Karzai urges Afghan war timeline

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for a timetable for ending the war against the Taleban in his country.

Mr Karzai made the call in a speech to a visiting UN Security Council team.

He said if Afghans had "no light at the end of the tunnel" they had the right to pursue other options, such as peace negotiations with the Taleban.

Mr Karzai also demanded an end to arrests of Afghans "in their homes, in the roads" by international forces, saying it was the job of Afghan police.

[snip]

Mr Karzai said there were two options.

First would be to set a timeline, saying that what had not been achieved in the past seven years would be achieved in the next "four years, five years or another seven years".

But he added: "If we cannot give a light at the end of the tunnel to the Afghan people, [do] the Afghan people have a right to ask for negotiation for peace? [Do] the Afghan people have a right to seek other avenues?"

Mr Karzai said he would continue to fight al-Qaeda and Taleban members "who are ideologically against the rest of the world".

However, he said Taleban members who were "part of the Afghan community" could be brought back to serve Afghanistan.

[More]


Comment:

That last part is the crux of the matter. Karzai has been (rightly) calling for negotiation with the reconcilables for quite some time now — indeed, he has actually engaged in some negotiation with the mediation of King Abdullah. His borrowing of the words "timeline" and "withdrawal" from Iraq is blatant electioneering, and nothing more.

The fact that he felt it would be beneficial to say it, however, is emblematic of a real problem, which is that we are running out of time. The good will of the Afghan people cannot last forever, and it is beginning to wear thin.

More propaganda

"Afghan mayor turns Taliban leader," announces Al Jazeera's top headline. But the man in question had not been mayor since the Taliban came to power, and had defected well over a year ago after being fired from his job as head of Herat's Department of Public Works. This story is not news by any stretch of the imagination, yet Al Jazeera considered it to be more important than the current financial Armageddon the planet is facing. I am apalled at this recent spate of pro-Taliban articles, and am very seriously considering finding somewhere else to get my news.

In other news, Hekmatyar has indicated that he would not be averse to switching sides (something he has a great deal of experience with), and the TTP is saying "uncle." I doubt that anything will come of the first (though I wouldn't put it past him), but it will be interesting to see what, if anything, will come of the second, especially inasmuch as the tribes are concerned.

We gain one, we lose one.

There's a lot to talk about today, so I'm going to depart from my usual format.

According to Al Jazeera:

In a second battle in Helmand province, Afghan and international troops retook the Nad Ali district centre - which had been held by fighters - during a three-day fight, Ahmadi said.

That battle, which also involved airstrikes, ended on Saturday and resulted in the death of 40 Taliban fighters, officials said.

Afghan police and soldiers were now in control of the district centre.

Nato said its aircraft bombed fighters after they were seen gathering for a major attack, killing "multiple enemy forces".

"If the fighters planned a spectacular attack prior to the winter, this was a spectacular failure," Richard Blanchette, an Isaf spokesman, said.

Although I was somewhat disappointed to learn that there had been a district that I had not known was held by the Taliban, this is of course good news, as is the news, also reported in the article, that NATO had repulsed a major attack on Lashkar Gah. However, AJ did not mention this somewhat less cheerful development, which I found out about via Quqnoos:

Taliban claim to have forced NATO-led troops from a remote district

THE NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has withdrawn from a district in the north-eastern province of Nuristan, the international force said.

ISAF said it retreated from its forward operating base in the Kamdish district on Friday following advice from Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry.

But the Taliban claimed that it forced ISAF troops in the district to retreat after engaging them in fierce fighting in the district, one of the country’s most insecure.

The situation in Nuristan has been growing increasingly worrying. According to my current map prototype, the Taliban currently controls three of its eight districts, as well as the Dara-ye Pech District just across the border in Kunar Province, and a fourth district, Bargomatal, was attacked by Tehrik-i-Taliban-i-Pakistan back in July. I still have been unable to determine the outcome of that battle, but am inclined to think that, even if the TTP did manage to take it, which I don't think they did, their forces have since been withdrawn to fight the Pakistani security forces in Bajaur, which would leave the district only nominally in the Taliban's hands, just as so much of the rest of the province is only nominally in the hands of NATO and the central government. I have seen reports that some of the forces currently fighting in Bajaur had previously been fighting in Afghanistan, which lends some credence to this theory.

Nuristan, for those of you who are not familiar with it (i.e. pretty much all of you), is one of the most isolated inhabited regions on the face of the Earth. Its terrain is nearly impassable, and it is so out of the way that Islam didn't reach it until the end of the 19th century. Before then it was known as Kafiristan (land of the unbelievers) and its inhabitants as the Red Kafirs; their cousins, the Black Kafirs, or Kalasha, live on the Pakistani side of the Durand line and still practice their age-old pagan religion. The Nuristanis speak languages that are unusual even for Mianistan; while most languages in the region are either Iranian (e.g. Pashto, Wakhi, Yidgha) or Indo-Aryan (e.g. Khowar, Kalasha, Torwali) (although this "Dardic" sub-group of the Indo-Aryan branch is pretty weird), the Nuristani languages form a group all of their own.

There is, however, yet another major development regarding Afghanistan in the news today. Quqnoos reports:

US wants to reduce dependence on government by arming militias

THE UNITED States plans to arm tribal militias against the Taliban, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said at a NATO summit in Hungary.

As part of a plan to create greater co-operation on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, the US wants to train tribal militias in an attempt to reduce its dependence on the central government in Kabul.

Parliament members had already suggested arming the tribes, but the idea was not given any currency at the time.

This is a superb idea. Working with the tribes worked in Iraq, is working in Pakistan, and, unlike McCain's bizarre idea to "clear and hold" some of the most impassible terrain on Earth, it would also work in Afghanistan. In case you haven't noticed, I am strongly pro-tribe, not only because of my own tribal identity (Stewart of Bote FTW!), but also simply because it works. Indeed, in regions such as Mianistan I would venture to say that it is the only strategy that will work. My friend Woke at News Hounds has often said that it is impossible for a conventional army to defeat a popular insurgency. Although it is possible to do it if you brutally punish the civilian population, as Genghis Khan did, that's not really an option if you're the good guys, so it's true so far as we are concerned. This means that if you are faced with an insurgency, the only way that you can win is if it stops being popular. The psychopathic, woman-oppressing, elder-beheading Taliban are already helping us out on this one. However, their antisocial ways can be counteracted by the collateral damage we often inflict when we fight them directly. This means that there needs to be a popular insurgency against the unpopular one. We can then support the locals rather than killing them. And in the tribal reality of Mianistan, supporting the locals means supporting the tribes.

US, Pakistan, Afghanistan to create joint military force

WASHINGTON: The US is discussing with Pakistan and Afghanistan to create a joint military force to combat insurgents in the two south Asian nations, a senior US official confirmed Tuesday.

"We’re obviously taking a good look at it. We’re going to analyse it and see where we go from here," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said, adding that "We will probably have something to say once we’ve done a thorough analysis of it."

Last month, officials from the three countries began discussing the creation of a joint military force for anti-insurgency operations on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Washington Post quoted Afghan Defence Minister Rahim Wardak as saying Tuesday.

"The terrorists have not recognised any boundaries. So to fight them, we have to eventually come up with some arrangement, together with our neighbour Pakistan," Wardak said.

"Pakistan’s government is considering the plan. They say they are looking at it," he added.

Via OINN.

Comment:

This is more like it. The recent unilateral attacks on Pakistan have been nothing short of catastrophic.

Arrests over Afghan civilian deaths

Afghan police have arrested three men alleged to have provided "wrong information"
which led to the deaths of scores of civilians in a US air raid.

More than 90 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the village of Azizabad in western Herat's Shindand district on August 22, according to the Afghan government.

Police began an investigation into the incident on September 4 after villagers said US-led forces in Afghanistan had been fed false information about the presence of Taliban members in Azizabad following a tribal dispute, the interior ministry said.

A statement said: "After examining all the police reports and direct claims made by people in the area, three suspects who are said to be key people in giving false information regarding the bombardment of Azizabad, have been arrested in a police operation."

The three were on a list of people provided to Hamid Karzai, the president, by the villagers. Karzai visited relatives of the victims earlier this month and pledged to punish those responsible.

Karzai has already sacked two senior army commanders over the incident.

Tribal dispute

Locals told Al Jazeera that the air raid hit a memorial service at a compound belonging to Reza Khan, a tribal leader who had been in dispute with Nader Tawakal, another local leader.

"We were holding a prayer ceremony when the bombs started to fall ... it was heavy bombardment. The whole village was on fire and about 90 were killed," Abdul Rasheed, the brother of one of the dead, said.

Villagers have denied that the gathering was a meeting of the Taliban, which has been fighting Afghan and international forces since being forced from power in 2001. They said that Khan, who died in the raid, was a businessman with security contracts at a nearby US base.

"Nader gave the US special forces wrong information," Gullah Ahmed, one villager, said.

"But instead of surrounding the village they just started bombing."

Nader was not among those arrested on Friday.

The US military maintains that between 30 and 35 Taliban fighters were killed, but has agreed to reopen the investigation after a mobile phone video emerged showing bodies of people said to have been killed in the attack.

It says the original investigation found that a senior Taliban commander was among the dead in the air raid, which was called in after Afghan army US-led ground forces came under intense fire.

Civilian casualties

One resident of Azizabad said that US forces raided his house after the bombing and demanded to be shown the bodies of the dead Taliban fighters.

"I said there were no Taliban here," he told Al Jazeera. "I saw their facial expressions when they realised that civilians had been killed."

More than 500 civilians have been killed during military operations by foreign and Afghan forces so far this year, according to the Afghan government and some aid groups.

Daoud Sultanzoy, an Afghan MP, said that such incidents were destroying people's faith in the Afghan government and international forces in the country.

"The weak Afghan government and weak leadership is trying to take advantage of this and trying to deflect attention from their own problems that are the root cause of these kind of things," he told Al Jazeera.

"Lack of co-ordination of our intelligence, lack of co-ordination of our security forces and lack of co-ordination of our leadership have led to these kind of problems ... if we are not careful we will cross a threshold and alienate the civilian population."

Via Al Jazeera.

Comment:

This is turning out to be quite the fiasco. I had initially not covered it because the differences between the numbers provided by the military and those provided by the locals had led me to believe that it was primarily, though not necessarily entirely, an attempt by Taliban sympathizers at propagandizing. It turns out, though, that the military's figures were based on an embedded FOX news reporter, who turned out to be, almost unbelievably, Oliver North.

Al Jazeera has suggested elsewhere that Bush is apparently ratcheting up efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan in hopes of capturing Osama bin Laden before his term expires. I hope to God that this is not true. Everything that Bush has ever tried to do has failed. If he attempts to, as an American commander put it, "kill [his] way to victory," we might as well just start paying bin Laden a pension right now.

Government's writ extended to 95% of Afghanistan: Saleh

Ahmad Khalid Moeed - Mar 3, 2008 - 12:03

KABUL (PAN): The intelligence department head considered eight districts in various provinces paralyzed and said that Taliban were moving in those districts in group.

Amrullah Saleh, told a press conference on Monday that Khak-i-Afghan district of Zabul province, Gizab of Daikundi, Disho, Khanshin, Bughran, and Washer of Helmand, Manawal and Dawaba of Nuristan province were the districts where governance is paralyzed.

He added that no group had captivity on these districts, but Taliban can freely move there.

Amrullah also considered the recent remarks of CIA head as base less.

Michaal Mekonil, head of CIA, recently told the US senate that Karzai government has control only on 30 per cent of the country.

He added that 10 per cent was under control of Taliban and 60 per cent was controlled by local power holders and tribal elders.

However Amrullah said that 95 per cent of land was under control of Afghan government and only 2 per cent population was not controlled by Afghan government.

Amrullah reminded that 18 per cent of people live in areas where the security is not safe, but the government controls it.

According to Amrullah, during last 12 months the districts of Mai nashin and Ghorak of Kandahar, Jani khil and Mangal of Paktia, Giro, Rashidan and Arjistan of Ghazni, Gomal, Yahya khil, Dila of Paktika, Bala murghab of Badghis, Kajran of Daikundi were among the districts which were recaptured by government and currently administrations are active in these districts.

He said seven people involved in Baghlan bloody suicide attack has been identified and five of those have been arrested.

On November 7, 2007 a blast killed over 90 school children including six MPs.

Amrullah said Mula Salih Muhammad, an official of Taliban intelligence and Mir Hairder master minded Baghlan attack, but they have not been arrested yet.

He informed reporters that Musa Kalim and Dil Muhammad who were involved in Kandahar recent suicide attack have been arrested.

He said the two people had prepared explosive vests and helped suicide attackers to cross border from Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Amrullah said all suicide attacks are conducted by Muhammad Arif in Kandahar city

He said the recent suicide attacks launched in Kandahar which were aimed to kill Commander Abdul Hakim, one of the government supporters in Kandahar province was also conducted by Muhammad Arif.

Amrullah added that Qahir who kept the suicide attacker of Kabul Serena at his house was also arrested.

Amrullah Salih, said according to a survey during last five month 27 abductions have taken place in Kabul and 101 in the country

The survey showed that most abductions were in Farah, Helmand and Herat provinces and were on criminal basis.

Via Pajhwok.

Comment:

Saleh is not exactly an unbiased observer, but this is still the most detailed account of who controls what in Afghanistan I've come across.

South Korean hostage talks 'fail'

Taliban officials have said they are deciding what to do with 19 captured aid workers after talks with a South Korean delegation in southern Afghanistan ended unsuccessfully.

"The talks ended without any result and have failed as our main demand was not accepted," Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a Taliban spokesman, said on Saturday. The announcement came as the Afghan interior ministry said a German woman had been abducted by unidentified armed men in Kabul.

The woman was taken from an area in the southwest of the capital where several aid groups have offices, Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the ministry, said. Twenty-three Christian volunteers from South Korea were taken from a bus as they travelled on the main road south from Kabul last month.

[More]


Comment:

The Taliban still hasn't decided what to do with them. Let us pray for their safe release.

Nato attacked after border meeting

A Nato soldier has been killed and four wounded in an attack by "unknown assailants" in Pakistan after meeting counterparts in the country to discuss calming tensions between Afghan and Pakistani forces, a Nato statement has said. The meeting was held on Monday after border clashes on Sunday between Afghan and Pakistan killed at least 12 people.

"One Isaf service member was killed and four Isaf service members wounded when they were ambushed by unknown assailants near Teri Mangel, Pakistan, after leaving a border meeting," the statement said on Monday, referring to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). [More]


Comment:

This is mostly just an update of the previous post, though I'm not sure whether it clears things up or just makes them even more confused.

It's interesting that the Afghan emissary's account of the incident differs, significantly, from the official accounts of the two parties involved. Barring unforeseen events (which are almost certain to occur), it appears to me that the nascent Afghan government may be attempting to foment ill will between Pakistan and America. While this would be a good thing (a milestone of development, sort of like when your teenager crashes your car for the first time), it would be preferable if it were to assert its growing sense of independence in a way that did not involve alleging that one nuclear power had committed an act of war against another.

Pakistan-Afghan fighting 'ends'

Afghan and Pakistani officials say their army forces have stopped fighting a day after border clashes broke out, with at least 12 reported dead. A Pakistani military spokesman and the Afghan interior ministry disputed claims made on Monday by Afghan officials that battles continued for a second day in Afghanistan's southeastern Paktia province.

"There was no clash today. The things are very much under control. There is no cause of concern," Major General Waheed Arshad, a Pakistani army spokesman, said. Sunday's fighting was the worst outbreak of violence between the neighbouring countries in years.

"Eight policemen and four civilians have been killed since yesterday," Sami-Ul Haq Badar, an Afghan army general, said on Monday.

US deaths

Despite the end to the army battles, reports have emerged that two US soldiers were killed on Monday in Pakistan's northwest Kurram region. US and Pakistani army soldiers had met to discuss moves to bring a lasting end to the clashes between the armies of Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to an Afghan government spokesman. "At the meeting, a Pakistani officer rose up and fired at US soldiers, resulting in the deaths of two soldiers and wounding of two others," Zahir Azimi, an Afghan defence ministry spokesman, told Reuters. He said US soldiers had returned fire, killing several Pakistani troops. Major General Waheed Arshad of the Pakistan army said it was unclear what had happened in the incident. "We don't know who fired. We have ordered an inquiry. We have cordoned off the area," he said.

Border posts

According to Afghan officials, Sunday's fighting erupted between after Pakistani forces took some areas in a border region in Paktia. Pakistan said paramilitary forces retaliated after Afghan troops started "unprovoked firing" on border posts in the Kurram tribal region in northwest Pakistan. Afghanistan said thousands of civilians joined government forces in fighting Pakistani troops after two Afghan children were killed.

Tense relationship

Relations between the neighbours have deteriorated badly in recent months. Afghanistan says Pakistan is not doing enough to stop Taliban insurgents operating from the Pakistani side of the disputed border. Pakistan, the main backer of the Taliban before the September 11 attacks in the US, says the root of the Taliban problem is in Afghanistan. Pakistan is building a fence along parts of the border, disputed since Pakistan's creation in 1947, in an attempt to stop infiltration by Taliban fighters. Afghanistan opposes fencing a border it has never recognised.


Comment:

This is bad. Let's hope that this incident spurs both sides to improve relations and ensure this does not happen again.

Via Al Jazeera.

Taliban military commander killed

Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's chief military commander, has been killed in southern Afghanistan according to government officials. James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent, was shown a body the authorities said was Dadullah's on Sunday morning.

The body was shown to media in the governor's compound in Kandahar.

A sheet was removed from the body up to the knee to show that part of one of the legs was missing. Dadullah lost a leg fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s.

An Interior Ministry statement said Dadullah was killed in fighting with security forces in Helmand's Girishk district on Saturday night.

Officials from Nato and the US-led coalition could not confirm it and Bays says a Nato source had told him privately that there was still some confusion over the reports but that they did believe the body was Dadullah.

Bays said the Taliban was still confused over whether Dadullah had been killed. Some sources had confirmed the body was his while some others said it was another military commander who also happened to only have one leg. A Taliban spokesman had earlier rejected the government's claim labelling it "propaganda".
Standing next to the body Bays said that although he had never met Dadullah face to face, the corpse was either him or someone bearing a striking resemblance to him.
Television stations interrupted routine broadcasting to give breaking news of the killing.

'Commander of commanders'

Dadullah is the most important rebel commander to be killed since the Taliban was driven from government by a US-led coalition in late 2001, the Afghan intelligence department said. Asadullah Khalid, the Kandahar provincial governor, said Dadullah was killed "in an operation carried out based on very accurate information." Sayed Ansari, the Intelligence agency spokesman, described him as the "biggest Taliban commander ever killed." "He was the commander of commanders," he said. Dadullah was known as the key military strategist in Taliban and was said to be close to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the fugitive Taliban supreme commander. He has bragged to the media about having thousands of men at his command, including hundreds of suicide bombers.

Comment:

Gotcha.

While it's a pity that he wasn't captured alive (see a previous post in the Dungeon), this is an immeasurably great victory for the Coalition. Moreover, it looks as if he was killed by the Afghan military, which speaks well of their growing competency. Hopefully this victory will persuade the Afghan parliament to let us continue on our mission, and hopefully it means we deserve to.

Via Al Jazeera.

Afghan leaders urge Taliban truce

Outraged by the rising number of civilian deaths, Afghan legislators have approved a bill calling for a truce and talks with the Taliban. The bill passed on Wednesday says military action should be used only in self-defence and calls for a date to be set for the withdrawal of US-led and Nato troops.

The move came as news emerged of US air strikes in Helmand province, southwest of the capital, Kabul, where at least 21 civilians were killed as US and Nato forces went after Taliban fighters. "Twenty-one civilians, including women and children, were killed," the governor of Helmand said. [More]


Comment:

So, it has finally come to this. Who would have thought, back in 2001, that Osama would end up getting away with it? Who would have thought that the mightiest nation on the face of the earth would take so long to defeat a single civilian that it would overstay its welcome and be forced to leave? Who would have thought that we would fail?

I remember, in 2002, walking home from school, seeing the newspaper still in the driveway, and reading that fateful headline stating that Bush had accused Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction. I remember feeling my heart sink, an almost sickening sensation, and thinking, "This is the beginning of the end." We were on the verge of victory, and then the president abandoned his promise and set off on a quixotic quest of his own. Five years have gone by, and still Osama walks free. If this bill passes, he will die free as well.

And even if it doesn't pass, what then? It would be nice if we could quadruple the size of our forces there, send the fatigued and the strained home to recuperate, fully equip our army with the latest technology, as we once would have done. But we cannot. Our soldiers are in Iraq, there are no reinforcements, there is no left over funding. The right wing has accused the left of being defeatist, of wanting to surrender. In reality, it is President Bush who surrendered when he pulled our forces out of Afghanistan without capturing bin Laden. He left enough to maintain a stalemate, but a person who chooses stalemate over victory has given in and given up.

It figures that it should have worked out like this. America was to great a nation for any outside force to defeat it. It took one of our own to bring us to our knees.

More:
Afghan Legislature Passes Bill To Open Talks With Taliban
Afghan Bill Calls for Talks With Taliban