NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis50.html

There's no use fooling ourselves anymore.

I guarantee that it'll be in the last place you look.

I guarantee that it'll be in the last place you look.

True. Just yesterday I found Serbia behind the sofa...

I guarantee that it'll be in the last place you look.

LMAO :p

I appreciate the comic relief, but if possible, I'd like to keep this thread serious. Thanks.

Afghanistan will be fine if we spend the needed money to build a modern road and communications infrastructure and help develop some local industries besides heroin.

I guarantee that it'll be in the last place you look.
I hate it when people say that, so I always keep looking after I've found whathaveyou, just so it isn't in the last place I look.

Afghanistan will be fine if we spend the needed money to build a modern road and communications infrastructure and help develop some local industries besides heroin.

And it doesn't help that we have all those troops that could be in Afghanistan, in Iraq...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis50.html

There's no use fooling ourselves anymore.

I just love defeatists. It's so much fun to see them flap about in the wind when their predictions turn out wrong. :p

Afghanistan will be fine if we spend the needed money to build a modern road and communications infrastructure and help develop some local industries besides heroin.

Like Burqa tailorings?

Like Burqa tailorings?

How about making lawn furniture for sale at Walmart? Or maybe a textile plant to make shirts for banana republic? If we're going to outsource manufacturing jobs let's at least outsource them in such a way as to make the world more secure.

I just love defeatists. It's so much fun to see them flap about in the wind when their predictions turn out wrong. :p
Read these (and this is just from the last week) and then say that the war there is going swell:
Nato struggles in Afghanistan (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5345452.stm)

Taleban fight 'hard but winnable'
The threat posed by the Taleban in Afghanistan has been under-estimated, the UK defence secretary has admitted.
Taleban fight hard (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5358654.stm)

Deaths shake Canada's Afghan mission (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5358072.stm)

Canadians die in Afghan bombing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5355478.stm)

Fact is, 5 years after invading, the Taleban are as strong as ever, if not stronger:
The US military says coalition forces in Afghanistan have begun a major operation against Taleban militants in the south-east of the country.

Operation Mountain Fury involves some 3,000 US-led troops and 4,000 Afghan security personnel, the US said
US opens fresh Afghan offensive (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5352080.stm)


Afghan forces retake district HQ
Afghan security forces have recaptured a district headquarters in western Farah province that had been seized by the Taleban, local police say.

The Farah attack raised fears of a new front opening in the west. Hundreds have been killed in the south and east.
Afghan forces retake district HQ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5349330.stm)

Simple facts are that there is not enough troops there, and support for the Taleban is growing.

One can't conquer Afghanistan, because there's just nothing to conquer. All you can do is sitting there and fighting in constant skirmishes, unless you are going to dump there more money than it could possibly be worth. Asymmetric warfare is an exhausting exercise for the strong side, and mostly useless one.

It's why soviets have left, and why NATO will probably leave as well. Or stay just to make it appear a victory, while there pretty much can't be such thing as victory at all.

And it doesn't help that we have all those troops that could be in Afghanistan, in Iraq...
I hear that old song a lot. I'm not sure that you can fit any more troops into Ashcanistan. And if you could, I'm not sure what they would do. Are you? The United States military can certainly operate in two countries/one region.

I hear that old song a lot. I'm not sure that you can fit any more troops into Ashcanistan. And if you could, I'm not sure what they would do. Are you? The United States military can certainly operate in two countries/one region.

Well, they could provide security outside of the cities, protect rural girls from getting acid thrown in their faces for not wearing a burqua or for going to school, they could maybe look for taliban and al qaeda terrorists. There is plenty to do there. The place needs to be brought foreward into the 19th century. No, that's not a typo.

I just love defeatists. It's so much fun to see them flap about in the wind when their predictions turn out wrong. :p

Here's the beauty of your argument--if, in a hundred years, Afghanistan turns out to be a bastion of democracy and human rights, then you can point back to this very discussion and claim victory. It won't matter if the intervening hundred years have been filled with death, destruction, intolerance and turmoil--you'll have been eventually proven right! And that's all that really matters in the world, after all.

One can't conquer Afghanistan, because there's just nothing to conquer. All you can do is sitting there and fighting in constant skirmishes, unless you are going to dump there more money than it could possibly be worth. Asymmetric warfare is an exhausting exercise for the strong side, and mostly useless one.
Yep. Until dirt becomes valuable, Afghanistan ain't worth squat.

And no amount of money is going to stop the farmers growing poppy. All that happens is you get:
1. People who don't grow the stuff claiming they do, and so get free money for not doing what they didn't do in the first place.
2. Farmers agreeing to stop, taking the money and then planting their crop elsewhere, using said monies to buy even more poppy seeds. And guns, to protect their harvests.

Schools, hospitals and infrastructure would be great, but how many countries you think would be willing to spend $Billions and support Afghanistan for a generation waiting for said infrastructures to have a positive effect on the populace?

Well, they could provide security outside of the cities, protect rural girls from getting acid thrown in their faces for not wearing a burqua or for going to school, they could maybe look for taliban and al qaeda terrorists. There is plenty to do there. The place needs to be brought foreward into the 19th century. No, that's not a typo.

I've been to Pakistan. I appreciate the time-warp. But that's the wrong purpose. If the people of Ashcanistan can't take the initiative to protect the population, then our efforts would only be temporary at best and futile at worst. We can't and shouldn't provide a body guard for every citizen.

Speaking of Pakistan, isn't that where most of Al-Quaida is hiding, now? That's what the last claims over how incompentant we were at selecting them as an ally made.

You still haven't addressed the issue of why more are needed. You, like the poster that I answered, just assume that more is the answer.

The United States military can certainly operate in two countries/one region.

If that is so, why has it taken over five years and the fighting is still continuing?

I'm sorry. I misread your post. You said 'operate', not 'win'.

remember back int he day when Russia tried to invade Afghanistan.
Well, just replace Russia with 'Coalition' and you get the idea.

Yep. Until dirt becomes valuable, Afghanistan ain't worth squat.

And no amount of money is going to stop the farmers growing poppy. All that happens is you get:
1. People who don't grow the stuff claiming they do, and so get free money for not doing what they didn't do in the first place.
2. Farmers agreeing to stop, taking the money and then planting their crop elsewhere, using said monies to buy even more poppy seeds. And guns, to protect their harvests.

Schools, hospitals and infrastructure would be great, but how many countries you think would be willing to spend $Billions and support Afghanistan for a generation waiting for said infrastructures to have a positive effect on the populace?
In that case why did we invade and not just bomb the shit out of the place, declare victory, and send the troops home?

...the people of Ashcanistan can't take the initiative to protect the population....

The first step towards racism is dehumanisation. They're not people, they're ash can dwellers!

:rolleyes:

If that is so, why has it taken over five years and the fighting is still continuing?

I'm sorry. I misread your post. You said 'operate', not 'win'.
Because it's tough. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Show me an instant peace accord that has ever lasted and I'll be surprised.

I hear that old song a lot. I'm not sure that you can fit any more troops into Ashcanistan.
It's 647,500 sq km, making it 200,000 sq km larger than Iraq, and just slightly smaller than Texas.

So yeah, I think a few more troops could be squeezed in there.

The first step towards racism is dehumanisation. They're not people, they're ash can dwellers!

:rolleyes:

You need to get out more.

I've been to Pakistan. I appreciate the time-warp. But that's the wrong purpose. If the people of Ashcanistan can't take the initiative to protect the population, then our efforts would only be temporary at best and futile at worst. We can't and shouldn't provide a body guard for every citizen.

Speaking of Pakistan, isn't that where most of Al-Quaida is hiding, now? That's what the last claims over how incompentant we were at selecting them as an ally made.

You still haven't addressed the issue of why more are needed. You, like the poster that I answered, just assume that more is the answer.

I think more troops would, by increasing security, allow a more modern infrastructure for manufacturing and trade to be built. It's part of a long term plan that I think might civilize the people of afghanistan. It's easy for terrorist scumbags to hide among illiterate, superstitious village folks. People with jobs and contact with the outside world, however, won't tolerate outsiders coming in and using their nation as a base to launch attacks against a superpower. People with jobs and real homes with actual flush toilets have too much to lose.

Because it's tough. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Show me an instant peace accord that has ever lasted and I'll be surprised.

You are right in that nothing worthwhile comes easy. But that keeps getting parroted as a rationale for failed policies in the Middle East. If something is not working, it is not cowardice or lack of moral fiber to decide to change your tactices.

You need to get out more.

You need to stop making statements that border on racism. You do your argument no good.

If we didnt get ourselves involved in Iraq we wouldn't be having this discussion. As it is we have made things incredibly difficult for ourselves. Still, I don't see us losing. Given our troop limitations it will take longer however.

You need to stop making statements that border on racism. You do your argument no good.

How is it racist to make fun of a country's name?

I hear that old song a lot. I'm not sure that you can fit any more troops into Ashcanistan. And if you could, I'm not sure what they would do. Are you? The United States military can certainly operate in two countries/one region.
Oh, the US can operate in two countries alright....it is just that they cannot win either battle. Afghanistan is coming up to 5 years and it is still unstable. WW 2 only took 6 years. Opium production is at record levels and the warlords still are influential. Iraq is a shithole, no matter how many prominent terrorists the US has captured or killed.

It is interesting that you should call it "Ashcanistan". Kinda like you admit that it is a shithole too?

One can't conquer Afghanistan, because there's just nothing to conquer. All you can do is sitting there and fighting in constant skirmishes.

I agree. Unlike in say, WW2 where there was a 'frontline' so you would know where to send troops tanks etc. to combat, there are no lines of combat in Afghanistan or in Iraq for that matter. The problem with the war we are fighting, is that its just some huge war where no ones sure where the enemy is or even who they are. Although I believe going in to both countries was justified, I think that we've just got severly bogged down when we could be doing something a whole lot more useful. That said, I do still think we can end terrorisim in Iraq + Afghanistan but its going to take a long time

How is it racist to make fun of a country's name?

It's not racist. It's dehumanising. It's a step towards racism. By calling people Ashcanis instead of Afghanis, you belittle them and make them less than you. At this point, it is easy to treat them worse than you would treat a human being, because in your mind, they are no longer humans, but something a little lower.

This is a common psychological tactic that the military uses. The military does not kill people. They neutralise targets. It's not a person, it's a target!

It's not a person, it's an ash can!

More troops will make no difference at all as long as we continue the current policy on opium poppies. It just isn't possible to erase more than half of a country's economy without massive resistance and without making a lot of criminals very rich. Colombia's been trying this for what, 40 years? And it has a far more developed economy.

Mr. Afghan Farmer currently has a choice between the guys who buy his opium crop, thus giving him enough to feed his family, and the guys who want to burn it down. Yeah, they won't let you send your daughter to school, but you're a little iffy about this whole feminism thing anyway.

I personally haven't been following the Afghanistan situation as of late, and I'm non-American, so I cannot say.

LMAO :p

I appreciate the comic relief, but if possible, I'd like to keep this thread serious. Thanks.


Meh, the parent source of all your information is Senlis, group which has it's economic base in Afghanistan whose function is to advance the interests of the opium industry via lobbying and supplying "reports" to steer international policies regarding opium poppies and the opiates made from them. Their take on Afghanistan is that it was all good until the Brits and Yanks burnt down the poppy fields while they were in the neighborhood to quash a large part of the heroin industry. At this point in time Senlis continued existence depends upon allowing the poppies to be farmed in Afghanistan. They would say whatever it takes to make this happen. Just incidentally a portion of Senlis proposals for poppy growing and production of morphine seem sensible, however at the moment they are desperate to get them poppies growing again and hence the "ZOMG the Taliban have taken control cuz the poppies are gone" press releases.

http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/Opium_licensing

I think more troops would, by increasing security, allow a more modern infrastructure for manufacturing and trade to be built. It's part of a long term plan that I think might civilize the people of afghanistan. It's easy for terrorist scumbags to hide among illiterate, superstitious village folks. People with jobs and contact with the outside world, however, won't tolerate outsiders coming in and using their nation as a base to launch attacks against a superpower. People with jobs and real homes with actual flush toilets have too much to lose.

If we are ready to accept a long-term presence in Afghanistan, what you propose is an excellent goal. I'm not sure the Afghanis are ready for the twentieth century, but even the Renaissance would be a big improvement. The problem is that long term commitments don't play well on the evening news. We want an instant solution where there isn't one. The problem is that we can't just let the country drift back into the mess that exsisted before the Taliban was removed. Damned if it isn't complicated.

Chicken little shit..."the sky is falling ...the sky is falling "

Afghanistan is fine the Taliban are getting their ass kicked regularly..they persist because they are zelots what did you expect from them ?

They have places to hide that cant easily be reached and they always can flee to Pakistan..it not like they tattoo " Taliban " on their forheads.

They are a losing faction and controll only what is left for them ...like a couple rocks and some caves...the poppy growers are another issue ..they give the taliban cash for protection and help keep them in business...after all there are billions of dollars at stake in that " industry " It will be hard to eradicate..the Irony is the Taliban almost did..but look at them now .

They need to use the growers to survive . So screw religion...take the money .

If we are ready to accept a long-term presence in Afghanistan, what you propose is an excellent goal. I'm not sure the Afghanis are ready for the twentieth century, but even the Renaissance would be a big improvement. The problem is that long term commitments don't play well on the evening news. We want an instant solution where there isn't one. The problem is that we can't just let the country drift back into the mess that exsisted before the Taliban was removed. Damned if it isn't complicated.

It's not all that complicated. If we wanted to do it cheap and quick we could have just bombed the shit out of Afghanistan without warning, concentrating on Taliban and Al Qaeda held areas, then declared victory and brought everyone home.

Chicken little shit..."the sky is falling ...the sky is falling "

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-09-18T090913Z_01_ISL242604_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-VIOLENCE.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C1-topNews-2
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked a NATO patrol in southern Afghanistan on Monday killing several soldiers, Afghan police said, a day after NATO declared the area free of Taliban insurgents.

The Taliban, who have unleashed a wave of attacks on government and foreign troops this year, claimed responsibility for the blast in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province.

Afghan police said a suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked Canadian troops while they were giving out aid.

Several Canadian soldiers had been killed and about a dozen wounded, said a police officer. About 25 civilians, most of them children, had also been wounded, said the officer, who declined to be identified.

How do you define "success in Afghanistan" ?

If it is enforcing law and order and the writ of the Afghan govt over all of sovereign Afghanistan, then it is already a failure.

fact is that it is the opium trade that is the key.

legalise heroin and you remove the funding for the terror groups.

"Lost? Who says it's lost? Was it lost when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
"Germans?"
"Leave it he's on a roll"
"Nothings over till we say it is! Now who's with me?" *silence* "Chhaaaaarrrgge!"

fact is that it is the opium trade that is the key.

legalise heroin and you remove the funding for the terror groups.

Wrong

http://opioids.com/afghanistan/opium-economy.html

"Taliban banned the crop and introduced the death penalty for opium crimes, leading to a sharp decline in production."

Paxomenia;11703693']"Lost? Who says it's lost? Was it lost when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
"Germans?"
"Leave it he's on a roll"
"Nothings over till we say it is! Now who's with me?" *silence* "Chhaaaaarrrgge!"

*sigh*

I love that film.

Paxomenia;11703693']"Lost? Who says it's lost? Was it lost when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
"Germans?"
"Leave it he's on a roll"
"Nothings over till we say it is! Now who's with me?" *silence* "Chhaaaaarrrgge!"

Bluto's right - psychotic, but right. Now, we could fight them with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, what we need - what this situation calls for, is a stupid, futile gesture on someone's part.

Wrong

http://opioids.com/afghanistan/opium-economy.html

"Taliban banned the crop and introduced the death penalty for opium crimes, leading to a sharp decline in production."

That article is from 2003....things are a wee bit different now...

The sky is falling!!! The sky is falling!! Oh Please. All Afghanistan needs is 15 years and 1000 companies x http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1737492.htm

Wrong

http://opioids.com/afghanistan/opium-economy.html

"Taliban banned the crop and introduced the death penalty for opium crimes, leading to a sharp decline in production."

Ah that "taliban against Opium" canard again.

Narco trafficking was always a source of their economy (regardless of their "banning").

Then
http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/bg1383.cfm
Afghanistan supplanted Burma as the world's largest producer of opium in 1999.37 Although the production and consumption of intoxicants is forbidden in Islam, Taliban leaders allow the opium trade and rationalize it by noting that it is intended for export and consumption by kafirs (nonbelievers) in the West.

The Taliban controls 97 percent of the territory that produces illicit opium in Afghanistan.38 It taxes opium dealers at a rate of up to 20 percent, earning at least $20 million per year in taxes.39

sourced from
37. United States Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report , 1999, at http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1999_narc_report/swasi99.html

38. Martha Brill Olcott and Natalia Udalova, "Drug Trafficking on the Great Silk Road: The Security Environment in Central Asia," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Russia-Eurasia Program Working Paper No. 11, March 2000, p. 6.

39. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 118-119.

And now,


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fAfghanistan&pagewanted=print
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul…
He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.

“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis50.html

There's no use fooling ourselves anymore.
So silly...

This is the same site that claims the Neo-cons are the ones stirring up trouble from the pope's speech... Right.

It's not lost until we're gone.

One can't conquer Afghanistan, because there's just nothing to conquer. All you can do is sitting there and fighting in constant skirmishes, unless you are going to dump there more money than it could possibly be worth. Asymmetric warfare is an exhausting exercise for the strong side, and mostly useless one.

It's why soviets have left, and why NATO will probably leave as well. Or stay just to make it appear a victory, while there pretty much can't be such thing as victory at all.

Yes Yes, like Vietnam, all little skirmishes decide nothing, also Bush is a brainless monkey:p and hires the worst people to do the job's:rolleyes: , just like Iraq, the us is dumping money into the project yet corporations are the only ones gaining anything.....-sighs-, thats the US for ya

Would you please stop posting this man's articles?

And why are we there, if we arent looking for him?

It's not racist. It's dehumanising. It's a step towards racism. By calling people Ashcanis instead of Afghanis
Afghanis isn't correct either, it's Afghans.

I guarantee that it'll be in the last place you look.

yeah. its always in the last place you look, because when you find it you stop looking.

Victory is in sight. True, the situation looks somewhat bleak right now, but, as they say, it is always darkest before dawn. It's pretty damn dark right now, but that means dawn is near.

Seeing that the German Bundeswehr has called for their SPz Marder 1A5 APCs, I believe it could become interesting very soon.

Yes Yes, like Vietnam, all little skirmishes decide nothing, also Bush is a brainless monkey:p and hires the worst people to do the job's:rolleyes: , just like Iraq, the us is dumping money into the project yet corporations are the only ones gaining anything.....-sighs-, thats the US for ya
It's not exactly like Vietnam (let alone the fact it wasn't a victory). In Vietnam there was a real war, just unconventional. An ideological clash, lands to hold and fight for, armies on both sides, both aiming to rule the country. Nothing like that in Afghanistan. Taliban are just militants (if not say bandits), using the widely distributed criminal system for their profit. There are no centers to attack, and Taliban doesn't value the land very much. US can control, say, the most important 10% of the land, all the cities and key points - it would be a clear defeat for any country. But Taliban is just fine with the remaining 90%.

Instead of trying to wipe out the opium trade why not just legalize it?
After all opium can be made into legitimate medicines such as morphine, vicodin and codeine just as easily as it can be made into heroin.

You have people that know how to grow a known cash crop very well.

Why not work with them instead of marginalizing them and pushing them into the arms of the Taliban?

As for the poll I believe that unless we change our tactics, start winning hearts and minds, and make a real effort to help the Afghan people we are doomed to the same failure that the Soviets were for the same exact reasons.

Updates.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1410642006
Afghan warlords unite to fight Nato
IAN MATHER DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT (imather@scotlandonsunday.com)

AS Nato struggles to find more troops to send to Afghanistan, the alliance appears to have achieved the impossible, but dangerous feat of uniting previously disparate warlords, tribes and militia.

US and British troops have stopped identifying them by their allegiance, and refer to them all as ACM - short for Anti-Coalition Militias - a collective word for the mixture of Taliban supporters, Pakistani jihadists, armed tribesmen, loyalists to various warlords and a sprinkling of foreign fighters who represent al-Qaeda.

One American soldier told a reporter at a US base: "I'm just a jarhead, sir, but if you ask me, sir, they're all bad guys. We find 'em, we kill 'em."

Most disturbing to the allied commanders is that at least two of the enemy warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, received many millions of dollars in cash, plus sophisticated weapons from the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), when they were fighting against the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s. Those weapons have now been turned against their former providers.

Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan, with 20,000 US soldiers under his control, said western intelligence had identified a "Taliban triumvirate" that has been operating since spring of this year.

The most colourful member is Hekmatyar - self-styled Lion of the Mountains, who was considered to be so effective as an anti-Soviet commander that the CIA and ISI allocated the highest percentage of all covert aid to him.

At that time, the Americans did not care that Hizb-i Islami, the militant group founded by Hekmatyar, espoused an extremist religious and anti-Western ideology, and attracted thousands of religious radicals to Afghanistan, among them Osama bin Laden himself.

Hekmatyar even became prime minister twice in the 1990s. After September 11 2001, he sided with Osama bin Laden, and was named as a global terrorist by an executive order of the US government. He has issued a tape calling for a jihad against the US and offering rewards for those who kill US troops.

Then there is Haqqani, who also fought against the Soviets with American support before moving to the Taliban. According to Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, who formerly ran the CIA's Bin Laden unit and met with Haqqani in the early 1990s, he is a "border brigand out of Kipling". Haqqani commands the eastern sector of the insurgency, along the border with Pakistan.

But Haqqani, now an elderly Islamic scholar, has excellent high-level contacts in the Arab world, especially among oil-rich fundamentalists in the Gulf. One of his wives is a Kuwaiti aristocrat, and members of the Saudi Arabian royal family are thought to have contributed to the construction of several large religious schools under his control.

"Haqqani's organisation has remained intact from the Soviet era, and is much more closely aligned with the Arabs than the Taliban are," according to a defence intelligence official. These Arab sponsors provide fighters to lead operations by Haqqani's Pashtun fighters, he says. The third member of the triumvirate, the lesser-known Mullah Mohammed Dadullah, has recently become the Taliban's top military commander.

Dadullah, who lost a leg fighting for the organisation during its rise to power in the mid-1990s, recently claimed the Taliban had registered 500 Afghans ready to be used as suicide bombers against "the intruders who have occupied our Islamic country".

Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, said: "As far as we can tell, it's elements of the old Taliban leadership who are at the forefront of what is happening now. But they are overseeing a very diffuse group. Many of them would describe themselves as adherents to the Taliban outlook, but it includes people who are essentially allied to local warlords.

"It certainly includes small landowners, who are concerned about losing their capacity to grow opium poppies because of the eradication campaigns. The Taliban's offers to protect farmers from eradication campaigns will have boosted their popularity in major poppy-growing provinces like Helmand."

The current Taliban coalition has its roots in a "council of war" held earlier this year in a village on the Pakistani border. It was agreed a closer alliance would be built to kill British and other troops due to arrive in Helmand province.

Al-Qaeda was represented by Abu Khalid Al-Misir, on behalf of Musab Al-Zarqawi, the now dead al-Qaeda leader in Iraq.

Misir told the gathering: "We have been washing the infidels with their blood; you should do the same. If Afghans defeated the Russians why not the Americans?"

Meanwhile, the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, holed up in Kabul, is increasingly marginalised, as the insecurity has shaken faith in the elected government.

Hekmatyar has even taken to taunting Karzai. Earlier this month he called the president and told him he should be able to tell from the telephone number where Hekmatyar was speaking from. He challenged Karzai to arrest him.

However, Hekmatyar, Haqqani and Dadullah - "the bad, the ugly and the uglier", as one US intelligence officer described them - are likely to be at large for some time.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15606794.htm
Afghanistan, 5 years later: U.S. confront Taliban's return

By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers

MALEK DIN, Afghanistan - The soldiers of Bravo Company knew that their quarry was here, somewhere. They could hear the Taliban fighters radio one another as they tracked every step the Americans took through the rutted tracks, the mud-walled compounds and the parched orchards of this sun-seared patch of Afghan outback.

Yet in three tense, sweat-soaked days of blasting open doors, scouring flyblown haylofts, digging up ammunition caches and quizzing tight-lipped villagers, the 10th Mountain Division troops never found a single Taliban fighter.

"They just hide their weapons and become farmers," muttered one U.S. officer, nodding at a group of turbaned men glowering from the shady lee of a nearby wall.

Afghanistan has become Iraq on a slow burn. Five years after they were ousted, the Taliban are back in force, their ranks renewed by a new generation of diehards. Violence, opium trafficking, ethnic tensions, official corruption and political anarchy are all worse than they've been at any time since the U.S.-led intervention in 2001.

By failing to stop Taliban leaders and Osama bin Laden from escaping into Pakistan, then diverting troops and resources to Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan, the Bush administration left the door open to a Taliban comeback. Compounding the problem, reconstruction efforts have been slow and limited, and the U.S. and NATO didn't anticipate the extent and ferocity of the Taliban resurgence or the alliances the insurgents have formed with other Islamic extremists and with the world's leading opium traffickers.

There are only 42,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops to secure a country that's half again the size of Iraq, where 150,000 U.S.-led coalition troops are deployed. Suicide bombings have soared from two in all of 2002 to about one every five days. Civilian casualties are mounting. President Hamid Karzai and his U.S. backers have become hugely unpopular.

"The Americans made promises that they haven't carried out, like bringing security, rebuilding the country and eradicating poverty," said Nasir Ahmad, 32, as he hawked secondhand clothes in the clamor of bus engines, horns and barking merchants in Kabul's main bazaar. "Karzai is an irresponsible person. He is just a figurehead."

James Dobbins, who was President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, said that the administration dismissed European offers of a major peacekeeping force after the U.S. intervention and almost immediately began shifting military assets to invade Iraq.

The White House "resisted the whole concept of peacekeeping," said Dobbins. "They wanted to demonstrate a different approach, one that would be much lower cost. So the decision to skimp on manpower and deploy one-fiftieth the troops as were deployed in Bosnia was accompanied by a decision to underplay economic assistance.

"We invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. We conquered the country in December, and Congress was not asked to provide any (reconstruction) money until the following October," he continued. "Much of the money didn't show up for years. And not only were the actual sums relatively small, but with the failure to establish even a modicum of security in the countryside, there was no way to spend it."

The majority of Afghanistan's 31 million people oppose the Taliban, which banned women from working and girls from attending school, enforced a puritanical form of Islamic government that included public floggings and executions, and fought a bloody civil war in the mid-1990s with the country's Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek minorities.

But most Afghans also have grown disgusted with Karzai, who rarely leaves his heavily fortified palace in central Kabul, and his U.S. patrons, and many yearn for a return of the security that the Taliban provided when they ruled.

So while the Taliban uprising has been focused in the southern homeland of the ethnic Pashtuns, their reach and that of allied Islamic groups and criminal gangs now extend to more than half the country.

"The insurgency is developing all over," warned Zia Mojaddedi, a senior member of Karzai's national security council. "It is still not lost. They are not strong. But we are weak. We are corrupt."

In the southeast, U.S. troops face daily ambushes and attacks from mines and improvised explosive devices. Their frequent search operations, such as a recent sweep through Dilla, a remote hamlet in Paktika province, create sympathy for the Taliban among conservative Pashtun tribesmen.

"Four or five times the Americans have searched my house," Mohammad Akram, a wizened cleric, complained to U.S. commanders and Afghan officials in Dilla. "They killed my dog and broke the glass in my windows. They shoot at us. If the Americans have proof that I am with the bad guys, show me the proof. The Americans dishonor our homes."

U.S. troops say the fighting often has been even tougher than it is in Iraq. U.S. aircraft, including B-1 bombers, originally designed to drop nuclear weapons on the former Soviet Union, have been lobbing more satellite-guided high explosives on Afghanistan than on Iraq, according to Air Force reports.

The Pentagon had planned to withdraw some U.S. forces from Afghanistan this year, but their commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, said on Sept. 21 that there would be no cuts before early next year.

It could take years and many more casualties for the United States and its allies to extinguish the insurgency. Since January, 158 American soldiers and troops of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have died, compared with 130 in 2005. An estimated 1,500 Afghans have been killed this year.

Without the foreign troops, the Taliban would sweep back to Kabul, re-igniting a civil war with other ethnic groups and perhaps offering sanctuary to bin Laden again.

"If American forces and ISAF forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban would come back in a week," warned Police Gen. Gullam Jan, a senior official in the Interior Ministry, which runs Afghanistan's national police forces.

The worsening war is further straining the overburdened U.S. military. The stakes also are high for America's relations with its allies. NATO, embroiled in its first conflict since it was created in 1949, could unravel if public anger over mounting casualties - already growing in Canada after the deaths of 20 ISAF soldiers this summer - compels members to withdraw before the Taliban threat is extinguished.

Senior U.S., European and Afghan officials, diplomats and military commanders said it's not too late to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist base camp again. But containing the crisis will require more troops, attention and energy from the United States and its allies, including pressure on Pakistan to crack down on the infiltration of Taliban fighters from its territory.

The crisis led U.S. and ISAF commanders to revise their counter-insurgency strategy this summer. The previous approach relied too much on military force - contradicting the Pentagon's long-established counter-insurgency doctrine, which emphasizes winning the support of the population.

"There's a downside" to heavy use of bombs and artillery, said Col. John W. Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan. "All that does is buy you time and space with the population, but if you don't fill that space, you are not winning."

The revised approach aims to recapture popular support for Karzai by having foreign troops do more to help re-establish local governments and police, deliver health care, build roads and restore irrigation systems in far-flung regions where the Taliban command support or terrorize people into feeding and sheltering their fighters.

Reconstruction has gone forward in the north, center and west of Afghanistan, where the Taliban strike but aren't entrenched. Some 6 million children attend school, more than 1,800 miles of road have been built, and electricity, irrigation, bridges and health clinics are going in. Afghanistan has a democratic constitution, and elections have been held for president, parliament and provincial councils.

But the effort is in trouble.

In the Pashtuns' southern heartland, ISAF has been unable to kick-start reconstruction because of the intense fighting that erupted this summer as the NATO-led force took over the region from U.S. troops.

"Many of the people of Afghanistan are on the fence right now, and they will be for whichever side wins," Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO's top military commander, said on Sept. 20. "If military action is not followed by visible, tangible, sizable and correctly focused reconstruction and development efforts, then we will be in Afghanistan for a much longer period of time than we need to be."

For that approach to succeed, there has to be security. Yet there are too few U.S. and NATO troops to secure the vast tracts of desert and mountains in eastern and southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban find their greatest support.

There are 22,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But there are only 5,000 U.S. combat soldiers in eastern Afghanistan bordering Taliban refuges in Pakistan, a 27,000-square-mile area of vast deserts and mountains nearly the size of South Carolina.

ISAF, with 20,000 troops from 36 nations, has only 8,000 troops for 77,000 square miles - slightly smaller than Minnesota - in the south.

The insurgents and their leaders operate from Pakistan, aided by Pakistani officials, radical Islamic parties and al Qaida. They're flush with recruits from Islamist seminaries on both sides of the border that offer religious instruction and combat training.

Taliban extremists also have been to Iraq for training in combat and bomb-making, and Iraqi insurgents have traveled to Pakistan to forge closer ties with Afghan and Pakistani extremists, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The insurgents fight, then blend back into the population. They've forged alliances with powerful drug lords, sharing in the profits of opium production, which has increased by 59 percent this year to record levels, fueling immense official corruption.

The United States has paid for poppy eradication, but farmers have gotten virtually no help to plant alternative crops. The Taliban have stepped in, providing seeds and fertilizers for new poppy crops in return for support and recruits.

Taliban clerics ban music, TV and radio in areas under their sway. The guerrillas have burned or closed more than 300 schools, depriving some 200,000 children of an education.

They've assassinated officials and pro-government Muslim religious leaders, undermining the efforts to extend Kabul's authority. Anyone suspected of being an informant or not sharing the Taliban's radical vision of Islam is at peril. Large sections of the nation's main highway have become unsafe in the past year for foreigners and Afghans who work for them. Taliban stop cars at roadblocks, drag people out and kill them.

Those who resist or oppose the Taliban's ideology are threatened with death in "night letters" posted on the doors of homes and mosques around the southeast region.

Guerrillas appear openly in Kandahar, the Pashtun spiritual and cultural capital and the country's second-largest city. Taliban suicide-bomber cells have infiltrated Kabul, and according to Jan, the Interior Ministry official, the guerrillas have begun stashing arms caches in rented homes.

Some parts of the country appear much the way Afghanistan did during the Soviet occupation of 1979-89: Afghan forces and their foreign allies, now U.S. and ISAF troops, control key population centers and areas around their bases; the Taliban move freely across swaths of countryside, terrorizing villagers into sheltering and feeding them or finding welcome from illiterate Pashtuns who cling to their ancient culture, conservative Islamic faith and distrust of foreigners.

"The Taliban and al Qaida are probably here right now," said Akram, the tribal elder, waving at some 200 villagers sitting in the sweltering heat during the meeting in Dilla. "These people will support them because the government has done nothing for them."

About a week earlier, the Taliban attacked the small 10th Mountain Division unit sent to secure the site for a new district administration office and police station.

"We were ambushed with rocket-propelled grenades. They basically trapped us. I had nine guys and it was a two-hour firefight," recalled Lt. David Patton of San Antonio, Texas, a tall 34-year-old former Marine who tried college but joined the Army after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Ninety percent of the U.S. convoys out here get hit by IEDs (improvised explosive devices).

"The biggest problem that we have is that the (Afghan army and national police) always bail out on us. They tell us if we don't stay, they won't."

As in Iraq, the U.S. exit strategy for Afghanistan hinges on building the army and police.

The Afghan army has about 30,000 troops who participate in operations with U.S. and ISAF forces. But they lack basic equipment - helmets, radios and armored vehicles - and rely on U.S. and other foreign funds for their salaries.

Police problems are far worse.

Desertions, Taliban infiltration, massive equipment theft, nepotism, low pay, incompetence, recruiting woes and corruption have forced reform of the Afghan National Police to grind to a halt, said Jan, Mojaddedi and three U.S officials involved in the program.

"We're running 100 miles per hour and not going anywhere," said one of the U.S. officials, all of whom requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

"If a Talib comes across the border and encounters the police, he says, `Here are 5,000 Afghanis (about $100). We are going to fight the infidels. We have weapons and rockets. Take this 5,000 Afghanis and get lost,' " Mojaddedi said.

On a six-day recruitment drive in two provinces hit by the Taliban, Ghazni and Paktika, two senior Interior Ministry officials and U.S. troops found only several dozen local men willing to sign up. The vast majority were either too terrified or sympathized with the Taliban.

The only other registrants were fighters from Ghazni Gov. Sher Alam's private militia. They knew little about their surroundings or the population because they came from other parts of Afghanistan. Some were suspected of cooperating with the Taliban.

In Dilla, the delegation confronted a mutiny by nearly 100 police officers who'd been dispatched from Kabul until a local force could be recruited.

Their superiors told them that they were being sent to a province near Kabul for two days. Instead, they were shipped for five weeks to a desert littered with improvised explosive devices, with insufficient food, water and clothing - they may have sold supplies they were given by American forces - and no way to contact their families.

With only a roofless mud-brick ruin for shelter, they brandished AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades as they shouted down Paktika Gov. Akram Khpalwak, who failed to persuade them to return to work by appealing to their patriotism, insulting their manhood and promising food and water.

"I am a general," retorted an enraged officer who refused to give his name. "I haven't taken a shower. I don't know where I am."

The Taliban quietly re-established themselves because the Pentagon largely ignored southern Afghanistan, according to current and former U.S., European and Afghan officials and commanders.

Until ISAF troops began arriving, no more than 3,000 U.S. troops were deployed there, even though it was the Taliban heartland.

Instead, the Pentagon focused most of its manpower on hunting al Qaida along the border with Pakistan. Karzai, meanwhile, lacked the security forces to extend his authority beyond the region's provincial capitals.

"The south has been to a large degree a vacuum," said a senior ISAF official, who requested anonymity because of the criticism of U.S. policy. "When the Taliban was pushed out (in 2001), they were neither replaced by effective government, nor were they replaced by alternative security forces. NATO is now dealing with the consequences of previous failures in policy."

Taliban leaders quietly re-established bases and training camps in Pakistan's border areas, where they were welcomed by Pashtun tribes, and rebuilt their ranks with religious students recruited from among the 2.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

They also received money and weapons from al Qaida and from sympathetic current and former officers of Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), according to current and former U.S., European and Afghan officials, commanders and experts.

U.S. intelligence has significant evidence of ISI complicity, said Seth Jones, an expert at the RAND Corp., a think tank that advises the U.S. government. Middle- and junior-level ISI officers are providing the Taliban with intelligence and have foiled several U.S. operations by tipping the insurgents off in advance, he said.

Pakistan insists that it's doing everything possible to crack down on the Taliban, whose sweep into Kabul in 1996 it supported as part of a traditional policy of favoring a pro-Pakistan Pashtun regime in Kabul. But Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf hasn't arrested any Taliban leaders.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5380376.stm

Afghanistan suicide bomb kills 18

At least 18 people have been killed in an explosion near a governor's office and mosque in southern Afghanistan.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3037881/site/newsweek/
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/8459/untitledta7.png

Note the difference between the US edition and others.

US Ambassador in Afghanistan: "We Are Not Going to Evacuate. We Are Not Going Anywhere" (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,439270,00.html)
SPIEGEL: How many insurgents are there? Is there an endless amount of angry young men who go to Jihad and are ready to die?

Neumann: My perception is still that the Taliban are a fairly weak force, despite the increase in violence in Kabul. But there is no comparison to Baghdad at all. There are a lot of places in this country where people are going about their business with only occasionally a bit of violence. That is much more a testimony to Taliban weakness than to government strength. There is also not a lot of ideological support for the Taliban, even if local people are fighting for them.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain that?

Neumann: We learn from interrogation of prisoners that it is more a matter of local grievances, tribal differences, things that can be dealt with -- not necessarily the deep ideological commitment of a suicide bomber.

SPIEGEL: What conclusions do you draw from such information?

Neumann: That we should continue with a double track approach. We should go on with major actions but also move parallel with the task of bringing more security to bear in local areas. And bringing development projects along with it. I think in this way the insurgency can be pushed back but I think it could go on for quite a while.

SPIEGEL: You were talking about 10 years?

Neumann: Easily.
Make of that what you will. Also, Musharraf's memoirs are coming out - I'll get myself a copy. Should be quite interesting.

I just love defeatists. It's so much fun to see them flap about in the wind when their predictions turn out wrong. :p

I just love denial ...

Musharraf's memoirs are coming out - I'll get myself a copy. Should be quite interesting.

Yeah, if you like self-adulatory fictional fabrications :p He has made a lot of stupid claims in that book like "Pakistan won Kargil war", "India used AQ network", "Me and Vajpayee were insulted" etc. Just about everyone else disagree with his version as written in his book.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=john%2Fjohn102%2Etxt&writer=john
Script for a PTV docudrama


There are several missing chapters in Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's memoir, In the Line of Fire. Although it will not be possible to list out the missing portions in toto, it is reasonable to believe that Gen Musharraf has revealed far less than he has chosen to hide. And what he reveals about Kargil, AQ Khan, 9/11 and various other incidents from his colourful life is carefully selected, cleverly embellished with fiction and packaged to generate media hype with the objective of, besides selling the book, creating a smokescreen on his real persona and actions. His memoir is, at best, a script for a PTV docudrama.
..
The missing post script is his truce with the new coalition of Taliban and al Qaeda in Waziristan that will pose a grave threat to the Western world that seems to be toasting the smooth-talking General who has cleverly diverted global attention from the urgent need for restoring democracy in Pakistan.


http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story4%2Etxt&counter_img=4
Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday hit back at Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, accusing him of derailing the Agra summit in July 2001. Breaking his silence on the controversy generated by the General's memoirs, In the Line of Fire, Vajpayee said that Musharraf's 'reported comments on the failure of the talks' have left him surprised. Vajpayee also denied that either he or Musharraf were insulted at the summit.

Setting the record straight on Tuesday, Vajpayee said, "During our talks, Musharraf took a stand that the violence that was taking place in Jammu and Kashmir could not be described as terrorism. He continued to claim that the bloodshed in the State was nothing but the people's battle for freedom. It was this stand of General Musharraf that India just could not accept. And this was responsible for the failure of the Agra summit.

"I have seen press reports about General Musharraf's recently released book. I am still to see the book. But his reported comments on the failure of our talks at Agra have surprised me. No one insulted the General and certainly no one insulted me," Vajpayee said in a statement.

http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/sep/26musharraf1.htm
former Indian Army chief Gen V P Malik on Tuesday said there was a lot of fabrication about the Kargil conflict in his book In the Line of Fire.

"The book is stingy on truth. From the accounts I have read, it appears to be a narration with no references and there appears to be a lot of fabrication," Malik, who was the army chief during the 1999 conflict, told PTI.
..
Malik, who recently wrote a book on Kargil titled From Surprise to Victory, said though Musharraf and Sharif could debate on whose decision it was to withdraw the troops, there was information that Musharraf had 'persuaded Nawaz to visit the United States and meet the then US president [Bill] Clinton'.

Rubbishing the claims made by Musharraf that India had planned an offensive against Pakistan, which led to the action in Kargil, Malik said, "This is not true.

"Either he had very poor intelligence or thinks that others are too naive," he said.

http://www.newkerala.com/news4.php?action=fullnews&id=27842
Jammu, Sep 26: A top Indian Army official Tuesday rebuffed the claim of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf that his country's army was victorious in the Kargil conflict in 1999.

"The whole world knows that Indian Army had thrown the Pakistani troops out of the Kargil," Lt. Gen. Deepak Kapur, chief of the Northern Command told reporters in Udhampur, the headquarters of the unit.

Kargil falls under the jurisdiction of the Northern Command.

"If Pakistan is seeing defeat as its victory, it is purely up to them, how they look at the outcome."

Kapur, however, said at last Pakistan has admitted that its troops were involved in Kargil. "It is better late than never."

http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=141534
He goes on to claim that India was also developing its nuclear arsenal during these years. "Perhaps we are being supplied by the same network, the non-state proliferators."

He has gone crazy too in his "book tour" in the US.

http://us.rediff.com/news/2006/sep/27mush.htm?q=tp&file=.htm
Musharraf calls Karzai an Ostrich
..In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, only hours after Karzai had described Musharraf as 'his brother President Musharraf,' in a joint press conference with Bush at the White House, Musharraf said, "He is not oblivious, he knows everything, but he is purposely denying -- turning a blind eye like an ostrich. He doesn't want to tell the world what is the fact for his own personal reasons. That is what I think."..


http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/September/subcontinent_September996.xml&section=subcontinent&col=
OTTAWA - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf bluntly told Canadians on Tuesday to stop complaining about the number of soldiers they were losing in Afghanistan, saying Canada’s death toll was far less than Pakistan’s.:eek: :confused: :rolleyes:

I just love defeatists. It's so much fun to see them flap about in the wind when their predictions turn out wrong. :p

Is the sky red in the world where you live?