Monday, November 23, 2009
Pakistan’s “help” against the Taliban: It won't materialize
Two recent articles make it plain that the United States will not be able to count on Pakistan in the fight against the Taliban. Some excerpts. RLC
Why Pakistan Won't Fight the Afghan Taliban
By Omar Waraich / Islamabad Friday, Nov. 20, 2009 time.com
"The demands of its own domestic counterinsurgency campaign, doubts about the duration of U.S. commitment in Afghanistan and looming political instability in Islamabad have left Pakistan in no hurry to help out."
. . . As a weak and unpopular President scarcely seen in public and now the object of growing vilification at home, Zardari is in no position to lead a popular movement against militancy, much less to redirect his army's focus. As ever, it is the all-powerful military establishment that will make the key decisions in Pakistan.
Pakistan's military has certainly moved decisively against those militants that pose a direct challenge to its authority on home soil. Buoyed by its successes in last May's campaign to drive the Taliban out of the Swat Valley, it has for the past month deployed some 30,000 troops to confront the militants in their main stronghold of South Waziristan, along the Afghan border. . . .
The South Waziristan offensive, however, may be the limit of what the Pakistani military is willing to take on right now. It's priority after clearing the area of Taliban elements will be to hold it - and there are signs that the militants have merely scattered to areas beyond the scope of the current offensive, waiting to stage a return. "We have not been defeated," Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told reporters at a secret location on Wednesday, dismissing the army's claims. "We have voluntarily withdrawn into the mountains under a strategy that will trap the Pakistan army in the area."
. . . "Pakistan army is not going to go to North Waziristan before it completes its operation in South Waziristan." Two of the militant groups that Washington would like to see Islamabad target are based in North Waziristan: the Haqqani network and the one led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, both of whom mount cross-border attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.
. . . [The army leaders] don't want to open a front with every militant group." The army has long insisted that it does not have the resources to counter the full range of militants based in the tribal areas. Already, military officials argue, heavy numbers are committed all along the tribal areas and in the Swat Valley. It is also forced to commit forces to guard against upsurges of militancy in other parts of Pakistan. And, of course, the army's priority remains guarding the eastern border with India. Indeed, the fact that India continues to be viewed as the principal security challenge by the Pakistani military establishment also dictates a policy toward Afghanistan that does little to help the U.S. there.
Pakistan's generals are concerned by what they perceive as growing Indian influence in Afghanistan, through the Karzai government and massive development projects. They also accuse India of using Afghanistan as a base from which to wage a proxy war on Pakistan. Its priorities make the Pakistan army unlikely to turn its fire on the Haqqani and Hafiz Gul Bahadur networks, as Obama is demanding. Instead, the army has revived a nonaggression pact with Bahadur and with Maulvi Nazir - both of which use Pakistani soil as a base from which to wage war on NATO forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan's priority is simply to get them to agree to stay neutral or join in the fight between the army and the Pakistan Taliban. Nazir, who was freed from Pakistani custody to fight al-Qaeda-linked Uzbek militants, controls the areas of South Waziristan where the Pakistan army has positioned troops to seal off a line of retreat for the Pakistan Taliban. The danger for the U.S. is that such deals involve a nod and a wink for continued cross-border attacks, making the militants an even more potent threat.
The Haqqani network is believed to have long-standing links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence organization, while senior Western diplomats allege that Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban continues to operate out of the southwestern city of Quetta - a claim furiously denied by Pakistan's military. Many suspect that the reason that the Afghan Taliban manages to operate unmolested on Pakistani soil is Pakistan's need to maintain leverage in Afghanistan, where the U.S. presence is viewed as temporary. Indeed, some Pakistani observers suggest that even if a U.S. surge is successful, it will at best lead to a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, in which Pakistan would play broker.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
EXCLUSIVE: Taliban chief hides among Pakistan populace
Friday, November 20, 2009 The Washington Times Eli Lake, Sara A. Carter and Barbara Slavin
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, has fled a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan and found refuge from potential U.S. attacks in the teeming Pakistani port city of Karachi with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service, three current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Mullah Omar, who hosted Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders when they plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had been residing in Quetta, where the Afghan Taliban shura -- or council -- had moved from Kandahar after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Two senior U.S. intelligence officials and one former senior CIA officer told The Washington Times that Mullah Omar traveled to Karachi last month after the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ....
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI, helped the Taliban leaders move from Quetta, where they were exposed to attacks by unmanned U.S. drones.
The development reinforces suspicions that the ISI, which helped create the Taliban in the 1990s to expand Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, is working against U.S. interests in Afghanistan as the Obama administration prepares to send more U.S. troops to fight there.
Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and analyst on al Qaeda and the Taliban, confirmed that Mullah Omar had been spotted in Karachi recently.
"Some sources claim the ISI decided to move him further from the battlefield to keep him safe" from U.S. drone attacks, said Mr. Riedel, who headed the Obama administration's review of policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last spring. "There are huge madrassas in Karachi where Mullah Omar could easily be kept."
. . . "There are indications of some kind of bleed-out of Taliban types from Quetta to Karachi, but no one should assume at this point that the entire Afghan Taliban leadership has packed up its bags and headed for another Pakistani city."
. . . The official said that neither Osama bin Laden nor al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri has been spotted in Karachi. The official said the top two al Qaeda figures are still thought to be in the tribal region of Pakistan on Afghanistan's border.
But, the official said, other midlevel al Qaeda operatives who facilitate the travel and training of foreign fighters have moved to the Karachi metropolitan area, which with 18 million people is Pakistan's most populous city.
"One reason, [al Qaeda] and Taliban leaders are relocating to Karachi is because they believe U.S. drones do not strike there," the official said. "It is a densely populated urban area."
. . . In late 2001, a cell likely commanded by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed -- the admitted operational planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- abducted and killed journalist Daniel Pearl.
Mohammed, who was captured by the CIA with ISI help in Pakistan in 2003, was sent to the detention facility at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is now set to go on trial in New York. In 2007, at a closed military hearing at Guantanamo, he confessed that he personally beheaded Mr. Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Pakistani officials said they were perplexed by the U.S. reports regarding Mullah Omar and denied that the ISI had facilitated a move by the Quetta shura to Karachi.
. . . "We have no evidence of his presence in Pakistan," Mr. Kiani said. "If anybody in the U.S. government knows of any Quetta shura or Karachi shura, why don't they share that intelligence with Pakistan so we can take care of the issue ourselves? We have not been made aware of any presence of Mullah Omar in the region."
. . . "Our forces are fighting the Taliban in Waziristan and other areas," he said. "The terrorists are now killing and targeting innocent people in Pakistani cities. ISI is a very professional intelligence agency and these allegations are baseless."
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The long term costs of middle class flight from the Third World
The reality that many educated people are being drawn to the Western world from their home counties is an old and familiar topic. But there is a back side to this process that seems yet to be identified. This is to try to define some of the implications of the problem. The point: the “drain” of talent into the Western countries [I’m mainly thinking about the United States] means that the social and cultural capital of countries desperately in need of that talent is being lost. That loss could eventually cost not only those countries but also the Western world, which must deal with countries bereft of educated middle classes.
One of the most noticeable entailments in this process of educated middle class movement is a flow of trained physicians to this country from other countries. Many countries in fact pay for their citizens – usually the cream of the crop – to study medicine. So their graduates come out of medical school with no debt. At same time the developing countries have the usual problems of graft and administrative incompetence, so that some of the best medical graduates can become frustrated and jaded. And some of them discover that in the United States [or some other western country] medical practice can be more fulfilling and far more profitable. The barrier is the costs of entering a medical career in the West: usually there are exams to take that often require further study. But the incentive is huge: a life in safety, a comfortable way of life, often a superior income, and the opportunity to actually practice medicine and even excel in the profession.
So some of them come to the United States and qualify to practice medicine. What this means for them is that their lives are much improved; they have a good income – one that can enable them to support family members back home – and a comfortable, safe career. Without debt -- unlike almost every young physician trained in the United States, for doctors trained in this country pay for their own education, almost always by acquiring an astronomical debt. Doctors graduating from medical schools in this country have no other option than to work hard, charge the best fees possible, in order to pay off their debt. Doctors arriving from elsewhere, after qualifying to practice, begin in a position to develop their careers with much less concern about financial obligations.
So much for what happens inside the United States, for instance. But the implications for the countries that trained these physicians is a growing and costly loss. Countries that must have professional communities and a viable middle class are constantly having their middle class, their best citizens, siphoned away. I don’t know any numbers, but I fear that the long term consequences of this process are to undermine social and cultural processes that our country needs to take place in other countries. We have a national interest in seeing middle classes prosper all over the world, but the seductive power of the opportunities that our country offers those classes works against that interest.
That’s a problem we see happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, after 2001, when the American military invaded the country in order to punish Al Qaeda, hundreds of Afghans who had been living abroad and had prospered in their respective professions returned to help develop the country. There was much excitement about finally developing their home country and they came, in many cases at their own expense.
As everyone knows, it hasn’t happened the way they had hoped. I fear that most of them – those for instance that I met at a 2002 conference on how to help the country, have given up. I wonder how many have stayed, continued trying to develop the country, despite the disappointing developments.
And what are the implications of losing that enthusiastic community of willing Afghans? Those who were ready to pay their own way, even to sacrifice, to serve the public interest of the country: doctors, bankers, hydrologists, engineers – educated, well trained professionals. What has been lost? It is easy to guess: A loss no one can assess. An opportunity lost that is unlikely ever to return.
For Afghanistan there is a huge need for them, but for reasons we can all appreciate I fear that most have gone back to the West.
I see the same problem in Pakistan. And there the loss may be just as catastrophic. And it is one many of us in this country can easily see in our own communities. The community I know includes many excellent physicians from Pakistan and other Third World countries. Our county in fact cannot do without them. But what does it do to Pakistan? Every day we read on the front page signs of the tragic failure of that country to develop the powerful and dominant middle class that must be established if it will ever establish a productive modern country. Pakistan’s loss, America’s gain. A gain scarcely appreciated in America; a loss scarcely recognized in Pakistan.
One of the most noticeable entailments in this process of educated middle class movement is a flow of trained physicians to this country from other countries. Many countries in fact pay for their citizens – usually the cream of the crop – to study medicine. So their graduates come out of medical school with no debt. At same time the developing countries have the usual problems of graft and administrative incompetence, so that some of the best medical graduates can become frustrated and jaded. And some of them discover that in the United States [or some other western country] medical practice can be more fulfilling and far more profitable. The barrier is the costs of entering a medical career in the West: usually there are exams to take that often require further study. But the incentive is huge: a life in safety, a comfortable way of life, often a superior income, and the opportunity to actually practice medicine and even excel in the profession.
So some of them come to the United States and qualify to practice medicine. What this means for them is that their lives are much improved; they have a good income – one that can enable them to support family members back home – and a comfortable, safe career. Without debt -- unlike almost every young physician trained in the United States, for doctors trained in this country pay for their own education, almost always by acquiring an astronomical debt. Doctors graduating from medical schools in this country have no other option than to work hard, charge the best fees possible, in order to pay off their debt. Doctors arriving from elsewhere, after qualifying to practice, begin in a position to develop their careers with much less concern about financial obligations.
So much for what happens inside the United States, for instance. But the implications for the countries that trained these physicians is a growing and costly loss. Countries that must have professional communities and a viable middle class are constantly having their middle class, their best citizens, siphoned away. I don’t know any numbers, but I fear that the long term consequences of this process are to undermine social and cultural processes that our country needs to take place in other countries. We have a national interest in seeing middle classes prosper all over the world, but the seductive power of the opportunities that our country offers those classes works against that interest.
That’s a problem we see happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, after 2001, when the American military invaded the country in order to punish Al Qaeda, hundreds of Afghans who had been living abroad and had prospered in their respective professions returned to help develop the country. There was much excitement about finally developing their home country and they came, in many cases at their own expense.
As everyone knows, it hasn’t happened the way they had hoped. I fear that most of them – those for instance that I met at a 2002 conference on how to help the country, have given up. I wonder how many have stayed, continued trying to develop the country, despite the disappointing developments.
And what are the implications of losing that enthusiastic community of willing Afghans? Those who were ready to pay their own way, even to sacrifice, to serve the public interest of the country: doctors, bankers, hydrologists, engineers – educated, well trained professionals. What has been lost? It is easy to guess: A loss no one can assess. An opportunity lost that is unlikely ever to return.
For Afghanistan there is a huge need for them, but for reasons we can all appreciate I fear that most have gone back to the West.
I see the same problem in Pakistan. And there the loss may be just as catastrophic. And it is one many of us in this country can easily see in our own communities. The community I know includes many excellent physicians from Pakistan and other Third World countries. Our county in fact cannot do without them. But what does it do to Pakistan? Every day we read on the front page signs of the tragic failure of that country to develop the powerful and dominant middle class that must be established if it will ever establish a productive modern country. Pakistan’s loss, America’s gain. A gain scarcely appreciated in America; a loss scarcely recognized in Pakistan.
Slackman on Montazeri's challenge to the Iranian government
NYTimes Michael Slackman’s article on Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri indicates again how conflicted, and contradictory the actual practice of administration in Iran has turned out to be. He was one of the original promoters of the concept of “Velayat-e Faqih,” the juristic guardianship, the concept that underlies Iran’s current theocracy, and was, in fact, at one time the teacher of the current leading “faqih,” Ali Khameini – now addressed as “ayatollah” although he never earned such a high level of scholarly achievement. Slackman says that Ayatollah Montazeri has argued for years that even in a religious state legitimacy comes from the people.
He has for years challenged the abuses of power in Iran. Even in the time of Khomeini, “He mocked Ayatollah Khomeini’s decision to issue a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” saying, “People in the world are getting the idea that our business in Iran is just murdering people.” It was in January, 1988, that Montazeri's objections to a wave of executions of political prisoners and his recoomendations to the leadership that Iran should export the revolution by example, not by violence. For that he was forced to leave government.
He has not, however, ceased to criticize the government, and now his criticisms of the Khameini regime have become exceedingly dangerous to it. A recent statement:
Dangerous words for a regime now believed guilty of stealing an election and then brutally crushing the thousands of citizens who objected to it.
“The government will not achieve legitimacy without the support of the people, and as the necessary and obligatory condition for the legitimacy of the ruler is his popularity and the people’s satisfaction with him,”Once the designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini until he began to criticize Khomeini’s practice in 1988, he is now a respected voice of opposition to the current regime. “He criticizes this regime purely from a religious point of view, and this is very hurtful. The regime wants to say, ‘If I am not democratic enough that doesn’t matter, I am Islamic.’ He says it is not an Islamic government.” (Mehdi Khalaji).
He has for years challenged the abuses of power in Iran. Even in the time of Khomeini, “He mocked Ayatollah Khomeini’s decision to issue a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” saying, “People in the world are getting the idea that our business in Iran is just murdering people.” It was in January, 1988, that Montazeri's objections to a wave of executions of political prisoners and his recoomendations to the leadership that Iran should export the revolution by example, not by violence. For that he was forced to leave government.
He has not, however, ceased to criticize the government, and now his criticisms of the Khameini regime have become exceedingly dangerous to it. A recent statement:
“A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate.”He says that the Islamic Republic of Iran is neither Islamic, nor a republic, and the supreme leader has lost his legitimacy.
Dangerous words for a regime now believed guilty of stealing an election and then brutally crushing the thousands of citizens who objected to it.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Steve Coll on The price of "failure" in the Afghanistan/Pakistan war
Steve Coll, whose understanding of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan has to be considered superb, has published in the Atlantic an estimate of the consequences of our “failing” in the war against that Taliban and AlQaeda. Anything he says needs to be considered carefully. Here is a fine statement of the implications of giving up or otherwise “failing” in the South Asian war. This, he says, is what would happen:
The Nineties Afghan Civil War on Steroids:
Momentum for a Taliban Revolution in Pakistan:
Increased Islamist Violence Against India, Increasing the Likelihood of Indo-Pakistani War:
Increased Al Qaeda Ambitions Against Britain and the United States:
He concludes this last section with the following:
"As 9/11 and the current creativity of the regionally focussed Taliban amply demonstrate, their potential should not be complacently underestimated. If they did get through and score another lucky goal, it is easy to imagine the prospective consequences for American politics and for the constitution."
The Nineties Afghan Civil War on Steroids:
Momentum for a Taliban Revolution in Pakistan:
Increased Islamist Violence Against India, Increasing the Likelihood of Indo-Pakistani War:
Increased Al Qaeda Ambitions Against Britain and the United States:
He concludes this last section with the following:
"As 9/11 and the current creativity of the regionally focussed Taliban amply demonstrate, their potential should not be complacently underestimated. If they did get through and score another lucky goal, it is easy to imagine the prospective consequences for American politics and for the constitution."
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Mutawakil's hint: Is negotiation possible?
On CNN Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, former foreign minister for the Taliban, said that negotiation with the Taliban was possible. Also, Taliban commander Mullah Toor Jan has recently said that the Afghan Taliban had no connection with Al Qaida or with Pakistan’s Tehrik-i Taliban, the Taliban that have challenged the Pakistani military. Comments to make us wonder.
As for Mutawakil, what he says is worth taking seriously because he seems to be -- even now -- a key link between the leadership of the Taliban and the American military. I went back to the transcript, to be sure of what he actually said. Not a lot, it turns out, but it is enough to be suggestive: Is it a hint of a chance of a deal with the Taliban? [Click on the title for a link to the CNN site it comes from.] Here are the key statements:
This, let us hope, is a possible opening. But it is clear, as Mutawakil intimated, that Mullah Muhammad Omar does not control all of the groups that call themselves "Taliban"; indeed, Mutawakil specifically rejected any point in talking to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Mujahedin leader against the Soviets and now a leader of one of the "Taliban" factions. And he admits that many young people have come under the influence of the more extreme of the Islamists connected with the Taliban; presumably there is no negotiating for them either.
So, if it means anything it means only that some Taliban might be willing to talk.
As for Mutawakil, what he says is worth taking seriously because he seems to be -- even now -- a key link between the leadership of the Taliban and the American military. I went back to the transcript, to be sure of what he actually said. Not a lot, it turns out, but it is enough to be suggestive: Is it a hint of a chance of a deal with the Taliban? [Click on the title for a link to the CNN site it comes from.] Here are the key statements:
MUTAWAKIL (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): The common Taliban do not believe in the peace process. They don't trust it.
LAWRENCE: (voice-over): But Mutawakil says its leadership is open to negotiation. ...
MUTAWAKIL: We are not a danger to the world. We can be flexible.
MUTAWAKIL (through translator): Only reconciling with Hekmatyar will not solve the problem. If they do not negotiate with the representative of Mullah Omar, it will be useless.
LAWRENCE: (voice-over): Mutawakil says the Taliban realize they can't turn back the clock to early 2001.
(on camera): Could they accept a government where women are granted rights, women can -- are allowed to go to school?
MUTAWAKIL (through translator): They will won't believe in co- education, but there can be separate education while wearing veils. This will be different.
LAWRENCE: (voice-over): He says the current Taliban leadership is more focused on driving out foreigners than Islamic crusade, but admits a lot of young Afghan fighters have been influenced by years of contact with the foreign jihadists.
MUTAWAKIL (through translator): The new generation of Taliban, the young boys who joined with them, they are different. (END VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE: The mullah told me that some American diplomats have already visited him to talk about Afghanistan's future. But he says the price of any deal could be taking the bounty off the heads of some Taliban leaders or even giving them control of some provinces . . . .
This, let us hope, is a possible opening. But it is clear, as Mutawakil intimated, that Mullah Muhammad Omar does not control all of the groups that call themselves "Taliban"; indeed, Mutawakil specifically rejected any point in talking to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Mujahedin leader against the Soviets and now a leader of one of the "Taliban" factions. And he admits that many young people have come under the influence of the more extreme of the Islamists connected with the Taliban; presumably there is no negotiating for them either.
So, if it means anything it means only that some Taliban might be willing to talk.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
BBC interview with a child "suicide bomber"
I have for some time believed that it takes a huge degree of inhumanity, wickedness, to train children to become suicide bombers. It appears to be an industry among the Taliban/Al Qaeda. So many bombers have been produced that the process cannot exist without a number of adults being involved and other numbers being willing to ignore it. For me, it is easy to believe that eventually this activity will create such revulsion among the communities being mined for their children that there will be an extreme reaction. How can a society, once fully aware of the practice, continue to allow it? Given my faith on the subject, I am encouraged by the report of a 14 year old boy who was "recruited" to be a suicide bomber. The whole report follows below. RLC
'I agreed to become a suicide bomber' Thursday, 12 November 2009 BBC News
A 14-year-old boy in the tribal region of Bajaur, in north-west Pakistan, says he was detained by Taliban forces who tried to turn him into a suicide bomber. The boy is now in army hands.
He provided a detailed account to BBC correspondent Orla Guerin. His story cannot be independently verified.
"There were five people who came after me from a place in Bajaur. They tricked me. They told me they were going to behead my father.
I went with them but my father wasn't there. They tied me up.
They said: 'You have two choices. We will behead you, or you will become a suicide bomber.' I refused.
There were two more guys of my age. They were also training to be suicide bombers. If we refused they would tie our hands behind our backs, blindfold us and start beating us.
They brainwashed us and told us we would go to heaven. They said 'there will be honey and juice and God will appear in front of you. You will have a beautiful house in Heaven'.
We used to ask them to let us out to pray. They would reply 'you are already on your way to heaven. You don't need to pray.'
They beat me hard for five days. I wasn't given any food. While they were beating me I agreed to become a suicide bomber. They separated me from the other boys.
Mosque mission
They took me to a dark room and started giving me pills. I was handed over to Maulvi Fakir [the Bajaur Taliban commander]. After all this preparation they said I was to go and do the job in a mosque.
It was an ordinary mosque but the cleric there used to talk against the Taliban, and they declared him their enemy. They told me the cleric was a non-believer, a non-Muslim.
They took off my shirt and put the jacket on my shoulders. There were two hooks on my chest. They told me that when you go there you say'Allahu Akbar' [God is Great] and then you pull apart these two hooks. Then they took me there, showed me the mosque and went off.
I was drugged and I couldn't feel anything. I only came to my senses when I arrived in the mosque. I saw the peaceful kind face of the cleric, and I saw the mosque was full of holy books. I saw the people praying. And I thought, they are all Muslims. How can I do this? I decided not to and I came out.
I sat under a tree outside the mosque and waited for prayers to be over. After that I made my way back to the Taliban. Then they called me 'a son of a bitch' and asked why I had come back without doing it.
I told them I could not do it because they were carrying out body searches of all the people entering the mosque. They took off my vest and handed me over to Maulvi Fakir.
They tied me up but I told them to give me another chance and I would do it. They trusted me. I was roaming around with them for a couple of days. I got to the road, found transport and came home. They followed me to my house. They wanted to know if I was still there or had run somewhere else.
The Taliban had beaten me so harshly my back was scarred. When my parents saw that my mother started to cry, and told me not to go back to them. My father asked them why they were after his son. One day he took his weapon and went after them. But they wanted to kill him so he came back home and closed the door.
Before the Taliban came we used to enjoy freedom. We used to play, and go to our schools. There were no restrictions on us. Morning and evening we used to play games, and sit and chat with friends. We used to listen to music on our mobile phones. They banned that. They stopped us doing anything. They stopped us playing cricket and going to school. We felt like prisoners.
I want to join the army because they are the defenders of the land. They are fighting for the right cause. I want to fight against the Taliban. I have no other intention except to defend my country. The Taliban should be eliminated.
I want to tell the Taliban that they are cruel, and what they did to me was unjust. I can't kill innocent Muslims.
I am not afraid of them. I am only afraid of God. I am answerable only to Him."
'I agreed to become a suicide bomber' Thursday, 12 November 2009 BBC News
A 14-year-old boy in the tribal region of Bajaur, in north-west Pakistan, says he was detained by Taliban forces who tried to turn him into a suicide bomber. The boy is now in army hands.
He provided a detailed account to BBC correspondent Orla Guerin. His story cannot be independently verified.
"There were five people who came after me from a place in Bajaur. They tricked me. They told me they were going to behead my father.
I went with them but my father wasn't there. They tied me up.
They said: 'You have two choices. We will behead you, or you will become a suicide bomber.' I refused.
There were two more guys of my age. They were also training to be suicide bombers. If we refused they would tie our hands behind our backs, blindfold us and start beating us.
They brainwashed us and told us we would go to heaven. They said 'there will be honey and juice and God will appear in front of you. You will have a beautiful house in Heaven'.
We used to ask them to let us out to pray. They would reply 'you are already on your way to heaven. You don't need to pray.'
They beat me hard for five days. I wasn't given any food. While they were beating me I agreed to become a suicide bomber. They separated me from the other boys.
Mosque mission
They took me to a dark room and started giving me pills. I was handed over to Maulvi Fakir [the Bajaur Taliban commander]. After all this preparation they said I was to go and do the job in a mosque.
It was an ordinary mosque but the cleric there used to talk against the Taliban, and they declared him their enemy. They told me the cleric was a non-believer, a non-Muslim.
They took off my shirt and put the jacket on my shoulders. There were two hooks on my chest. They told me that when you go there you say'Allahu Akbar' [God is Great] and then you pull apart these two hooks. Then they took me there, showed me the mosque and went off.
I was drugged and I couldn't feel anything. I only came to my senses when I arrived in the mosque. I saw the peaceful kind face of the cleric, and I saw the mosque was full of holy books. I saw the people praying. And I thought, they are all Muslims. How can I do this? I decided not to and I came out.
I sat under a tree outside the mosque and waited for prayers to be over. After that I made my way back to the Taliban. Then they called me 'a son of a bitch' and asked why I had come back without doing it.
I told them I could not do it because they were carrying out body searches of all the people entering the mosque. They took off my vest and handed me over to Maulvi Fakir.
They tied me up but I told them to give me another chance and I would do it. They trusted me. I was roaming around with them for a couple of days. I got to the road, found transport and came home. They followed me to my house. They wanted to know if I was still there or had run somewhere else.
The Taliban had beaten me so harshly my back was scarred. When my parents saw that my mother started to cry, and told me not to go back to them. My father asked them why they were after his son. One day he took his weapon and went after them. But they wanted to kill him so he came back home and closed the door.
Before the Taliban came we used to enjoy freedom. We used to play, and go to our schools. There were no restrictions on us. Morning and evening we used to play games, and sit and chat with friends. We used to listen to music on our mobile phones. They banned that. They stopped us doing anything. They stopped us playing cricket and going to school. We felt like prisoners.
I want to join the army because they are the defenders of the land. They are fighting for the right cause. I want to fight against the Taliban. I have no other intention except to defend my country. The Taliban should be eliminated.
I want to tell the Taliban that they are cruel, and what they did to me was unjust. I can't kill innocent Muslims.
I am not afraid of them. I am only afraid of God. I am answerable only to Him."
Friday, November 13, 2009
Pakistani double-speak. Ingress? Dominate?
Former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf has complained that Afghanistan is "under the influence of Indian intelligence." He clearly indicates that the ISI are somehow connected with the Taliban:
At the end of this article he says that we should "defeat Al Qaeda" and "dominate Taliban." Hmm. Not defeat the Taliban; only dominate them.
Ingress. Dominate. These terms leave us unsettled as to what Pakistan is really committed to. What the Pakistani military are not fully committed to is a complete defeat of the Taliban. As Musharraf says, some of them are useful.... What follows, at least, is the version of India's Economic Times. The whole article follows below. RLC
Afghan is under influence of Indian intelligence:
Musharraf
The Economic Times (India) - Nov 08 9:21 PM WASHINGTON:
Acknowledging that there is "An ingress of the ISI in every terrorist group", former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has alleged Afghanistan is under influence of Indian intelligence agencies and he has documentary evidence against it.
"Afghan intelligence, Afghan President, Afghan Government. Don't talk of them. I know what they do. They are, by design, they mislead the world. They talk against Pakistan, because they are under the influence of Indian intelligence, all of them," Musharraf said in an interview yesterday.
"The Afghan intelligence (is) entirely under the influence of Indian intelligence. We know that," Musharraf said when asked that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is in the Quetta city of Pakistan.
"Whatever I am saying, I am not saying it here (for the first time). I have given documentary evidence of all this to everyone. There is the documentary evidence. And we know the involvement of Indian intelligence, in India, with their intelligence," Musharraf, currently in London, charged.
"I have given documentary evidence to everyone from top to bottom. Everyone knows it. And we have the documentary evidence," the former Pakistan Army chief said.
Musharraf denied reports and statements coming from the US leaders that ISI still has contacts with the terrorists.
"They (ISI) will not support it (terrorists). That was not the government policy. That was not the military policy. However, there was ingress," he said.
"Always, in every group, there is an ingress of the ISI. And that is the efficiency, the effectiveness of the ISI. You must have ingress, so that you can influence all organizations. And it is this ingress of theirs, which doesn't mean that they are supporting them, but they have ingress. They have some contacts, which can be used for their own advantage," Musharraf said.
He said foreign troops are not welcome in Afghanistan, but now since they are there, they should win the battle against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
"Foreign troops are not welcome there (in Afghanistan). But now that they are there, we have to win. And quitting is not an option at all," he said.
"Anyone who is talking of quitting doesn't understand the ramifications of quitting. He must sit down and analyze what will happen if he were to quit there without a solution.
We have to defeat the al-Qaida, we have to dominate the Taliban, and we have to introduce a credible, legitimate government in Afghanistan. But we cannot leave before that," he said.
"They (ISI) will not support it (terrorists). That was not the government policy. That was not the military policy. However, there was ingress," he said.
"Always, in every group, there is an ingress of the ISI. And that is the efficiency, the effectiveness of the ISI. You must have ingress, so that you can influence all organizations. And it is this ingress of theirs, which doesn't mean that they are supporting them, but they have ingress. They have some contacts, which can be used for their own advantage," Musharraf said.
At the end of this article he says that we should "defeat Al Qaeda" and "dominate Taliban." Hmm. Not defeat the Taliban; only dominate them.
Ingress. Dominate. These terms leave us unsettled as to what Pakistan is really committed to. What the Pakistani military are not fully committed to is a complete defeat of the Taliban. As Musharraf says, some of them are useful.... What follows, at least, is the version of India's Economic Times. The whole article follows below. RLC
Afghan is under influence of Indian intelligence:
Musharraf
The Economic Times (India) - Nov 08 9:21 PM WASHINGTON:
Acknowledging that there is "An ingress of the ISI in every terrorist group", former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has alleged Afghanistan is under influence of Indian intelligence agencies and he has documentary evidence against it.
"Afghan intelligence, Afghan President, Afghan Government. Don't talk of them. I know what they do. They are, by design, they mislead the world. They talk against Pakistan, because they are under the influence of Indian intelligence, all of them," Musharraf said in an interview yesterday.
"The Afghan intelligence (is) entirely under the influence of Indian intelligence. We know that," Musharraf said when asked that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is in the Quetta city of Pakistan.
"Whatever I am saying, I am not saying it here (for the first time). I have given documentary evidence of all this to everyone. There is the documentary evidence. And we know the involvement of Indian intelligence, in India, with their intelligence," Musharraf, currently in London, charged.
"I have given documentary evidence to everyone from top to bottom. Everyone knows it. And we have the documentary evidence," the former Pakistan Army chief said.
Musharraf denied reports and statements coming from the US leaders that ISI still has contacts with the terrorists.
"They (ISI) will not support it (terrorists). That was not the government policy. That was not the military policy. However, there was ingress," he said.
"Always, in every group, there is an ingress of the ISI. And that is the efficiency, the effectiveness of the ISI. You must have ingress, so that you can influence all organizations. And it is this ingress of theirs, which doesn't mean that they are supporting them, but they have ingress. They have some contacts, which can be used for their own advantage," Musharraf said.
He said foreign troops are not welcome in Afghanistan, but now since they are there, they should win the battle against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
"Foreign troops are not welcome there (in Afghanistan). But now that they are there, we have to win. And quitting is not an option at all," he said.
"Anyone who is talking of quitting doesn't understand the ramifications of quitting. He must sit down and analyze what will happen if he were to quit there without a solution.
We have to defeat the al-Qaida, we have to dominate the Taliban, and we have to introduce a credible, legitimate government in Afghanistan. But we cannot leave before that," he said.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Sober Foresight: The International Energy Agency Report, 2009
Human beings are the most sentient creatures on the earth, the most capable of foresight and planning, the most adaptable and adjustable. At least so we tell ourselves.
The reality may be otherwise. We seem able to see ahead but as a species we – the industrial world especially -- seem unable to correct our social practices enough to spare our planet from ecological collapse. Could Jared Diamond be a prophet? Is it because we are unable or unwilling?
Anyway, I wonder how many people will read the just-released executive summary of the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2009”. Sobering as it is, the industrial world is likely to go on more or less as it has, primarily driven by immediate and local practical interests. That seems to me the most sobering, and unstated, features of the report.
In order to help circulate the sense of how serious the world ecological trend is I reproduce here merely the topic sentences of the executive summary. Actually the whole report is not long and the details are the most sobering feature of the report; click on the title for a link to the whole Executive Summary.
Just so you don't miss it: Here is how it ends:
Saving the planet cannot wait. For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions over a given period becomes narrower — and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase. We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010-2030. A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach. If this were the case, the additional adaptation costs would be many times this figure. Countries attending the UN Climate Change Conference must not lose sight of this. The time has come to make the hard choices needed to turn promises into action.
Read, and wonder. Some of us also will pray.
International Energy Agency, “World Energy Outlook 2009” [executive summary]
The past 12 months have seen enormous upheavals in energy markets around the world, yet the challenges of transforming the global energy system remain urgent and daunting. How we rise to that challenge will have far-reaching consequences for energy markets. The scale and breadth of the energy challenge is enormous — far greater than many people realise. But it can and must be met.
Households and businesses are largely responsible for making the required investments, but governments hold the key to changing the mix of energy investment. This Outlook presents the results of two scenarios: a Reference Scenario, which provides a baseline picture of how global energy markets would evolve if governments make no changes to their existing policies and measures; and a 450 Scenario, which depicts a world in which collective policy action is taken to limit the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent (ppm CO2-eq), an objective that is gaining widespread support around the world. © OECD/IEA, 2009 World Energy Outlook 2009
The financial crisis brings a temporary reprieve from rising fossil energy
use
• Global energy use is set to fall in 2009 — for the first time since 1981 on any significant scale — as a result of the financial and economic crisis; but, on current policies, it would quickly resume its long-term upward trend once economic recovery is underway.
• Fossil fuels remain the dominant sources of primary energy worldwide in the
Reference Scenario, accounting for more than three-quarters of the overall increase in energy use between 2007 and 2030.
• The main driver of demand for coal and gas is the inexorable growth in energy needs for power generation.
• The use of non-hydro modern renewable energy technologies (including wind, solar, geothermal, tide and wave energy, and bio-energy) sees the fastest rate of increase in the Reference Scenario.
Falling energy investment will have far-reaching consequences
• Energy investment worldwide has plunged over the past year in the face of a tougher financing environment, weakening final demand for energy and lower cash flow.
• In the oil and gas sector, most companies have announced cutbacks in capital spending, as well as project delays and cancellations, mainly as a result of lower cash flow.
• Falling energy investment will have far-reaching and, depending on how governments respond, potentially serious consequences for energy security, climate change and energy poverty.
• The financial crisis has cast a shadow over whether all the energy investment needed to meet growing energy needs can be mobilised. Current policies put us on an alarming fossil-energy path
• Continuing on today’s energy path, without any change in government policy, would mean rapidly increasing dependence on fossil fuels, with alarming consequences for climate change and energy security.
• Non-OECD countries account for all of the projected growth in energy-related CO2 emissions to 2030.
• These trends would lead to a rapid increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• The Reference Scenario trends also heighten concerns about the security of energy supplies.
• Expanding access to modern energy for the world’s poor remains a pressing matter.
Limiting temperature rise to 2°C requires a low-carbon energy revolution
• Although opinion is mixed on what might be considered a sustainable, long-term level of annual CO2 emissions for the energy sector, a consensus on the need to limit the global temperature increase to 2°C is emerging.
• The reductions in energy-related CO2 emissions required in the 450 Scenario (relative to the Reference Scenario) by 2020 — just a decade away — are formidable, but the financial crisis offers what may be a unique opportunity to take the necessary steps as the political mood shifts.
• With a new international climate policy agreement, a comprehensive and rapid transformation in the way we produce, transport and use energy — a veritable lowcarbon revolution — could put the world onto this 450-ppm trajectory.
Energy efficiency offers the biggest scope for cutting emissions
• End-use efficiency is the largest contributor to CO2 emissions abatement in 2030, accounting for more than half of total savings in the 450 Scenario, compared with the Reference Scenario.
• Measures in the transport sector to improve fuel economy, expand biofuels and romote the uptake of new vehicle technologies — notably hybrid and electric vehicles — lead to a big reduction in oil demand.
New financing mechanisms will be critical to achieving
low-carbon growth
• The 450 Scenario entails $10.5 trillion more investment in energy infrastructure and energy-related capital stock globally than in the Reference Scenario through to the end of the projection period.
• The cost of the additional investments needed to put the world onto a 450-ppm path is at least partly offset by economic, health and energy-security benefits.
• It is widely agreed that developed countries must provide more financial support to developing countries in reducing their emissions; but the level of support, the mechanisms for providing it and the relative burden across countries are matters for negotiation.
Natural gas will play a key role whatever the policy landscape
• With the assumed resumption of global economic growth from 2010, demand for natural gas worldwide is set to resume its long-term upwards trend, though the pace of demand growth hinges critically on the strength of climate policy action.
• The outlook to 2015 differs markedly from the longer-term picture.
• In the 450 Scenario, world primary gas demand grows by 17% between 2007 and 2030, but is 17% lower in 2030 compared with the Reference Scenario.
Gas resources are huge but exploiting them will be challenging
• The world’s remaining resources of natural gas are easily large enough to cover any conceivable rate of increase in demand through to 2030 and well beyond, though the cost of developing new resources is set to rise over the long term.
• The non-OECD countries as a whole are projected to account for almost all of the projected increase in global natural gas production between 2007 and 2030.
• The rate of decline in production from existing gas fields is the prime factor determining the amount of new capacity and investment needed to meet projected demand.
Unconventional gas changes the game in North America
and elsewhere
• The recent rapid development of unconventional gas resources in the United States and Canada, particularly in the last three years, has transformed the gas-market outlook, both in North America and in other parts of the world.
• The extent to which the boom in unconventional gas production in North America can be replicated in other parts of the world endowed with such resources remains highly uncertain.
A glut of gas is looming
• The unexpected boom in North American unconventional gas production, together with the current recession’s depressive impact on demand, is expected to contribute to an acute glut of gas supply in the next few years.
• The looming gas glut could have far-reaching consequences for the structure of gas markets and for the way gas is priced in Europe and Asia-Pacific.
ASEAN countries will become a key energy market
• The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are set to play an increasingly important role in global energy markets in the decades ahead.
• Many hurdles will need to be overcome if Southeast Asia is to secure access to the energy required to meet its growing needs at affordable prices and in a sustainable manner.
Turning promises into results
• The upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen will provide important pointers to the kind of energy future that awaits us.
• A critical ingredient in the success of efforts to prevent climate change will be the speed with which governments act on their commitments.
The final comment:
Saving the planet cannot wait. For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions over a given period becomes narrower — and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase. We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010-2030. A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach. If this were the case, the additional adaptation costs would be many times this figure. Countries attending the UN Climate Change Conference must not lose sight of this. The time has come to make the hard choices needed to turn promises into action.
© OECD
The reality may be otherwise. We seem able to see ahead but as a species we – the industrial world especially -- seem unable to correct our social practices enough to spare our planet from ecological collapse. Could Jared Diamond be a prophet? Is it because we are unable or unwilling?
Anyway, I wonder how many people will read the just-released executive summary of the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2009”. Sobering as it is, the industrial world is likely to go on more or less as it has, primarily driven by immediate and local practical interests. That seems to me the most sobering, and unstated, features of the report.
In order to help circulate the sense of how serious the world ecological trend is I reproduce here merely the topic sentences of the executive summary. Actually the whole report is not long and the details are the most sobering feature of the report; click on the title for a link to the whole Executive Summary.
Just so you don't miss it: Here is how it ends:
Saving the planet cannot wait. For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions over a given period becomes narrower — and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase. We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010-2030. A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach. If this were the case, the additional adaptation costs would be many times this figure. Countries attending the UN Climate Change Conference must not lose sight of this. The time has come to make the hard choices needed to turn promises into action.
Read, and wonder. Some of us also will pray.
International Energy Agency, “World Energy Outlook 2009” [executive summary]
The past 12 months have seen enormous upheavals in energy markets around the world, yet the challenges of transforming the global energy system remain urgent and daunting. How we rise to that challenge will have far-reaching consequences for energy markets. The scale and breadth of the energy challenge is enormous — far greater than many people realise. But it can and must be met.
Households and businesses are largely responsible for making the required investments, but governments hold the key to changing the mix of energy investment. This Outlook presents the results of two scenarios: a Reference Scenario, which provides a baseline picture of how global energy markets would evolve if governments make no changes to their existing policies and measures; and a 450 Scenario, which depicts a world in which collective policy action is taken to limit the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent (ppm CO2-eq), an objective that is gaining widespread support around the world. © OECD/IEA, 2009 World Energy Outlook 2009
The financial crisis brings a temporary reprieve from rising fossil energy
use
• Global energy use is set to fall in 2009 — for the first time since 1981 on any significant scale — as a result of the financial and economic crisis; but, on current policies, it would quickly resume its long-term upward trend once economic recovery is underway.
• Fossil fuels remain the dominant sources of primary energy worldwide in the
Reference Scenario, accounting for more than three-quarters of the overall increase in energy use between 2007 and 2030.
• The main driver of demand for coal and gas is the inexorable growth in energy needs for power generation.
• The use of non-hydro modern renewable energy technologies (including wind, solar, geothermal, tide and wave energy, and bio-energy) sees the fastest rate of increase in the Reference Scenario.
Falling energy investment will have far-reaching consequences
• Energy investment worldwide has plunged over the past year in the face of a tougher financing environment, weakening final demand for energy and lower cash flow.
• In the oil and gas sector, most companies have announced cutbacks in capital spending, as well as project delays and cancellations, mainly as a result of lower cash flow.
• Falling energy investment will have far-reaching and, depending on how governments respond, potentially serious consequences for energy security, climate change and energy poverty.
• The financial crisis has cast a shadow over whether all the energy investment needed to meet growing energy needs can be mobilised. Current policies put us on an alarming fossil-energy path
• Continuing on today’s energy path, without any change in government policy, would mean rapidly increasing dependence on fossil fuels, with alarming consequences for climate change and energy security.
• Non-OECD countries account for all of the projected growth in energy-related CO2 emissions to 2030.
• These trends would lead to a rapid increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• The Reference Scenario trends also heighten concerns about the security of energy supplies.
• Expanding access to modern energy for the world’s poor remains a pressing matter.
Limiting temperature rise to 2°C requires a low-carbon energy revolution
• Although opinion is mixed on what might be considered a sustainable, long-term level of annual CO2 emissions for the energy sector, a consensus on the need to limit the global temperature increase to 2°C is emerging.
• The reductions in energy-related CO2 emissions required in the 450 Scenario (relative to the Reference Scenario) by 2020 — just a decade away — are formidable, but the financial crisis offers what may be a unique opportunity to take the necessary steps as the political mood shifts.
• With a new international climate policy agreement, a comprehensive and rapid transformation in the way we produce, transport and use energy — a veritable lowcarbon revolution — could put the world onto this 450-ppm trajectory.
Energy efficiency offers the biggest scope for cutting emissions
• End-use efficiency is the largest contributor to CO2 emissions abatement in 2030, accounting for more than half of total savings in the 450 Scenario, compared with the Reference Scenario.
• Measures in the transport sector to improve fuel economy, expand biofuels and romote the uptake of new vehicle technologies — notably hybrid and electric vehicles — lead to a big reduction in oil demand.
New financing mechanisms will be critical to achieving
low-carbon growth
• The 450 Scenario entails $10.5 trillion more investment in energy infrastructure and energy-related capital stock globally than in the Reference Scenario through to the end of the projection period.
• The cost of the additional investments needed to put the world onto a 450-ppm path is at least partly offset by economic, health and energy-security benefits.
• It is widely agreed that developed countries must provide more financial support to developing countries in reducing their emissions; but the level of support, the mechanisms for providing it and the relative burden across countries are matters for negotiation.
Natural gas will play a key role whatever the policy landscape
• With the assumed resumption of global economic growth from 2010, demand for natural gas worldwide is set to resume its long-term upwards trend, though the pace of demand growth hinges critically on the strength of climate policy action.
• The outlook to 2015 differs markedly from the longer-term picture.
• In the 450 Scenario, world primary gas demand grows by 17% between 2007 and 2030, but is 17% lower in 2030 compared with the Reference Scenario.
Gas resources are huge but exploiting them will be challenging
• The world’s remaining resources of natural gas are easily large enough to cover any conceivable rate of increase in demand through to 2030 and well beyond, though the cost of developing new resources is set to rise over the long term.
• The non-OECD countries as a whole are projected to account for almost all of the projected increase in global natural gas production between 2007 and 2030.
• The rate of decline in production from existing gas fields is the prime factor determining the amount of new capacity and investment needed to meet projected demand.
Unconventional gas changes the game in North America
and elsewhere
• The recent rapid development of unconventional gas resources in the United States and Canada, particularly in the last three years, has transformed the gas-market outlook, both in North America and in other parts of the world.
• The extent to which the boom in unconventional gas production in North America can be replicated in other parts of the world endowed with such resources remains highly uncertain.
A glut of gas is looming
• The unexpected boom in North American unconventional gas production, together with the current recession’s depressive impact on demand, is expected to contribute to an acute glut of gas supply in the next few years.
• The looming gas glut could have far-reaching consequences for the structure of gas markets and for the way gas is priced in Europe and Asia-Pacific.
ASEAN countries will become a key energy market
• The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are set to play an increasingly important role in global energy markets in the decades ahead.
• Many hurdles will need to be overcome if Southeast Asia is to secure access to the energy required to meet its growing needs at affordable prices and in a sustainable manner.
Turning promises into results
• The upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen will provide important pointers to the kind of energy future that awaits us.
• A critical ingredient in the success of efforts to prevent climate change will be the speed with which governments act on their commitments.
The final comment:
Saving the planet cannot wait. For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions over a given period becomes narrower — and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase. We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010-2030. A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach. If this were the case, the additional adaptation costs would be many times this figure. Countries attending the UN Climate Change Conference must not lose sight of this. The time has come to make the hard choices needed to turn promises into action.
© OECD
Monday, November 09, 2009
Nemat Sadat's creative case for pursuing the project in Afghanistan
As people search for analogies by which to interpret developments in Afghanistan they have often turned to ones that seem to me quite useless -- suggestions that "empires" have always been bogged down there [they forget the Mongols and Babur's Moghals, and Tamerlane, etc.]. Nemat Sadat has provided a different analogy by which to make the case for how significant the Afghanistan war is for the world in general. Because his argument is so crucial I reproduce it entirely here. It is refreshing to read someone who has original things to say about a world that is changing fast and careening into the future rather than into the past. [The source page can be reached by clicking on the title above.] RLC
Why Afghanistan is the new post-Cold War Berlin
From the OhMyGov! website
By Nemat Sadat Oct 30 2009, 11:04 AM
Twenty years ago today, the fall of the Berlin Wall, brought German re-unification, revolutionary marches throughout Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union's disintegration. While the war of ideas that shattered the Iron Curtain was waged in Europe, Afghans fought the bloody battle against communism and demoralized the Brezhnev doctrine.
The Afghan vs. Soviet proxy war paralyzed Afghanistan with a million dead, millions of displaced refugees, and countless millions disabled. As the Red Army withdrew forces, the U.S. in turn shifted its attention away from Afghanistan. Who would have imagined that sole remaining superpower would return to Afghanistan and find itself bogged down in a long military conflict? Or that this landlocked nation would become the new schwer punkt, the new focal or resistant point of the post-Cold war battle against terrorism - in short, the new Berlin.
When the Berlin Wall fell, many predicted market expansion into former Eastern bloc states, but few would have predicted the nexus of events converging on Afghanistan. The arms race between India and Pakistan resulting in nuclear testing, energy rich Central Asian states proclaiming independence. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda network launching terrorist operations in Afghanistan. Iran's drive for nuclear enrichment, India and China's growing influence in Asia. And the re-emergence of a market-oriented Russian Federation. Landlocked Afghanistan, flanked by resource-rich and nuclear-armed neighbors transitioned as the center of gravity.
The anarchy in Afghanistan beginning in the post-Cold War created unmitigated desperation, and soon Afghanistan emerged as the world largest exporter of opium and refugees. In the vacuum of the chaotic fighting between mujahideen warlords, the Taliban rose to power. Sure enough, the Taliban brought security but with no semblance of civilization - no basic rights, no civic institutions, no functioning economy, no freedom of religion, and no recovery from war.
Plain and simple: No front is more important than Afghanistan where the stakes of descent into chaos poses a severe threat to the region and U.S. strategic interests. An Afghanistan or nuclear-armed Pakistan overrun by extremists endangers the entire world. The potential loss in human life and treasures from a nuclear strike is unquantifiable. I'm no economist by any means but I can assure you that nuclear fallout will be more than the $243 billion price tag on Afghanistan since 2001 and more than the $2 trillion cost of the September 11 attacks.
But misguided pundits have been sold on the tactical idea of Afghanistan as not worth the fight. Dismissing the necessary war as a 35-year civil war, or blindly making the Vietnam analogy ignores the facts. The Afghanistan War is the central front in a cross-border and global conflict. It is by no means a local war. How can the foreign intervention and militarization of Afghanistan during the Cold War, the rise of Islamic extremism that rose out of the ashes of the Afghan-Soviet War, and the 9/11 terrorist planning on Afghan soil that targeted the symbols of world commerce and U.S. national security murdering thousands en masse, only make it an Afghan conundrum?
Afghanistan has more in common with Cold War Berlin than it does with Vietnam. The Vietnam comparison of the Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda neglects the fundamental difference that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese never posed any direct threat to the U.S. homeland. The U.S. was able to strike a peace accord with the Vietnamese in Paris, but is it possible to negotiate with leaders Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders whom we've labeled terrorists and targeted for the last eight years? Maybe, if we could only find them.
In the last decade, the Taliban's brand of Islamic doctrine has evolved to a transnational jihadi movement, bent on chasing out the international community out of the region and establishing a pan-Islamic state. That would certainly give Al Qaeda an unfettered safe haven. Allowing the Taliban to return to power would be an enormous victory for Al Qaeda's propaganda and Islamists around the world.
Battling terrorism with aerial bombings into the Afghan plains or in neighboring Pakistan is not going to address the issues that breed extremism and recruit the next generation of extremists. In western Europe, communism was "contained" with a Marshall Plan that rebuilt the continent. Addressing human rights issues and building the civil capacity of the region with a viable development plan will quell the insurgency. Sustainable peace is possible but it will take time for a new generation to transform the breeding ground of terror into a beacon of freedom.
In August 2008, while running for president, Barack Obama warned a Berlin crowd of 250,000 of the dangerous currents in Afghanistan. "For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now," Obama said. Americans, with British and French allies, created a miracle in fortress Berlin and rescued a devastated Europe after World War II. Today with NATO's first mission outside of Europe, a UN mandate, a majority of Afghans' support, and nearly all the world powers supporting the U.S. led mission in Afghanistan, we have an opportunity to remake the world as the post-World War II generation did so a half century ago.
Why Afghanistan is the new post-Cold War Berlin
From the OhMyGov! website
By Nemat Sadat Oct 30 2009, 11:04 AM
Twenty years ago today, the fall of the Berlin Wall, brought German re-unification, revolutionary marches throughout Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union's disintegration. While the war of ideas that shattered the Iron Curtain was waged in Europe, Afghans fought the bloody battle against communism and demoralized the Brezhnev doctrine.
The Afghan vs. Soviet proxy war paralyzed Afghanistan with a million dead, millions of displaced refugees, and countless millions disabled. As the Red Army withdrew forces, the U.S. in turn shifted its attention away from Afghanistan. Who would have imagined that sole remaining superpower would return to Afghanistan and find itself bogged down in a long military conflict? Or that this landlocked nation would become the new schwer punkt, the new focal or resistant point of the post-Cold war battle against terrorism - in short, the new Berlin.
When the Berlin Wall fell, many predicted market expansion into former Eastern bloc states, but few would have predicted the nexus of events converging on Afghanistan. The arms race between India and Pakistan resulting in nuclear testing, energy rich Central Asian states proclaiming independence. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda network launching terrorist operations in Afghanistan. Iran's drive for nuclear enrichment, India and China's growing influence in Asia. And the re-emergence of a market-oriented Russian Federation. Landlocked Afghanistan, flanked by resource-rich and nuclear-armed neighbors transitioned as the center of gravity.
The anarchy in Afghanistan beginning in the post-Cold War created unmitigated desperation, and soon Afghanistan emerged as the world largest exporter of opium and refugees. In the vacuum of the chaotic fighting between mujahideen warlords, the Taliban rose to power. Sure enough, the Taliban brought security but with no semblance of civilization - no basic rights, no civic institutions, no functioning economy, no freedom of religion, and no recovery from war.
Plain and simple: No front is more important than Afghanistan where the stakes of descent into chaos poses a severe threat to the region and U.S. strategic interests. An Afghanistan or nuclear-armed Pakistan overrun by extremists endangers the entire world. The potential loss in human life and treasures from a nuclear strike is unquantifiable. I'm no economist by any means but I can assure you that nuclear fallout will be more than the $243 billion price tag on Afghanistan since 2001 and more than the $2 trillion cost of the September 11 attacks.
But misguided pundits have been sold on the tactical idea of Afghanistan as not worth the fight. Dismissing the necessary war as a 35-year civil war, or blindly making the Vietnam analogy ignores the facts. The Afghanistan War is the central front in a cross-border and global conflict. It is by no means a local war. How can the foreign intervention and militarization of Afghanistan during the Cold War, the rise of Islamic extremism that rose out of the ashes of the Afghan-Soviet War, and the 9/11 terrorist planning on Afghan soil that targeted the symbols of world commerce and U.S. national security murdering thousands en masse, only make it an Afghan conundrum?
Afghanistan has more in common with Cold War Berlin than it does with Vietnam. The Vietnam comparison of the Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda neglects the fundamental difference that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese never posed any direct threat to the U.S. homeland. The U.S. was able to strike a peace accord with the Vietnamese in Paris, but is it possible to negotiate with leaders Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders whom we've labeled terrorists and targeted for the last eight years? Maybe, if we could only find them.
In the last decade, the Taliban's brand of Islamic doctrine has evolved to a transnational jihadi movement, bent on chasing out the international community out of the region and establishing a pan-Islamic state. That would certainly give Al Qaeda an unfettered safe haven. Allowing the Taliban to return to power would be an enormous victory for Al Qaeda's propaganda and Islamists around the world.
Battling terrorism with aerial bombings into the Afghan plains or in neighboring Pakistan is not going to address the issues that breed extremism and recruit the next generation of extremists. In western Europe, communism was "contained" with a Marshall Plan that rebuilt the continent. Addressing human rights issues and building the civil capacity of the region with a viable development plan will quell the insurgency. Sustainable peace is possible but it will take time for a new generation to transform the breeding ground of terror into a beacon of freedom.
In August 2008, while running for president, Barack Obama warned a Berlin crowd of 250,000 of the dangerous currents in Afghanistan. "For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now," Obama said. Americans, with British and French allies, created a miracle in fortress Berlin and rescued a devastated Europe after World War II. Today with NATO's first mission outside of Europe, a UN mandate, a majority of Afghans' support, and nearly all the world powers supporting the U.S. led mission in Afghanistan, we have an opportunity to remake the world as the post-World War II generation did so a half century ago.
For the Taliban/Al Qaeda smaller training camps
One of the features of the Al Qaeda / Taliban movement in Pakistan is its ability to produce recruits, most strikingly recruits for suicide bombing. Now we hear that the units of training are getting ever smaller, and thus less easily discovered and targeted.
Lolita Baldor of AP reports on the new trend [11/9/09; click on the title for a link; highlights follow below].
> Training camps are growing smaller and more mobile, inside small compounds.
> The trainers are from al-Qaida who take their instruction on the road.
> Altogether the trainers number between 100 and 200 "hard-core al-Qaida leaders and operatives" who filter in and out of these small bases near the border.
> They are even active in Punjab province, where some militant groups have stronger ties to the Pakistani government.
> Their agendas are not primarily to train insurgents but to train "terrorists for deployment to the west."
> Some madrassas are part of the insurgent network in the sense that they will pass on information to prospective participants: "People within those nonviolent organizations, he said, will say, "if you want to be violent, you have to leave us, but here's an address and a letter of introduction" for a recruiter from one of the militant groups."
> Perhaps as many as 100 to 150 westerners have gone to the Pakistan border region for terror training in the last year.
Lolita Baldor of AP reports on the new trend [11/9/09; click on the title for a link; highlights follow below].
> Training camps are growing smaller and more mobile, inside small compounds.
> The trainers are from al-Qaida who take their instruction on the road.
> Altogether the trainers number between 100 and 200 "hard-core al-Qaida leaders and operatives" who filter in and out of these small bases near the border.
> They are even active in Punjab province, where some militant groups have stronger ties to the Pakistani government.
> Their agendas are not primarily to train insurgents but to train "terrorists for deployment to the west."
> Some madrassas are part of the insurgent network in the sense that they will pass on information to prospective participants: "People within those nonviolent organizations, he said, will say, "if you want to be violent, you have to leave us, but here's an address and a letter of introduction" for a recruiter from one of the militant groups."
> Perhaps as many as 100 to 150 westerners have gone to the Pakistan border region for terror training in the last year.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
A view of Pakistan by a Muslim from India: Giving thanks
A medieval state
Zafar Agha
October 16, 2009
Thank God, I am not a citizen of the Islamic state of Pakistan. Imagine if my parents had been enamoured of Jaswant Singh's newfound hero Mohammad Ali Jinnah and migrated to the Islamic State of Pakistan.
What a tragedy could have befallen my family and me! I could have either myself turned into a bigot or my kids could have taken up guns in the pursuit of a puritanical Islamic state like Saudi Arabia. I am extremely indebted to my parents for sticking to their roots in Allahabad and happily accepting the citizenship of 'Hindu India' instead of saltanat-e-khudadad-e-Pakistan (godly kingdom of Pakistan. Ironically, there is nothing godly or saintly about Pakistan today. Pakistan could never become a modern republican state. So the state eventually withered away and got out of everyone's control. There was a time not too long ago when the world believed that it was the Pakistan army whose writ ran the country. How naive was this understanding.
Once considered the most powerful power centre, the Pakistan army headquarters in Rawalpindi is now under attack from Pakistani jihadis. The world also thought that the Punjabi elite had a tight grip over Pakistan establishment. Now the Punjabis themselves are not secure in their beloved town of Lahore where terrorists' strike at will.
Who then controls Pakistan? Is it the democratic establishment led by Asif Zardari? No, not at all! There is no consensus between Zardari and Mian Nawaz Sharif, the two leading rival democratic parties, even in these moments of grave internal crisis. Are the executive and judiciary now acting as the watchdog? Well, both sympathise with the likes of Hafiz Saeed and nuclear technology smuggler AQ Khan more than the state of Pakistan. Saeed and Khan are the two ideological masters of Pakistani jihadi philosophy.
All the Pakistani terror groups revere them. So it is neither army, nor the Punjabi elite that controls Pakistan any longer. Instead it is men like Saeed and Khan who do, ideologically at least.
You cannot arrest Saeed in Pakistan because he is the ideological pope of jihad. You cannot prosecute him either. The police would make such a weak case that it won't stand in a court of law for a minute. The judiciary would let him walk out because of his 'heroic services' in 'destabilising India'. And even America cannot harm Khan.
After all, he delivered a nuclear bomb to the insecure Pakistanis, stealing and smuggling nuclear technology from all over the world. The world is convinced that he smuggled dreaded technology to North Korea and Iran. He is the last hope of the jihadis who believe that Khan would one day deliver them a nuclear device to destroy their hated enemy, America.
Pakistan is today controlled by the syndicate of Taliban, al Qaeda and Punjabi terror outfits like Jaish e Mohammad. But why is it that Pakistan has failed in modern sense of the word state? A modern state in the post renaissance and post industrial revolution world is essentially run by the will of the people through democracy.
Pakistan has nothing to do both with renaissance and industrial revolution. Its ideological frontier very soon after its inception was a medieval Islamic state whose only function was to destroy India.
So the people were always kept at the margin of state affairs. Pakistan elite facilitated the military takeover of the establishment to fight India and 'liberate Muslim Kashmir from Hindu hands'.
When the entire Pakistani establishment failed to harm an emerging modern Indian state and got truncated in 1971, it vengefully came up with the idea of jihad against India 'to bleed India in Kashmir'.
A jihad genie like Jaish e Mohammed was created with the ideological training from men like Saeed and Talibani madrasas spread across the tribal belt of Pakistan to harm India. The genie is now out of the bottle consuming the state that created it.
A medieval Pakistani state, run by an army and ideologically driven by myopic people like Saeed and terror outfits like Jaish, has had to finally come to this pass where no one now understands who runs Pakistan.
Pakistan shunned renaissance wisdom and post-industrial democratic institutions. Such a medieval state has had to run out of steam sooner or later. So it is now imploding and being consumed by the medieval and tribal hatred it nurtured against India.
Thank you mom and pop, for not migrating to Islamic state of Pakistan because I would have also exploded if not imploded by the jihadi forces that are consuming Pakistan now.
The writer is a commentator on political affairs
Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_a-medieval-state_1299884
URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamIslamicWorldNews_1.aspx?ArticleID=2012
Zafar Agha
October 16, 2009
Thank God, I am not a citizen of the Islamic state of Pakistan. Imagine if my parents had been enamoured of Jaswant Singh's newfound hero Mohammad Ali Jinnah and migrated to the Islamic State of Pakistan.
What a tragedy could have befallen my family and me! I could have either myself turned into a bigot or my kids could have taken up guns in the pursuit of a puritanical Islamic state like Saudi Arabia. I am extremely indebted to my parents for sticking to their roots in Allahabad and happily accepting the citizenship of 'Hindu India' instead of saltanat-e-khudadad-e-Pakistan (godly kingdom of Pakistan. Ironically, there is nothing godly or saintly about Pakistan today. Pakistan could never become a modern republican state. So the state eventually withered away and got out of everyone's control. There was a time not too long ago when the world believed that it was the Pakistan army whose writ ran the country. How naive was this understanding.
Once considered the most powerful power centre, the Pakistan army headquarters in Rawalpindi is now under attack from Pakistani jihadis. The world also thought that the Punjabi elite had a tight grip over Pakistan establishment. Now the Punjabis themselves are not secure in their beloved town of Lahore where terrorists' strike at will.
Who then controls Pakistan? Is it the democratic establishment led by Asif Zardari? No, not at all! There is no consensus between Zardari and Mian Nawaz Sharif, the two leading rival democratic parties, even in these moments of grave internal crisis. Are the executive and judiciary now acting as the watchdog? Well, both sympathise with the likes of Hafiz Saeed and nuclear technology smuggler AQ Khan more than the state of Pakistan. Saeed and Khan are the two ideological masters of Pakistani jihadi philosophy.
All the Pakistani terror groups revere them. So it is neither army, nor the Punjabi elite that controls Pakistan any longer. Instead it is men like Saeed and Khan who do, ideologically at least.
You cannot arrest Saeed in Pakistan because he is the ideological pope of jihad. You cannot prosecute him either. The police would make such a weak case that it won't stand in a court of law for a minute. The judiciary would let him walk out because of his 'heroic services' in 'destabilising India'. And even America cannot harm Khan.
After all, he delivered a nuclear bomb to the insecure Pakistanis, stealing and smuggling nuclear technology from all over the world. The world is convinced that he smuggled dreaded technology to North Korea and Iran. He is the last hope of the jihadis who believe that Khan would one day deliver them a nuclear device to destroy their hated enemy, America.
Pakistan is today controlled by the syndicate of Taliban, al Qaeda and Punjabi terror outfits like Jaish e Mohammad. But why is it that Pakistan has failed in modern sense of the word state? A modern state in the post renaissance and post industrial revolution world is essentially run by the will of the people through democracy.
Pakistan has nothing to do both with renaissance and industrial revolution. Its ideological frontier very soon after its inception was a medieval Islamic state whose only function was to destroy India.
So the people were always kept at the margin of state affairs. Pakistan elite facilitated the military takeover of the establishment to fight India and 'liberate Muslim Kashmir from Hindu hands'.
When the entire Pakistani establishment failed to harm an emerging modern Indian state and got truncated in 1971, it vengefully came up with the idea of jihad against India 'to bleed India in Kashmir'.
A jihad genie like Jaish e Mohammed was created with the ideological training from men like Saeed and Talibani madrasas spread across the tribal belt of Pakistan to harm India. The genie is now out of the bottle consuming the state that created it.
A medieval Pakistani state, run by an army and ideologically driven by myopic people like Saeed and terror outfits like Jaish, has had to finally come to this pass where no one now understands who runs Pakistan.
Pakistan shunned renaissance wisdom and post-industrial democratic institutions. Such a medieval state has had to run out of steam sooner or later. So it is now imploding and being consumed by the medieval and tribal hatred it nurtured against India.
Thank you mom and pop, for not migrating to Islamic state of Pakistan because I would have also exploded if not imploded by the jihadi forces that are consuming Pakistan now.
The writer is a commentator on political affairs
Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_a-medieval-state_1299884
URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamIslamicWorldNews_1.aspx?ArticleID=2012
President of World Bank has a scheme for Afghanistan
Here is the World Bank’s proposal for how to help the situation in Afghanistan.
What we can achieve in Afghanistan
Washington Post By Robert B. Zoellick Friday, October 30, 2009
As governments reconsider strategies in Afghanistan, stories abound about why achieving progress in this "graveyard of empires" is so challenging: The country is racked by violence and opium production; confidence in the government is weak; its neighbors meddle; and fiercely independent tribes distrust any intruder -- whether from Britain, the Soviet Union, NATO or Kabul.
The World Bank Group's experience in Afghanistan reflects all these problems. This is one of the most difficult environments in which we work. Yet we have seen real, measurable progress: in the health sector, education, community development, microfinance and telecommunications. Since 2002, the World Bank has committed nearly $2 billion to these and other projects and manages, with partners, a $3.2 billion trust fund for 30 donor countries.
Here are some of the lessons we have learned:
First, we need to "secure development" -- that is, create a strong link between security and development. Each reinforces the other, especially when we focus on communities and on resolving local-level conflict. A dysfunctional police force, justice and prison system feeds a lawlessness that breeds disillusionment with the government and sympathy for its opponents.
Second, corruption can be fought better through design than through calls for virtue or even a slew of investigations. Afghanistan's drug trade risks the criminalization of the state. But there are steps one can take to make corruption harder and less likely. Afghanistan's reform-minded finance ministers have taken practical steps to simplify government processes and add transparency to reduce opportunities for corruption, already raising government revenue 75 percent in the first part of this year. Recently the government slashed the number of steps to register vehicles from some 55 to just a few, reducing opportunities for bribes and increasing revenue.
Third, locally led projects are the most effective. The National Solidarity Program, which the World Bank helped launch in 2003, empowers more than 22,000 elected, village-level councils to decide on their development priorities -- from building a school to irrigation to electrification. So far, the program has reached more than 19 million Afghans in 34 provinces, with grants averaging $33,000. Development owned by the community can survive amid conflict: When an NSP-funded school was attacked in August 2006, the villagers defended it. The community councils also help build cooperation among villages and with the government.
Fourth, while local progress matters, government responsibility and capacity must be built at the national level. Currently, two-thirds of aid to Afghanistan flows outside the government because donors lack confidence in its competence and transparency. But this undermines those trying to build legitimate Afghan institutions. It can also grossly distort resource allocation: Some relatively secure areas are starved of money when they could be producing results. We can work with Afghans to strengthen public financial management. That said, in the absence of strong institutions, and facing considerable corruption, good results have been dependent on one-by-one partnerships with honest, reformist ministers. The new cabinet must include more such individuals.
Fifth, Afghans need to see measurable improvements to their lives, or they will not feel they owe anything to Kabul or local governments. There are success stories: More than 12,000 miles of all-weather rural roads have been built, connecting communities to markets; today, 80 percent of Afghans have access to basic health services, compared with only 9 percent in 2003; 6 million children are enrolled in school, nearly 35 percent of whom are girls, compared with about 1 million students and no girls seven years ago; competitive telecommunications networks now serve about 10 million subscribers. But a lot remains to be done.
Stability in Afghanistan also depends on good leadership -- especially in critical areas that have lagged behind, such as agriculture, energy, mining and private-sector development. The challenges of securing development so that it is self-sustaining are formidable. But progress is possible if safety is strengthened, the Afghan government assumes ownership, its partners build development through the choices of the Afghan people, and Afghanistan's neighbors decide they are better off with a successful state than with a perilous buffer zone that could send trouble back across their borders.
The writer is president of the World Bank Group.
What we can achieve in Afghanistan
Washington Post By Robert B. Zoellick Friday, October 30, 2009
As governments reconsider strategies in Afghanistan, stories abound about why achieving progress in this "graveyard of empires" is so challenging: The country is racked by violence and opium production; confidence in the government is weak; its neighbors meddle; and fiercely independent tribes distrust any intruder -- whether from Britain, the Soviet Union, NATO or Kabul.
The World Bank Group's experience in Afghanistan reflects all these problems. This is one of the most difficult environments in which we work. Yet we have seen real, measurable progress: in the health sector, education, community development, microfinance and telecommunications. Since 2002, the World Bank has committed nearly $2 billion to these and other projects and manages, with partners, a $3.2 billion trust fund for 30 donor countries.
Here are some of the lessons we have learned:
First, we need to "secure development" -- that is, create a strong link between security and development. Each reinforces the other, especially when we focus on communities and on resolving local-level conflict. A dysfunctional police force, justice and prison system feeds a lawlessness that breeds disillusionment with the government and sympathy for its opponents.
Second, corruption can be fought better through design than through calls for virtue or even a slew of investigations. Afghanistan's drug trade risks the criminalization of the state. But there are steps one can take to make corruption harder and less likely. Afghanistan's reform-minded finance ministers have taken practical steps to simplify government processes and add transparency to reduce opportunities for corruption, already raising government revenue 75 percent in the first part of this year. Recently the government slashed the number of steps to register vehicles from some 55 to just a few, reducing opportunities for bribes and increasing revenue.
Third, locally led projects are the most effective. The National Solidarity Program, which the World Bank helped launch in 2003, empowers more than 22,000 elected, village-level councils to decide on their development priorities -- from building a school to irrigation to electrification. So far, the program has reached more than 19 million Afghans in 34 provinces, with grants averaging $33,000. Development owned by the community can survive amid conflict: When an NSP-funded school was attacked in August 2006, the villagers defended it. The community councils also help build cooperation among villages and with the government.
Fourth, while local progress matters, government responsibility and capacity must be built at the national level. Currently, two-thirds of aid to Afghanistan flows outside the government because donors lack confidence in its competence and transparency. But this undermines those trying to build legitimate Afghan institutions. It can also grossly distort resource allocation: Some relatively secure areas are starved of money when they could be producing results. We can work with Afghans to strengthen public financial management. That said, in the absence of strong institutions, and facing considerable corruption, good results have been dependent on one-by-one partnerships with honest, reformist ministers. The new cabinet must include more such individuals.
Fifth, Afghans need to see measurable improvements to their lives, or they will not feel they owe anything to Kabul or local governments. There are success stories: More than 12,000 miles of all-weather rural roads have been built, connecting communities to markets; today, 80 percent of Afghans have access to basic health services, compared with only 9 percent in 2003; 6 million children are enrolled in school, nearly 35 percent of whom are girls, compared with about 1 million students and no girls seven years ago; competitive telecommunications networks now serve about 10 million subscribers. But a lot remains to be done.
Stability in Afghanistan also depends on good leadership -- especially in critical areas that have lagged behind, such as agriculture, energy, mining and private-sector development. The challenges of securing development so that it is self-sustaining are formidable. But progress is possible if safety is strengthened, the Afghan government assumes ownership, its partners build development through the choices of the Afghan people, and Afghanistan's neighbors decide they are better off with a successful state than with a perilous buffer zone that could send trouble back across their borders.
The writer is president of the World Bank Group.
The relation between Al Qaeda and the various Taliban groups
A lot of nonsense has recently been written about how distinguishable Al Qaeda is from the Taliban. This article, drawing from some knowledgeable sources, reveals several ways the two are interlinked and emphasizes how mutually dependent they are. RLC
Al-Qaida and the Taliban: Knowing your enemy
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Senior al-Qaida leaders are forging deeper relationships with Pakistani militants and often operating from their camps inside the Pakistan border, fueling Obama administration arguments for a shift in the Afghan war strategy that more narrowly targets the terrorists.
For eight years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has focused mostly on Afghanistan's Taliban as an unabashed ally of al-Qaida.
Now, however, forced to choose between sending more troops in an intensified counterinsurgency campaign against Afghanistan's Taliban or largely maintaining troop levels and using more drone strikes to take out al-Qaida along the border, U.S. officials must first determine which enemy is the greater priority.
That dilemma is complicated by the recent rise of a Pakistani faction of the Taliban that operates in close proximity with al-Qaida - even as al-Qaida has lessened activities with its former Afghan Taliban hosts, according to some administration officials.
U.S. officials face a tough challenge in dissecting the structure and leanings of the militant organizations on both sides of the often indiscernible Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and understanding their murky and evolving ties to al-Qaida.
"You cannot meaningfully distinguish between al-Qaida and the co-linked (militant) networks - either in terms of understanding the landscape or crafting a policy response," said Vahid Brown, a researcher at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
"If you think you can kill al-Qaida leaders, as opposed to doing a broader scale effort against the militant environment, that notion is based on a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of the terrain," said Brown, describing the complexity of the networks along the border and their threat.
With concerns about Pakistani militants growing, an influential faction inside the administration that includes Vice President Joe Biden is pushing for the U.S. to concentrate more on al-Qaida and less on the Afghan Taliban.
But the push for that strategy butts up against the long-perceived union between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban, ingrained in America's consciousness since the Sept. 11 attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan.
The 19 al-Qaida members behind the hijackings that sent planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside plotted their attacks from Taliban-protected safe havens in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996. United in Islamic ideology, they sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida followers. Al-Qaida terrorist training camps flourished openly in the 1990s and the two groups shared weapons, financing and tactics.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration repeatedly linked al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban in rhetoric and policy, pairing them in enemies' lists and economic penalties.
President Barack Obama and his advisers are debating whether U.S. policy should sever that linkage and target al-Qaida, which has appeared to have found new allies inside the Pakistani border.
Over the past 18 months, according to analysts and U.S. counterterrorism officials, al-Qaida leaders have deepened and solidified their relationship with Pakistan's Taliban and with other violent homegrown militant groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Janghvi, that are based in the northeastern Punjab province.
Al-Qaida also has strong ties with the network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj, who direct the fight against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from the Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan.
Brown pointed to the Haqqani network operating in Pakistan's tribal areas as an example of militants linked to al-Qaida who have demonstrated a growth in technical innovation. Its increased use of roadside bombs and different types of suicide attacks, and the employment of other international jihadists are evidence of the al-Qaida influence, he said.
According to U.S. officials and analysts, al-Qaida leaders have provided training and resources to these groups in camps along the border.
The stronger ties are also evident, the analysts said, in suicide bombings and other violent battlefield tactics long known to be associated with al-Qaida that are showing up more frequently in attacks staged by those Pakistan-based groups.
Pakistan's Taliban have unloosed a spree of violence inside the country over the past year, attempting to take over the Swat Valley region before being ousted by Pakistan's army.
In recent weeks, the Pakistani Taliban, aided by other militants, have targeted military and government installations in suicide bombings aimed at forcing the government to back off from its recent push into South Waziristan, the border area where many militants are based. Despite those attacks, the offensive began last week.
At the same time, said Richard Barrett, coordinator of the monitoring team for the U.N.'s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee, said there are hints of fracture between al-Qaida and its longtime Afghan Taliban allies.
Barrett said that Afghan Taliban leaders, including the reclusive, one-eyed Mullah Omar, may have changed their once-approving view of al-Qaida. Barrett said the Afghan Taliban may worry about U.S. repercussions if they "are seen as very closely wedded to al-Qaida" and likely to allow that group tore-establish sanctuaries there.
While the Afghan Taliban share many of al-Qaida's violent goals, including the defeat of the Kabul government, Barrett said, they are more regionally focused and do not hold the same global jihadist views.
Some U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, warn against underestimating the relationship between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban.
While the Taliban and al-Qaida may have differences, senior counterterrorism officials say that al-Qaida still has strong historical ties to Mullah Omar and that is not likely to go away. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is arguing for an additional 10,000 and 80,000 troops to mount a counterinsurgency campaign against the Afghan Taliban to stabilize the country and boost Afghan security forces.
But rising U.S. casualties, escalating violence and declining American support for the war have put political pressure on the White House to rethink that strategy. The counterproposal urged by Biden and others would maintain current troop levels and use special operations forces and targeted unmanned aircraft strikes against al-Qaida and other insurgents.
Recent U.S. government estimates put the number of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan at about 25,000, while analysts and other officials say there are only about 100 al-Qaida members in the country. Totals for al-Qaida in Pakistan are more difficult to pin down, but estimates are in the low hundreds, while Taliban there number also in the thousands.
Biden and others argue that if the aim is to prevent future attacks against the United States, then the goal must be to defeat al-Qaida.
Military analyst Frederick Kagan told Congress this past week that any move to defeat al-Qaida cannot be separated from efforts to defeat its allies and proxies. The Afghan Taliban may not be planning attacks terrorist against the United States now, but he said that, with continued association with al-Qaida, the Taliban eventually may pursue global jihad.
Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University and a longtime government adviser, said al-Qaida continues to work with the Taliban and other insurgents on both sides of the border, providing resources and training to bolster their fight.
He and others argue that to narrowly focus the fight on al-Qaida leaders, particularly those targeted by drone strikes inside the Pakistan border, would be to oversimplify a complex enemy, and ultimately fail.
Al-Qaida and the Taliban: Knowing your enemy
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Senior al-Qaida leaders are forging deeper relationships with Pakistani militants and often operating from their camps inside the Pakistan border, fueling Obama administration arguments for a shift in the Afghan war strategy that more narrowly targets the terrorists.
For eight years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has focused mostly on Afghanistan's Taliban as an unabashed ally of al-Qaida.
Now, however, forced to choose between sending more troops in an intensified counterinsurgency campaign against Afghanistan's Taliban or largely maintaining troop levels and using more drone strikes to take out al-Qaida along the border, U.S. officials must first determine which enemy is the greater priority.
That dilemma is complicated by the recent rise of a Pakistani faction of the Taliban that operates in close proximity with al-Qaida - even as al-Qaida has lessened activities with its former Afghan Taliban hosts, according to some administration officials.
U.S. officials face a tough challenge in dissecting the structure and leanings of the militant organizations on both sides of the often indiscernible Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and understanding their murky and evolving ties to al-Qaida.
"You cannot meaningfully distinguish between al-Qaida and the co-linked (militant) networks - either in terms of understanding the landscape or crafting a policy response," said Vahid Brown, a researcher at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
"If you think you can kill al-Qaida leaders, as opposed to doing a broader scale effort against the militant environment, that notion is based on a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of the terrain," said Brown, describing the complexity of the networks along the border and their threat.
With concerns about Pakistani militants growing, an influential faction inside the administration that includes Vice President Joe Biden is pushing for the U.S. to concentrate more on al-Qaida and less on the Afghan Taliban.
But the push for that strategy butts up against the long-perceived union between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban, ingrained in America's consciousness since the Sept. 11 attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan.
The 19 al-Qaida members behind the hijackings that sent planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside plotted their attacks from Taliban-protected safe havens in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996. United in Islamic ideology, they sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida followers. Al-Qaida terrorist training camps flourished openly in the 1990s and the two groups shared weapons, financing and tactics.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration repeatedly linked al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban in rhetoric and policy, pairing them in enemies' lists and economic penalties.
President Barack Obama and his advisers are debating whether U.S. policy should sever that linkage and target al-Qaida, which has appeared to have found new allies inside the Pakistani border.
Over the past 18 months, according to analysts and U.S. counterterrorism officials, al-Qaida leaders have deepened and solidified their relationship with Pakistan's Taliban and with other violent homegrown militant groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Janghvi, that are based in the northeastern Punjab province.
Al-Qaida also has strong ties with the network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj, who direct the fight against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from the Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan.
Brown pointed to the Haqqani network operating in Pakistan's tribal areas as an example of militants linked to al-Qaida who have demonstrated a growth in technical innovation. Its increased use of roadside bombs and different types of suicide attacks, and the employment of other international jihadists are evidence of the al-Qaida influence, he said.
According to U.S. officials and analysts, al-Qaida leaders have provided training and resources to these groups in camps along the border.
The stronger ties are also evident, the analysts said, in suicide bombings and other violent battlefield tactics long known to be associated with al-Qaida that are showing up more frequently in attacks staged by those Pakistan-based groups.
Pakistan's Taliban have unloosed a spree of violence inside the country over the past year, attempting to take over the Swat Valley region before being ousted by Pakistan's army.
In recent weeks, the Pakistani Taliban, aided by other militants, have targeted military and government installations in suicide bombings aimed at forcing the government to back off from its recent push into South Waziristan, the border area where many militants are based. Despite those attacks, the offensive began last week.
At the same time, said Richard Barrett, coordinator of the monitoring team for the U.N.'s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee, said there are hints of fracture between al-Qaida and its longtime Afghan Taliban allies.
Barrett said that Afghan Taliban leaders, including the reclusive, one-eyed Mullah Omar, may have changed their once-approving view of al-Qaida. Barrett said the Afghan Taliban may worry about U.S. repercussions if they "are seen as very closely wedded to al-Qaida" and likely to allow that group tore-establish sanctuaries there.
While the Afghan Taliban share many of al-Qaida's violent goals, including the defeat of the Kabul government, Barrett said, they are more regionally focused and do not hold the same global jihadist views.
Some U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, warn against underestimating the relationship between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban.
While the Taliban and al-Qaida may have differences, senior counterterrorism officials say that al-Qaida still has strong historical ties to Mullah Omar and that is not likely to go away. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is arguing for an additional 10,000 and 80,000 troops to mount a counterinsurgency campaign against the Afghan Taliban to stabilize the country and boost Afghan security forces.
But rising U.S. casualties, escalating violence and declining American support for the war have put political pressure on the White House to rethink that strategy. The counterproposal urged by Biden and others would maintain current troop levels and use special operations forces and targeted unmanned aircraft strikes against al-Qaida and other insurgents.
Recent U.S. government estimates put the number of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan at about 25,000, while analysts and other officials say there are only about 100 al-Qaida members in the country. Totals for al-Qaida in Pakistan are more difficult to pin down, but estimates are in the low hundreds, while Taliban there number also in the thousands.
Biden and others argue that if the aim is to prevent future attacks against the United States, then the goal must be to defeat al-Qaida.
Military analyst Frederick Kagan told Congress this past week that any move to defeat al-Qaida cannot be separated from efforts to defeat its allies and proxies. The Afghan Taliban may not be planning attacks terrorist against the United States now, but he said that, with continued association with al-Qaida, the Taliban eventually may pursue global jihad.
Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University and a longtime government adviser, said al-Qaida continues to work with the Taliban and other insurgents on both sides of the border, providing resources and training to bolster their fight.
He and others argue that to narrowly focus the fight on al-Qaida leaders, particularly those targeted by drone strikes inside the Pakistan border, would be to oversimplify a complex enemy, and ultimately fail.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The case against continued involvement in Afghanistan
Yesterday I was accosted by a man who is a mechanic by profession over the situation in Afghanistan. He was incensed that we were spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan [“Billions! Billions!,” he kept saying], and from his point of view the American project there was a total waste. I wish I could have mustered a better defense of my own belief that our military can make a serious contribution to the country, one that over the long run could protect our interests. But I understand the frustration that the American people feel over the mess in Afghanistan / Pakistan, two countries far away that seem to be endemically conflicted and disorganized, even in some ways under powerful criminal influences.
The most unacceptable part of the situation is that Americans are being asked to die for an Afghanistan government that seems unable to control pervasive graft and incompetence. If the situation were better there, it would easier for me to justify our investment [Billions!] in the region, although still hard to justify the loss of American life.
I have come to believe that if the Pakistan military, who have a decisive [although relatively invisible] grip on the government, doesn’t make up its mind to stamp out all Islamic extremists, not just the ones bent on bringing down the Pakistan government, then all the American effort in Afghanistan will be wasted.
So – again – the fundamental issue, the real problem, resides in Pakistan, and in fact with those who are most powerful in Pakistan. If they make the critical commitment -- a full commitment -- then the Taliban/ Al Qaeda coalition will be toast.
Otherwise, I have to admit that the mechanic was probably right.
The most unacceptable part of the situation is that Americans are being asked to die for an Afghanistan government that seems unable to control pervasive graft and incompetence. If the situation were better there, it would easier for me to justify our investment [Billions!] in the region, although still hard to justify the loss of American life.
I have come to believe that if the Pakistan military, who have a decisive [although relatively invisible] grip on the government, doesn’t make up its mind to stamp out all Islamic extremists, not just the ones bent on bringing down the Pakistan government, then all the American effort in Afghanistan will be wasted.
So – again – the fundamental issue, the real problem, resides in Pakistan, and in fact with those who are most powerful in Pakistan. If they make the critical commitment -- a full commitment -- then the Taliban/ Al Qaeda coalition will be toast.
Otherwise, I have to admit that the mechanic was probably right.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Dr Lewis Wall's voluntary services to the health needs of Africans versus the incomes of American health insurance executives
Compare the voluntary service of Dr. Lewis Wall to the health needs of folks in Africa with the bloated benefits of the health insurance executives who claim to be serving the health needs of America.
Most of us tend to regard health professionals as providing a kind of ministry, a public service, to individuals and communities in their times of need. For that we feel they deserve remuneration fitting to their service, so we don’t begrudge the incomes of physicians, nurses, technicians, and other health professionals. But when the remuneration of executives in the health insurance industry ascends beyond amounts that seem fitting we begin to distrust them. They appear to be self serving, exploiting the sufferings of Americans for their own benefit. Likewise for the investment community: when their essential interest is in profits to be made from the illnesses of Americans we wonder if there isn’t something wrong with the way the health industry is constituted in this country.
I am thankful that my colleague Dr. Lewis Wall has been recognized by Nicholas D. Kristof (his column in today’s New York Times) for the voluntary service he has provided to African women suffering from obstetric fistulas. Through surgery he has enabled hundreds (thousands?) of women to have a normal life who had previously borne scorn and humiliation for an illness created (usually) by early age child-birth. [Click on the title for a link to Kristof's column.]
Compare Wall’s voluntary service with the salaries of top health insurance executives: salaries that run in the millions of dollars. Is it fair for executives to accept a salary of several million dollars a year for managing the health services to sick folks in this country?
This is not a comparison that Dr. Wall would likely ever make himself, but I keep wondering: Isn't there something wrong with an industry spending billions of dollars lobbying congress in its own interest when there continue to be major problems in the health care system that the insurance industry controls?
Most of us tend to regard health professionals as providing a kind of ministry, a public service, to individuals and communities in their times of need. For that we feel they deserve remuneration fitting to their service, so we don’t begrudge the incomes of physicians, nurses, technicians, and other health professionals. But when the remuneration of executives in the health insurance industry ascends beyond amounts that seem fitting we begin to distrust them. They appear to be self serving, exploiting the sufferings of Americans for their own benefit. Likewise for the investment community: when their essential interest is in profits to be made from the illnesses of Americans we wonder if there isn’t something wrong with the way the health industry is constituted in this country.
I am thankful that my colleague Dr. Lewis Wall has been recognized by Nicholas D. Kristof (his column in today’s New York Times) for the voluntary service he has provided to African women suffering from obstetric fistulas. Through surgery he has enabled hundreds (thousands?) of women to have a normal life who had previously borne scorn and humiliation for an illness created (usually) by early age child-birth. [Click on the title for a link to Kristof's column.]
Compare Wall’s voluntary service with the salaries of top health insurance executives: salaries that run in the millions of dollars. Is it fair for executives to accept a salary of several million dollars a year for managing the health services to sick folks in this country?
This is not a comparison that Dr. Wall would likely ever make himself, but I keep wondering: Isn't there something wrong with an industry spending billions of dollars lobbying congress in its own interest when there continue to be major problems in the health care system that the insurance industry controls?
“No one invests in a loser in Afghanistan”
What a great statement of how things work in Afghanistan!
This was stated by Muhammad Ismail Yoon, with respect to Abdullah Abdullah’s withdrawal. Abdullah withdrew because he knew he would lose. What Yoon says is true, and worth pondering in the case of the American project in Afghanistan.
The longer our President dithers over what to do, the more confident those against him will become.
This was stated by Muhammad Ismail Yoon, with respect to Abdullah Abdullah’s withdrawal. Abdullah withdrew because he knew he would lose. What Yoon says is true, and worth pondering in the case of the American project in Afghanistan.
The longer our President dithers over what to do, the more confident those against him will become.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Afghanistan resources: How great are they?
Much is unknown about the natural resources of Afghanistan. Here is an article that refers to some of the resources that might exist in that country. Certainly the neighboring countries to the north and west are very rich. It could be. RLC
Afghan minister seeks justice through exploitation
By Lynne O'Donnell October 19, 2009
(AFP) - KABUL - "My family name means justice and that is what I am determined to get for my country," says Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, Afghanistan's minister of mines.
In his large, plush office in a Soviet-style compound in downtown Kabul, Adel -- whose surname means "just man" in Arabic, Dari and Pashtu -- outlined how he plans to bring economic justice to one of the world's poorest countries.
"People in Afghanistan are like people lying on a bed of gold but going hungry," he told AFP.
"Afghanistan is not known for its natural resources. It is known across the world and in history as a nation of war and violence and poverty.
"But we have a lot: copper, iron ore, gold, natural gas, oil, precious and semi-precious stones, chromite, talc, salt," he said, counting on his fingers.
"Except diamonds," he grinned. "We haven't found diamonds yet, but we might."
Adel has seen other poor countries -- notably in Africa and South America -- allow foreign governments and companies to extract and export their mineral wealth, with the profits rarely remaining at home.
"Afghanistan will never be exploited in this way. The relationship between the company that invests in Afghanistan's mineral resources and the people has to be just," said Adel, who trained as a mining engineer in the former Soviet Union.
"Not more than five percent of Afghanistan's natural resources is known, 95 percent we still don't know. But I hope that in the very near future we can start exploration work.
"We are trying to develop the economy using our natural and mineral resources."
Adel, who spent time in jail and as a refugee in Pakistan before returning to Kabul and joining the ministry after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, has already signed contracts developing a massive copper mine in Logar province, and a medium-sized coal mine in Bamiyan province.
But he said companies interested in Afghanistan's natural resources must make long-term and costly commitments to developing not just the underground resource, but also everything above it.
Exploitation plans must be environmentally sound and based on solid social impact studies, with development including "job creation, schools, hospitals, electricity, water," he said.
In 2007, China's state-owned metals producing giant Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) signed a three-billion-dollar contract to develop the Aynak copper mine -- one of the world's biggest -- over the next 30 years.
First discovered in 1974, the site, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Kabul in Logar, is estimated to contain 11.3 million tonnes of copper.
The red metal used in plumbing, heating, electrical and telecommunications wiring, is essential to China's breakneck economic development.
The region is becoming increasingly tense and insecure, and is being guarded by US soldiers.
While China's involvement in the mine is another step in its often-controversial forays into resource exploitation abroad, the terms of the contract are very much in Afghanistan's favour.
"The Aynak Copper Mines alone can bring us 500 million dollars a year just in revenues to the government," Adel said.
He said he insisted on conditions binding the Chinese in Aynak to de-mine the area and, effectively, build a city from scratch that will be centred on the mine.
The contract obliges the Chinese partner to develop a smelter, refinery and factory as well as infrastructure such as roads, houses, hospitals and schools -- similar to the cities centred on single industries that were a hallmark of China's centralised economy in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Chinese company will also build a rail link across the country, from the border with Pakistan in the southeast to the border with Uzbekistan in the north.
Thousands of jobs will be created at the Aynak mine, Adel said, adding that the company is also obliged to train Afghan engineers and geologists so that "in 10-15 years Afghans are able to work independently."
On top of these agreements, he said, MCC threw in a bonus of 808 million dollars, to be paid in three installments during the lease.
"How could we refuse that?" Adel asked. "No one else offered us anything like that."
He intends to apply the same principles to the huge Hajigak iron ore mine in Bamiyan province, north of Kabul, which is currently under tender, with one Chinese and half a dozen Indian firms vying for the contract.
The contract for exploitation of almost two billion tonnes of high-grade ore includes processing, smelting, steel production, 200 megawatts of electricity and a coking plant.
In addition, the winning firm -- expected to be announced by next July -- will help develop downstream industries such as machinery plants, he added.
Afghan minister seeks justice through exploitation
By Lynne O'Donnell October 19, 2009
(AFP) - KABUL - "My family name means justice and that is what I am determined to get for my country," says Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, Afghanistan's minister of mines.
In his large, plush office in a Soviet-style compound in downtown Kabul, Adel -- whose surname means "just man" in Arabic, Dari and Pashtu -- outlined how he plans to bring economic justice to one of the world's poorest countries.
"People in Afghanistan are like people lying on a bed of gold but going hungry," he told AFP.
"Afghanistan is not known for its natural resources. It is known across the world and in history as a nation of war and violence and poverty.
"But we have a lot: copper, iron ore, gold, natural gas, oil, precious and semi-precious stones, chromite, talc, salt," he said, counting on his fingers.
"Except diamonds," he grinned. "We haven't found diamonds yet, but we might."
Adel has seen other poor countries -- notably in Africa and South America -- allow foreign governments and companies to extract and export their mineral wealth, with the profits rarely remaining at home.
"Afghanistan will never be exploited in this way. The relationship between the company that invests in Afghanistan's mineral resources and the people has to be just," said Adel, who trained as a mining engineer in the former Soviet Union.
"Not more than five percent of Afghanistan's natural resources is known, 95 percent we still don't know. But I hope that in the very near future we can start exploration work.
"We are trying to develop the economy using our natural and mineral resources."
Adel, who spent time in jail and as a refugee in Pakistan before returning to Kabul and joining the ministry after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, has already signed contracts developing a massive copper mine in Logar province, and a medium-sized coal mine in Bamiyan province.
But he said companies interested in Afghanistan's natural resources must make long-term and costly commitments to developing not just the underground resource, but also everything above it.
Exploitation plans must be environmentally sound and based on solid social impact studies, with development including "job creation, schools, hospitals, electricity, water," he said.
In 2007, China's state-owned metals producing giant Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) signed a three-billion-dollar contract to develop the Aynak copper mine -- one of the world's biggest -- over the next 30 years.
First discovered in 1974, the site, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Kabul in Logar, is estimated to contain 11.3 million tonnes of copper.
The red metal used in plumbing, heating, electrical and telecommunications wiring, is essential to China's breakneck economic development.
The region is becoming increasingly tense and insecure, and is being guarded by US soldiers.
While China's involvement in the mine is another step in its often-controversial forays into resource exploitation abroad, the terms of the contract are very much in Afghanistan's favour.
"The Aynak Copper Mines alone can bring us 500 million dollars a year just in revenues to the government," Adel said.
He said he insisted on conditions binding the Chinese in Aynak to de-mine the area and, effectively, build a city from scratch that will be centred on the mine.
The contract obliges the Chinese partner to develop a smelter, refinery and factory as well as infrastructure such as roads, houses, hospitals and schools -- similar to the cities centred on single industries that were a hallmark of China's centralised economy in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Chinese company will also build a rail link across the country, from the border with Pakistan in the southeast to the border with Uzbekistan in the north.
Thousands of jobs will be created at the Aynak mine, Adel said, adding that the company is also obliged to train Afghan engineers and geologists so that "in 10-15 years Afghans are able to work independently."
On top of these agreements, he said, MCC threw in a bonus of 808 million dollars, to be paid in three installments during the lease.
"How could we refuse that?" Adel asked. "No one else offered us anything like that."
He intends to apply the same principles to the huge Hajigak iron ore mine in Bamiyan province, north of Kabul, which is currently under tender, with one Chinese and half a dozen Indian firms vying for the contract.
The contract for exploitation of almost two billion tonnes of high-grade ore includes processing, smelting, steel production, 200 megawatts of electricity and a coking plant.
In addition, the winning firm -- expected to be announced by next July -- will help develop downstream industries such as machinery plants, he added.
Taliban funding sources
A Variety of Sources Feed Into Taliban's War Chest New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT October 18, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency's coffers brimming with cash.
Estimates of the Taliban's annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and United Nations officials. By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and NATO efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say.
Despite efforts by the United States and its allies in the last year to cripple the Taliban's financing, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent.
"I don't believe we can significantly alter their effectiveness by cutting off their money right now," said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat on the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan last month. "I'm not saying we shouldn't try. It's just bigger and more complex than we can effectively stop."
The Taliban's ability to raise money complicates the Obama administration's decision to deploy more United States troops to Afghanistan. It is unclear, for example, whether the deployment of 10,000 Marines over the summer to Helmand Province, the heart of the opium production, will have a sustaining impact on the insurgency's cash flow. And American officials are debating whether cracking down on the drug trade will anger farmers dependent on it for their livelihood.
But even if the United States and its allies were able to stanch the money flow, it is not clear how much impact it would have. It does not cost much to train, equip and pay for the insurgency in impoverished Afghanistan - fighters typically earn $200 to $500 a month - and to bribe local Afghan security and government officials.
"Their operations are so inexpensive that they can be continued indefinitely even with locally generated resources such as small businesses and donations," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service and a former analyst of the region at the C.I.A.
American officials say that they have been surprised to learn in recent months that foreign donations, rather than opium, are the single largest source of cash for the Taliban.
"In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan," Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in June. "That is simply not true."
Supporting this view, in his Aug. 30 strategic assessment, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, voiced skepticism that clamping down on the opium trade would crimp the Taliban's overall finances.
"Eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits - even if possible, and while disruptive - would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact," General McChrystal said.
The C.I.A. recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan, a figure first reported last month by The Washington Post. Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counterterrorism official said.
Top American intelligence officials and diplomats say there is no evidence so far that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or other Persian Gulf states are providing direct aid to the Afghan insurgency. But American intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistani intelligence operatives continue to give some financial aid to the Afghan Taliban, a practice the Pakistani government denies.
The United States Treasury Department and the United Nations have for years maintained financial blacklists of those suspected of being donors to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But counterterrorism officials say donors have become savvier about disguising their contributions to avoid detection.
"The sanctions have worked to a certain extent but obviously not to the extent of being able to cut off all funds," said Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer now monitoring Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.
Still, drugs play an important role. Afghanistan produces more opium than any other country in the world, and the Taliban are widely believed to make money at virtually every stage of the trade.
"It extorts funds from those involved in the heroin trade by demanding `protection' payments from poppy farmers, drug lab operators and the smugglers who transport the chemicals into, and the heroin out of, the country," David S. Cohen, an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department responsible for combating terrorist financing, said in a speech in Washington last week.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a report issued in August, said that Taliban commanders charged poppy farmers a 10 percent tax, and that Taliban fighters supplemented their pay by working in the poppy fields during harvest. The biggest source of drug money for the Taliban is regular payments made by drug traffickers to the Taliban leadership, based in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, according to the report.
Counterterrorism experts say the relationship of the insurgents to drug trafficking is shifting in an ominous direction. A United Nations report issued in August said that some opium-trafficking guerrillas had secretly stockpiled more than 10,000 tons of illegal opium - worth billions of dollars and enough to satisfy at least two years of world demand. The large stockpiles could bolster the insurgency's war chest and further undercut the ability of NATO military operations to curb the flow of drug money to the Taliban.
A third major source of financing for the Taliban is criminal activity, including kidnappings and protection payments from legitimate businesses seeking to operate in Taliban-controlled territory, American authorities say.
The United States has created two new entities aimed at disrupting the trafficking networks and illicit financing. One group, the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, is located at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. The second group, the Illicit Finance Task Force based in Washington, also aims to identify and disrupt the financial networks supporting terrorists and narcotics traffickers in the region.
American officials say they are working closely with the Afghan government to dry up the Taliban financing, but as one senior American military officer in Afghanistan put it last week, "I won't overstate the progress."
Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON - The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency's coffers brimming with cash.
Estimates of the Taliban's annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and United Nations officials. By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and NATO efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say.
Despite efforts by the United States and its allies in the last year to cripple the Taliban's financing, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent.
"I don't believe we can significantly alter their effectiveness by cutting off their money right now," said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat on the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan last month. "I'm not saying we shouldn't try. It's just bigger and more complex than we can effectively stop."
The Taliban's ability to raise money complicates the Obama administration's decision to deploy more United States troops to Afghanistan. It is unclear, for example, whether the deployment of 10,000 Marines over the summer to Helmand Province, the heart of the opium production, will have a sustaining impact on the insurgency's cash flow. And American officials are debating whether cracking down on the drug trade will anger farmers dependent on it for their livelihood.
But even if the United States and its allies were able to stanch the money flow, it is not clear how much impact it would have. It does not cost much to train, equip and pay for the insurgency in impoverished Afghanistan - fighters typically earn $200 to $500 a month - and to bribe local Afghan security and government officials.
"Their operations are so inexpensive that they can be continued indefinitely even with locally generated resources such as small businesses and donations," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service and a former analyst of the region at the C.I.A.
American officials say that they have been surprised to learn in recent months that foreign donations, rather than opium, are the single largest source of cash for the Taliban.
"In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan," Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in June. "That is simply not true."
Supporting this view, in his Aug. 30 strategic assessment, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, voiced skepticism that clamping down on the opium trade would crimp the Taliban's overall finances.
"Eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits - even if possible, and while disruptive - would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact," General McChrystal said.
The C.I.A. recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan, a figure first reported last month by The Washington Post. Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counterterrorism official said.
Top American intelligence officials and diplomats say there is no evidence so far that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or other Persian Gulf states are providing direct aid to the Afghan insurgency. But American intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistani intelligence operatives continue to give some financial aid to the Afghan Taliban, a practice the Pakistani government denies.
The United States Treasury Department and the United Nations have for years maintained financial blacklists of those suspected of being donors to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But counterterrorism officials say donors have become savvier about disguising their contributions to avoid detection.
"The sanctions have worked to a certain extent but obviously not to the extent of being able to cut off all funds," said Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer now monitoring Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.
Still, drugs play an important role. Afghanistan produces more opium than any other country in the world, and the Taliban are widely believed to make money at virtually every stage of the trade.
"It extorts funds from those involved in the heroin trade by demanding `protection' payments from poppy farmers, drug lab operators and the smugglers who transport the chemicals into, and the heroin out of, the country," David S. Cohen, an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department responsible for combating terrorist financing, said in a speech in Washington last week.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a report issued in August, said that Taliban commanders charged poppy farmers a 10 percent tax, and that Taliban fighters supplemented their pay by working in the poppy fields during harvest. The biggest source of drug money for the Taliban is regular payments made by drug traffickers to the Taliban leadership, based in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, according to the report.
Counterterrorism experts say the relationship of the insurgents to drug trafficking is shifting in an ominous direction. A United Nations report issued in August said that some opium-trafficking guerrillas had secretly stockpiled more than 10,000 tons of illegal opium - worth billions of dollars and enough to satisfy at least two years of world demand. The large stockpiles could bolster the insurgency's war chest and further undercut the ability of NATO military operations to curb the flow of drug money to the Taliban.
A third major source of financing for the Taliban is criminal activity, including kidnappings and protection payments from legitimate businesses seeking to operate in Taliban-controlled territory, American authorities say.
The United States has created two new entities aimed at disrupting the trafficking networks and illicit financing. One group, the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, is located at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. The second group, the Illicit Finance Task Force based in Washington, also aims to identify and disrupt the financial networks supporting terrorists and narcotics traffickers in the region.
American officials say they are working closely with the Afghan government to dry up the Taliban financing, but as one senior American military officer in Afghanistan put it last week, "I won't overstate the progress."
Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Afghan Taliban cooperate with the Tahrik-Taliban of Pakistan
The article below from the News International reveals how unwise it is to suppose that the Taliban-Pakistan are different from the Taliban-Afghanistan. They are both a part of a common movement. Yes, these groups are essentially factions who, if there were no state to fight on the outside, would probably clash among themselves, but given the situation they now have they have reason to hold together for the time being. RLC
TTP gets Afghan Taliban support
By Mazhar Tufail The News International (Pakistan) October 18, 2009
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani militants based in South Waziristan Agency committed the terrorism acts in the past couple of weeks or so with the help of the
Afghan Taliban, The News learnt here on Saturday.
"Leaders of various militant groups active in Pakistan under the banner of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have succeeded in winning support of
the Afghan Taliban for committing terror acts in Pakistan," a source in the security forces disclosed on condition of anonymity.
"They have mounted the deadly attacks in Peshawar, Bannu, Rawalpindi and Lahore with the help of Afghan Taliban," he said.
The source said the top leaders of outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have established links with the Afghan Taliban and all its operatives who have been operating
in the Punjab have reached South Waziristan or Afghanistan to evade arrests as the law-enforcement agencies have launched a crackdown on such elements in the
Punjab province.
"Initially, this group was involved in sectarian violence and has been targeting people belonging to a particular religious sect but now it is targeting the
security forces," the source said.
According to the source, the security forces have, however, launched the operation - codenamed Rah-e-Nijat - in South Waziristan with full determination to
eliminate the terrorists from the restive tribal region. He said majority of the troops participating in the operation have an extensive experience of
warfare in mountainous terrain and have earlier been fighting terrorists in Swat, Malakand and elsewhere.
"As directed by the army chief and other commanders involved in the military operation in South Waziristan, the security forces will exercise utmost care to
avoid collateral damage during the operation. The commanders are very optimistic about the completion of the operation well before the end of the stipulated
time and its positive outcome," the source said.
The Pakistan Army launched operation against the extremists in South Waziristan Agency on the night between Friday and Saturday. According to military
sources, 1,000 to 1,500 militants are present in South Waziristan and the operation has been launched after three-month siege of the militants.
The political administration of South Waziristan has, however, said that over 4,000 to 5000 terrorists are present in the area with most of them hiding in
Mahsuds-inhibited area.
South Waziristan is the nerve centre of the TTP and the main source of terrorism across Pakistan. It is from here that TTP renders support to other terrorist
groups operating from the nearby Khyber, Bajaur, Orakzai and Mohmand agencies.
"The root of the terror is in South Waziristan where this group is present. It is a must to root out this terror and curse," the source said.
After the death of Baitullah Mahsud in a drone strike on August 5, TTP is being led by Hakimullah Mahsud with the assistance of Waliur Rehman and Qari
Hussain, who runs a suicide training camp in Kotkai area of the region.
According to the source, in the last three months, the TTP militants intensified attacks on security forces deployed in South and North Waziristan agencies,
including five suicide missions in Razmak area, kidnapping of 15 security personnel, killing three of them, over 300 rocket attacks and 78 improvised
explosive device (IED) attacks.
"Given all of the recent terrorism acts in various parts of the country, a final showdown against Taliban and their al-Qaeda Uzbek allies in South Waziristan
has become an absolute necessity," the source said.
The source said no doubt the country's security forces were faced with a far stronger enemy in South Waziristan than one they have confronted and overcame in
Swat.
TTP gets Afghan Taliban support
By Mazhar Tufail The News International (Pakistan) October 18, 2009
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani militants based in South Waziristan Agency committed the terrorism acts in the past couple of weeks or so with the help of the
Afghan Taliban, The News learnt here on Saturday.
"Leaders of various militant groups active in Pakistan under the banner of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have succeeded in winning support of
the Afghan Taliban for committing terror acts in Pakistan," a source in the security forces disclosed on condition of anonymity.
"They have mounted the deadly attacks in Peshawar, Bannu, Rawalpindi and Lahore with the help of Afghan Taliban," he said.
The source said the top leaders of outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have established links with the Afghan Taliban and all its operatives who have been operating
in the Punjab have reached South Waziristan or Afghanistan to evade arrests as the law-enforcement agencies have launched a crackdown on such elements in the
Punjab province.
"Initially, this group was involved in sectarian violence and has been targeting people belonging to a particular religious sect but now it is targeting the
security forces," the source said.
According to the source, the security forces have, however, launched the operation - codenamed Rah-e-Nijat - in South Waziristan with full determination to
eliminate the terrorists from the restive tribal region. He said majority of the troops participating in the operation have an extensive experience of
warfare in mountainous terrain and have earlier been fighting terrorists in Swat, Malakand and elsewhere.
"As directed by the army chief and other commanders involved in the military operation in South Waziristan, the security forces will exercise utmost care to
avoid collateral damage during the operation. The commanders are very optimistic about the completion of the operation well before the end of the stipulated
time and its positive outcome," the source said.
The Pakistan Army launched operation against the extremists in South Waziristan Agency on the night between Friday and Saturday. According to military
sources, 1,000 to 1,500 militants are present in South Waziristan and the operation has been launched after three-month siege of the militants.
The political administration of South Waziristan has, however, said that over 4,000 to 5000 terrorists are present in the area with most of them hiding in
Mahsuds-inhibited area.
South Waziristan is the nerve centre of the TTP and the main source of terrorism across Pakistan. It is from here that TTP renders support to other terrorist
groups operating from the nearby Khyber, Bajaur, Orakzai and Mohmand agencies.
"The root of the terror is in South Waziristan where this group is present. It is a must to root out this terror and curse," the source said.
After the death of Baitullah Mahsud in a drone strike on August 5, TTP is being led by Hakimullah Mahsud with the assistance of Waliur Rehman and Qari
Hussain, who runs a suicide training camp in Kotkai area of the region.
According to the source, in the last three months, the TTP militants intensified attacks on security forces deployed in South and North Waziristan agencies,
including five suicide missions in Razmak area, kidnapping of 15 security personnel, killing three of them, over 300 rocket attacks and 78 improvised
explosive device (IED) attacks.
"Given all of the recent terrorism acts in various parts of the country, a final showdown against Taliban and their al-Qaeda Uzbek allies in South Waziristan
has become an absolute necessity," the source said.
The source said no doubt the country's security forces were faced with a far stronger enemy in South Waziristan than one they have confronted and overcame in
Swat.
Gilles Dorronsoro's doubts about a "surge" in Afghanistan
Gilles Dorronsoro is one of the few people who have done extensive anthropological research on the ground in Afghanistan in recent years so he speaks with an authority that we need to listen to. He has come out in support of Matthew Hoh's notable break with American policy. Hoh I have been less sure of. True, he has had military experience in Afghanistan and was then a foreign service officer in Afghanistan, but it is hard to tell how well he understands the wider implications of his position. All along I have been in favor of adding a lot of troops in Afghanistan -- plus forcing Pakistan to clean up their side of the border. Even so, as Dorronsoro points out, there are good reasons to wonder if it is fair to ask American young men and women to die for a regime that still countenances corruption and vote fraud. Below is what Dorronsoro has to say about the situation. RLC
Getting lost in Afghanistan Matthew Hoh's resignation as a US official in Afghanistan delivers a sharp, honest and accurate critique of the war
By Gilles Dorronsoro,
guardian.co.uk Wednesday 28 October 2009
Former US marine and foreign service officer Matthew Hoh's letter of resignation from the US state department delivers a shot across the bow of those who would escalate the American combat presence in Afghanistan. "I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," Hoh wrote. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
With Tuesday's attacks making October the bloodiest month for US troops in the country in the eight years since the war began, Hoh's letter is an expression of deep moral conviction, and senior US officials, from ambassador Karl Eikenberry to vice-president Joe Biden, are taking it seriously. But the statement is more than a cri du coeur. It presents several arguments that are worthy of discussion.
"If honest," Hoh writes, "our strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaida resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc."
Hoh's argument here is weak on two accounts. First, in the other countries mentioned, the US has a degree of co-operation with the local governments, even if they cannot completely control their own territories. Afghanistan is a special case, in that its government cannot survive without western assistance. And if the Taliban succeeds in retaking Afghanistan's cities, al-Qaida could find there a perfect sanctuary, where it would be impervious to counter-terrorism operations. In the other countries Hoh mentions, that is not the case.
"Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilisation and insurgency in Pakistan," Hoh asserts.
This is absolutely correct, the only caveat being that the Pakistani government also supports the Taliban and other radical groups that are destabilising the country. As the Afghan Taliban show with their persistent practice of attacking Indian targets in Kabul, the Pakistani military support them as a weapon against India, and it offers no indication of a new policy. (The offensive in Waziristan is directed against the Pakistan and it offers no indication of a new policy. (The offensive in Waziristan is directed against the Pakistan Taliban, not the Afghan Taliban). Nonetheless, even an American withdrawal from Afghanistan would not give the US or Pakistan any insurance about the future behaviour of these radical groups, Afghan or Pakistani. Afghanistan could still become a sanctuary for groups fighting in Pakistan.
"The threat is not tied to geographic or political boundaries," Hoh says.
Hoh is right. The September 11 attacks were planned mostly in Germany, and the war in Afghanistan does not make the US more secure. At the same time, al-Qaida needs a sanctuary in order to escape from the police and counterterrorism forces. Even a loose network of individuals is vulnerable when it has no protection from police or military strikes. Afghanistan was once instrumental in lending a certain level of security to al-Qaida and similar groups, just as Waziristan is today. Al-Qaida can always move from Pakistan to another base, like Yemen, if the situation there becomes too dangerous, but that will affect its ability to operate, since Pakistan is still the best base they can hope for.
US troops, Hoh writes, were "inadequately prepared and resourced".
This point is also completely accurate, and little has changed. Western troops are not prepared to fight a counter-insurgency. They spend too little time in country, undergo no appreciable linguistic training and the Pashtuns fear their presence and reject their cultures. By contrast, the Iraq surge worked not because of counter-insurgency, but because the local tribes chose to join the US, and the insurgents they were fighting were mostly urban. So the US did not learn how to fight a rural counterinsurgency in Iraq.
Hoh writes that the war could continue for "decades and generations".
If the objective is to crush the Taliban, not to pursue the more realistic goal of leaving an Afghan government that can survive on its own, this is true. The Obama administration has made clear that its objectives are mostly limited to security, and John Kerry's speech on Monday delivered exactly that line. But Hoh has nevertheless a point here, because the strategy General Stanley McChrystal proposes is more ambitious: it aims for total military victory against the Taliban. To accomplish that, McChrystal will need a lot more than the 20,000 to 60,000 troops for which he is asking. The Taliban can continue to strike from Pakistan, and, as the US operation in Helmand showed this summer, even 20,000 soldiers cannot secure the centre of a single province in southern Afghanistan.
To what end, as Hoh asks, are we asking our young men and women to sacrifice? That is the question the White House has to answer.
Getting lost in Afghanistan Matthew Hoh's resignation as a US official in Afghanistan delivers a sharp, honest and accurate critique of the war
By Gilles Dorronsoro,
guardian.co.uk Wednesday 28 October 2009
Former US marine and foreign service officer Matthew Hoh's letter of resignation from the US state department delivers a shot across the bow of those who would escalate the American combat presence in Afghanistan. "I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," Hoh wrote. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
With Tuesday's attacks making October the bloodiest month for US troops in the country in the eight years since the war began, Hoh's letter is an expression of deep moral conviction, and senior US officials, from ambassador Karl Eikenberry to vice-president Joe Biden, are taking it seriously. But the statement is more than a cri du coeur. It presents several arguments that are worthy of discussion.
"If honest," Hoh writes, "our strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaida resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc."
Hoh's argument here is weak on two accounts. First, in the other countries mentioned, the US has a degree of co-operation with the local governments, even if they cannot completely control their own territories. Afghanistan is a special case, in that its government cannot survive without western assistance. And if the Taliban succeeds in retaking Afghanistan's cities, al-Qaida could find there a perfect sanctuary, where it would be impervious to counter-terrorism operations. In the other countries Hoh mentions, that is not the case.
"Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilisation and insurgency in Pakistan," Hoh asserts.
This is absolutely correct, the only caveat being that the Pakistani government also supports the Taliban and other radical groups that are destabilising the country. As the Afghan Taliban show with their persistent practice of attacking Indian targets in Kabul, the Pakistani military support them as a weapon against India, and it offers no indication of a new policy. (The offensive in Waziristan is directed against the Pakistan and it offers no indication of a new policy. (The offensive in Waziristan is directed against the Pakistan Taliban, not the Afghan Taliban). Nonetheless, even an American withdrawal from Afghanistan would not give the US or Pakistan any insurance about the future behaviour of these radical groups, Afghan or Pakistani. Afghanistan could still become a sanctuary for groups fighting in Pakistan.
"The threat is not tied to geographic or political boundaries," Hoh says.
Hoh is right. The September 11 attacks were planned mostly in Germany, and the war in Afghanistan does not make the US more secure. At the same time, al-Qaida needs a sanctuary in order to escape from the police and counterterrorism forces. Even a loose network of individuals is vulnerable when it has no protection from police or military strikes. Afghanistan was once instrumental in lending a certain level of security to al-Qaida and similar groups, just as Waziristan is today. Al-Qaida can always move from Pakistan to another base, like Yemen, if the situation there becomes too dangerous, but that will affect its ability to operate, since Pakistan is still the best base they can hope for.
US troops, Hoh writes, were "inadequately prepared and resourced".
This point is also completely accurate, and little has changed. Western troops are not prepared to fight a counter-insurgency. They spend too little time in country, undergo no appreciable linguistic training and the Pashtuns fear their presence and reject their cultures. By contrast, the Iraq surge worked not because of counter-insurgency, but because the local tribes chose to join the US, and the insurgents they were fighting were mostly urban. So the US did not learn how to fight a rural counterinsurgency in Iraq.
Hoh writes that the war could continue for "decades and generations".
If the objective is to crush the Taliban, not to pursue the more realistic goal of leaving an Afghan government that can survive on its own, this is true. The Obama administration has made clear that its objectives are mostly limited to security, and John Kerry's speech on Monday delivered exactly that line. But Hoh has nevertheless a point here, because the strategy General Stanley McChrystal proposes is more ambitious: it aims for total military victory against the Taliban. To accomplish that, McChrystal will need a lot more than the 20,000 to 60,000 troops for which he is asking. The Taliban can continue to strike from Pakistan, and, as the US operation in Helmand showed this summer, even 20,000 soldiers cannot secure the centre of a single province in southern Afghanistan.
To what end, as Hoh asks, are we asking our young men and women to sacrifice? That is the question the White House has to answer.
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