27. October 2010 by admin.

We are a week away from the 2010 U.S. midterm elections. The outcome is already locked in. Whether the Republicans take the House or the Senate is close to immaterial. It is almost certain that the dynamics of American domestic politics will change. The Democrats will lose their ability to impose cloture in the Senate and thereby shut off debate. Whether they lose the House or not, the Democrats will lose the ability to pass legislation at the will of the House Democratic leadership. The large majority held by the Democrats will be gone, and party discipline will not be strong enough (it never is) to prevent some defections. Should the Republicans win an overwhelming victory in both houses next week, they will still not have the votes to override presidential vetoes. Therefore they will not be able to legislate unilaterally, and if any legislation is to be passed it will have to be the result of negotiations between the president and the Republican Congressional leadership. Thus, whether the Democrats do better than expected or the Republicans win a massive victory, the practical result will be the same. When we consider the difficulties President Barack Obama had passing his health care legislation, even with powerful majorities in both houses, it is clear that he will not be able to push through any significant legislation without Republican agreement. The result will either be gridlock or a very different legislative agenda than we have seen in the first two years. These are not unique circumstances. Reversals in the first midterm election after a presidential election happened to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It does not mean that Obama is guaranteed to lose a re-election bid, although it does mean that, in order to win that election, he will have to operate in a very different way. It also means that the 2012 presidential campaign will begin next Wednesday on Nov. 3. Given his low approval ratings, Obama appears vulnerable and the Republican nomination has become extremely valuable. For his part, Obama does not have much time to lose in reshaping his presidency. With the Iowa caucuses about 15 months away and the Republicans holding momentum, the president will have to begin his campaign. Obama now has two options in terms of domestic strategy. The first is to continue to press his agenda, knowing that it will be voted down. If the domestic situation improves, he takes credit for it. If it doesn’t, he runs against Republican partisanship. The second option is to abandon his agenda, cooperate with the Republicans and re-establish his image as a centrist. Both have political advantages and disadvantages and present an important strategic decision for Obama to make.

The Foreign Policy Option

Obama also has a third option, which is to shift his focus from domestic policy to foreign policy. The founders created a system in which the president is inherently weak in domestic policy and able to take action only when his position in Congress is extremely strong. This was how the founders sought to avoid the tyranny of narrow majorities. At the same time, they made the president quite powerful in foreign policy regardless of Congress, and the evolution of the presidency over the centuries has further strengthened this power. Historically, when the president has been weak domestically, one option he has had is to appear powerful by focusing on foreign policy.For presidents like Clinton, this was not a particularly viable option in 1994-1996. The international system was quiet, and it was difficult to act meaningfully and decisively. It was easier for Reagan in 1982-1984. The Soviet Union was strong and threatening, and an aggressive anti-Soviet stance was popular and flowed from his 1980 campaign. Deploying the ground-launched cruise missile and the Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile in Western Europe alienated his opponents, strengthened his position with his political base and allowed him to take the center (and ultimately pressured the Soviets into agreeing to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty). By 1984, with the recession over, Reagan’s anti-Soviet stance helped him defeat Walter Mondale.Obama does not have Clinton’s problem. The international environment allows him to take a much more assertive stance than he has over the past two years. The war in Afghanistan is reaching a delicate negotiating state as reports of ongoing talks circulate. The Iraq war is far from stable, with 50,000 U.S. troops still there, and the Iranian issue is wide open. Israeli-Palestinian talks are also faltering, and there are a host of other foreign issues, ranging from China’s increasing assertiveness to Russia’s resurgent power to the ongoing decline in military power of America’s European allies. There are a range of issues that need to be addressed at the presidential level, many of which would resonate with at least some voters and allow Obama to be presidential in spite of weak political support.There are two problems with Obama becoming a foreign policy president. The first is that the country is focused on the economy and on domestic issues. If he focuses on foreign policy and the U.S. economy does not improve by 2012, it will cost him the election. His hope will be foreign policy successes, or at least the perception of being strong on national security, coupled with economic recovery or a plausible reason to blame the Republicans. This is a tricky maneuver, but his presidency no longer offers simple solutions. The second problem is that his presidency and campaign have been based on the general principle of accommodation rather than confrontation in foreign affairs, with the sole exception of Afghanistan, where he chose to be substantially more aggressive than his predecessor had been. The place where he was assertive is unlikely to yield a major foreign policy success, unless that success is a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. A negotiated settlement will be portrayed by the Republicans as capitulation rather than triumph. If he continues on the current course in Afghanistan, he will seem to be plodding down an old path and not pioneering a new one. Interestingly, if Obama’s goal is to appear strong on national security while regaining the center, Afghanistan offers the least attractive venue. His choices are negotiation, which would reinforce his image as an accommodationist in foreign policy, or continued war, which is not particularly new territory. He could deploy even more forces into Afghanistan, but then would risk looking like Lyndon Johnson in 1967, hurling troops at the enemy without a clear plan. He could, of course, create a massive crisis with Pakistan, but it would be extremely unlikely that such an effort would end well, given the situation in Afghanistan. Foreign policy presidents need to be successful.There is little to be done in Iraq at the moment except delay the withdrawal of forces, which adds little to his political position. Moreover, the core problem in Iraq at the moment is Iran and its support of disruptive forces. Obama could attempt to force an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, but that would require Hamas to change its position, which is unlikely, or that Israel make massive concessions, which it doesn’t think it has to do. The problem with Israel and the Palestinians is that peace talks, such as those under Clinton at Camp David, have a nasty tendency to end in chaos. The European, Russian and Chinese situations are of great importance, but they are not conducive to dramatic acts. The United States is not going to blockade China over the yuan or hold a stunning set of meetings with the Europeans to get them to increase their defense budgets and commit to more support for U.S. wars. And the situation regarding North Korea does not have the pressing urgency to justify U.S. action. There are many actions that would satisfy Obama’s accomodationist inclinations, but those would not serve well in portraying him as decisive in foreign policy.

The Iranian Option

This leaves the obvious choice: Iran. Iran is the one issue on which the president could galvanize public opinion. The Republicans have portrayed Obama as weak on combating militant Islamism. Many of the Democrats see Iran as a repressive violator of human rights, particularly after the crackdown on the Green Movement. The Arabian Peninsula, particularly Saudi Arabia, is afraid of Iran and wants the United States to do something more than provide $60 billion-worth of weapons over the next 10 years. The Israelis, obviously, are hostile. The Europeans are hostile to Iran but want to avoid escalation, unless it ends quickly and successfully and without a disruption of oil supplies. The Russians like the Iranians are a thorn in the American side, as are the Chinese, but neither would have much choice should the United States deal with Iran quickly and effectively. Moreover, the situation in Iraq would improve if Iran were to be neutralized, and the psychology in Afghanistan could also shift.If Obama were to use foreign policy to enhance his political standing through decisive action, and achieve some positive results in relations with foreign governments, the one place he could do it would be Iran. The issue is what he might have to do and what the risks would be. Nothing could, after all, hurt him more than an aggressive stance against Iran that failed to achieve its goals or turned into a military disaster for the United States. So far, Obama’s policy toward Iran has been to incrementally increase sanctions by building a weak coalition and allow the sanctions to create shifts in Iran’s domestic political situation. The idea is to weaken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and strengthen his enemies, who are assumed to be more moderate and less inclined to pursue nuclear weapons. Obama has avoided overt military action against Iran, so a confrontation with Iran would require a deliberate shift in the U.S. stance, which would require a justification. The most obvious justification would be to claim that Iran is about to construct a nuclear device. Whether or not this is true would be immaterial. First, no one would be in a position to challenge the claim, and, second, Obama’s credibility in making the assertion would be much greater than George W. Bush’s, given that Obama does not have the 2003 weapons of mass destruction debacle to deal with and has the advantage of not having made such a claim before. Coming from Obama, the claim would confirm the views of the Republicans, while the Democrats would be hard-pressed to challenge him. In the face of this assertion, Obama would be forced to take action. He could appear reluctant to his base, decisive to the rest. The Republicans could not easily attack him. Nor would the claim be a lie. Defining what it means to almost possess nuclear weapons is nearly a metaphysical discussion. It requires merely a shift in definitions and assumptions. This is cynical scenario, but it can be aligned with reasonable concerns. Destroying Iran’s nuclear capability does not involve a one-day raid, nor is Iran without the ability to retaliate. Its nuclear facilities are in a number of places and Iran has had years to harden those facilities. Destroying the facilities might take an extended air campaign and might even require the use of special operations units to verify battle damage and complete the mission. In addition, military action against Iran’s naval forces would be needed to protect the oil routes through the Persian Gulf from small boat swarms and mines, anti-ship missile launchers would have to be attacked and Iranian air force and air defenses taken out. This would not solve the problem of the rest of Iran’s conventional forces, which would represent a threat to the region, so these forces would have to be attacked and reduced as well. An attack on Iran would not be an invasion, nor would it be a short war. Like Yugoslavia in 1999, it would be an extended air war lasting an unknown number of months. There would be American POWs from aircraft that were shot down or suffered mechanical failure over Iranian territory. There would be many civilian casualties, which the international media would focus on. It would not be an antiseptic campaign, but it would likely (though it is important to reiterate not certainly) destroy Iran’s nuclear capability and profoundly weaken its conventional forces. It would be a war based on American strengths in aerial warfare and technology, not on American weaknesses in counter insurgency. It would strengthen the Iranian regime (as aerial bombing usually does) by rallying the Iranian public to its side against the aggression. If the campaign were successful, the Iranian regime would be stronger politically, at least for a while, but eviscerated militarily. A successful campaign would ease the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, calm the Saudis and demonstrate to the Europeans American capability and will. It would also cause the Russians and Chinese to become very thoughtful. A campaign against Iran would have its risks. Iran could launch a terrorist campaign and attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending the global economy into a deep recession on soaring oil prices. It could also create a civil war in Iraq. U.S. intelligence could have missed the fact that the Iranians already have a deliverable nuclear weapon. All of these are possible risks, and, according to STRATFOR’s thinking, the risks outweigh the rewards. After all, the best laid military plan can end in a fiasco.We have argued that a negotiation with Iran in the order of President Richard Nixon’s reversal on China would be a lower-risk solution to the nuclear problem than the military option. But for Obama, this is politically difficult to do. Had Bush done this, he would have had the ideological credentials to deal with Iran, as Nixon had the ideological credentials to deal with China. But Obama does not. Negotiating an agreement with Iran in the wake of an electoral rout would open the floodgates to condemnation of Obama as an appeaser. In losing power, he loses the option for negotiation unless he is content to be a one-term president. I am arguing the following. First, Obama will be paralyzed on domestic policies by this election. He can craft a re-election campaign blaming the Republicans for gridlock. This has its advantages and disadvantages; the Republicans, charging that he refused to adjust to the electorate’s wishes, can blame him for the gridlock. It can go either way. The other option for Obama is to look for triumph in foreign policy where he has a weak hand. The only obvious way to achieve success that would have a positive effect on the U.S. strategic position is to attack Iran. Such an attack would have substantial advantages and very real dangers. It could change the dynamics of the Middle East and it could be a military failure. I am not claiming that Obama will decide to do this based on politics, although no U.S. president has ever engaged in foreign involvement without political considerations, nor should he. I am saying that, at this moment in history, given the domestic gridlock that appears to be in the offing, a shift to a foreign policy emphasis makes sense, Obama needs to be seen as an effective commander in chief and Iran is the logical target. This is not a prediction. Obama does not share his thoughts with me. It is merely speculation on the options Obama will have after the midterm elections, not what he will choose to do.

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13. September 2010 by admin.

Western  Freedom

By Susan MacAllen

In 1978-79 I was living and studying in Denmark. But in 1978 - even in Copenhagen, one didn’t see Muslim immigrants. 

The  Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated  the exotic, went   out  of its way to protect each of its citizens. It  was proud of its new brand  of socialist liberalism one in development since  the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to  struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time. The  rest of  Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior  educational system and a history of  humanitarianism. Denmark  was also most generous in its immigration  policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in  transportation, housing and  education. It was determined to set a world  example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism. How could it have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of  political cartoons in a newspaper would spark violence that would leave dozens dead in the  streets -all because its commitment to  multiculturalism would come back  to  bite?   

By  the 1990’s the growing urban Muslim population  was obvious - as was its unwillingness to  integrate into Danish society. Years of  immigrants had settled into Muslim-exclusive  enclaves. As the Muslim leadership became more vocal about what they  considered the decadence of Denmark ’s liberal way of life, the Danes  - once so welcoming - began to feel slighted. Many Danes had begun to see Islam as incompatible with their long-standing values:  belief in personal liberty and free speech, in equality for women, in tolerance for other  ethnic groups, and a deep pride in Danish heritage and history. An  article by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, in which they accurately forecast, that the growing immigrant problem in Denmark would explode.

In the article they reported: ‘Muslim  immigrants constitute 5 percent of the population but consume  upwards  of 40 percent of the welfare spending.’ ‘Muslims  are only 4 percent of Denmark’s 5.4 million people but make up  a majority of the country’s convicted rapists,  an especially  combustible  issue given that practically all the female  victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes.’ ‘Over  time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers,  they wish less   to  mix with the indigenous population. A recent  survey found that only 5 percent of young Muslim  immigrants   would readily marry a Dane.’ 

‘Forced  marriages - promising a newborn daughter in  Denmark to a male   cousin  in the home country, then compelling her to  marry him, sometimes on   pain  of death - are one problem’.  ‘Muslim  leaders openly declare their goal of introducing  Islamic law   once  Denmark’s Muslim population grows large enough-  a not-that-remote prospect.. If present trends  persist, one sociologist estimates, every  third inhabitant of   Denmark  in 40  years will be Muslim.’   It  is easy to understand why a growing number of  Danes would feel that   Muslim  immigrants show little respect for Danish values  and laws.

An example is the phenomenon  common to other European countries and    Canada: some Muslims in  Denmark  who opted  to leave the Muslim faith have been murdered in  the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for  their   lives.  Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by  Muslim leaders in Denmark, a country where once Christian citizens  worked to smuggle out nearly all of their 7,000  Jews by night to Sweden  - before  the Nazis could   invade.  I think of my Danish friend Elsa - who, as a teenager, had dreaded crossing the street to the  bakery every morning under the eyes of occupying Nazi  soldiers - and I wonder what she would say  today.   

In  2001,   Denmark  elected the most  conservative government in some 70 years -one that had some decidedly non-generous ideas  about liberal, unfettered immigration. Today Denmark  has the strictest  immigration policies   in Europe  . ( Its effort to protect  itself has been met with accusations of ‘racism’  by liberal media across Europe - even as other  governments struggle to right the social  problems wrought by years of too-lax  immigration).   

If  you wish to become Danish, you must attend three  years of language classes.  You must pass a test on Denmark ’s  history, culture, and a Danish language test . You must live in Denmark  for 7 years  before applying for citizenship.  You  must demonstrate an intent to work, and have a  job waiting. If you wish to  bring a spouse into Denmark, you  must both be over 24 years of age, and you  won’t find it so easy anymore to move your  friends and family to Denmark with you.You  will not be allowed to build a mosque in Copenhagen. Although your children  have a choice of some 30 Arabic culture and  language schools in Denmark, they will be strongly encouraged to assimilate to Danish society in  ways that past immigrants weren’t.

 In  2006, the Danish minister for employment, Claus  Hjort Frederiksen,   spoke  publicly of the burden of Muslim immigrants on  the Danish welfare   system,  and it was horrifying: the government’s welfare  committee had calculated that if immigration  from Third World countries were blocked, 75 percent  of the cuts needed to sustain the huge welfare  system in coming decades would be unnecessary.  In other words, the welfare system, as it existed,  was being exploited by immigrants to the point  of eventually   bankrupting  the government.

‘We are simply forced to adopt a  new policy on immigration’. ‘The  calculations of the welfare committee are  terrifying and show how   unsuccessful  the integration of immigrants has been up to  now,’ he said.   A  large thorn in the side of   Denmark ’s  imams is the Minister of   Immigration  and Integration, Rikke Hvilshoj.. She makes no  bones about the   new  policy toward immigration, ‘The number of  foreigners coming to the   country  makes a difference,’ Hvilshoj says, ‘There is an  inverse correlation between how many come here  and how well we can receive the foreigners that come’  And on Muslim immigrants needing to demonstrate  a willingness to blend in, ‘In my view,   Denmark  should be a country with room  for different cultures and religions. Some  values, however, are   more  important than others. We refuse to question  democracy, equal rights,  and  freedom of speech.’      

Hvilshoj  has paid a price for her show of backbone.  Perhaps to test her resolve, the leading radical imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban,  demanded that the government pay blood money to  the family of a   Muslim  who was murdered in a suburb of Copenhagen,  stating that the family’s thirst  for revenge could be thwarted for money. When  Hvilshoj dismissed his demand, he argued that in Muslim culture the payment of retribution money was  common, to which Hvilshoj replied that what is done in a Muslim country  is  not necessarily what is done in Denmark. The  Muslim reply came soon after: her house was  torched while she, her husband and children  slept. All managed  to escape unharmed, but she and her family were  moved to a secret location and she and other  ministers were assigned bodyguards for the first time  - in a country where such murderous violence was  once so scarce.

Her  government has slid to the right, and her  borders have tightened.Many believe that  what happens in the next decade will determine whether   Denmark survives as a bastion of good living,  humane thinking and   social  responsibility, or whether it becomes a nation  at civil war with   supporters  of Sharia law.   And  meanwhile, Canadians clamor for stricter  immigration policies, and demand  an end to state welfare programs that allow many  immigrants to live on the public dole. As we in Canada look at the enclaves of Muslims amongst us,  and see those  who enter our shores too easily, dare live on  our taxes, yet refuse to embrace our culture,  respect our traditions, participate in our  legal system, obey our laws, speak our language,  appreciate our history..  we would do  well to look to Denmark, and say a prayer for her future and for our own.  If  you agree with this article, then please pass it  on.

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13. September 2010 by admin.

– The Story You Won’t See In the Western Mainstream MediaBy Phyllis Chesler Published September 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com They are crossing the border illegally and violently displacing the indigenous population whose homes and possessions they either destroy or occupy. They are attacking the young, the elderly, and especially the girls and women, whom they kidnap, forcibly convert, or traffic into brothels. The locals are terrified of them. The police rarely come to their aid, nor do the politically correct media or government. Both are terrified by the criminals and terrorists who are riding these immigrant waves.

I am not talking about illegal immigrants to Europe or North America. I am describing Muslims who are penetrating India’s West Bengal region. These Bangladeshi immigrants are becoming conduits for criminal activities (arms, drugs, and sexual slavery) which also fund global jihad.

The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Nathan Bloom in the preparation of this article.

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11. September 2010 by admin.

Rumors are circulating on the Internet and Indian media over the reported presence of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, ostensibly to provide “protection for aid and construction workers”. It is not really unusual that the reports/news might be a bit over blown by the media, BUT China’s growing reassertion of territorial claims in the region will not go ignored by India and will give New Delhi and Washington another cause for cooperation. The prospect of greater U.S.-Indian defense cooperation and diminishing U.S. interest in Afghanistan will meanwhile drive Pakistan closer to China, creating a series of self-perpetuating threats on the subcontinent.Let us analyse the geopolitical implications on the subcontinent and relationship of India, Pakistan and China with each other and with United States. U.S. Pacific Command head Adm. Robert F. Willard is on a two-day visit to India to meet with the Indian defense leadership Sept. 9-10. Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony will follow up his meetings with Willard when he meets with U.S. defense leaders in Washington at the end of September. With an arduous war being fought in Afghanistan and India’s fears growing over Pakistan-based militancy, there is no shortage of issues for the two sides to discuss. But there is one additional topic of discussion that is now elevating in importance: Chinese military moves on the Indian subcontinent.Allegations over a major increase of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in northern Kashmir have been circulating over the past several weeks, with an Op-Ed in The New York Times claiming that as many as 7,000 to 11,000 PLA troops have flooded into the northern part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, known as the Gilgit-Baltistan region. This is an area through which China has been rebuilding the Karakoram Highway, which connects the Chinese region of Xinjiang by road and rail to Pakistan’s Chinese-built and funded ports on the Arabian Sea. Though Chinese engineers have been working on this infrastructure for some time, new reports suggest that several thousand PLA troops are stationed on the Khunjerab Pass on the Xinjiang border to provide security to the Karakoram Highway construction crews. Handfuls of militants have been suspected of transiting this region in the past to travel between Central Asia, Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang province, and Chinese construction crews in Pakistan have been targeted a number of times by jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That said, a large Chinese troop presence in the region is likely to serve a larger purpose than simply stand-by protection for Chinese workers.Pakistan responded by describing the reports as fabricated and said a small Chinese presence was in the area to provide humanitarian assistance in the ongoing flood relief effort. Chinese state media also discussed recently how the Chinese government was shipping emergency aid to Pakistan via Kashgar, Xinjiang province, through the Khunjerab Pass to the Sost dry port in northern Pakistan. India expressed its concern over the reports of Chinese troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said it was working to independently verify the claims, and then claimed to confirm at least 1,000 PLA troops had entered the region.Such claims of troop deployments in the region are often exaggerated for various political aims, and these latest reports are no exception. It is still not known for sure the exact number of PLA troops in and around Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (known as Gilgit-Baltistan) and what percentage of those are combat troops. It has been reported that a convoy of approximately 110 Chinese trucks recently delivered some 2,000 metric tons of mostly food aid through the Khunjerab Pass to the Gojal Valley, an area devastated by recent flooding and landslides. Chinese Bridges and Roads Co. (CBRC) has been working on expanding the Karakoram Highway for the past three years and has roughly 700 Chinese laborers and engineers working on the project. The highway expansion is expected to be completed by 2013, but the deadline is likely to be extended as a result of recent flooding.Though, as per various media sources, on-ground reports so far track closest with the Chinese claims of flood relief operations, such relief and construction work can also provide useful cover for a more gradual buildup and sustained military presence in the region. This prospect is on the minds of many U.S. and Indian defense officials who would not be pleased with the idea of China reinforcing military support for Pakistan through overland supply routes.

What can be the intentions behind this build-up?

Though Pakistan, as per its typical characteristic, has reacted defiantly to the rumors, Islamabad has much to gain from merely having the rumor out in the open. Pakistan’s geopolitical vulnerability cannot be overstated. The country already faces a host of internally wrenching issues but must also contend with the fact that the Pakistani heartland in the Indus River Valley sits near the border with Pakistan’s much bigger and more powerful Indian rival, denying Islamabad any meaningful strategic depth to adequately defend itself. Pakistan is thus on an interminable search for a reliable, external power patron for its security, and its preferred choice is the United States, which has the military might and economic heft to buttress Pakistani defenses. However, Washington must maintain a delicate balance on the subcontinent, moving between its deepening partnership with India and keeping Pakistan on life support to avoid having India become the unchallenged South Asian hegemon.

Though Pakistan will do whatever it can to hold U.S. interest in an alliance with Islamabad — and keeping the militant threat alive is very much a part of that calculus — it will more often than not be left feeling betrayed by its allies in Washington. With U.S. patience wearing thin on Afghanistan, talk of a U.S. betrayal is naturally creeping up again among Pakistani policymakers as Pakistan fears that a U.S. withdrawal from the region will leave Pakistan with little to defend against India, a massive militant mess to clean up and a weaker hand in Afghanistan. China, while unwilling to put its neck out for Pakistan and provoke retaliation by India, provides Islamabad with a vital military backup that Pakistan can not only use to elicit more defense support against the Indians, but also to capture Washington’s attention with a reminder that a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could open the door for Chinese military expansion in South Asia.Chinese motives in the Kashmir affair are more complex. Even before the rumors, India and China were diplomatically sparring over the Chinese government’s recent refusal to issue a visa to a senior Indian army general on grounds that his command includes Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Such diplomatic flare-ups have become more frequent over the past couple of years, as China has used visa issuances in disputed territory in Kashmir and in Arunachal Pradesh along the northern Indian border to assert its territorial claims while trying to discredit Indian claims. Even beyond Kashmir, China has injected life into its territorial claims throughout the East and South China seas, much to the consternation of the Pacific Rim states.China’s renewed assertiveness in these disputed territories can be explained in large part by the country’s resource acquisition strategy. As China has scaled up its efforts to scour the globe for energy resources to sustain its elephantine economy, it has increasingly sought to develop a military that can safeguard vital supply lines running through the Indian Ocean basin to and from the Persian Gulf. Building the Karakoram Highway through Kashmir, for example, allows China to substantially cut down the time it takes to transit supplies between the Pakistani coast and China’s western front.China’s increasing reliance on the military to secure its supply lines for commercial interests, along with other trends, has thus given the PLA a much more prominent say in Chinese policymaking in recent years. This trend has been reinforced by the Chinese government’s need to modernize the military and meet its growing budgetary needs following a large-scale recentralization effort in the 1990s that stripped the PLA of much of its business interests. Over the past decade, the PLA has taken a more prominent role in maintaining internal stability — including responses to natural disasters, riots and other disturbances — while increasing its participation in international peacekeeping efforts. As the PLA’s clout has grown in recent years, Chinese military officials have gone from remaining virtually silent on political affairs to becoming commentators for the Chinese state press on issues concerning Chinese foreign policy.The PLA’s political influence could also be factoring into the rising political tensions in Kashmir. After all, China’s naval expansion into the Indian Ocean basin for its primarily commercial interests has inevitably driven the modernization and expansion of the Indian navy, a process the United States supports out of its own interest to hedge against China. By both asserting its claims to territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir and raising the prospect of more robust Chinese military support for Pakistan, the Chinese military can benefit from having India’s military focus on ground forces, which require a great deal of resources to maintain a large troop presence in rough terrain, while reducing the amount of attention and resources the Indian military can give to its naval modernization plans.

The Indian Response

There may be a number of commercial, political and military factors contributing to China’s military extensions into South Asia, but India is not as interested in the multifaceted purposes behind China’s moves as it is in the actual movement of troops along the Indian border. From the Indian point of view, the Chinese military is building up naval assets and fortifying its alliance with Pakistan to hem in India. However remote the possibility may be of another futile ground war with China (recall the Sino-Indian war of 1962) across the world’s roughest mountainous terrain, India is unlikely to downplay any notable shifts in China’s military disposition and infrastructure development in the region. India’s traditional response is to highlight the levers it holds with Tibet, which is crucial buffer territory for the Chinese. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit with the Dalai Lama was certainly not lost on Beijing. Chinese media have already reported recently that India is reinforcing its troop presence in Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, which flanks the Tibetan plateau. Singh also recently warned that India would have to “take adequate precautions” against Chinese “pinpricks” in Jammu and Kashmir, while maintaining hope of peaceful dialogue.The Chinese relief work in the area so far does not appear to have reached the level of criticality that would prompt India to reinforce its troop presence in Kashmir. However, tensions are continuing to escalate in the region and any meaningful shift in India’s troop disposition would carry significant military implications for the wider region.India has been attempting at least symbolically to lower its war posture with Pakistan and better manage its territorial claims by reducing its troop presence in select parts of Indian-administered Kashmir. If India is instead compelled to beef up its military presence in the region in reaction to Sino-Pakistani defense cooperation, Pakistan will be tempted to respond in kind, creating another set of issues for the United States to try to manage on the subcontinent. Washington has faced a persistent struggle in trying to convince Pakistan’s military to focus on the counterinsurgency effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan and leave it to the United States to ensure the Indian threat remains in check. Though the Pakistani security establishment is gradually adjusting its threat matrix to acknowledge the war right now is at home and not with India, Pakistan’s troop disposition remains largely unchanged, with 147,000 troops devoted to the counterinsurgency effort in northwestern Pakistan and roughly 150,000 troops in standard deployment formation along the eastern border with India.

The United States, like India, is keeping a watchful eye on China’s military movements on the subcontinent, providing another reason for the two to collaborate more closely on military affairs. Willard was quoted by the Indian state press Sept. 10 as saying that “any change in military relations or military maneuvers by China that raises concerns of India” could fall within U.S. Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, while also maintaining this is an issue for the Indian military to handle on its own. 

Though the United States is being exceedingly cautious in defining its role in this affair, it cannot avoid the fact that every time U.S. and Indian defense officials get together to discuss Pakistan and China, Islamabad’s fears of a U.S.-Indian military partnership are reinforced, drawing the Pakistanis closer to China. This combination of insecurities is creating a self-perpetuating threat matrix on the subcontinent with implications for U.S., Indian, Chinese and Pakistani defense strategy.

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4. September 2010 by admin.

How the US army protects its trucks – by paying the Taliban

Insurance, security or extortion? The US is spending millions of dollars in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through – and it’s the Taliban who profit

The lawyers for Hamed Wardak and NCL Holdings, Mishcon de Reya say: NCL and Mr Wardak learned of the contracting opportunities for the provision of trucking services in Afghanistan from the “fedbizopps” website, which is hosted by the US Government, and open to all, with all of the stringencies required in such an exercise. NCL competed for the contract according to the advertised criteria and were awarded it on the merits of its tender in a fair and open exercise. Neither NCL nor Mr Wardak were the recipients of the contract because of Mr Wardak’s connections in Afghanistan. The contracts were not awarded unfairly. Although each tendering party has been awarded transit contracts with a value of up to US$360 million for a period of two years, NCL have so far, nearly half way through the first year, performed contacts to the value of US$18.5 million. Mr Wardak and his family have dedicated their political lives to the welfare of Afghanistan, in vocal opposition to the Taliban. He does not directly or indirectly provide funds to the Taliban. There is no evidence that any money from NCL was received by the Taliban.

On 29 October 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahideen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1998.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin, President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn in a separate case.

The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan [its senior personnel are ex-British army, many of them from Special Services]. One of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA ^­ officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.

“It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials admits. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10% of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts – hundreds of millions of dollars – consists of payments to insurgents.

Understanding how this situation came to pass requires untangling two threads. The first is the complex web of connections that determines who wins and who loses in Afghan business, and a good place to pick up this thread is a small firm awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars: NCL Holdings.

Like the Popals’ Watan Risk, NCL is a licensed security company in Afghanistan. What NCL Holdings is most notable for in Kabul contracting circles, though, is the identity of its chief principal, Hamed Wardak. He is the young American son of Afghan’s current defence minister, General Rahim Wardak, who was a leader of the mujahideen against the Soviets.

Earlier this year, the firm, with no apparent trucking experience, was named as one of the six companies that would handle all the US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to the web of bases and remote outposts scattered across the country.

Striking contracting gold

At first the contract, for “host nation trucking”, was large but not gargantuan. But over the summer, citing the coming “surge” and a new doctrine, “Money as a weapons system”, the US military expanded the contract 600% for NCL and the five other companies. The contract documentation warns of dire consequences if more is not spent: “Service members will not get the food, water, equipment and ammunition they require.”

Each of the military’s six trucking contracts was bumped up to $360m, or a total of nearly $2.2bn. Put it in this perspective: this single two-year effort to hire Afghan trucks and truckers was worth 10% of the annual Afghan gross domestic product. NCL, the firm run by the defence minister’s well-connected son, had struck pure contracting gold.

Host nation trucking does, indeed, keep the US military efforts alive in Afghanistan. “We supply everything the army needs to survive here,” one American trucking executive told me. “We bring them their toilet paper, their water, their fuel, their guns, their vehicles.”

The epicentre is Bagram air base, just an hour north of Kabul, from where virtually everything in Afghanistan is trucked to the outer reaches of what the army calls “the battlespace” – that is, the entire country. Parked near Entry Control Point 3, the trucks line up, shifting gears and sending up clouds of dust as they prepare for their various missions across the country.

The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: “The army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.”

That is something everyone seems to agree on. Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the host nation trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: “You are paying the people in the local areas – some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force – to move your trucks through.”

Hanna explained that the prices charged are different depending on the route. “We’re basically being extorted. Where you don’t pay, you’re going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to.”

Sometimes, he says, the fee is high, and sometimes it is low. “Moving 10 trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It’s based on a number of trucks and what you’re carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they’re not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying Mraps [mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles] or Humvees, they are going to charge you more.”

Hanna says it is just a necessary evil. “If you tell me not to pay these insurgents in this area, the chances of my trucks getting attacked increase exponentially.”

The private security industry in Afghanistan has developed quite differently from the private military model seen in Iraq, where firms such as Blackwater were arms of the US government. The industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. “Every warlord has his security company,” is the way one executive explained it to me.

The heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The security firms don’t really protect convoys of US military goods here because they simply can’t; they need the Taliban’s co-operation.

One of the big problems for the companies that ship US military supplies across the country is that they are banned from arming themselves with any weapon heavier than a rifle. That makes them ineffective for battling Taliban attacks on a convoy. Insurgents are “shooting the drivers from 3,000ft away” with Kalashnikovs, a trucking company executive in Kabul told me. “They are using RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] that will blow up an up-armed vehicle. So the security companies are tied up. Because of the rules, security companies can only carry AK-47s, and that’s just a joke. I carry an AK – and that’s just to shoot myself if I have to!”

The rules are there for a good reason: to guard against devastating collateral damage by private security forces. Still, as Hanna points out, “An AK-47 versus a rocket-propelled grenade – you are going to lose.”

That said, at least one of the host nation trucking companies has tried to do battle instead of paying off insurgents and warlords. It is a US-owned firm called Four Horsemen International (FHI). Instead of payments, it tried to fight off attackers. FHI, like many other firms, refused to talk publicly; but insiders in the security industry say that FHI’s convoys are attacked on virtually every mission.

Watan’s secret weapon

For the most part, the security firms do as they must to survive. A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, “What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat.”

He is an army veteran with years of Special Forces experience, and he is not happy about what is being done. He says that, at a minimum, American military forces should try to learn more about who is getting paid off. “Most escorting is done by the Taliban,” an Afghan private security official told me. He is a Pashto and former mujahideen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. “Now the government is so weak,” he added, “everyone is paying the Taliban.”

To Afghan trucking officials, this is barely even something to worry about. One woman I met was an extraordinary entrepreneur who had built up a trucking business in this male-dominated field. She told me the security company she had hired dealt directly with Taliban leaders in the south. Paying the Taliban leaders meant they would send along an escort to ensure that no other insurgents would attack. In fact, she said, they just needed two armed Taliban vehicles. “Two Taliban is enough,” she told me. “One in the front and one in the back.” She shrugged. “You cannot work otherwise. Otherwise it is not possible.”

Which leads us back to the case of Watan Risk, the firm run by the Popals, the Karzai family relatives and former drug dealers. Watan is known to control one key stretch of road that all the truckers use: the strategic route to Kandahar called Highway 1. Think of it as the road to the war – to the south and to the west. If the army wants to get supplies down to Helmand, for example, the trucks must make their way through Kandahar.

Watan Risk, according to seven different security and trucking company officials, is the sole provider of security along this route. The reason is simple: Watan has a deal with the local warlord who controls the road.

Watan’s secret weapon to protect American supplies heading through Kandahar is a man named Commander Ruhullah. Said to be a handsome man in his 40s, Ruhullah has an oddly high-pitched voice. He wears traditional salwar kameez and a Rolex watch. He rarely, if ever, associates with westerners. He commands a large group of irregular fighters with no known government affiliation, and his name, security officials tell me, inspires obedience or fear in villages along the road.

According to witnesses, Ruhullah works like this: he waits until there are hundreds of trucks ready to convoy south down the highway. Then he gets his men together, setting them up in 4×4s and pickups. Witnesses say he does not limit his arsenal to AK-47s but uses any weapons he can get. His chief weapon is his reputation. And for that, Ruhullah is paid royally, collecting a fee for each truck that passes through his corridor. The American trucking official told me that Ruhullah “charges $1,500 per truck to go to Kandahar. Just 300km.”

Security, extortion or insurance?

It is hard to pinpoint what this is, exactly – security, extortion or a form of “insurance”. Then there is the question, does Ruhullah have ties to the Taliban? That is impossible to know. As an American private security veteran familiar with the route says, “He works both sides . . . whatever is most profitable. He’s the main commander. He’s got to be involved with the Taliban. How much, no one knows.”

Even NCL, the company owned by Hamed Wardak, is reputed to pay. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me that NCL sends its portion of US logistics goods in Watan and Commander Ruhullah’s convoys. Sources say NCL is billed $500,000 a month for Watan’s services. To underline the point, NCL, operating on a $360m contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister’s son, is apparently paying millions a year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai’s cousins, for protection.

Cleaning up what looks like cronyism may be easier than the next step: shutting down the money pipeline from Department of Defense contracts to potential insurgents. Two years ago, a top Afghan security official told me, Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), alerted the American military to the problem. The NDS is a well-run service, trusted by the international forces. The NDS delivered what I’m told are “very detailed” reports to the Americans explaining how the Taliban are profiting from protecting convoys of US supplies. The Afghan intelligence service even offered a solution: what if the US was to take the tens of millions paid to security contractors and instead set up a dedicated and professional convoy support unit to guard its logistics lines? The suggestion went nowhere.

The bizarre fact is that the practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. I asked Colonel David Haight, who commands the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, about it. After all, part of Highway 1 runs through his area of operations. What did he think about security companies paying off insurgents?

“The American soldier in me is repulsed by it,” he said in an interview in his office at forward operating base Shank in Logar province. “But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”

As a military official in Kabul explained contracting in Afghanistan overall, “We understand that across the board, 10-20% goes to the insurgents. My intel [intelligence] guy would say it is closer to 10%. Generally, it is happening in logistics.”

In a statement about host nation trucking, the US army’s chief public affairs officer in Afghanistan, Colonel Wayne Shanks, says international forces are “aware of allegations that procurement funds may find their way into the hands of insurgent groups, but we do not directly support or condone this activity, if it is occurring”. He adds that, in spite of oversight, “the relationships between contractors and their subcontractors, as well as between subcontractors and others in their operational communities, are not entirely transparent”.

In any case, the main issue is not that the US military is turning a blind eye to the problem. Many officials acknowledge what is going on while also expressing a deep disquiet about the situation. The trouble is that – as with so much in Afghanistan – the United States doesn’t seem to know how to fix it.

This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current edition of the Nation magazine

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2. September 2010 by admin.

US Losing The War Against Taliban in Afghanistan?

Almost 150,000 U.S. and allied troops are now in Afghanistan, some 30,000 more than the number of Soviet troops at the height of their occupation in the 1980s. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is now at the pinnacle of its strength, which is expected to start declining, one way or another, by the latter half of 2011, a trend that will have little prospect of reversing itself. Though history will undoubtedly speak of missed or squandered opportunities in the early years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, this is now the decisive moment in the campaign.It is worth noting that nearly a year ago, then-commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the ISAF Gen. Stanley McChrystal submitted his initial assessment of the status of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan to the White House. In his analysis, McChrystal made two key assertions:

• The strategy then being implemented would not succeed, even with more troops.
• A new counterinsurgency-focused strategy just proposed would not succeed without more troops.

There was no ambiguity. The serving commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan told his commander in chief that without both a change in strategy and additional troops to implement the new strategy, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan would fail. Nowhere in the report, however, did McChrystal claim that with the new strategy and more troops the United States would win the war in Afghanistan.Today, with the additional troops committed and a new strategy governing their employment, the ISAF is making its last big push to reshape Afghanistan. But domestic politics in ISAF troop-contributing nations are severely constraining the sustainability of these deployments at their current scale. Meanwhile, the Taliban continue to retain the upper hand, and the incompatibilities of the political climates in troop-contributing nations with the military imperatives of an effective counterinsurgency are becoming ever more apparent. This leads to the question: What is the United States ultimately trying to achieve in Afghanistan and can it succeed?

The Iraq Campaign

The surges of U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007 and into Afghanistan in 2010 represent very different military campaigns, and a look at the contrasts between the two campaigns can be instructive. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Washington had originally intended to install a stable, pro-American government in Baghdad in order to fundamentally reshape the region. Instead, after the U.S. invasion destroyed the existing Iraqi-Iranian balance of power, Washington found itself on the defensive, struggling to prevent the opposite outcome — a pro-Iranian regime. An Iran unchecked by Iraq (a key factor in Iran’s rise and assertiveness over the last seven years) and able to use Mesopotamia as a stepping-stone for expanding its influence across the Middle East would reshape the region every bit as much as a pro-American regime.The American adversaries in Iraq were Sunni insurgents (including a steadily declining pool of Baathist nationalists), al Qaeda fighters and a smattering of other foreign jihadists and Iranian-backed Shiite militias. The Sunnis provided support and shelter for the jihadists while fighting a pair of losing battles they viewed as existential struggles — simultaneously taking on the U.S. military and the security forces of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, with a Shiite Iran meddling all the while in Iraqi Shiite politics.But the foreign jihadists ultimately overplayed their hand with Iraq’s Sunnis, a decisive factor in their demise. Their attempts to impose a harsh and draconian form of Islamism and the slaying of traditional Sunni tribal leaders cut against the grain of Iraqi cultural and societal norms. In response, beginning well-before the surge of 2007, Sunni Awakening Councils and militias under the Sons of Iraq program were formed to defend against and drive out the foreign jihadists.At the heart of this shift was Sunni self-interest. Not only were the foreign jihadists imposing a severe and unwelcome form of Islamism, but it was also becoming clear to the Sunnis that the battles they were waging held little promise of actually protecting them from Shiite subjugation. Indeed, with foreign jihadist attacks on the traditional tribal power structure, it was increasingly clear that the foreign jihadists themselves were, in their own way, attempting to subjugate Iraqi Sunnis for their own purposes. As the Sunnis began to warm to the United States, they found themselves with very few options. Faced with subjugation from many directions and having realized that the way they held the upper hand in Iraq before 2003 was simply not recoverable, the Sunnis came to see siding with the United States as the best alternative.When the United States surged troops into Iraq in 2007, one of the main U.S. adversaries in Iraq (the Sunnis) turned against another (al Qaeda and the jihadists). While the surge was instrumental in breaking the cycle of violence in Baghdad and shifting perceptions both within Iraq and around the wider region, there were nowhere near enough troops to impose a military reality on the country by force. Instead, the strategy relied heavily on capitalizing on a shift already taking place: the realignment of the Sunnis, who not only fed the U.S. actionable intelligence on the foreign jihadists but also became actively engaged in the campaign against them.While success appeared anything but certain in 2007, almost an entire segment of Iraqi society had effectively changed sides to ally with the United States. This alliance allowed the United States to hunt down jihadist leaders and systematically disrupt jihadist networks while arming the Sunnis to the point that only a unified Shiite segment with consolidated command of the security forces could destroy them — and even then, only with considerable effort and bloodshed.But despite the marked shift in Iraq since the surge, the security gains remain fragile, the political situation tenuous and the prospects of an Iraq not dominated by Iran limited. In other words, for all the achievements of the surge, and despite the significant reduction in American forces in the country, the situation in Iraq — and the balance of power in the region — is still unresolved.

The Afghanistan Campaign

With this understanding of the 2007 surge in Iraq in mind, let us examine the current surge of troops into Afghanistan. In Iraq, the United States was forced to shift its objective from installing a pro-American regime in Baghdad to preventing the wholesale domination of the country by Iran (a work still in progress). In Afghanistan, the problem is the opposite. The initial American objective in Afghanistan was to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda, and while certain key individuals remain at large, the apex leadership of what was once al Qaeda has been eviscerated and no longer presents a strategic threat. This physical threat now comes more from al Qaeda “franchises” like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula andal Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.In other words, while the original objective was never achieved in Iraq and the United States has been scrambling to re-establish a semblance of the old balance of power, the original American objective has effectively been achieved in Afghanistan (though the effort is ongoing). Most of what remains of the original al Qaeda prime that the United States set out to destroy in 2001 now resides in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Despite — or perhaps because of — the remarkably heterogeneous demography of Afghanistan, there is no sectarian card to play. Nor is there a regional rival, as there is in Iraq with Iran, that U.S. grand strategy dictates must be prevented from dominating the country. Indeed, an Afghanistan dominated by Pakistan is both largely inevitable and perfectly acceptable to Washington under the right conditions.The long-term American geopolitical interest in Afghanistan has always been and remains limited: to prevent the country from ever again serving as a safe haven for transnational terrorists. While counterterrorism efforts on both sides of the border are ongoing, the primary strategic objective for the United States in Afghanistan is the establishment of a government that does not espouse transnational jihadism and provide sanctuary for its adherents and one that allows limited counterterrorism efforts to continue indefinitely.Al Qaeda itself has little to do with this objective in Afghanistan anymore. The challenge now is crafting circumstances in the country that are sufficient to safeguard American interests. Given this objective, the enemy in Afghanistan is no longer al Qaeda. It is the Taliban, which controlled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and provided sanctuary for al Qaeda until the United States and the Northern Alliance ousted them from power. (It is important to note that the Taliban were not defeated in 2001. Faced with a superior force, they declined combat and refused to fight on American terms, only to resurge after American attention shifted to Iraq.) But it is not the Afghan Taliban per se that the United States is opposed to, it is their support for transnational Islamist jihadists — something to which the movement does not necessarily have a deep-seated, non-negotiable commitment.As a grassroots insurgency, the Taliban enjoy a broad following across the country, particularly among the Pashtun, the single-largest demographic segment in the country (roughly 40 percent of the population). The movement has proved capable of maintaining internal discipline (recent efforts to hive off “reconcilable” elements have shown little tangible progress) while remaining a diffuse and multifaceted entity with considerable local appeal across a variety of communities. For many in Afghanistan, the Taliban represent a local Afghan agenda and its brand of more severe Islamism — while hardly universal — appeals to a significant swath of Afghan society. The Taliban’s militias were once Afghanistan’s government-sponsored military force. And as a light-infantry force both appropriate for and intimately familiar with the rugged Afghan countryside, the Taliban enjoy superior knowledge of the terrain and people as well as superior intelligence (including intelligence from compromised elements of the Afghan security forces). The Taliban are particularly well-suited for waging a protracted insurgency and they perceive themselves as winning this one — which they are.

Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency

The Taliban are winning in Afghanistan because they are not losing. The United States is losing because it is not winning. This is the reality of waging a counterinsurgency. The ultimate objective of the insurgent is a negative one: to deny victory — to survive, to evade decisive combat and to prevent the counterinsurgent from achieving victory. Conversely, the counterinsurgent has the much more daunting and affirmative task of forcing decisive combat in order to end hostilities. It is, after all, far easier to disrupt governance and provoke instability than it is to govern and provide stability.This makes the timetables dictated by political realities in ISAF troop-contributing nations extremely problematic. Counterinsurgency efforts are not won or lost on a timetable compatible with the current political climate at home. Admittedly, the attempt is not to win the counterinsurgency in the next year or the next three years (the U.S. timetable calls for troop withdrawals to begin in July 2011). Rather, the strategy is now one of “Vietnamization”, in which indigenous forces are assembled and trained to assume responsibility for waging the counterinsurgency with sufficient skill and malleability to serve American interests.But the effort to which the bulk of ISAF troops are being dedicated and the effort in which the ISAF hopes to demonstrate progress for domestic consumption is the counterinsurgency mission, not the counterterrorism one. This effort, specifically, is taking place in key population centers and particularly in the Taliban’s core turf in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the country’s restive south. The efforts in Helmand and Kandahar were never going to be easy — they were chosen specifically because they are Taliban strongholds. But even with the extra influx of troops and the prioritization of operations there, progress has proved elusive and slower than expected. The fact is, the counterinsurgency effort is plagued with a series of critical shortcomings that have traditionally proved pivotal to success in such efforts.

Integration

The heart of the problem is twofold. First, the core strengths of the Taliban as a guerrilla force are undisputed, and the United States and its allies are unwilling to dedicate the resources and effort necessary to fully defeat it. To be clear, this would not be a matter of a few more years or a few more thousand troops, but a decade or more of forces and resources being sustained in Afghanistan at not only immense immediate cost but also immense opportunity cost to American interests elsewhere in the world. In reality (if not officially), the end objective now appears to be political accommodation with the Afghan Taliban and their integration into the regime in Kabul.The idea originally was to take advantage of the diffuse and multifaceted nature of the Taliban and hive off so-called “reconcilable elements,” separating the run-of-the-mill Taliban from the hard-liners. The objective would be to integrate the former while making the situation more desperate for the latter. But from the beginning, both Kabul and Islamabad saw this sort of localized, grassroots solution as neither sufficient nor in keeping with their longer-term interests.While some localized changing of sides has certainly taken place (in both directions, with some Afghan government figures going over to the Taliban), the Afghan Taliban movement has proved to have considerable internal discipline that is no doubt bolstered by the widespread belief that it is only a matter of time before the foreigners leave. This makes the long-term incentive to remain loyal to the Taliban — or, at the very least, not to so starkly break from them that only brutal reprisal awaits when the foreign forces leave — very difficult to resist. So the negotiation effort has shifted more into the hands of Kabul and Islamabad, both of which favor a comprehensive agreement with the Afghan Taliban’s senior leadership.

Compelling the Enemy to Negotiate

And this is where the second aspect of the problem comes into play. While special operations forces have been successful in capturing or killing some Taliban leaders, the Pakistanis have so far continued to provide only grudging and limited assistance, and there is no Afghan analogy to the Sunni Awakening in Iraq. In addition to building up indigenous government forces, the focus of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is on securing the country’s key population centers, thereby denying the Taliban key bases of support. The idea is that, as the Taliban continue to decline decisive combat and resort to harassing attacks, local loyalties will have shifted by the time ISAF forces leave and strengthened Afghan security forces will be able to manage a weakened Taliban movement.However, this entails much more than just temporarily clearing Taliban fighters out of key population centers. The ISAF has made a concerted effort to secure and protect such areas (including Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan) from surreptitious intimidation as well as overt violence and to guarantee not just stability but also jobs and adequate governance. But the strategy requires that such transformations become entrenched and durable on an extremely short timetable in a national population that is anything but homogenous. Indeed, all three aspects of the ISAF’s concept of operations — shifting local loyalties, weakening the Taliban and putting capable Afghan security forces in place — are proving problematic.The underlying point here is that the United States does not intend to defeat the Taliban; it seeks merely to draw them into serious negotiations. While deception and feints are an inherent part of waging war, the history of warfare shows that seeking to convince the enemy to negotiate without being dedicated to his physical and psychological destruction can be perilous territory. The failed attempt by the United States to drive North Vietnam to the negotiating table through the Linebacker air campaigns is an infamous case in point. Like those bombing campaigns, current U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan appear to lack the credibility to be compelling — much less forceful enough to bring the Taliban to the table.The application of military power, as Clausewitz taught, must be both commensurate with the nation’s political objectives and targeted at the enemy’s will to resist. The Taliban’s will to resist is unlikely to be altered by an abstract threat to key bases of support, especially one that may or may not materialize years from now — and, in particular, when the Taliban genuinely doubt both the efficacy of the concept of operations and the national resolve. In any event, this is ultimately a political calculation. The application of military force to that calculation must be tailored in such a way as to bring the enemy to its knees — to force the enemy off balance, strike at his center of power and exploit critical vulnerabilities.To be effective, this must be done relentlessly, at a tempo to which the enemy cannot adapt. This is done to force the enemy not to negotiate but to seriously contemplate defeat — and thereby seek negotiation out of fear of that defeat. Although Pakistan has intensified its counterinsurgency efforts on its side of the border, an international border and the Taliban’s ability to take refuge on the far side of it further restricts, as it did in Vietnam, the American ability to target and pressure its adversary. So far, nothing that has been achieved appears to have resonated with the Taliban as a threat too dangerous and pressing to wait out.Political accommodation can be the result of both fear and opportunity. Force of arms is meant to provide the former. And the heart of the problem for the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan is that the counterinsurgency strategy does not target the Taliban directly and relentlessly to create a sense of immediate, visceral and overwhelming threat. By failing to do so, the military means remain not only out of sync with the political objectives but also, given the resources and time the United States is willing to dedicate to Afghanistan, fundamentally incompatible. As an insurgent force, the Taliban is elusive, agile and able to seamlessly maneuver within the indigenous population even if only a portion of the population actively supports it. The Taliban is a formidable enemy. As such, they are making the political outcome appear unachievable by force of arms — or at least the force of arms that political realities and geopolitical constraints dictate.

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29. July 2010 by admin.

ISI: Wikileaks logs reflect soldiers’ fears, suspicions, and anxieties 

The following article is an excerpt from this week’s SPIEGEL cover story. The facts in the story come from a database of almost 92,000 American military reports on the state of the war in Afghanistan that were obtained by the WikiLeaks website. Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the New York Times and SPIEGEL have all vetted the material and reported on the contents in articles that have been researched independently of each other. All three media sources have concluded that the documents are authentic and provide an unvarnished image of the war in Afghanstan — from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground.

“The truth is that not all documents from this treasure trove are beyond any doubt.”

Afghanistan’s neighbor, Pakistan, has been in a tight spot since the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington. Officially, the country is part of the worldwide anti-terrorism coalition forged by former United States President George W. Bush. Unofficially, however, the Pakistani security forces are the patrons of the Taliban forces that gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and his terrorists. It is clear that the Taliban would not exist without help from abroad. The Pakistani intelligence service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), helped build up and install the Taliban after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and the country descended into a fratricidal war among the victorious mujahedeen, creating the threat of a power vacuum.

Despite all assurances by Pakistani politicians that these old connections were severed long ago, the country still pursues an ambiguous policy, in which Pakistan is both an ally of the United States and a helper of its enemies. Now there is new evidence to support this. The war logs make it clear that the Pakistani intelligence service is still presumably the Taliban’s most important supporter outside Afghanistan. The fact is that the war against the Afghan security forces, the Americans and their allies within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is still being conducted from Pakistani soil, with the country serving as a safe haven for all hostile forces. It also serves as a staging ground from which they can deploy. The Taliban’s new recruits, including feared foreign fighters, are streaming across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The three main enemies of the Western coalition forces, the Taliban under Mullah Omar, the fighters led by former mujahedeen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the militias of the Haqqani clan of warlords all have important quarters and operations centers in Pakistan. Osama bin Laden, the original justification for this war, is also believed to have found safe haven in Pakistan, where he is still involved in the day-to-day operations of jihad against the infidels. On one occasion, according to the documents, bin Laden planned to attack his enemies with a poison called, in his honor, “Osama Kapa,” and on another he reportedly gave the gift of a wife to a particularly zealous Taliban fighter who had designed effective remotely triggered explosive booby traps. Pakistan ‘s Assurance of Future InfluenceThe Pakistani intelligence service has excellent relations with all groups. In the constant fear that Pakistan’s archrival India could gain a foothold in Afghanistan and thus have Pakistan in its pincers, so to speak, the ISI supports everything that could preserve and strengthen its own influence in Kabul. And because many ISI strategists cannot believe that the Americans will remain in Afghanistan for long (after all, Washington has already announced the beginning of its withdrawal), the Taliban remains Pakistan’s assurance of future influence in Kabul. This reasoning is particularly clear in the Afghanistan war logs. According to the warnings of new attacks and suicide bombings by the enemy, ISI envoys were present when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s commanders met for a war council in northern Waziristan.A document dated Sept. 1, 2007 reports on an imminent attack by a group of Hekmatyar’s fighters on one of the Allies’ forward operating bases in Kunar, the Afghan province bordering Peshawar in Pakistan. The elaborate and carefully planned attack was to involve four suicide bombers, and the Americans’ source even knew where they were from: one Pakistani, one Arab and two Afghans. The plans also included a rocket attack and artillery fire. Finally, foot soldiers were to storm the outpost and take enemy soldiers prisoner, if possible. The Pakistani intelligence service supplied Chinese ammunition to the insurgents. The ISI, as partial financier of the operation, wanted to retain control and thus intended to send an officer to observe the attack and advise the fighters. Nothing Works without the ISIPakistan’s western Balochistan Province is believed to be the area where Taliban leader Mullah Omar spends most of his time. The Shura, the Taliban’s decision-making body, meets once a month in the city of Quetta, or at least it did in the first few years after the Taliban fled Afghanistan. Some of the documents, such as the Aug. 16, 2006 warning of an impending attack, even claim that bin Laden himself has attended this meeting. The American intelligence gatherers, skeptical about this claim, classified the document as 3F, which means that it does not require verification. A man who undoubtedly attended the Shura was Mullah Baradar, a brother-in-law of Mullah Omar and the former Taliban military chief. The documents describe Baradar as the chairman of the Shura, and state that he monitors the financing, procurement and distribution of weapons, ammunition and other materials. As it happens, Baradar is also a confidant of the ISI. He designed the Taliban’s strategy and, according to the war logs, is also responsible for the use of suicide bombings. Why, then, would Pakistani security forces have arrested Baradar on Feb. 8, 2010?Many observers believe that the Pakistani security forces struck after the mullah had begun communicating with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If this interpretation is correct, then the arrest of Baradar constituted a clear signal to the Taliban and their allies that nothing works without the ISI. Anyone reading through the material already comes away with this impression. In document after document, it is the ISI that controls the course of the war, and suicide bombers are apparently one of its preferred weapons. In fact, it is the ISI itself that often deploys them, as a threat warning note dated Oct. 30, 2008 indicates. The note reads: “According to a source (C6) AQ (al-Qaida) and ISI formed an attack group that was called ‘General.’ There are six suicide bombers in the group, two of them are Chinese, two of them are Uzbek and the others are Arab. The suicide bombers intruded into Khost (province) … .”The ISI also issues precise orders to murder certain individuals. According to the documents, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is at the top of its hit list. Some of the documents are shockingly succinct and to the point. According to a warning dated August 21, 2008, for example, an ISI colonel “had directed Talib Maulawi Izzatullah to see that Karzai was assassinated. Izzatullah assigned Abdulbari from Sarobi District to assassinate Karzai in a suicide mission at the Presidential Palace.” Archenemy India a Frequent TargetPakistan’s archenemy India is mentioned again and again. According to the documents, the intelligence service instructed its Afghan allies to kill Indians who worked in Afghanistan. Their efforts apparently did not go unrewarded, with the ISI promising fighters in the Haqqani network large sums of money for killing Indians. The ISI’s other preferred targets included all Indian consulates in Afghanistan, roads built by Indian workers and a telephone network installed by Indians. There is only one warning about a planned attack that does not include any indication of the ISI’s involvement, this time on the Indian embassy in Kabul — which did in fact happen, on July 7, 2008, claiming 58 lives. That warning came from intelligence agents within the Polish ISAF contingent. The documents also contain information about attacks ordered on strategic targets, like dams, key roads and the Kabul power supply. Some of the plans the intelligence service apparently had developed were relatively extreme. One report, for example, states that the ISI planned to have its agents poison drinking water and alcoholic beverages sold on the black market. All attacks, including the suicide bombings on foreign troops, came with financial incentives, although the reports vary widely on the level of compensation. For example, the ISI was allegedly willing to pay between $15,000 and $30,000 to fighters in the Haqqani network for each attack on Indians. Former ISI Chief Plays Key Role in LogsPakistan’s former intelligence chief Hamid Gul plays a special role in the documents. Gul, a former army general who headed the ISI from 1987 to 1989, was one of the key supporters of the mujahedeen when they were fighting the Soviet occupation force in Afghanistan. When speaking with the Western media, Gul later proved to be a propagandist of sorts for the Taliban and someone who could easily see himself sympathizing with their struggle against the Americans. The United States accuses him of maintaining ties to al-Qaida. In the newly leaked documents, Gul is also portrayed as an ally and, in one case, even as “a leader” of the Taliban. According to a threat assessment dated Jan. 14, 2008, he coordinated plans to kidnap United Nations employees on Afghanistan’s Highway No. 1 between Kabul and Jalalabad. Some 15 to 20 Taliban fighters were to stop the UN vehicle and threaten the passengers with their weapons. There was to be no mercy. As the report reads, if the Taliban encountered resistance during the kidnapping, the hostage-takers “will use the AK47 guns to fight the resistance or kill the hostages.” According to the reports, the retired general continued to supply his protégés with weapons. One source mentions that Gul had organized a convoy of 65 trucks filled with ammunition for the Taliban, although the authors of the report do not completely trust the source. Another report mentions that the ISI sent 1,000 motorcycles to the Haqqanis and delivered 7,000 weapons to Kunar Province, including Kalashnikovs, mortars and Strella missiles. Skepticism over Veracity of Some DocumentsBut it is precisely the especially transparent attempts to portray the Taliban’s supporters at the ISI as the most sinister of monsters that give rise to skepticism about the documents.On May 29, 2006, for example, the Afghan intelligence service reported on an ISI campaign to burn down Afghan schools. Was this truly the work of a generally secular military, or was the campaign in fact the brainchild of Taliban religious fanatics?And the claims about the ISI’s alleged recruitment of children as suicide bombers? According to the documents, the child bombers were sent out with explosive vests attached to their bodies, and the explosives were then detonated remotely. Was this also the work of the Pakistani intelligence service, which was supposedly being overrun by domestic and foreign candidates for martyrdom? Did the ISI truly ask women to hide explosive vests under their burqas, and is it true that ISI agents tenderly concealed an explosive device inside a gold-colored, fake Koran? These and other claims appear in this collection of reports assembled by the Americans. But are they true? The truth is that not all documents from this treasure trove are beyond any doubt.

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22. May 2010 by admin.

The U.S.-Pakistan Conundrum and Europe’s Existential Test

May 20, 2010

U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER JIM JONES and CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Pakistan’s top civil and military leadership Wednesday and reportedly urged it to take more aggressive action against jihadists, especially in North Waziristan. (The region is the main hub of an array of international jihadist actors, which the Pakistanis have yet to target in their yearlong counterinsurgency campaign.) The visit was prompted by revelations about the deep connections the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, had with Pakistan’s jihadist community as well as its military. Shahzad’s father is a retired Air Vice Marshal, the third highest rank in the Pakistani air force. His uncle is a retired two-star general who once headed the Frontier Corps in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province. The Frontier Corps is the paramilitary force currently playing a key role in the counterinsurgency campaign against Taliban rebels in northwest Pakistan.

Given the level of religious radicalization that the country has experienced over the past three decades or so, it is not unusual for a person with Shahzad’s pedigree to have joined al Qaeda transnational jihadists. Furthermore, being from an elite family also does not mean that senior people within the army have ties to the global jihadist nexus involved in plots to attack the United States. However, Tuesday there were reports that Pakistani authorities had arrested a serving army major suspected of being an accomplice to Shahzad, which further exacerbates an already complicated U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

Cooperation between Washington and Islamabad on dealing with the jihadist menace had just begun to improve when the Times Square bomb incident took place. It had hardly been three months since U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus had applauded Pakistani efforts against the militant infrastructure. He said Islamabad’s forces were doing the best they could with limited resources, and should not be expected to expand the scope of their operations anytime soon. The shifting paradigm in Washington vis-a-vis Islamabad came to a screeching halt when it became clear that Shahzad had been dispatched by jihadist elements based in Pakistan.

The problem is not that the United States has completely reverted to the old policy of pressuring Pakistan. Rather it has to do with the dilemma where on one hand U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration needs to stabilize Pakistan to deal with the Afghan Taliban, while on the other it needs to pressure Pakistan to take tougher action against al Qaeda, which could further destabilize the already dangerously weakened Pakistani polity. In other words, the U.S. strategy for the region has been knocked off balance.

This precarious situation should not be considered an unintended outcome of the plot to detonate an improvised explosive device in the heart of Manhattan. It is very clearly the work of transnational jihadists headquartered in Pakistan who view increased U.S.-Pakistani cooperation as a lethal cocktail. The jihadists have been able to exploit the weakness of the Pakistani state and the contradictions within its security establishment to their advantage.

But in the past year they have faced a major onslaught and find themselves caught between U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strikes and Pakistani ground assaults. They are in no position to resist the combined U.S.-Pakistani offensive. Their only way out is to undermine the bilateral relationship, which, given its fragility and the tools at the disposal of the jihadists, is not hard to do.

This strategy mimics efforts to ignite conflict between India and Pakistan by staging attacks in India in an attempt to force New Delhi into taking unilateral action against militant facilities on Pakistani soil. Doing so would lead to an all-out war between the two South Asian rivals, giving militants even more room to maneuver. In the case of the United States and Pakistan, an attack does not have to be successful, such as the case with the Times Square plot. All that is required is an attempt by an individual with easily traceable connections to Pakistan and its security establishment, which would undermine the ties between the two. Ideally, the goal is to create a situation where the United States is forced to be more aggressive about unilateral action on Pakistani soil. Doing so would create further chaos, which is the environment in which the jihadists thrive.

It should be noted that the whole idea of the al Qaeda-allied Pakistani Taliban claiming responsibility for the failed Times Square attack makes no sense. Why would the jihadists expend resources on an individual who did not have the skill set to pull off a real bombing? It only makes the organization appear weak, unless of course the intent was not to stage an actual attack, but rather undermine U.S. strategy for the region by creating problems between Islamabad and Washington.

Lest our readers think there isn’t anything going on in the world beyond Pakistan, the financial crisis in Europe has not gone anywhere — in fact, it continues to build. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament that Europe is facing an “existential test” from the Greek-triggered crisis, noting that “if the euro fails, then Europe fails.” The chancellor is laying the groundwork for a Friday vote on approving Germany’s 123 billion euro contribution to a eurozone bailout fund.

While it was not designed that way, the euro has become the EU. The euro was intended to inject German economic dynamism into the rest of Europe, providing capital and markets that would act like the ocean tide and raise all boats. Instead, the common currency allowed poorer Southern Europe to delay reforms.

The issue of the day focuses on German subsidization of the South versus a series of rolling collapses should Berlin refuse. Unintended or not — and economically beneficial or not — the link between Germany’s checkbook and “the preservation of the European idea” is undisputed. If Germany is to seek global stature, it will have to make donations of similar scale to the European South over and over again. And should it refuse to participate, the great unraveling of Europe will begin with a vengeance.

It is not so much that we are attracted to the drama in Berlin — although it is worth noting that there has not been this type of drama in Berlin since the 1940s — but rather that the Germans are enacting policies that have a hint of desperation to them. On Wednesday the Germans instituted a ban on naked short selling, market parlance for betting that a certain horse will lose badly. Such trades usually only affect the margins of the market, and governments only get nervous about them when the ship seems about to go down. 

For comparison, the United States instituted a similar policy in July 2008, just before the American markets degraded from wobbly to free fall.

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13. May 2010 by admin.

Conflicting Objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan

May 11, 2010 

AFGHAN PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI ON MONDAY began a four-day trip to Washington, where he is reportedly scheduled to have candid conversations with U.S. President Barack Obama and other senior American officials about the war effort in the southwest Asian nation. Karzai’s visit comes after a rather nasty spat that broke out between Washington and Kabul largely over corruption within the Karzai government, which the Obama administration sees as a major impediment in regards to its exit strategy from the insurgency-wracked country. Responding to repeated statements from U.S. officials criticizing the Afghan leader, his family and close associates, Karzai accused the United States and its European allies of attempting to subvert his government by engaging in fraud in the presidential polls held last year.

Karzai went on to warn his Western allies that their pressure on him would only strengthen the Taliban, and that he could be forced to join the Afghan insurgent movement. These remarks from the Afghan president stem from the bitterness between his government and the Obama administration that kicked off shortly after Obama took office, and which largely manifested itself in the controversy surrounding the presidential vote. Therefore, it is unlikely that this one visit will heal matters –-regardless of any handshakes, press statements or photo- or video-ops.

In addition to the issue of corruption, there is significant disagreement over how to approach the matter of negotiating with the Taliban. Washington insists on reaching out only to low- to mid-level leadership to divide the movement from within, while the Karzai regime wants to talk to the senior leadership. This state of affairs between Kabul and Washington is deleterious for their mutual interests, especially at a time when anti-Taliban forces need to be on the same page to effectively deal with the Afghan jihadist insurgency. This is particularly true given the short time frame Washington has set for itself.

Islamabad presents an even greater case of conflicting goals for the United States than Kabul. Having realized that their policy of pressuring the Pakistanis to “do more” in terms of aggressive action against the diverse gamut of Islamist militant actors had dangerously weakened the Pakistani state, the Americans recently altered course and rushed toward stabilizing the Pakistani polity. This shift in U.S. attitude to a great degree was facilitated by Pakistan’s own rude awakening about a year ago when it launched a full-scale offensive against rogue jihadists who had declared war on Islamabad.At the end of the day, the Obama administration will likely have to seriously scale back its expectations of good governance on the part of the Karzai regime — whose nature is partially reflective of the nature of Afghanistan — to be able to focus on the core objective: containing the Taliban insurgency. Ironically, Washington is not just in the throes of uneasy relations with its Afghan partners. The failed Times Square bombing attempt appears to have adversely affected the nascent process of improving relations with Pakistan, whose cooperation is critical to the success of the American mission in the region.

It was only a few months ago that Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus came out praising Pakistan and defending its position, saying that Islamabad was doing the best it could. He said its security forces were overstretched in terms of their human and material capacity, and argued that it was not reasonable to ask for more for the time being. This new approach toward Islamabad is also based on the fact that the United States cannot deal with Afghanistan if Pakistan is destabilizing.

Effectively dealing with Afghanistan requires not just Pakistani action east of the Durand Line but also U.S.-Pakistani intelligence cooperation to its west, which is the key to being able to distinguish between reconcilable and irreconcilable jihadist actors in Afghanistan. The problem, however, is that while such a policy might help the United States deal with the Afghan Taliban, it does not address the challenge posed by al Qaeda and its local and transnational allies based in Pakistan. And here is where the Times Square bomb plot has created a policy dilemma for the United States.

That the attack has been traced back to Pakistan’s murky jihadist landscape forces the Obama administration to return to pressuring Islamabad’s civil-military leadership to once again “do more.” In fact, there have been reports that U.S. officials have warned Pakistan of “serious consequences” if it does not expand its counterinsurgency efforts to North Waziristan, the main hub of a variety of jihadist forces. Many of these forces are hostile to Pakistan, some are neutral and still others are somewhat friendly. Despite this tough talk, which has the potential to throw a wrench into the process of growing cooperation between the two sides, the Obama administration cannot really afford to return to the status quo ante with the Pakistanis because of the larger goal of exiting Afghanistan within a very narrow window of opportunity.

Ultimately, Washington is faced with difficult policy choices in the case of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In terms of the latter, how does it balance the need for improved relations with Pakistan while at the same time dealing with the threat posed by transnational jihadism? As for Afghanistan, how does President Obama work with Karzai vis-a-vis the Taliban problem and at the same time deal with Kabul’s corruption? It is unclear that the Obama administration will be able to balance these conflicting objectives, especially since its current relationships with its two key partners are far from where they should be from the point of view of U.S. national interests.

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11. May 2010 by admin.

Pakistan: Faisal Shahzad and the Pakistani Taliban

May 10, 2010 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said May 9 that the United States has evidence linking the Pakistani Taliban to Faisal Shahzad, the man who confessed to the failed bombing attempt at Times Square in New York City on May 1. Shahzad is a naturalized U.S. citizen who demonstrated a willingness to carry out an attack on U.S. soil. However, his status as a U.S. citizen would have been problematic for the Pakistani Taliban, who must remain wary of potential infiltration from U.S. intelligence. Furthermore, the attempted bombing showed little to no signs that Shahzad had help from an outside group.

The Case of Faisal Shahzad U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced May 9 that the United States had uncovered evidence linking the Pakistani Taliban to Faisal Shahzad, the naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent who confessed to the botched May 1 attempt to bomb Times Square in New York City. Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, made essentially the opposite contention May 7, arguing that Shahzad acted alone. Any link between Shahzad and the Pakistani Taliban is not as meaningful as it appears, but it does draw attention to the need for a more sophisticated discussion of the Pakistani Taliban phenomenon and the way in which Shahzad approached the organization.

In the wake of the attack, Shahzad allegedly has been linked not only to the Pakistani Taliban but also to Anwar al-Awlaki, the former U.S.-born radical imam of a mosque in a Virginian suburb of Washington, D.C., who is now thought to be in hiding in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was also linked to two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers and U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who gunned down 13 at Fort Hood in November 2009.

But even Hasan, who appears to have had closer ties to al-Awlaki, acted as a lone wolf and did not inform anyone of his intentions. In other words, despite some loose ideological affinity, the connection played no operational role in the attack, as the old apex leadership of al Qaeda prime did in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. What made Hasan an effective lone wolf was not his ideological connections, but his insider knowledge of a good location for an attack at Fort Hood, his professional and personal proficiency with small arms and an appropriate target selection commensurate with his skill.

Shahzad was more of a “Kramer” jihadist in the tradition of Richard Reid — an ultimately inept radicalized individual with no operational understanding of basic tradecraft, no self-awareness of that lack of skill and ambition to carry out an attack utterly beyond his capabilities. Shahzad’s skill set is strikingly similar to that of Najibullah Zazi or the Glasgow group — they were all failed bomb makers.

The ‘Walk-In’ Jihadist

About the only thing Shahzad brought to the table was the passport of a naturalized U.S. citizen and a willingness to carry out an attack on U.S. soil. However, that entails more problems than opportunities.

A militant group that U.S. and Pakistani intelligence are actively targeting has to be inherently skeptical of outsiders — especially if one shows up on their doorstep (as Shahzad did) with an offer that appears to be too good to be true. Any entity must balance operational security with the active pursuit of its goals and objectives. But the lack of tradecraft that Shahzad exhibited is only further evidence that if Shahzad interacted with the Pakistani Taliban meaningfully — and there is not yet much evidence either way about how far he made it up the chain of command during his visit – they did not help him attain any meaningful skills. Although subsequent events might have shown that the group — if it was behind the plot — missed a chance to strike at the U.S. homeland, the ensuing investigations and focus of both U.S. and Pakistani intelligence efforts will only make operational security all the more important and any Shahzad-like offers all the more difficult to trust.

Shahzad’s childhood in Pakistan afforded him both cultural and filial connections in the country. There are even reports that a childhood friend was behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Childhood has little bearing on adult operational capability, though it did make it easier for Shahzad to travel outside Peshawar, where he once lived, and make contacts with innumerable individuals — some invariably with some degree of connection to the shadowy, amorphous world of the Pakistani Taliban and their local and transnational allies.

However, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had spent more than a decade in the United States — even one with some historical acquaintance among militants — is problematic. It is next to impossible for a jihadist group to have any confidence in the trustworthiness of an individual who walks in and volunteers in a scenario such as this. The potential for that individual to be a double agent is simply too high to meaningfully compromise operational security — especially as the United States and others are trying very hard to enhance their intelligence for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes in the region. The lack of tradecraft in Shahzad’s device is compelling evidence that whatever “contacts” or “training” he might have received in northern Pakistan was largely confined to physical training and weapons handling, not the far more sophisticated skill set of fashioning improvised explosive devices.

So whoever he did talk to in Pakistan — and the list of potentials is virtually endless for someone who grew up in the area — reveals almost nothing. More information may become available about whom he spoke with and what was discussed but there is no meaningful context for these conversations. Basic tradecraft and Shahzad’s Times Square device that make it clear that at most, the Pakistani Taliban sent a low-level representative to speak with him. It is unclear who provided the training, but it is reasonable to assume that he underwent basic guerilla training courses, but not advanced bomb-making courses. (Zazi received the bomb-making training but still failed in his attempt to attack New York’s subways because training without experience is insufficient.) However, the May 3 video of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakeemullah Mehsud claiming he had not been killed in a 2009 U.S. UAV strike probably gave the group an almost irresistible opportunity to claim credit for the May 1 attempted attack in the United States — even if it was an inept one — in order to bolster the larger movement’s standing (although the Pakistani Taliban is so fractious and diffuse, it can hardly be said that the claim was from “the group”).

Pakistani Taliban

The Pakistani Taliban is an outgrowth of the Afghan Taliban that Islamabad nurtured in the 1990s. The radical Islamist ideology and militant training that Pakistan (along with the United States and Saudi Arabia) had cultivated in Afghanistan during the 1980s war against the Soviets in order to consolidate control over the country eventually spilled back across the border. With a recent rise in attacks against Pakistani government targets, Islamabad began to grasp the implications and consequences of its existing policies. Consequently, in April 2009, it initiated an unprecedented counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaign in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the leading group in the amorphous and diffuse phenomenon that is the Pakistani Taliban (even though the TTP itself is fractious), certainly has had ambitions to attack the continental United States, a supporter of the regime in Islamabad that it opposes.

However, it is important to note that at its strongest, the TTP demonstrated the ability to strike at urban targets in Pakistan. It has never demonstrated the capability to strike far afield, much less on the opposite side of the world. Others, such as splinter factions of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizb-ul-Jihad al-Islami, have demonstrated that capability recently, but not the TTP. So while it has the intent, it has never had the capability to carry out an attack at that distance. The closest it has come to an international attack is the suicide bombing on the CIA facility in eastern Afghanistan across the border from the FATA, which for all intents and purposes should be considered a local operation given the close proximity and porous nature of the border. In that instance, the group got lucky in that the bomber had independent access to agency officials. And the ongoing campaign in FATA is only further pressuring the Pakistani Taliban. Facing both the Pakistani military and American UAV strikes, the group has seen its operational reach within Pakistan severely constrained. The idea that the group has sufficient capacity to plot and support a strike on the continental United States is increasingly far-fetched, despite its desire to do so. In any event, Shahzad’s actions were not only carried out ineptly by an untrained individual, but have no evidence of meaningful outside support.

So while there are links that should not be underestimated, the botched Times Square bombing is merely the latest in a now well-established trend of “grassroots” and “Kramer” jihadists. They absolutely pose a danger — and an ongoing one at that — but they must not be mistaken for the coherent, transnational phenomenon of al Qaeda 2.0.

Posted via web from Jay’s Blogs

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