with me until you're able to discuss the salient aspects of guerrilla warfare.

By Petraeus' own writings, we're making every mistake in the book (including FM 3-24) in Afghanistan. I so wish the ghost of Colonel Lawrence had been around to whisper a bit of this reality to General Hillier before he cajoled his way through Paul Martin's office and on into Kandahar. Which leads me to bad political leadership.

I fully accept that Paul Martin fell for a song and dance act on Afghanistan. If, as Martin aides claim, he only approved it on Hillier's assurance that the forces could take it on and take on another major mission at the same time, what was Hillier doing giving this assurance? Either Hillier was smart enough to know that wasn't true - or he wasn't smart enough to know whether it was true. No matter which end you approach this from, it was lousy military leadership.

Then, as the enemy grew in strength and the mission took on burdens far beyond the worst-case scenario given Martin - Hillier did nothing to see that the Canadian force was appropriately reinforced.

Look at it this way. Hillier got the PM to sign on - and openly told Canadian TV cameras - that the 2.500-strong force was sufficient because we were going into that large province but only to kill "a few dozen ...scumbags." Given the history of Afghanistan, all its troubles and associated circumstances and perils, how could anyone say that? You don't take on missions - voluntarily, even beggingly - unless you're absolutely certain that the force you take will be able to cope with a worst-case situation. And then, when that worst-case situation emerges and catches you shorthanded, you do nothing to increase your numbers to the size of the force you ought to have taken in there when you first outlined the mission?

Imagine a Canadian general going to the prime minister of the day and coming out with approval for a war that will utterly exhaust our armed forces and leave them much less able to deal with any other threat anywhere, including Canada itself, that may emerge - and for years, possibly generations. Imagine that. Yet, somehow, that's precisely what's staring us in the face right now. If Hillier didn't warn Paul Martin off this godawful predicament, he ought to come out and explain why not? The Canadian people need an answer from The Big Cod on that one.

Sorry, ladies and gents, but winding up where we are right now , given all the clues and indicators, was foreseeable as at least "possible" if not straight out "probable." Why did this seem to come as such an unimagineable surprise by our military leaders?


Our political leadership failed - and continues to fail us. I don't believe you need to have much expertise in military history to see this coming down the line. Somehow Paul Martin accepted some pretty baseless assurances when he and his organization ought to have known better. But if benign gullibility is Martin's crime, his successor's has been far more culpable. Harper wants to be one of the boys, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of the other English-speaking democracies, the good old white boys.

Harper's leadership on Afghanistan is entirely politically-driven. That's bad news for the troops because it means their mission is compromised by a political agenda. The best trained, best equipped and most capable and motivated troops cannot overcome weak political and military leadership.

The Afghanistan war, or at least our chapter of it, began in 2001. Now we're in the bottom half of 2008. In the course of those seven years a lot has changed, not much of it for the good.

Afghanistan remains a failed state. Why? One reason is the destabilizing role of the insurgency, a problem compounded by the chaos in neighbouring Pakistan. That, however, is only one reason and there are others. Another key reason is that a strong Afghan state with a powerful central government is not in the interests of some very key players, among them the warlords (to whom we've handed over most of the country) and the drug barons.

It's no accident that Hamid Karzai remains the mayor of Kabul. He exercises only those powers the warlords are willing to give him and we're not doing a damned thing about that. Why? Because that would risk bringing us into conflict not only with a Pashtun insurgency but also with the Hazara, Turkmen, Tajik and Uzbek leadership. We'd be at war with everybody.

Time is a precious commodity in warfare and seven years is an almost unbelievable amount of time for a war and yet, as Milne noted in the previous piece from the Guardian, we've not achieved a single objective we had for invading and occupying Afghanistan.

There's no faulting our troops in this. They're not responsible for the abject failure of their leadership, political and military. The soldiers at the sharp end are doing a terrific job. They're well trained, committed and very capable but they can't overcome their shortage in numbers or the fundamental flaws inherent in "the mission" that will deny their efforts any meaningful victory.

It was stunning to read last week that the National Post itself has clued in to the fact that we're woefully understrength in Afghanistan. Wow, and it only took them seven years to notice! Even the Spot understands that we can't win in Afghanistan with the paltry forces we've deployed to Kandahar. Maybe if the Spot can figure that out there's hope yet that our politicians and generals may also reach that same state of belated enlightenment.

Afghanisnam Now (Redux)

All that's missing is Francis Ford Coppola. If we could only get him to show up with one of his enormous camera crews, we might just be able to turn Afghanistan into a real war. And maybe that's our only hope of legitimizing the furious fiasco we're foolishly waging in that country.

Big events on the weekend. The Taliban put in an appearance at a big government whoop-up in downtown Kabul and got within spitting distance of Hamid Karzai, popping a few rounds into the reviewing stand and then evaporating. Apparently no one remembered to tell the gunmen to be sure to yell "Bitch" on their way out.

Now you would think that this latest Taliban attempt on Karzai's life would have him racing about in that lovely green cape demanding NATO hunt these bastards down and kill them, kill them all. Well, not quite. In fact, just the opposite. Hamid actually told the New York Times on the weekend that NATO and the US should stop arresting Taliban suspects. Yes, that's right - Hamid Karzai wants us to leave the Taliban alone, leave them to him.

This doesn't make any sense, does it? Of course it does. All it takes is a bit of grade school arithmetic. The Taliban is (optimistically) said to control as little as 10% of Afghanistan. Karzai is (optimistically) said to control as much as 30% of Afghanistan. The country's warlords (other than those who already work for Karzai) are then left with the remaining 60%. The warlords have coalesced into the thoroughly Disloyal Opposition even calling themselves the United National Front.

Now, as for the Taliban, the opposition United National Front is conducting separate negotiations with the Pashtun insurgents. They're cutting out Karzai and the Kabul government and they're doing it because - because they can. Our guy, Karzai, is getting sidelined. If the UNF strikes a deal with the Taliban, Karzai becomes effectively irrelevant.

But what about the Afghan National Army? Yes, exactly. Other than NATO and US forces, it's the Afghan National Army that props up the wobbly Karzai government. So far it's more or less been willing to fight the Taliban but that's no guarantee that the ANA would even consider moving against the Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and lesser tribes. More likely it would dissolve along ethnic lines into modern, western-trained militias under the command of their respective warlords.

At the end of the day, "We" (NATO and the US) may be the force of unintended national unity for Afghanistan because history shows the one thing that manages to unite the usually raucous Afghan tribes is having a foreign invader's ass to kick. Karzai can be a stand-in for the former Marxist government and we can be the stand-in for the Soviet "assistance" force. Everyone else gets to play Mujaheed on our western ass until we give up and leave. Then, as before, they can sort out their own ethno-political differences in the time-honoured Afghan fashion.

How did we get in this mess? Simple. We failed to properly constitute the Afghanistan government after the Taliban had been driven out. Then we compounded that by failing to finish off the Taliban while we had the chance, when they were in disarray and hiding in the mountains. We left Karzai weak and unable to thwart the demands of the warlords and we left the Taliban able to regroup and recover. Here are some insights from Nick Grono writing last week in The Guardian:

"The sad reality is that Afghanistan has suffered from sustained conflict for almost 30 years. The enduring paradigm is that of abusive power-holders preying on the local populations. The power-holders change - absolute monarchs, Afghan communists, Soviet military, mujahideen, Taliban, and now re-empowered warlords - but the problem remains the same: highly personalised rule, a culture of impunity, and the abuse of large sections of the population on ethnic, regional, tribal, or sectarian grounds.

The US and its allies reinforced this pattern of grievance and impunity in 2001 and 2002 by outsourcing the fighting and stabilisation operations to discredited and largely disempowered warlords and commanders. When they entrenched themselves in their former fiefdoms, they reverted to their old practices of human rights abuse, corruption and drug production, working once again to build their own networks at the expense of central government authority.

The result is festering grievances and an alienated population that often has little faith in its leadership and offers rich pickings for insurgent recruitment."

Their folks, see, what did I tell you? We lost this thing at the very start and allowed our initial failures to ripen and grow and spread to where we are today. But we're the well-intentioned, rich and supremely powerful western world, aren't we? Yes we are indeed, and so what? Rich or poor, weak or powerful, when you get into a war, you have to fight the war that's in front of you. You have to meet its demands and its challenges because it doesn't respect your wealth and your power if you don't employ them.

Back in 2001-2002 we ought to have been deploying a force of 300,000 soldiers or more to Afghanistan, enough to secure the Karzai government, genuinely crush the Taliban and completely defang the warlords. We needed to occupy and secure the countryside so that the villagers and tribal elders were protected from the predations of the insurgents, the warlords and (shudder) the government itself. In neglecting to do those things, in being miserly with our wealth and power when they might have done some good, we prescribed our own defeat.

We're treading water, barely, while the sharks begin to gather at our feet and our government's only response is to not look down.

We've lost too many fine young people in Afghanistan and we're bound to lose a lot more before this farce is over.

Bernier to Karzai - Ditch Khalid

Canada's ForAffMin Maxime Bernier may need to brush up on his diplomacy.

Speaking to reporters at Kandahar airfield, Bernier said it's time for Afghan president Hamid Karzai to ditch Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid.

"I think (Karzai) can work with us to be sure the governor will be more powerful, the governor will do what he has to do to help us," he said. "There's a question to maybe have a new governor. They're a sovereign state, they're going to have to decide the measure the president will have to take about the future of the governor here.

"Is it the right person at the right place at the right time? President Karzai will have to answer these questions as soon as possible."

Of course there's nothing in Bernier's remarks intended to meddle with Afghan sovereignty. Yeah, right. Then again, maybe Karzai needs Bernier to tell him how to run Kandahar province, eh?

It probably won't take more than a day or two for Karzai to fire back. He got enmeshed in a pretty vicious war or words with the Brits over his appointment for governor of Helmand province. Being an Afghan, these remarks can represent a huge loss of face, especially to a national leader utterly beholden to (aka "held captive by") his nation's warlords.

Afghanistan - Awash in Opium And Democracy

Thanks to their brilliantly thought-out constitution, Afghanis are scheduled to go to the polls 11-times over the next 17 years. They'll be voting to elect presidents and parliamentarians and provincial and district counsellors.

Karzai's job comes up for a vote next May and most of his parliamentarians face elections the following year. For a country wracked by insurgency, this is a real security nightmare.

But, according to The Economist, Karzai remains the favourite to win the presidential runoff.

"Mr Karzai has not said he will run, though most people expect him to (not least, the Western governments which back him). His popular support, however, is lukewarm at best. His government has been tarnished by charges of incompetence and corruption, while his international backers have struggled to fulfil promises to rebuild the country. Large parts of the south, Mr Karzai's heartland, have descended into insurgent-inspired chaos. The president has become increasingly critical of the West, and particularly of Britain, the Afghans' historic foe.

"But, as in 2004, Westerners think Mr Karzai will prove the worst Afghan leader except for all the others. He is from the dominant Durrani federation of the majority Pushtun tribe. He participated in the jihad against the Soviet occupiers but does not have blood on his hands from the civil war that followed. He did not leave his homeland for sanctuary abroad. (Those who did are called dogwashers: the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, said they washed the dogs of rich Americans.)

"No other prominent politician has that mix. Afghanistan may have capable technocrats on call, such as Ehsanullah Bayat, a telecoms mogul, Amin Arsala, a former vice-president, and even, improbably, America's (Afghan-born) ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad. But they lived abroad. It also has former mujahideen commanders such as Burhanuddin Rabbani and Younis Qanooni, both Tajik leaders, and Gul Agha Sherzai, the energetic major of Jalalabad, whom Mr Karzai dubs the bulldozer. But they are tarnished by warlordism. An excess of would-be leaders, in short. And an excess of ways to vote for them."

The Happy Face of Afghanistan

According to US Director of National Intelligence, Hamid Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan, the Taliban another 10% and the rest is under the control of warlords. These questionable number were what Mitch McConnell produced when he appeared before the Senate armed services committee yesterday.

McConnell, of course, happily carries water for the Bush White House. That's why those numbers, grim as they may sound, are unquestionably inflated. What does McConnell mean by "controlling" territory? A lot of southern Afghanistan isn't "controlled" at all but is in a disputed state of insurgency. He obviously lumps that in to Karzai's 30%. As for the Taliban then controlling, undisputed, 10% of the country, that's a far cry from the estimates of knowledgeable independents such as Sarah Chayes.

He obviously maintains that Karzai "controls" the cities, Kandahar and Kabul for example. That's becoming increasingly unclear. As Chayes notes, the drug barons openly build mansions in Kabul. And then there's the warlords.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a showdown in Kabul between the Afghan police and infamous warlord/thug Dostum. A disaffected Dostum aide had split from his master. Dostum and about 50-60 militiamen stormed the aide's house, killed two of his bodyguards and kidnapped the guy. The Afghan police managed to rescue the badly injured aide and then surrounded Dostum's compound, a hundred of them. Dostum went to the rooftop and hurled taunts and insults at them, daring them to attack. The police simply went away. Now is that how Karzai "controls" his capital?

When Dostum is behind bars for murder and kidnapping, when Karzai arrests the drug barons who sport their wealth freely in Kabul, then you can tell me that Karzai controls the city. Reigning as mayor at the suffrance of warlords and criminals isn't controlling anything.

Here's Something Karzai Can Tackle - The Sale of Afghan Kids

Our good friend and faithful ally in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, must be about the most useless president of any country on earth. He can't handle the insurgency that's spreading throughout his country. He can't handle the flourishing opium trade that has left his country strapped to a runaway narco-economy. He can't handle the rampant corruption in his police and security services. He can't prevent torture in his prisons. He can't bring his country's warlords to heel.

He has been able to safeguard his own job and install his friends in high places. He has managed to thwart the UN's efforts to appoint a super-envoy to organize reconstruction and aid efforts lest that somehow diminish Karzai's own standing.

But surely he has time to protect his country's children. The UN is warning of an increasing problem of parents selling children. I'm sure it's just a coincidence but the kids being sold are all girls. Hmm, wonder why that could be.

In three recent cases, the parents all pleaded poverty, claiming they sold their daughters because they couldn't afford to feed them. In fairness, famine is a widespread problem in Afghanistan, particularly this winter. The going rate seems to range anywhere from $20 up to $240 per girl.

It seems Karzai & Company just haven't had time to pass laws prohibiting the sale and trafficking in Afghan kids or even child abuse. The good news is that they've assured the UN they're working on it.

The Taliban Are Winning

Further proof that the Manley Panel report is a load of political hogwash came today in the release of several reports showing that we're not winning in Afghanistan but the Taliban is.

The Atlantic Council of the United States, in a report prepared by former Afghanistan NATO commander, retured US general James L. Jones, warns that NATO is, at best, in a "stategic stalemate" as the Taliban expands its influence in the countryside and the Karzai government fails to carry out vital reforms and reconstruction. From the Washington Post:

"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," said the report by the Atlantic Council of the United States. "Afghanistan remains a failing state. It could become a failed state," warned the report, which called for "urgent action" to overhaul NATO strategy in coming weeks before an anticipated new offensive by Taliban insurgents in the spring.

A second report, by the Afghan Study Group, co-chaired by General Jones and US diplomat Thomas R. Pickering stressed the urgent need for the appointment of a UN High Commissioner to coordinate the international effort, a move that Karzai sabotaged last weekend.

Progress in Afghanistan "is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country," said the report by the Afghanistan Study Group.

Wow, we're not winning? The Taliban's winning? Odd that our military wunderkind, Rick Hillier, hasn't been sounding the alarm here at home, isn't it?

Of course we're not winning, something the Karzai government all but guarantees. Lest everybody realize how useless he is, Karzai blocks the appointment of Paddy Ashdown as UN super envoy, torpedoing it at the very last moment and setting the whole effort right back on its heels. You'll know Karzai is serious about salvaging Afghanistan the day he arrests his first drug lord. That's right, he hasn't arrested one of them in the past six years and it's so easy. All he would have to do is start with his own brother Ahmed who's reported to be in thick with the opium trade.

If there's to be any hope of saving Afghanistan we have to get rid of Karzai and the warlords and drug lords and common criminals who have insinuated themselves into positions of power in his government. We have to stop pretending that this guy is our guy. He's not.

Forget the helicopters, forget the extra troops, forget Manley and Harper. That's all meaningless nonsense until we can establish some sort of decent, functioning governance for Afghanistan. Maybe this is one of those Diem moments. Then again, how well did that turn out?

Karzai's Kabul Uprising

Hamid Karzai is on the warpath, in revolt, and his antics could have major repercussions for the US, NATO and us too. Over the weekend Karzai shook up his Western benefactors by torpedoing the appointment of Lord Paddy Ashdown who was slotted to become the UN's super envoy to Afghanistan. It's a tale of grand intrigue that our media totally missed. Fortunately the story is brilliantly laid out in Asia Times:

Kabul knew for months about the impending appointment of Ashdown as a key step in a new NATO strategy spearheaded by the US and Britain, aimed at stabilizing the Afghan situation. Karzai knew detailed planning had gone into the move involving NATO, the EU and the United Nations Security Council. But Karzai waited patiently until the eleventh hour before shooting it down publicly on Saturday in a interview with the BBC while attending the World Economic Forum meet in the Swiss resort town of Davos. The move was pre-planned and carried out in a typical Afghan way with maximum effect.

Karzai insists there has been a serious misunderstanding of motives because Kabul had never taken a "decision" on Ashdown's appointment. He is perfectly right in saying so. But in actuality, Karzai has put on display his proud Afghan temper. He has taken umbrage that Washington and London took the decision on Ashdown's appointment in consultation with Brussels and thereupon got UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to execute it, all the time taking Kabul's agreement for granted.

Karzai anticipated that Ashdown, true to his reputation in the Balkans, would function like a colonial viceroy. Karzai knows that the Western agencies and organizations operating in Afghanistan lack coordination. But a "unified command" under Ashdown would create a counterpoint in Kabul to Karzai's own authority. Karzai didn't want that to happen.

The bottom line concerns Karzai's political future. He sizes up that Ashdown is part of a political package leading toward a post-Karzai era. There has been persistent chatter in recent weeks that Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to the UN - an ethnic Afghan - is in the mix for a run as president of Afghanistan. According to Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, Karzai took the rumor seriously and point-blank asked Khalilzad about it when the two met in London in October, but Khalilzad "didn't give a Shermanesque response".

The UN's capacity to spearhead the political process in Afghanistan now stands seriously impaired. This deprives Washington of a neutral international bridge - but under its control - leading toward the Taliban camp, which is a pre-requisite for commencement of any meaningful intra-Afghan dialogue. Meanwhile, the war hangs perilously on the edge of an abyss.

Almost everyone is talking to the Taliban one way or another. Confusion is near-total. All this is happening at an awkward time when NATO lacks a counterinsurgency strategy. In particular, Britain, which lately assumed a lead role within NATO, has been embarrassed. Karzai singled out British operations in Afghanistan for criticism in an interview with the Times newspaper of London on the eve of his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Davos on Friday. Karzai alleged that Afghan people "suffered" from the coming of the British. He had little praise for the 7,800 British troops deployed in Afghanistan. He said, "Both the American and British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And, when they came in, the Taliban came."

As The Times commented, "British forces believe that, in many respects, their Afghan allies pose more of a challenge to their mission than the Taliban ... It is the Afghan government that is now proving more of an obstacle to stability in an area where a mixture of official corruption, ineptitude and paranoia are stymying British efforts."

...it remains to be seen how long Washington can keep Karzai away from the reach of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Russia and China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization. From the Ashdown saga, Karzai must have realized his capacity to shake up US strategy in the region. In an interview with CNN in Davos on Thursday, Karzai said, "We have opened our doors to them [Iran]. They have been helping us in Afghanistan." Karzai then insisted that the Bush administration has "wisely understood that Iran is Afghanistan's neighbor".

Musharraf will know that his own defiance of Washington's recent attempts to dictate the nature of the political set-up in Islamabad now enters a conclusive phase. He will know that with such a first-rate mess-up in the war in Afghanistan, Washington is hardly in a position to be intrusive, let alone dictate terms of engagement to him. In a curious way, Karzai has considerably smoothened for him the passage from now until the elections in Pakistan on February 8. In all probability, Pakistan, which has excellent intelligence outfits in Kabul, knew in advance that Karzai was about to give shock-and-awe treatment to Washington. Clearly, Musharraf has begun finger-pointing at anyone who will even remotely suggest the need of deploying US troops on Pakistani soil.


Timely backing from China has also strengthened Musharraf's hands. In an extraordinary commentary titled "No more turmoil in Pakistan is permissible", China's People's Daily has come out with a whole-hearted endorsement of Musharraf's leadership. It said, "President Pervez Musharraf has resorted to a host of viable measures ... Pakistani government has been making unremitting efforts in defense of the supreme national interests ... Some opposition forces at home and a few powers overseas impose pressures or punitive measures against Pakistan in the name of 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'opposition to terrorism'.

Musharraf must be greatly relieved that Beijing has finally broken its silence and come down unequivocally in support of him at a crucial juncture in his desperate resistance of the US game plan to remove him from power and to disgrace the military by deploying American troops on Pakistani soil.

Increasingly, Karzai and Musharraf find themselves in a somewhat similar predicament. They cannot do without American support, but they do not accept US pressure tactics. They know US regional policies are part of their problem within their own countries and, therefore, they need to differentiate themselves for their political survival. Paradoxically, their attempt is to perpetuate the US's dependence on them while they work at consolidating a political base of their own, which is independent of US control. In Karzai's case, the 3-4 million votes that Musharraf can mobilize from the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan will always remain a decisive factor in his re-election as president. Besides, there are regional powers - China and Iran in particular - which are keenly watching the geopolitics surrounding Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Iranian thinking is that there is a concerted US-Israeli plot to destabilize Musharraf's regime with the twin objective of the US establishing a base in Pakistan for its military intelligence operations directed against Russia and China and at the same time for neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear capability.

...Both China and Iran are keen on the stability of the Karzai government. Both would like Karzai to continue to explore the parameters of a neutral, independent foreign policy free of US manipulation. Both visualize that Afghanistan can serve as a vital land bridge between them, playing a strategic role in the rapid expansion of Sino-Iranian relations.

Wheels spinning within wheels and we're stuck debating another thousand soldiers for Kandahar so that we can prop up a guy who is working hard at cross purposes and whose country appears headed in a direction of its own. Astonishing, unbelievable. Are we really so naive, so myopic, maybe even so stupid?

Time To Topple Karzai?

Hamid Karzai is turning into a royal pain in the ass and a useless one at that. Maybe it's come to the point where either NATO goes or he does.

Karzai has just blocked the appointment of UN super envoy, Paddy Ashdown. Lord Ashdown had made clear he wanted far-reaching powers to serve as overall co-ordinator for international aid and political efforts in Afghanistan. Now his candidacy is up in Afghan smoke.

From the Times Online:

"The latest snub came as British officials were already fuming over Mr Karzai’s criticism of the role of British troops in Afghanistan. In an outburst to journalists on Thursday, the Afghan leader claimed that British forces had failed in their mission in Helmand province.

“Without British troops in Helmand province there would be no control over the influence of the Taleban in the south, and no control over the Taleban’s exploitation of the poppy,” said one senior army officer who has served in Helmand.

The Afghan leader claimed that Helmand had been under Kabul’s control before the British troops arrived on the scene, and that the province was now overrun with Taleban.

The new tension has been caused by differences between the Kabul Government and the British troops on the ground over Mr Karzai’s choice of local officials to run the Helmand administration and the security forces.

President Karzai expressed particular frustration at the way he claimed the British had forced him to get rid of Sher Muhammad Akhunzada, his chosen and trusted governor in Helmand.
His deployment is yet another signal of Mr Karzai’s lack of faith in British policy in southern Afghanistan and his belief that warlords can succeed where governance fails."

In 2006, the Brits forced the ouster of Sher Muhammad Akhunzada and his replacement by Mohammed Daud. The Brits felt Akhunzada was a corrupt warlord with ties to the opium industry and considered Daud, by conrast, honest and reliable. Maybe Daud was but that didn't stop Karzai from sacking him in December, 2006. And Karzai has blamed the Brits ever since.

From The Telgraph:

"There was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces," Mr Karzai told journalists on the margins of the Davos Economic Forum.

"Before that, we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge. They came and said 'your governor is no good'. I said 'allright, do we have a replacement for this governor, do you have enough forces?'

"Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taliban came."
Mr Karzai added: "The mistake was that we removed a local arrangement without having a replacement. We removed the police force. That was not good. The security forces were not in sufficient numbers or information about the province. That is why the Taliban came back in."

Karzai is up for re-election next year and this may be time a real leader for Afghanistan came forward. Karzai has just been too ineffective and his government too susceptible to warlords and drug lords to have done any good. According to a new book just released, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop by Antonio Giustozzi, reviewed in Asia Times, Karzai has contributed to the resurgence of the Taliban:

"Giustozzi partially attributes the re-entry of the Taliban to the feebleness of President Hamid Karzai's administration, which is geared to accommodating tribal strongmen and warlords rather than to building a professional bureaucracy. Corruption, infighting and arrogance among provincial authorities delegitimize the government and open space for the Taliban to re-emerge. For instance, the abuses of Helmand's governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, turned an uncommitted population into Taliban sympathizers by 2006. Harsh methods of the government's intelligence service drive many into the lap of the insurgency. The general weakness of the provincial administration alienates tribal elders who otherwise resent the Taliban's impudence. "

Trying to salvage Afghanistan from its insurgency is hard enough without being undermined by a hapless, corrupt central government. Next year's Afghan elections may be our best, last chance to sort out the Kabul conundrum.

America's Shakey Assessment of Afghanistan

To listen to Peter MacKay and some Canadian generals, we're making solid progress in Afghanistan. That's the problem with listening to Peter MacKay and his generals. They can't afford to tell you how miserably "the mission" is faltering.

But, when it comes to tall tales you can expect the tallest to come from the Americans. So, what's their take on Afghanistan? According to the Washington Post, it's not nearly as rosey as the line coming out of Ottawa:

...the latest assessment [of the National Security Council] concluded that only "the kinetic piece" -- individual battles against Taliban fighters -- has shown substantial progress, while improvements in the other areas continue to lag, a senior administration official said.

This judgment reflects sharp differences between US military and intelligence officials on where the Afghan war is headed. Intelligence analysts acknowledge the battlefield victories, but they highlight the Taliban's unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium poppy cultivation and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai as signs that the war effort is deteriorating.

The contrasting views echo repeated internal disagreements over the Iraq war: While the military finds success in a virtually unbroken line of tactical achievements, intelligence officials worry about a looming strategic failure.

But one senior intelligence official, who like others interviewed was not authorized to discuss Afghanistan on the record, said such gains are fleeting. "One can point to a lot of indicators that are positive . . . where we go out there and achieve our objectives and kill bad guys," the official said. But the extremists, he added, seem to have little trouble finding replacements.

Although growing numbers of foreigners -- primarily Pakistanis -- are joining the Taliban ranks, several officials said the primary source of new recruits remains disaffected Afghans fearful of opposing the Taliban and increasingly disillusioned with their own government. Overall, "there doesn't seem to be a lot of progress being made. . . . I would think that from [the Taliban] standpoint, things are looking decent," the intelligence official said.

Senior White House officials privately express pessimism about Afghanistan.

At the moment, several officials said, their concern is focused far more on the domestic situation in Afghanistan, where increasing numbers are losing faith in Karzai's government in Kabul. According to a survey released last month by the Asia Foundation, 79 percent of Afghans felt that the government does not care what they think, while 69 percent felt that it is not acceptable to publicly criticize the government.

Gee, does anyone remember another conflict not all that long ago where America won every battle but finished up losing the war?

Karzai Cozies Up To Taliban

With the Taliban insurgents said to be spreading throughout the Afghanistan countryside, Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he's in almost daily contact with the insurgents.

"Only this week I've had more than five or six major contacts, approaches, by the leadership of the Taliban trying to find out if they can come back to Afghanistan,” Karzai told reporters.

Of course it's not clear why the Taliban would be reaching out to Karzai for permission to "come back to Afghanistan." According to the Senlis Council the Taliban have already come back to Afghanistan in a big way and are closing in on Kabul.

By the way, here's a picture of another Karzai, Hamid's brother Ahmad, said to be a big wheel in the opium trade. Ahmad is shown meeting with notorious warlord Gul Agha. Nice, very nice.

The Bitter Truth

Canada's and NATO's policies in Afghanistan are fundamentally flawed. We're just not getting this right and it makes the loss of each of our soldiers killed over there especially bitter to take.

Since I began this blog back in August, I've been writing about the profound mistakes we're making in Afghanistan. If you do a quick search of this site you'll find those articles and there are plenty of them. Taken together, they stand as an indictment of our sitting prime minister and his top soldier, General Rick Hillier.

I wish that I had some genius no one else has, that I was prescient at a mystical level. I don't and I'm not. The fact is that everything I've drawn upon in coming to my criticisms is relatively common knowledge, not even very obscure. Insurgency and counter-insurgency is probably the most clearly defined form of warfare that exists. It's the only form of warfare in which the weakest side - the one that fights at a huge disadvantage in firepower, manpower, communications and mobility - almost always wins. It's been practised time and again and it's an experiment that produces consistent results. Every mistake that we're making in Afghanistan today has been demonstrated repeatedly in the past.

But what do I know. Fortunately I don't have to rely on my say so. The US military has finally come to its senses, digested the lessons of history (some of that history they themselves made) and produced a new counter-insurgency field manual FM 3-24. It virtually catalogues everything we're doing wrong in Afghanistan. Check out Lawrence of Arabia, Col. T.E. Lawrence has his excellent accounts of his successful insurgency in the Middle East in WWI. There are several others.

Now Thomas Walkom, writing in today's Toronto Star, summarizes a report written by Gordon

Smith, now director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, is Canada's former ambassador to NATO and a former deputy minister of foreign affairs. His Canada in Afghanistan: Is it Working? was done for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, a Calgary think-tank that is not known for being squishy on matters military.

Smith maintains that negotiating with the Taliban is our only realistic option:

"'We do not believe that the Taliban can be defeated or eliminated as a political entity in any meaningful time frame by Western armies using military measures,' he says.

"The reasons for this are fourfold. First, the Taliban are still the dominant force among Pashtuns in Afghanistan's south, where Canadian troops are operating. NATO bête noire Mullah Omar 'remains unchallenged as leader of the Taliban,' Smith writes. 'There is no alternative representing Pashtun interests who has more clout than he.'

"Second, neighbouring Pakistan 'is highly ambivalent about crushing the Taliban insurgency.' While technically on NATO's side in this matter, important elements of the Pakistani state apparatus, Smith writes, continue to support the Taliban as their proxy in Afghanistan – mainly as a way to fend off what they see as hostile Russian and Indian influences.

"To destroy the Taliban would be to end Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, he says – which perhaps explains Islamabad's less than total support for the NATO mission.

"Third, the NATO strategy of using air power and heavy armour is backfiring. So is the policy of opium eradication. One destroys Afghan lives, the other their livelihoods. The net result, writes Smith (and here he echoes reports from the London-based Senlis Council), is to make Afghans even more hostile to NATO troops.

"Fourth, NATO countries don't have the will to fight a protracted war in a faraway country.
'If NATO states it will only be satisfied with a decisive military victory, the Taliban will call our bluff,' Smith says. 'The Taliban have demonstrated greater resolve, tactical efficiency and ability to absorb the costs of war over the long term than have NATO forces.'

"As a result, 'talking to the Taliban' emerges as the only feasible solution. 'Given the costs of war,' he writes, 'NATO needs to look candidly at the prospects – aware that there can be no guarantee – of a political solution.'"

Smith is clearly right that we're not going to somehow win this battle but he ends his discourse a bit too soon. Not mentioned is the real hurdle that will remain to be cleared - restoring some balance in political power in Afghanistan.

The Pashtun of Afghanistan are the Shia of Iraq - a majority. Thanks for 5+ years of Western indifference the Kabul government has come to be dominated by warlords, drug lords and common criminals of the minority Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaris and Turkmen. As far as they're concerned, the Afghan civil war is over and they're the victors. The Taliban are obviously not accepting that result and want to renew the civil war.

To settle this conflict NATO or the US or Pakistan or all of them (India included) will have to use their influence to get these mortal enemies, the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, to engage in some sort of legitimate power-sharing. The US will also have to use its influence to prevent India from exploiting Afghanistan to wage a proxy war against Pakistan. But, if we cannot broker some genuine agreement between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance we'll have to decide whether we're going to become embroiled in their civil war or step completely away from it.

This is a real conundrum but it's one that might have been avoided had George Bush not turned indifferent to Afghanistan in 2001 so that he could conquer Iraq. The US should have played a more direct role in shaping Afghanistan's first post-Taliban government. It should have developed a legitimate political entity to represent the majority Pashtun and it should have given Karzai essential support to prevent the warlords and drug lords from seizing political power. Our side should have kept that scum out of government and thereby prevented the corruption of the country's security services that simply drives the Pashtun into the arms of the Taliban.

We have to recognize that we can't turn back the clock to 2001 (unless we oust the warlords and go to war with the Northern Alliance mujahideen). We can't use firepower to legitimize a corrupted regime. We can't even expect our firepower to defeat this insurgency. So just what the hell are we doing there? It's time we revisited that debate.