AS President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over the United States' prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has long been the "graveyard of empires." In 1842, the British lost a nasty war that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands retreating from Kabul. And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to give up ignominiously in 1989.
But in fact, these are only two isolated examples. Since Alexander the Great, plenty of conquerors have subdued Afghanistan. In the early 13th century, Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes ravaged the country's two major cities. And in 1504, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, easily took the throne in Kabul. Even the humiliation of 1842 did not last. Three and a half decades later, the British initiated a punitive invasion and ultimately won the second Anglo-Afghan war, which gave them the right to determine Afghanistan's foreign policy.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/30/2009 00:00 ||
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In an ABC/BBC poll conducted in 2005, a full four years after the fall of the Taliban, 8 in 10 Afghans expressed a favorable opinion of the United States -- an extraordinary proportion in a Muslim nation -- and the same number supported the American-led overthrow of the Taliban in their country.
And just last month, in a new poll by ABC and the BBC, 58 percent of Afghans named the Taliban as the greatest threat to their nation. Only 8 percent said it was the United States. And while only 47 percent of Afghans still had a favorable opinion of America, the Taliban fared far worse, with just 7 percent approval.
In the New York Times. But I don't recall hearing things like this from them back in the olden days when Mr. Bush lived in the White House...
After decades of denial, the U.S. military though not yet the State Department has begun to admit that the Pakistan military, a major non-NATO ally, is the source of much of the capability of the Taliban thugs that are now sending NATO into a panic in Afghanistan.
Individuals within the Pakistan military claim that no fewer than 30,000 jihadists are presently being trained by regular officers and army men, who are, of course, officially "on leave to visit family." Of the trainees, no fewer than 2,000 are being imparted proficiency in high explosives and in the commando-style operations that enabled a handful of operatives to hold off the Indian security establishment for three humiliating days in Mumbai from Nov. 26 to 28 last year.
The purpose of such assistance is to "ensure that Afghanistan, Kashmir and Central Asia emerge as allies of a rejuvenated Pakistan" and to see that "the Indian economic dream becomes a nightmare," the army sources say.
This second objective is of value to China, which is visibly uneasy at the accelerating pace of development in India, despite intense efforts by its communist allies in the ruling establishment to reverse economic reforms. Its no wonder that almost all the sensitive communications links of the Pakistan army including the unrecorded "ghost units" that guide terror operations are provided by China.
Unless those in authority in Beijing are as credulous as their counterparts in the CIA and in the U.S. State Department a difficult proposition to accept the Chinese vendors of the communications, explosives and other lethal equipment that ultimately reaches jihadists in Afghanistan, India and elsewhere must be aware of the unconventional nature of the end-users of the goods and services they dispense.
An increase in terrorist activity in India would surely lead to a decline in that country's growth prospects. Therefore, if the activities of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence units cause a spike in terror activities in India, it is not sufficient reason for China to cut off its gifts to the army of force-multipliers that end up in jihadist hands.
It is not only in Pakistan that China has, in effect, become a reliable ally of what are euphemistically known as "unconventional forces." Equipment and services from China flood into states such as Sudan, Iran, Syria and Somalia. In none of these states are the authorities squeamish about separating regular operations from those conducted by terror groups.
During the years when the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, China was among its biggest benefactors, together with Pakistan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Of course, in the cause of showering largesse on the Pakistan army, few can rival the United States. Days ago, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the gift of a fresh US$7.5 billion to Pakistan, supposedly to build schools, roads and other infrastructure.
What Obama apparently failed to pick up from his intelligence briefings was the fact that these schools, with their poisonous curricula and fanaticized staff, are the breeding grounds for jihad. Or that the Pakistan army has according to information available even to the civilian government diverted about 63 percent of the funds given to it by the United States "to fight terror" to operations that are India-specific, hardly a contribution to the War on Terror.
Until the toxic content is removed from school curricula in Pakistan; unless jihadist elements within the teaching community are weeded out and replaced with genuine moderates; and unless religious schools confine themselves to the training of imams rather than to seeding the entire Pakistan civil and military structure with their products, most assistance given to Pakistan is a contribution to jihad.
What the U.S. government should do is impose immediate travel restrictions and financial sanctions on individuals and entities that aid terrorists such as al-Qaida and the Taliban. It is ironic that the sons, daughters and relatives of the very military officers that are assisting the Taliban are teeming in U.S. campuses and corporations, courtesy of successive indulgent administrations.
Amazingly, the very "experts" who in the 1990s called for help to what became the Taliban, and who in the post-9/11 phase advised the defanging of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan to benefit the Pakistan military, have remained the dominant voices in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in both the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations. It appears that, in the wonderland of U.S. policy, nothing succeeds as well as failure.
The "new" policy announced by the Obama administration, unless accompanied by a push toward structural reforms in Pakistan's military and education system, will also end in failure. Not surprisingly, after Obama advisor Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton generously gave their support to the "Punjabi plot" the scheme of Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan Muslim League (N) chief Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to marginalize President Asif Ali Zardari there was an immediate spike in terrorist activity on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
With cash from the United States and sophisticated equipment from China, the jihad-friendly Pakistan military is on a roll. Its allies in terror groups around the world will be delighted.
As for the rest, all they can do is brace themselves for the terror attacks that will follow the consistent China-U.S. policy of allowing the Pakistan army to continue unmolested on the jihadi path initiated by the late Islamist President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq nearly four decades ago.
Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/30/2009 10:31 ||
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The purpose of such assistance is to "ensure that Afghanistan, Kashmir and Central Asia emerge as allies of a rejuvenated Pakistan" and to see that "the Indian economic dream becomes a nightmare," the army sources say
They are so jealous of Indian success!!!!US/West must side with India against the Pak/Chinese/Russian Alliance!!!
#2
Agreed, Paul. President Obama's predecessor understood, but the current resident of the White House enjoyed pheasant hunting in Pakistan with one of his university friends over the holidays... apparently travelling on his Malaysian passport, because Americans were not permitted to go there at the time.
JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.
Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.
President Obama went on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday to make the case for his great big war in Afghanistan.
The good news is that Obama says, "What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always results in an improved situation."
The bad news is that Obama is dispatching more troops to a country that has never taken well to occupation.
So where is the MoveOn.org blast condemning the ramping up of an undeclared war and the president's refusal to rule out an even more dramatic expansion of that war to Pakistan? Where is the memo from the Center for American Progress outlining the case against giving the president "a blank check for endless war"?
Don't hold your breath, says John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, two of the most scathing books on the Bush-Cheney administration and its war in Iraq.
In a no-holds-barred critique of groups that earned their reputations as critics of the rush to invade and occupy Iraq, Stauber argues that the Obama administration has effectively co-opted some of the nation's most high-profile anti-war groups.
Here's what Stauber writes in a piece titled: "How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement," which appears on the CMD website:
John Podesta's liberal think tank the Center for American Progress strongly supports Barack Obama's escalation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is best evidenced by Sustainable Security in Afghanistan, a CAP report by Lawrence J. Korb. Podesta served as the head of Obama's transition team, and CAP's support for Obama's wars is the latest step in a successful co-option of the US peace movement by Obama's political aids and the Democratic Party.
CAP and the five million member liberal lobby group MoveOn were behind Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), a coalition that spent tens of millions of dollars using Iraq as a political bludgeon against Republican politicians, while refusing to pressure the Democratic Congress to actually cut off funding for the war. AAEI was operated by two of Barack Obama's top political aids, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, and by Brad Woodhouse of Americans United for Change and USAction.
Today Woodhouse is Obama's Director of Communications and Research for the Democratic National Committee. He controls the massive email list called Obama for America composed of the many millions of people who gave money and love to the Democratic peace candidate and might be wondering what the heck he is up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan. MoveOn built its list by organizing vigils and ads for peace and by then supporting Obama for president; today it operates as a full-time cheerleader supporting Obama's policy agenda. Some of us saw this unfolding years ago. Others are probably shocked watching their peace candidate escalating a war and sounding so much like the previous administration in his rationale for doing so.
Ouch!
Stauber's piece has circulated widely in recent days, stirring the same sort of dialogue that his previous criticisms of MoveOn inspired.
The truth is that important players in the anti-war movement are speaking out against Obama's Afghanistan buildup.
Peace Action is petitioning Congress to oppose Obama's Afghanistan plan. Peace Action executive director Kevin Martin has compared the president's moves with those of John Kennedy in Vietnam. "It's a shame President Obama believes he can pursue the same militaristic strategy as his predecessors and produce a different result, While President Obama has made some good statements on increasing diplomacy and economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the emphasis is clearly on military operations. John F. Kennedy was in a comparable situation when he was elected. He chose to escalate then as well, and the consequences of his decision left our country mired in an unwinnable war."
The Friends Committee on National Legislation, which maintains the largest peace lobby in Washington, says: "More troops won't bring more peace in Afghanistan. Instead, the U.S. should invest in long-term diplomacy and development assistance."
United for Peace and Justice, of which both Peace Action and FCNL are member groups, is organizing coordinated local actions on April 6-9 to pressure Congress to oppose the Afghanistan escalation.
But Stauber's broad point is an important one.
There is significant discomfort with the expansion of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and opposition has been expressed by political leaders abroad and at home (including Democrats and Republicans in Congress). This is a time when genuine anti-war groups could be expected to harness that discomfort and build a stronger movement to shift U.S. policy.
As such, it is a time of testing for organizations that came to prominence opposing not just George Bush and Dick Cheney but the wrongheaded war-making of the White House -- no matter which party happened to occupy the Oval Office. And that makes Stauber's J'accuse a particularly stinging one.
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Is Stauber really that obtuse or is he just prevaricating for the heck of it?
The reason that the "anti-war" groups were so easy to co-opt is that they were never anti-war groups in the first place. They were and still are anti-Republican / anti-American war groups.
Now that Zero has taken over they are tripping over the cognitive dissonance between the two positions and keeping their mouths shut.
Just remember, they're not anti-war; they're just on the other side.
It seems there won't be a last-minute miracle in negotiations to bring Gilad Shalit home. True, the talks have restarted, but that's not enough to clinch a deal, especially after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert laid out his red lines around two weeks ago. Olmert's refusal to release 125 prisoners whom Hamas wants freed and the publication of part of the list by Olmert's office has backed the negotiating partners into a corner.
In the short time before Benjamin Netanyahu is sworn in as prime minister on Tuesday, Israel cannot retreat from its public declarations. Hamas doesn't want to look like it has caved into pressure from Olmert, so it is demanding the freedom of the same prisoners whose release Israel says is out of the question.
A zero-sum game has thus been created which at the moment almost certainly rules out any room for maneuver toward a compromise. Any concession by either side after such decisive declarations would be seen as surrender. The ball seems to be in Netanyahu's court - hopefully now it will be possible to start over and try to reinvigorate the talks.
It should not be forgotten, however, that Netanyahu inherits his predecessor's red lines. It will be hard for the new prime minister to be seen as someone willing to make larger concessions than his predecessor, who is to the left of Netanyahu politically. Despite everything, the Egyptian intermediaries refuse to succumb to the pessimism. They see the distance Israel and Hamas have moved in recent months and say progress can also be made with a Netanyahu-led government.
The attention to the Shalit negotiations obscures another phenomenon, however. The Gaza border is quieter than it has been for months, with the number of rockets fired into Israel having declined to one or two a week. There are also virtually no clashes near the border fence. This shows that, in evaluating wars fought against organizations such as Hamas, as opposed to states, it's apparently better to suspend final judgment. Deterrence in the face of terrorism is apparently too complicated a topic to be subjected to quick media analysis.
Hamas has no interest in shooting rockets when it is preoccupied with rebuilding the Gaza Strip. And the other Palestinian factions, after being responsible for most of the shooting in the last two months, may also have concluded for now that their attacks are not yielding significant results, while giving Israel an excuse to tighten the blockade on Gaza and bomb the Rafah smuggling tunnels.
Sooner or later, however, the military wing of Hamas will want to resume the fight against Israel if it thinks it can withstand the Israeli response.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/30/2009 00:00 ||
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Arundhati Roy
The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media -- or indeed in the international press -- about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.
From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the 'war on terror' as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.
Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ''welfare villages'' have been established to house displaced Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ''will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting''. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph:
''A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They're basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.''
Given its stated objective of ''wiping out'' the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ''terrorists'' does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.
Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ''A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.''
Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and 'white van abductions', which have made society ''freeze with fear''. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.
There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?
In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.
It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no 'white van abductions' -- at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government's long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country. It's a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it's too late.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/30/2009 00:00 ||
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The mere fact that A. Roy doesn't like it indicates that there is likely some merit to the situation. I may be wrong, but she has been a pretty good inverse weathervane for me in the past.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/30/2009 3:59 Comments ||
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Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/30/2009 9:35 Comments ||
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Roy considers herself an International citizen.
She said she was ashamed to have an Indian passport after the 1998 nuclear tests. She has tried to justify the jihad in Kashmir and recently called on India to surrender the state to Pakistan.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/30/2009 9:42 Comments ||
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Wonder what the late Arthur C. Clark would think?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
