Afghanistan Issue (Important Articles)
 

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]An Afghan Led Reconciliation Process[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
February 27, 2012
By Dr Raja Muhammad Khan


In its primitive history, Europe has undergone a series of wars for centuries. However, the “Thirty years war” from 1618-1648 has a unique significance. This bloody war forced the European wisdom to reconcile. They sat together and found a way-out from the continued infightings. Their reconciliation gave Europe in particular and the world in general a new concept, “The Concept of Nation State”. Since it was a European problem, therefore, the notables met at Westphalia, Germany, and concluded a treaty, which in the history known as the “Treaty of Westphalia”. As of today, the borders of Westphalia are between rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of Ruhr River. Today, European very proudly claims that, they are the one who gave world, a system where they could live in an organized manner with claims and obligations. The concept revolves around the sovereignty of the nation state, how much small or big in size it may be with respect to its contemporaries.

Historically Afghanistan has been a region of great turbulence, where wars and infightings have been the order of the day. It has been a centre of global wars and factional and ethnic fights. Like thirty years war of Europe, this great civilizational country, indeed an Asian crossroads has faced a mix of foreign invasions and infightings for more than thirty years now, in its recent history. The days, months and years may be different, but, the sufferings are similar to ‘European Thirty Years’. Today, after 364 years of Westphalia, the world is more civilized and aware, thus why cannot we find another treaty specific to this nation state, which externally can guarantee Afghanistan its sovereignty and internally, peace and stability. Why cannot the war wagers of the same civilized Europe, who claims export of the concept of a sovereignty world over, ensure sovereignty of this country and end their occupation to let Afghan have their own will and wish within their own territorial borders.

After a decade of US invasion, today, there is warmth in the process of political reconciliation in Afghanistan. Two dimensions of this process seem more prominent. One, led by United States, which has encouraged opening of a Taliban’s talking point in Doha, Qatar, where there have been many rounds of covert and overt direct talks between US officials and the representatives of Taliban leadership. No official of Afghan Government or any other Afghan faction has participated in these US led talks, thus are non-indigenous in nature. This is purely a foreign led reconciliation process. The second, a domestic reconciliation process, headed by Afghan Government. President Karazai has personally took a lead role and desired to try the domestic option. Irrespective of the option finally materialized, the ultimate aim should be; peace, stability and harmony among all groups and factions of Afghanistan. Afghans are tired from infightings and international invasions and interferences in their motherland. They want an end to all and a guaranteed safety and security from external powers. At the same time they want that their traditional and religious values and Afghan customs and culture to be respected by all. After all why should they be deprived of their basic rights, enunciated in the UN Charter of this highly civilized world?

While inviting Taliban for a direct talks and political reconciliations, Afghan President Karazia, requested a help from Pakistan. On its part, Pakistan was very quick and responsive. Prime Minister Gillani after consultations with his aids and security establishment, appealed to all Afghan factions to be part of these talks for the greater cause of Afghan peace and stability. In his appeal he said, “I would like to appeal to the Taliban leadership as well as to all other Afghan groups, including Hizb-i-Islami, to participate in an intra-Afghan process for national reconciliation and peace. It is important to create conditions conducive for a grand intra-Afghan settlement, based on national reconciliation that involves the Afghan people without any distinction.” Together with Afghans, Pakistan wishes that all Afghan factions must unite themselves to conclude a treaty for the permanent solution of their domestic issues and block the routes for any future foreign interventions and invasions.
It is still uncertain as to what would be the formal response of the Taliban to the call of President Hamid Karazai for a direct talk and political reconciliation. Nevertheless, for the permanent peace and stability in Afghanistan, the reconciliation process must be supported by neighbours and international actors, especially United States. However, the durability of the reconciliation can only be ensured once these are led by Afghan nationals rather by foreign powers. In the same context, during an address by Pakistani Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, at Chatham House, an international relations think tank in London, she said, “We will support any (peace efforts) that are Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-driven. This is our first and last pre-requisite. But we will not lead. We cannot lead … We will only follow what our Afghan brothers and sisters decide is the course of action they will adopt.”

On one hand, United States is negotiating with Taliban, outside the boundaries of Afghanistan (at Qatar), whereas, on the other, it is continuing with the military offensives, resulting into killing of innocent Afghans, humiliation of Afghan dead bodies and desecrating of Holy Quran within the boundaries of same Islamic Republic. The biggest question is that how come these acts of US and NATO go side by side with a reconciliation process. Some of the recent acts of US in Afghanistan may become a great setback to the reconciliation process led by US. Through these acts US indeed is adding difficulties for it and increasing its enemies too. Through these acts, particularly after the desecration of the Holy Quran, there have been wide spread demonstrations throughout in Afghanistan, killing dozens of Afghan protestors, besides two NATO soldiers.

Before Afghan public sentiments transformed into an Afghan National Resistance Movement, United States must bring a change in the attitudes of its troops deployed in that country. As tangible measures, night raids and military offensive must be stopped forthwith. There must be restoration of respect for the Afghan masses and their traditions. Apology from President Obama and ISAF Commander in Afghanistan over the desecration of Holy Quran may not be enough. Those responsible for this act must be publically punished and the conspiracy must be investigated for the satisfaction of Afghan people. Else it would be considered as if US desires instability in Afghanistan and this negotiation with Taliban is another strategy for creating acceptability for its long-term stay there.

For a stable Afghanistan, US must bring clarity in its approach and attitude towards Afghan future. In the first instance, this super power must have a precision whether to support or otherwise, the reconciliation process among the various groups in Afghanistan. If U.S wants peace and stability in Afghanistan, it must encourage an Afghan led political reconciliation process, rather itself engaging with few Taliban, thousands of miles away from Afghan soil. An indigenous Afghan led political reconciliation process taking on board all Afghan factions including Taliban would ensure durable peace in Afghanistan. Only in the subsequent phase, other stakeholders like; U.S, Pakistan and geographically contiguous regional countries, should be consulted for future guarantees to the sovereignty of Afghanistan. However, the entire process should be Afghan owned with Afghan people at its lead role without discriminating any group or faction.

The writer is an analyst of international relations.

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Awash with civilian blood[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 17, 2012
By Mohammad Jamil

During the last 10 years, thousands of civilians have been killed by air strikes supposedly targeting the Taliban, as if the Afghan life is cheap. It seems that the mounting toll is sapping the authority of the Western-backed Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, who has pleaded repeatedly with the US and Nato commanders to consult with the Afghan authorities before the operations are initiated and show more restraint. Despite this, unfortunately, the occupiers have always turned a deaf ear to his pleas and cries.

Against this backdrop, the unprecedented attack on families asleep in their homes came as anti-foreign sentiment was already running high after the Afghans discovered that the US troops had burned copies of the Holy Quran at a military base.

The latest incident took place when a US soldier shot dead 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, in a village outside his base in southern Afghanistan, a rampage that the Afghan President said was unforgivable. The soldier, who was reported to be a staff sergeant and father of three, who has done three tours of duty in Iraq, was arrested after the assault.

It is not the first time that the US soldiers have intentionally killed Afghan civilians, but the toll is unprecedented for a single soldier. The commander of the American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, however, promised a thorough investigation of the tragic incident. “I am absolutely dedicated to making sure that anyone who is found to have committed wrongdoing is held fully accountable,” he said, but his response is unlikely to do much to dampen the fury of the Afghan officials or people.

In 2010, US soldiers had killed three Afghan civilians as a sport in the Kandahar province. They were sentenced in August 2011, but it did not deter other American soldiers from involving in such despicable acts.

In January 2012, a video surfaced showing US marines urinating on the corpses of three insurgents, and in February anger flared over the burning of the Holy Quran. The US President, Barack Obama, said he was deeply saddened. He said: “I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives, and to the people of Afghanistan, who have endured too much violence and suffering. This incident does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.” But this will not heal the Afghan wounds, because despite regrets by the President, military commanders even in the past did not avoid participating in such incidents.

When the Americans and the Europeans are killed in a terrorist attacks, like 9/11 or 7/7, the champions of the cause of human rights throughout the world mourn; they light candles and place bouquets at the venue or the graves of the victims. But when other people are killed in similar attacks, or by ruthless and callous bombings and air strikes, there is no mourning. One may ask: What different breed is the Taliban from their compatriots, who fought against the Red Army, and were regarded as freedom fighters or mujahideen by the West, especially the Americans, while the Soviets viewed them as bandits? It is up to the historians to write the true history, but, for the present, Afghanistan is awash with civilian blood. Unfortunately, weddings have also been bombed more than once during the last four years.

In 2010, for instance, at least 44 civilians were killed in what they called a mistaken Nato air strike, in the Gujran District of Daykundi province carved out of the Uruzgan province, on three mini buses in southern Afghanistan a marriage party. This added to the already existing hatred against the US and West. After the incident, the Nato officials said: “It hit a suspected insurgent convoy, but ground forces later found a number of individuals killed and wounded, including women and children.” In addition, a commander said that this was not a deliberate act, but sometimes they have to take snap decisions. The question, however, remains: How such incidents take place by mistake when the US and Nato forces have all the facilities to determine the identity of people on ground? Indeed, such callous acts belie the claims that the US and Nato forces are in Afghanistan to protect the people from the militants.

The Americans and the Europeans are yet harping on the same tune that they are fighting in Afghanistan to secure it and their countries as well against militancy. But the Afghans are paying the price for it with their innocent blood – the blood of their civilians, their children and their women.

Needless to say, the saddest part is that there are no eyes brimming with tears in the West and no fears on the massacre of Afghan civilians. Not a single human rights activist has so far made an issue of this civilian carnage in which 16 innocent people lost their lives, as if the Afghans are no human beings. Pathetically, Western hearts bleed on the deaths of their troops; if the Afghan war is becoming unpopular in the West, it is because of mounting casualties and injuries of their armies and not because they feel qualms about the killing of innocent people of Afghanistan.

The writer is a senior journalist and freelance columnist.

Email: [email]mjamil1938@hotmail.com[/email]

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Terror, Trauma and the Endless Afghan War[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 18, 2012
By Amy Goodman

We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack U.S. forces, they are called “terrorists.” That is, perhaps, the inconsistency at the core of U.S. policy, that democracy can be delivered through the barrel of a gun, that terrorism can be fought by terrorizing a nation.

“I did it,” the alleged mass murderer said as he returned to the forward operating base outside Kandahar, that southern city called the “heartland of the Taliban.” He is said to have left the base at 3 a.m. and walked to three nearby homes, methodically killing those inside. One farmer, Abdul Samad, was away at the time. His wife, four sons, and four daughters were killed. Some of the victims had been stabbed, some set on fire. Samad told The New York Times, “Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us.”

The massacre follows massive protests against the U.S. military’s burning of copies of the Quran, which followed the video showing U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans. Two years earlier, the notorious “kill team” of U.S. soldiers that murdered Afghan civilians for sport, posing for gruesome photos with the corpses and cutting off fingers and other body parts as trophies, also was based near Kandahar.

In response, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rolled out a string of cliches, reminding us that “war is hell.” Panetta visited Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, near Kandahar, this week on a previously scheduled trip that coincidentally fell days after the massacre. The 200 Marines invited to hear him speak were forced to leave their weapons outside the tent. NBC News reported that such instructions were “highly unusual,” as Marines are said to always have weapons on hand in a war zone. Earlier, upon his arrival, a stolen truck raced across the landing strip toward his plane, and the driver leapt out of the cab, on fire, in an apparent attack.

The violence doesn’t just happen in the war zone. Back in the U.S., the wounds of war are manifesting in increasingly cruel ways.

The 38-year-old staff sergeant who allegedly committed the massacre was from Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), a sprawling military facility near Tacoma, Wash., that has been described by Stars and Stripes newspaper as “the most troubled base in the military” and, more recently, as “on the brink.” 2011 marked a record for soldier suicides there. The base also was the home for the “kill team.”

The Seattle Times reported earlier this month that 285 patients at JBLM’s Madigan Army Medical Center had their post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses inexplicably reversed by a forensic psychiatric screening team. The reversals are now under investigation due to concerns they were partly motivated by a desire to avoid paying those who qualify for medical benefits.

Kevin Baker was also a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Lewis. After two deployments to Iraq, he refused a third after being denied a PTSD diagnosis. He began organizing to bring the troops home. He told me: “If a soldier is wounded on a battlefield in combat, and they’re bleeding to death, and an officer orders that person to not receive medical attention, costing that servicemember their life, that officer would be found guilty of dereliction of duty and possibly murder. But when that happens in the U.S., when that happens for soldiers that are going to seek help, and officers are ordering not a clear diagnosis for PTSD and essentially denying them that metaphoric tourniquet, real psychological help, and the soldier ends up suffering internally to the point of taking their own life or somebody else’s life, then these officers and this military and the Pentagon has to be held responsible for these atrocities.”

While too late to save Abdul Samad’s family, Baker’s group, March Forward!—along with Iraq Veterans Against the War’s “Operation Recovery,” which seeks to ban the deployment of troops already suffering from PTSD—may well help end the disastrous, terrorizing occupation of Afghanistan.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2012 Amy Goodman
Source: Truthdig

[B][CENTER][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Afghanistan shooting shows U.S. should stop treading water[/SIZE][/FONT][/CENTER][/B]
March 18, 2012
By MALOU INNOCENT and ROBERT NAIMAN

The rogue U.S. soldier’s massacre Sunday of 16 Afghan villagers — nine of them children — follows the violent anti-American protests unleashed in Afghanistan over the burning of Qurans by American soldiers.

This continued violence reveals the latent animosity that persists between foreign and indigenous forces. Accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. military forces would most likely save us from a costly strategic defeat in the future.

By October, the roughly 90,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan are due to shrink to 68,000, with a complete exit by 2014. Though these moves are steps in the right direction, officials are still grasping for a protracted presence.

Washington seeks a bilateral arrangement that allows indefinite outposts (“joint bases”) with their Afghan counterparts. Indeed, plans for an extended presence, which would embed civilian and military advisers at bases and Afghan government ministries, call for even closer contact between Americans and Afghans. But a long-term strategic partnership between Washington and Kabul is a mission doomed to fail.

The recent spiraling violence, accompanied by heightened mutual distrust and a dearth of local cultural knowledge, does not instill confidence in our victory. Each new crisis triggers yet another violent outburst fueled by public outrage.

More troops, more money, more time and more resources are unlikely to change these underlying realities and could exacerbate them. Foreign-led efforts to resuscitate Afghan institutions have made only limited progress toward enabling that country to function logistically without the continued assistance of the international community.

Kabul’s dependence on foreign patronage not only undercuts its domestic legitimacy, but its tightly centralized system of government undermines local ownership of the development process by the country’s distinct and insular regions.

An indefinite U.S. military presence in this landlocked country could also be challenged by the tenuous supply lines. After Pakistan closed two border crossings into Afghanistan, the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have been using the Northern Distribution Network, a patchwork of roads, ports and railways connecting the Baltic and Caspian regions to Afghanistan, via Russia and Central Asia.

This patchwork road system means far higher transit costs — $104 million a month compared with the Pakistani alternative of $17 million a month, according to one Pentagon official. As Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after the killing of Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan no longer holds the strategic importance to match America’s exorbitant investment.

Indeed, in addition to fears of insurgents ambushing vulnerable supply lines, commercial sources familiar with the NDN claim that the Uzbekistan government is “continuously uncooperative” when it comes to shipping goods into Afghanistan. One can only hope that Washington can retain the consent of relevant governments until U.S. forces withdraw by discouraging neighboring states from following Pakistan’s lead in closing their supply routes as well.

Rather than continue to tread water in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama should announce an accelerated drawdown of U.S. troops. Sharing intelligence with allies and partners, scrutinizing people trying to enter the United States who may be linked to terrorist groups and relying on targeted raids against Al Qaeda leaders — as opposed to local insurgents who aren’t trying to attack the U.S. — are the most efficient means of reducing the threat from terrorism.

Compared to drawn-out nation-building campaigns, targeted operations are the lesser of two evils. They don’t require tens of thousands of U.S. troops to occupy Afghanistan or any foreign country.

These operations are far less costly in terms of lives, money, time and effort than attempts to cultivate a foreign people’s allegiance to a rapacious and unpopular central government backed by foreign forces. Without a drastic change in strategy, the war in Afghanistan will continue to be a slow bleed.

Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Robert Naiman is the policy director at Just Foreign Policy.

Source: Politico

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Putting an end to a degenerating war[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 19, 2012
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

Despite religious injunctions, international laws and exhaustive military manuals regulating belligerents’ conduct in war, protracted wars seem to degenerate inevitably. There is a progressive erosion of ethics; even the best armies encounter indiscipline, unauthorised vengeance, crimes against women and children and disregard of human rights.

The 11-year-old war in Afghanistan is beginning to be a case history of this deterioration. Perhaps nothing like what happened to the hundreds of inhabitants of My Lai in Vietnam on March 16, 1968 has taken place in Afghanistan but civilian casualties are on the rise, as, indeed, are the instances of wanton disregard for human dignity. It is not just the indiscriminate cruelty in the night raids of the Special Forces or the ‘mistaken’ bombing of Afghan wedding parties; rogue elements — individuals or small groups — from the Nato-Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) troops behave disgracefully.

This may indicate stress in a hostile environment, sheer fatigue, frustration at the lack of success and racist and religious bias in the lower rungs of command but, apart from tarnishing the image of the United States and its allies, it complicates the implementation of the existing plans to disengage from the conflict.

The situation since the beginning of 2012 has been egregious. Pictures of marines urinating on the bodies of slain Taliban fighters have gone round the world; so has the news of the bloody sequel to the ‘accidental’ burning of the copies of the Quran and of an American soldier, reportedly either deranged or drunk, shooting 16 Afghans, including nine children dead. Retaliation has come not just from the Taliban but also from members of President Karzai’s security forces.

Internal settlement

As the Afghan conflict degenerates, the danger of eventual disengagement leaving behind an unmanageable anarchy increases. That the movement towards disengagement is irreversible can be seen from President Barack Obama’s latest pronouncements about winding down the war ‘responsibly’ and from what we know of his recent consultations with UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Regardless of the compulsions of the American presidential election, the forthcoming Nato summit in Chicago must rise to the challenge of making qualitatively different policy adjustments to achieve this objective.

The guiding principle will have to be a higher priority for an internal Afghan settlement than for the strategic gains of outside powers. The basic elements of a settlement may include the following: farewell to arms; inclusion of the Taliban in a national government; consensus on constitutional reforms including greater devolution of power to provinces within the framework of a viable united state; size and composition of the Afghan National Army and security forces; and the disbanding of militias maintained by the warlords or their absorption into the agencies and forces of the state.

Short-sighted social, ethnic and sectarian engineering by any outside power will only perpetuate tensions as it, indeed, has done since 2001. Diversity in Afghanistan is no different from diversity in other regional states.

The US-led interventionist powers must honour the sovereignty of Afghanistan and respect the prerogative of its government to negotiate the grant of such facilities to them. The Chicago summit ought to substantially scale down plans for a huge Afghan National Army to align them closer with national needs and means. Raising an army that can only be fractionally financed by Kabul and that is primarily designed to fulfil Nato’s own ambitions in a contested region will only make Afghanistan controversial and prone to instability. A policy of positive neutrality will give the resurrected Afghan state time to establish itself strongly.

Regional countries must be drawn into a UN-sponsored arrangement of non-interference in the affairs of Afghanistan. Without prejudice to such treaties as Kabul may enter into with neighbouring states, the UN Security Council should be the guarantor of non-interference. Regional associations such as South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Economic Cooperation Organisation, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation should be encouraged to network to assist Afghanistan re-build its economy and realise its potential as a natural hub of regional and international trade. A greater role for the GCC states in the economic field should be seen as a natural extension of the Qatar process for peace.

In the short run, the powers that militarily intervened to overthrow the Taliban regime will be seen to have been forced to substantially curtail their war aims. But in a long-term projection, this would be the best way of salvaging the nobler elements in their decade-long military campaign in this Asian land. Above all, they would have extricated themselves from a dilemma that could only get worse with time.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan.
Source: Gulf News

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]For a stable Afghanistan[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 20, 2012
By Javid Husain

As if the US did not enough troubles already in Afghanistan because of its flawed Afghan strategy, the gross misconduct on the part of its soldiers keeps aggravating its problems. The latest tragic incident was the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers, including women and children, by a lone American soldier in Panjwayi District near Kandahar on March 11. This tragedy took place in the wake of the disgusting videos showing American soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses and the desecration of the Holy Quran, which led to widespread demonstrations in Afghanistan and the killing of Isaf soldiers by the Afghans. The Americans are, thus, not only losing the political battle in Afghanistan, but they have also lost the moral high ground to the opposition.

These incidents reflect the hatred between the Afghans and foreign soldiers, as well as the failings of US strategy in Afghanistan, particularly the alienation of Pashtuns, the imposition of a government of its choice on the independent-minded Afghans and the unsuccessful attempts to impose a liberal order on a deeply conservative society. There is little doubt, therefore, that the US is bogged down in Afghanistan, despite the high price it has paid in terms of blood and treasure. The American people are increasingly turning against the war in Afghanistan that, in their view, appears to lack any clear aim or purpose, especially after the killing of Osama bin Laden. America’s current economic problems make it difficult for the administration to justify the high cost of the war. Little wonder, therefore, that Washington is now in desperate search of a graceful way out of the predicament in which it finds itself in Afghanistan. The situation calls for a thorough review and modification of America’s Afghanistan policy. This, in turn, would require course correction of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy, since any changes in the US strategy would have direct implications for our security and well being.

It is not enough that every time a disgusting or repulsive incident involving American soldiers takes place in Afghanistan, the US government and military commanders should apologise to the Afghan government and people. What Washington needs to do, in addition, is to set for itself realistic goals in that country and formulate a well considered strategy for their achievement. The realistic US goal would be a peaceful and stable Afghanistan from where Al-Qaeda cannot pose a threat to other countries.

The starting point of the strategy for the achievement of this goal should be an intra-Afghan dialogue involving the Taliban/Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other significant Afghan political groups/parties. The aim of this dialogue should be national reconciliation and power-sharing arrangements leading to the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan. The challenge facing the Americans is to work out the modalities for bringing the Taliban into the mainstream of Afghan politics and persuade them and other Afghan parties to join the intra-Afghan dialogue.

The negotiations for national reconciliation in Afghanistan would be difficult. In view of the tendency of the Afghans to take a quick recourse to guns rather than dialogue, the success of the intra-Afghan dialogue is hardly guaranteed. Hopefully, however, both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance have learnt by now that neither of them alone can rule over and establish durable peace and stability in Afghanistan. If this indeed is the case, a generally acceptable political settlement in the country would become a possibility.

Needless to say, the US should encourage and facilitate such intra-Afghan dialogue without laying down impossible preconditions for its initiation. In view of the current animosity between the Taliban and the US, both sides should consider adoption of confidence building measures (CBM’s) to set in motion the process of talks. These CBM’s could include swap of prisoners and even a temporary halt in fighting by both sides. Hopefully, the suspension of talks with the Americans announced by the Taliban a few days ago would be temporary, allowing the two sides to resume their contacts soon.

In view of the hatred that many Afghans have towards foreign soldiers, total withdrawal of the US/Isaf troops from Afghanistan would have to be an essential element of any deal that is worked out among the Afghan parties, and between them and the Americans. The US target of withdrawal of the Isaf troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 seems realistic, if other pieces of the Afghan puzzle fall in place and a broad-based Afghan government takes over the reins of power by that time.

In view of the experience of the 1990s, when various Afghan parties and regional countries made a mess of the situation in Afghanistan after the fall of the Najibullah government, the US would be well advised to refrain from a precipitate military withdrawal to avoid the renewal of hostilities among the parties into which the regional countries may also be sucked in. It would be preferable instead to condition the total military withdrawal of the US/Isaf troops from Afghanistan on the conclusion of a political settlement and the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan and cutting off all links with Al-Qaeda by the Afghan parties. However, even after total military withdrawal, the US should remain engaged in the country to provide support to developmental activities there.

The proposed arrangement would have a reasonable chance of success, only if it enjoys the support of the regional countries, particularly Pakistan and Iran, and major powers like China and Russia. It is important, therefore, that these countries are taken into confidence, while the intra-Afghan dialogue is continuing. But as the government of Pakistan has pointed out from time to time, the peace process in Afghanistan must be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned. Pakistan and other countries should simply act as facilitators for the intra-Afghan dialogue in way without trying to predetermine its end result. Several recommendations worth the consideration of the Pakistan government flow from the foregoing analysis.

Firstly, Pakistan should do all that is in its power to encourage the Afghan Taliban and other Afghan parties to initiate intra-Afghan dialogue. This should, however, be done delicately without in any way interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. We and other countries must allow the Afghans to take their destiny in their own hands.

Secondly, since the intra-Afghan dialogue must involve the Afghan Taliban, it would not make any sense for us to take military action against them, even if some of them happen to be on our soil as long as they avoid terrorist activities against Pakistani targets. It would be ideal, if all the Afghan parties and the foreign troops in Afghanistan can be persuaded to halt hostilities temporarily pending negotiations for the restoration of peace in Afghanistan.

Thirdly, in handling the situation in Afghanistan, we must not repeat our strategic blunders of the 1990s when we alienated the non-Pashtuns in Afghanistan, while supporting the Taliban. A determined effort must be made by us to build up bridges of understanding and friendship with the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, etc.

Fourthly, in view of the disastrous experience of our support to an exclusively Taliban government in the 1990s, we must clearly understand that such a government is neither in our interest, nor feasible if the restoration of durable peace and stability in Afghanistan is desired. The situation in Afghanistan calls for a coalition government of the Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns.

Finally, our ultimate goal should be to have close friendly relations and cooperation with an independent and sovereign Afghanistan. Our real strategic depth lies in a friendly Afghanistan that is capable of taking decisions about its own destiny, rather than an Afghanistan that is under our thumb.

- The writer is a retired ambassador.

Email: [email]javid.husain@gamil.com[/email]
-The Nation

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Self-interest in Afghanistan[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 21, 2012
Mahir Ali

“I been knocking on the door/ That holds the throne/ I been looking for the map/ That leads me home/ I been stumbling on good hearts/ Turned to stone/ The road of good intentions/ Has gone dry as a bone/ We take care of our own…/ Wherever this flag’s flown/ We take care of our own.”

Bruce Springsteen is no stranger to wilful misinterpretation; the tendency for his protest songs to be miscast as patriotic hymns stretches back more than a quarter of a century to Born in the USA, which was misappropriated by the Reagan re-election campaign in the mid-1980s.

The opening track on his latest album — arguably his most potent series of commentaries on the state of the union — is, as Springsteen recognises, liable to being misunderstood.

Who would have thought, though, that it could be deployed as a theme song for the rapid evacuation of Robert Bales from Afghanistan after he strolled into a village near Kandahar and slaughtered 16 innocents, many of them children?

He was rapidly airlifted to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The question of facing charges in Afghanistan obviously did not arise.
And even before he had set foot in Kansas, a civilian lawyer had been hired to assist him. That’s all well and good.

Every accused person deserves a lawyer, and perhaps it’s just as well that the one representing Bales has appropriate experience. John Henry Browne has represented, among others, Ted Bundy, an American serial killer, rapist and necrophile who was executed some 15 years after being charged.

Browne is likely to have better luck with Bales. After all, a couple of months ago Sergeant Frank Wuterich was effectively exonerated for charges relating to the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, when he and seven other marines went on a rampage. Charges against six of the others were dropped or dismissed, while the seventh was acquitted.

Many years earlier, Lt William Calley was the only soldier convicted after details of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam became public, despite concerted efforts at a cover-up. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the same Fort Leavenworth.
President Richard Nixon immediately decreed that he should serve his time under house arrest. Less than four years later, he was a free man.

We take care of our own.

One of the supposedly mitigating factors in Calley’s case was the popular impression that he had been scapegoated. That was certainly true to the extent that many other officers and troops were involved in the gratuitous massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. It’s not that he wasn’t guilty, just that he obviously wasn’t the only one.

The corollary, in Calley’s case as much as in Wuterich’s, ought to have been several more trials rather than effective exoneration. Unlike Calley, however, Bales wasn’t ostensibly following orders. Unlike Wuterich, he was apparently alone. And deranged?

As Robert Fisk commented last week, “Surely, if he was entirely deranged, our staff sergeant would have killed 16 of his fellow Americans. He would have slaughtered his mates and then set fire to their bodies. But, no, he didn’t kill Americans. He chose to kill Afghans. There was a choice involved.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been cited all too frequently by the American press. Bales had served tours of duty in Iraq — where, according to a brother in arms by the name of Capt Chris Alexander, he did not betray a negative attitude towards his adversaries: “He said there was no need to be a jerk. Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet if you need to.”

That makes the entire enterprise of imperialist wars sound much like the longstanding parody of a US military recruitment drive: “Travel the world. Meet interesting people. Then kill them.”

In the case of My Lai, the American perpetrators of war crimes essentially got off with a defence that was deemed inadequate for Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. It’s useful to remember, though, that quite a few of those who deserved to stand trial for their complicity in Nazi crimes were recruited to the American cause as immigrants.

The mitigating circumstances cited by the American press in the case of Bales, even before he has been charged, range from his war experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan to the fact that his family back home was in dire economic straits. At least some of the reports concede, however, that he was by no means the only American soldier in that position.

Could it possibly be the case that war brings out the worst in those who participate in it, particularly — as in invariably the case — the enemy is ill-defined and dehumanised? If so, is that not a sufficient cause for avoiding war rather than holding out the false hope that the conflict presages some sort of a solution?

It has become less fashionable to refer to the Nato-led military operations in Afghanistan as ‘the good war’. The majority in Afghanistan never did support it. Now even the majority in the US does not, which has led some of Barack Obama’s would-be Republican challengers to suggest it ought to be halted before the 2014 schedule. Obama has apologised profusely for the latest massacre, telling Hamid Karzai that the mass atrocity felt as vile as if it had been perpetrated against American kids.

Karzai, meanwhile, has been putting on his periodic puppet-without-a-string act, demanding that Nato forces get out of Afghan villages — but not yet, mind you, out of the country, a move that would render his regime untenable.

What the future holds for Afghanistan is indeterminate and probably unpleasant. No one can accurately predict the extent to which the Taliban — initially sponsored by two of America’s closest allies in the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and quite conceivably still the beneficiaries of assistance from the ISI — will run rampant again. But if the blighted land if ever to be Taliban-free, the impetus must come from Afghans themselves.

Those who execute toddlers, urinate on the corpses of their adversaries and demonstrate their cultural ignorance by trying to incinerate copies of the Quran deserve no say in the matter.

[email]mahir.dawn@gmail.com[/email]
-Dawn

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Telepathic analysis of the Afghan war[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 22, 2012
Musa Khan Jalalzai

While I sleep, my soul and brain waves start visiting hundreds of people, offices, files, archives; picking out messages, reports, information, analysis and the records of negotiations behind closed doors. In a meditative state, I sit in the skies looking at Earth to uncover some important things without using material and physical things — e-mail or telephones. No doubt, these are important, but having discovered telepathic knowledge, I studied many books, reports and stories with considerable attention for three years.

Before going into the details of my irksome journey into the war zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I just want to elucidate the philosophy of mind control knowledge in a few words. As I have already studied and experienced the power of mind control techniques, simply speaking, telepathy is communication between minds, thoughts and visions. This is the knowledge of the transmission of feeling, emotions and images. In our world, this is considered to be the knowledge of mind control, the knowledge of intelligence abilities or the knowledge of mental discipline. Telepathy is a direct transference of thoughts and minds from one person to another without using the usual sensory channels of communication. It is called extra-sensory perception. Interestingly, animals communicate regularly through telepathy.

Yes, I was talking about the overnight journey of my soul and brain waves to many inaccessible places, specifically in Afghanistan and Pakistan. During the last two months, some unexpected events enraged the entire population in Afghanistan. From the desecration of the Holy Quran to the desecration of the graveyard of Britain’s heroes in Libya, from the killing of American and British soldiers in Kabul and Kandahar to the killing of 16 innocent civilians in a Kandahar village — all these unwanted incidents created misunderstandings between the guardians and the guarded in Afghanistan.

Last week, the Afghan army chief claimed that innocent people were killed in Kandahar by a group of Americans; it was not the act of a single soldier. According to him, the killings were premeditated. In the light of this statement, I decided to send my brainwaves to Afghanistan to find out the recently developed thoughts in the minds of civilian and government officials of the country. From the top of the mountain, my mind waves told me that the situation was going out of control as the Afghans became enraged over the recent incidents. The killing of six young British soldiers created a climate of despair in the UK. In the presence of my brainwaves, Afghan defence officials secretly conveyed their annoyance and exasperation to the presidential palace. My brainwave secretly entered into the Interior Ministry from the back door, where two American military men were killed by an Afghan intelligence man two weeks ago. Records of whisperings showed that Afghan police officials did not want any more close cooperation with the foreign forces. My brainwave revealed to me that they didn’t like any watchdog system in their offices to check their corruption. From a short visit to the NATO headquarters, my brainwaves told me that within the NATO and US military command, there was reluctance to directly confront the problems of corruption, powerbrokers, criminal elements and Taliban influence in the command structure of the Afghan National Army (ANA). My brain recorded many messages including power of the warlords, their private military networks and their private security firms that present the biggest challenge to the country. A woman in the Interior Ministry told my brainwave that Bismillah Khan’s position was going down and he might lose his seat in the near future as his performance as the interior minister had been very controversial. In a new message from the Kabul-based journalist community, my brainwave told me that these misunderstandings, frustrations and the climate of fear might jeopardise the US-led coalition strategy of training ANA soldiers. My brain retrieved a heartbreaking message from an American journalist saying that US forces faced a new threat despite the more than a trillion dollars the Americans spent in Afghanistan.

Three days ago, in Islamabad, my brainwaves entered GHQ and met some military officers who were talking about the failure of the Americans in Afghanistan. They were enjoying doodh-patee (milk tea). In the ISI circles, there was a hot debate that American military strategy to save Afghanistan from their wrath had failed. As the tiresome night elapsed, my soul and brainwaves finished their long journey and returned to London with numerous messages.

The next day early in the morning after tackling some breakfast, I physically visited one of my politician friends from Pakistan in London. Chaudhry Allahwali told me that some elements in Islamabad were trying to convince Afghan tribal elders to fight against the Americans and kill them. In Chaudhry’s understanding, the US soldiers urinating on Taliban dead bodies, cursing them and unnecessary killings of innocent people endangered the lives of the US soldiers in Afghanistan. Chaudhry Allahwali warned that factors that created animosity included American military convoys creating a climate of fear, returning fire on Taliban in an apparently discriminate way, using weak intelligence sources and conducting night raids on private homes. What does the killing of Afghan civilians say about the US embarrassment across the world and what repercussions will these killings have on the US-Afghan partnership? They lost the war but they are looking for a safe exit. The occupation is coming to an end and the morale of foreign forces is going down. He told me that the mood in Europe was changing while London was weeping for the death of its soldiers. In the end, he said angrily, “The war in Afghanistan will never be won because there is no war and no army to fight it with.”

The writer is author of Policing in Multicultural Britain and Civil war in Afghanistan. He can be reached at [email]zai.musakhan222@gmail.com[/email]
-Daily Times

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Dangerous narratives[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 24, 2012
By Hasan Khan

IF anything drags down the current peace process in Afghanistan it will be the prevalence of religious, ethno-historical and politico-strategic narratives that encourage Afghans to continue fighting till the finish.

The Afghan psychology is one of ‘raw bravery’ boosted by romanticising past victories against global powers. Serious measures are needed to counter these narratives.

Following Obama’s exit policy in Afghanistan, different forums have started debating possible solutions to the future of the war-battered country. The Taliban’s readiness to open a political shop in Qatar and its recent contacts with the US had given impetus to these debating sessions.

However, workable ideas have been scant; most donor-sponsored forums waste time on tracing the factors that led to the war, counting the actors and coming up with ‘conspiracies’ that were hatched by the world against the Afghans.

Reading the history of the Afghan wars through rose-tinted glasses, a batch of retired generals and first-generation Pakhtun intellectuals have been busy romanticising Afghan heroism and love for religion as well as trying to frighten the world by presenting superhuman Afghan qualities. Calling for the humiliation of the Americans at the hands of the Afghans, these ‘experts’ continue to beat the drums of war, as they remind the Afghans of their ‘glorious’ past.

The Afghan conflict is seen predominantly through the prism of religion and the perception among ordinary Afghans is that their ragtag nation is repeating history by defeating the US just as they triumphed over the Soviet Union and the British Empire.

This discourse is very dangerous as it continues to fan the idea of ‘holy jihad’ in a religious sense and ‘the global war on terror’ at a politico-strategic level.

No efforts at coming up with a permanent solution to the Afghan crisis can be successful until such narratives, whether based in religion, history or politics, are eliminated. Space is needed for an alternative discourse before various Afghan factions and
ethnic groups can effectively be made part of a future dispensation.

Since the invasion by the Soviet Union in 1979, the Afghan conflict is being showcased as a holy war. This prefix continues as Afghan lands serve as hunting grounds for both Arab sheikhdoms and western democracies — some are sending their bad boys
there, others are searching for the bad boys.

Another equally dangerous narrative is propagated mostly by military commentators and religious elites who call the Afghans ‘invincible’ and their land a graveyard for the superpowers, in which history is now repeating itself.

The fact is that the British Empire remained master of Afghan foreign policy from 1879 to 1919 — 40 years — unchallenged.

Besides, taking full control of Afghan foreign policy, the British also seized the Kurram and Pishin valleys, Sibi and Khyber Pass and forced the Afghan monarch to sign the humiliating treaty of Gandamak.

In the late 19th century, the Afghan monarch signed the Durand Line Treaty surrendering Afghanistan’s legal claims over what became the North West Frontier Province and the tribal areas (now Fata) to the British Crown. And who defeated the Soviets?

No doubt the Afghans put up a historic resistance but the war was, for all purposes, the Soviets vs the world.

An alternate discourse should challenge the current narratives and must be actively encouraged in Afghan society and Pakistan in a way that discourages outside forces from using Afghan soil to further their long-term strategic interests.

The writer is director, news and current affairs at Khyber TV.

[email]hasan.khyber@gmail.com[/email]
-Dawn

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Denial and defeat in Afghanistan[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]


Tarak Barkawi


To listen to US and European officials, all is well with the Western project in Afghanistan.

Absent awareness of the irony, President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron have announced that this project is in its "final phases".
"The trajectory we've set", said an advisor of President Obama's who specialises in strategic communications, "is one of transition and Afghan sovereignty". As the Afghans move into the lead, the US will be able to pull back.

It is as if the symphony of war was set to the rational beats of Western political calendars. For General John R. Allen, the overall commander in Afghanistan, "The campaign is sound. It is solid."

Faced with news of 16 Afghans murdered by a rogue US sergeant and an upcoming NATO summit with politicians eager to pull out of an unpopular war, a European official blandly assured the media: "The most important thing now is the messaging."

Sound bites will not save the West's latest effort to modernise Afghanistan.
We are dealing here with peoples whose historical trajectory has dealt out repeated defeats to the world's greatest empires. You cannot make war successfully in such places as an afterthought to the crises of economy and democracy in the West.

The conflict in Afghanistan is at a decisive juncture, and the West is facing defeat on a scale not seen since Vietnam. Few want to face facts, and the result is a gap between rhetoric and reality of a kind that only wars gone badly wrong produce.

Lost in the rolling crisis that began with the Quran burning is an important upcoming date. At the end of this month, the Karzai regime will see through its threat to force out the private security companies who guard the contractors that carry out development projects across Afghanistan.

Humanitarian NGOs that operate without security will be unaffected. But the contractors who carry out projects funded by Western governments face the prospect of operating under the protection of a hastily raised "Afghan Public Protection Force".

Would you put your business and your life in the hands of such a force?
According to the New York Times, some companies are wrapping up their projects in Afghanistan and leaving; others allow their employees to illegally keep personal weapons; and all are scrambling to make new arrangements.

In the kind of corporate buffoonery that neoliberal privatisation creates, and which has damaged the Western war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, one US company is considering suing the US government. The contractors had been assured that they would have a secure environment in which to operate.
Another company is stationing guards with its employees who work in Afghan ministries. So unwelcome are Westerners assisting Afghans in developing their country that the advisors need bodyguards inside government offices. A better indicator of just how illegitimate for Afghans the continued Western presence is could hardly be imagined.

As one frightened US employee of an aid company commented, "We're easy pickings" for insurgents and angry Afghans.

And there are a lot of angry Afghans. Abdul Samad is one of them. He lost 11 relatives to the rogue sergeant in Panjwai. Along with those who have demonstrated against the Quran burnings, the Taliban, and the silent majority of Afghans, Mr. Samad has one demand: It is time for the Americans to leave, all of them.

Therein lays the reality that Western officials cannot face. The West is not welcome in Afghanistan and is only present by force of arms. Westerners prefer to believe that, a few bad apples aside, most "ordinary Afghans" support Western led development.

The basic idea of the "solid" and "sound" campaign is that Western combat forces will depart by 2014, leaving behind a large development assistance programme and a small counter-terrorism and advisory force, shielded by trained Afghan security forces.

Members of these forces have repeatedly turned on their Western advisors, slaughtering them unawares.

Can there be any more sure sign of the moral decay of the West? First it contracts out its dirty work in forlorn campaigns of white man's burden to its professional soldiers, then to its own hired guns, and onwards to Afghan recruits.

Shock is then expressed in all quarters of Western opinion when these Afghans turn on their invaders.

The fiction is that somehow the Karzai regime will be ready to "take the lead". But the regime is a creation of the Western presence, and is mostly an opportunity for corruption for well-connected Afghans. They are moving their money, much of it skimmed off Western development aid, out of the country at an increasing rate. The writing is on the wall and a comfortable exile funded by stolen Western tax dollars beckons.

What is left unexplained in the official story is just how it is that a small Western counter-terrorism force, civilian development contractors, and the pathetic faux-patriotic Karzai can long survive in a country that over 130,000 first line Western troops with their full panoply could not secure.

To be sure, as long as large numbers of Western troops are present, the insurgents cannot win. But neither can those troops decisively defeat the insurgency, nor can they win the allegiance of the Afghan population in the middle of a shooting war.

Inevitably, the troops will leave one way or another and the Karzai regime and the Western development enterprise will be swept away by angry Afghans of many different stripes.

The West's only realistic option is to regroup in a statelet based on the old Northern Alliance, from which it can launch counter-terror operations and continue to deny Afghanistan as a base for terrorism. A problem here is that the Europeans, with their exhausted liberal publics, could never go along with such an exercise in realpolitik.

President Obama, too, probably lacks the ruthlessness, while his political advisors will tell him to cut and run from an unpopular war in an election year.
After all, exiting and forgetting has worked so far in Iraq.

Western opinion and financial crisis have decreed that the troops must come out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Yet the Western project there is doomed without those troops, and even their continued presence guarantees only a longer run for the tragic and bloody status quo.

These contradictions will come to a head before the next two years is out. Withdrawal of Western troops is likely to be followed by a collapse of the Karzai regime and civil war. While some committed humanitarian NGOs will always remain in the country no matter the circumstances, such chaos and disorder will see off the bulk of the Western development presence.
The upshot will be that the West has little to show for over ten years in Afghanistan but the corpses of Osama bin Laden and his fighters.

Source: [url=http://www.weeklycuttingedge.com/index.html]WEEKLY CUTTING EDGE[/url]