Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, writing in Foreign Policy, are sceptical about the loudly-hailed “victory” for US forces, taking the town of Marja in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and the detention of Taliban leaders in Pakistan:
The release of Tim Burton’s new blockbuster movie, Alice in Wonderland, is days away. The timing could not be more appropriate. Lewis Carroll’s ironically opium-inspired tale of a rational person caught up inside a mad world with its own bizarre but consistent internal (il)logic has now surpassed Vietnam as the best paradigm to understand the war in Afghanistan.
The war in Afghanistan, as we have written here and in Military Review (pdf), is indeed a near replication of the Vietnam War, including the assault on the strategically meaningless village of Marjah, which is itself a perfect re-enactment of Operation Meade River in 1968.But the callous cynicism of this war, which we described here in early December, and the mainstream media’s brainless reporting on it, have descended past these sane parallels. We have now gone down the rabbit hole.
Pajhwok News Agency reports that on Tuesday, the Afghanistan senate deplored the foreign airstrikes that killed 21 innocent civilians in the province of Daikundi on Sunday, and demanded that NATO avoid any repetition of this sort of error.
But some senators went farther, demanding that NATO or US military men responsible for the deaths be executed. Senator Hamidullah Tokhi of Uruzgan complained to Pajhwok that the foreign forces had killed civilians in such incidents time and again, and kept apologizing but then repeating the fatal mistake: “Anyone killing an ordinary Afghan should be executed in public.”
Lawmaker Fatima Aziz of Qunduz concurred, observing, “We saw foreign troops time and again that they killed innocent people, something unbearable for the already war-weary Afghans.”
UPDATE 0810 GMT: Afghanistan government officials say at least 33 civilians have been killed by a NATO air attack on a convoy of vehicles in Uruzgan. Nato confirmed that it fired on Sunday on a group of vehicles that it believed contained fighters, only to discover later that women and children were in the cars.
We still have a government, for the moment. Opinion polls taken today indicate 45% in favour of Uruzgan [Dutch troops in Afghanistan] being worth a crisis, 35% against. Supporters of [Geert] Wilders’ PVV and the Socialists are above 60% in their hope that the Cabinet falls, as are – significantly – 55% of Labour. Yet overall 54% still come out hoping the Cabinet stays together, economic concerns being the main reason. It’s rare that a foreign policy issue can be so divisive, and potentially so decisive.
Indeed. Less than 72 hours later, and the Government of Jan Peter Balkenende is no more. Balkenende, of the centre-right Christian Democrat CDA, wanted to extend the August deadline for withdrawal of Dutch troops from Afghanistan by a year. He miscalculated, possibly because of misleading signals, that he would the support of his coalition partner, the Labour Party; Labour leader and Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos announced:
The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, first to walk viewers through the US interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and then to take a tour around other issues from Iran to Guantanamo Bay to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military.
In contrast to previous appearances, when Petraeus was fighting his own President to get his version of US foreign and military policy, this was a stay-the-course interview behind agreed approaches. The message on Afghanistan was long-haul effort to win. On Pakistan, it was supporting Pakistani forces to vanquish the Taliban. He spoke in generalities about maintaining pressure on Iran, and beyond his main agenda, on the tricky issues like Guantanamo Bay and “enhanced interrogation” (torture), he evaded any definitive statements.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: General David Petraeus joins us live from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
General, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Thanks, David. Good to be with you.
A US drone strike on N. Waziristan has allegedly killed Muhammad Haqqani, a son of guerrilla leader Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Haqqani network is considered particularly skilled insurgents, and is the faction closes to both the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and to al-Qaeda. Jalaluddin’s health is said to be poor and he may have already turned most decisions over to his other son, Siraj. The Telegraph hinted that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence has ceased supporting the Haqqanis behind the scenes, and may even have helped the Americans target their drone strike.
According to Dawn, the governor of the Afghan province of Qunduz is reporting that Pakistan has “arrested Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammad, respectively the shadow governors of the northern Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan” in Pakistani Baluchistan (presumably in Quetta). Islamabad has yet to confirm the report.
UPDATE 1145 GMT: The Washington Post this morning has a very different view of US-Pakistan relations and the Mullah Baradar case:
The capture of senior Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan represents the culmination of months of pressure by the Obama administration on Pakistan’s powerful security forces to side with the United States as its troops wage war in Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
A new level of cooperation includes Pakistani permission late last month for U.S. intelligence officials to station personnel and technology in this pulsating megacity, officials said. Intercepted real-time communications handed over to Pakistani intelligence officials have led to the arrests in recent days of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, and two of the group’s “shadow” governors for northern Afghanistan.
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Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, goes behind the official story of the US-Pakistan joint operation to break the “Old Taliban” in Afghanistan with the capture of the organisation’s second-ranking leader:
Contrary to initial U.S. suggestions that it signals reduced Pakistani support for the Taliban, the detention of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the operational leader of the Afghan Taliban, represents a shift by Pakistan to more open support for the Taliban in preparation for a peace settlement and U.S. withdrawal.
Statements by Pakistani officials to journalists prior to the arrest indicate that the decision to put Baradar in custody is aimed at ensuring that the Taliban role in peace negotiations serves Pakistani interests. They also suggest that Pakistani military leaders view Baradar as an asset in those negotiations rather than an adversary to be removed from the conflict. Read the rest of this entry »
In the past week, American, British and Afghan troops launched a major campaign around the southern Afghan city of Marjah in Helmand province – part of the counter-insurgency program begun in earnest last year. Shortly thereafter, far to the south in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, a major Taliban figure was taken into custody. The two events may help bring about a negotiated settlement.
All go in Marjah
Operations began near the central Helmand town with little prospect of a large-scale battle with Taliban bands that had operated freely there. The much-publicized buildup to the operation might have been throwing down the gauntlet and challenging the Taliban to a major battle, but the Taliban know such engagements go badly for them as their levies are no match or a Western unit’s cohesion and firepower – a lesson learned repeatedly over the years.
It has been eerie to watch the first few days of Operation Moshtarak, the US-Afghanistan-ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) military offensive against the Taliban in Helmand Province. It is not just the observation of the battle from thousands of miles away; it is that this encounter has been scripted.
The offensive was signalled weeks ago in declaration from US military and political headquarters, reporters were suitably embedded, and the ritual proclamations were issued. BBC radio even turned over several minutes of prime-time programming to the speech, in full, of a British commander to his troops on the eve of battle. (Ever since William Shakespeare put words in the mouth of Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 — “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” — this has been required in presentation of English/British wars.) Yet all the scripting could not set down the final-act resolution of this question:
This morning an Afghan official is declaring that 12 Taliban were killed on Sunday. That makes it a score draw with number of dead civilians, as 12 perished in an American rocket strike. In total, about 40 Taliban are reported dead since the start of the offensive. That’s 40 bad guys in what was supposed to be a showdown battle for the Taliban “stronghold” of Marja and in what The Washington Post, voicing the words of a US Lieutenant-Colonel, is calling “last-ditch efforts” by the enemy.
Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, writing in Foreign Policy, are sceptical about the loudly-hailed “victory” for US forces, taking the town of Marja in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and the detention of Taliban leaders in Pakistan:
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