KABUL (Reuters) – When NATO leaders gather for a summit in Lisbon next week, where Afghanistan will top the agenda, they can expect a message waiting for them from the Taliban.
That message may well be a violent demonstration of their staying power, even though Washington and U.S. and NATO commanders have been talking up recent successes in Afghanistan before the summit and a strategy review by President Barack Obama next month.
This comes as many European NATO members begin to look at how long they can keep justifying their commitments to an increasingly unpopular war, and as Obama remains committed to beginning a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops from July 2011 before the 2014 goal set by Kabul to take total security responsibility.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Fears of false flag and foreign funded covert operations designed to influence U.S. policy drove the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to launch exhaustive investigations and call for warranted enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). A newly declassified March 17, 1961 memo unsealed and released by the National Archives and Records Administration on October 21, 2010 outlined the Senate's rationale for investigating Israel lobbying groups and other foreign agents active across the United States.
“In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels…..there have been occasions when representatives of other governments have been privately accused of engaging in covert activities within the United States and elsewhere, for the purpose of influencing United States Policy (the Lavon Affair).”
The Lavon Affair refers to a false flag Israeli terrorist bombing plot code named “Operation Susannah” against U.S. targets in Egypt. It was designed to reverse U.S. policy pressuring British withdrawals and reverting control of the Suez Canal to Egypt. Israeli agents infiltrating as Arabs were discovered, arrested and criminally prosecuted in Egypt when their explosives malfunctioned, leading to a crisis in the Israeli government.
WASHINGTON — With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.
It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whether he wins or loses.
That is all the more reason that Mr. Obama’s choices are certain to face scrutiny in a narrowly divided Senate, whose Republican leadership has declared itself intent on defeating him.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he plans to retire next year, while the terms of four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to end: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman; Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman; Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief; and Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations.
Phi Beta Iota: The current and prospective leaders being discussed and considered are all inter-changeable. They share the same paradigmatic views, the same commitment to the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), and therefore, to suggest that changing out the guard is in any way an option, is to demonstrate profound naivete or a gift for deception. President Obama is truly at a historic fork in the road: he can go on with business as usual, bailing out Wall Street and carrying on with a global military cmapaign that is both ineffective and unaffordable–or he can reach deep down and come up with one startling insight and two serious options.
Startling insight: integrity matters. Doing the right thing is more important than continuing to do the wrong thing righter.
Option A: Make Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points) the issue. That will burn down the two-party tyranny and restore the Republic WHILE EARNING HIM A SECOND TERM.
Option B: Hold an Open Space Technology event on the future of the USA in all its forms, in the Washington Convention Center, a no-notice open public event, with Harrison Owen as the facilitator.
Sadly, we are quite certain neither the startling insight nor either of the two options will be considered. The Titanic is sinking and the President is being asked to re-arrange the name cards…..thus does the Republic flail in the tar pit of history.
We predict, with a depth of despair, that Obama will choose to go along and eventually be as wealthy as Bill Bradley and Al Gore. He is one phone call away from greatness, and won't do it. He lives, we die.
The US commander in Afghanistan, David Petraeus, has drafted a timetable for the handing over of control of its provinces to local security forces. The news emerged as officials recovered the bodies of five of 16 policemen who vanished a week ago after an apparent Taliban attack on their remote base.
General Petraeus's colour-coded map includes a small number of ”green” areas, designated for handover within six months, the London newspaper The Times reported.
The plan, which will be presented to NATO leaders at a summit in Lisbon on November 19, indicates that the western province of Herat will be handed over early, while NATO forces are expected to remain in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand for at least two more years.
KABUL—Add another group to the list of people with a message for the newly elected U.S. Congress: the Taliban.
In a rambling “open letter” to Congress, the Taliban's spokesman said he wanted to present American lawmakers with “a true picture of the ground realities” of the war in Afghanistan, which he insisted the U.S. can't win.
The spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousaf Ahmadi, called on Congress to send a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, apparently ignorant of the fact that representatives and senators visit Afghanistan all the time. But American lawmakers rarely leave heavily guarded U.S. facilities, moving only in armored convoys,…
Phi Beta Iota: While this initiative demonstrates the Taliban's understanding of history–Viet-Nam redux, it also shows their lack of understanding of Washington. We have absolutely no doubt that at least three lobbying firms have a team enroute to Pakistan to make contact and offer their services. They will accept bricks of #4 heroin, no extra charge for laundering currency. We are really surprised Halliburton did not think of this, Brown & Root seems to already have the smuggling channel for the drugs and money in place. Next up: a slick video and some YouTube snippets that go viral, under the broad campaign slogan of “Ground Truth from Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan: An Afghan national army soldier fired on foreign troops at a military compound in Sangin district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, after which he sought refuge with the Taliban, who took him to a safe location, a Taliban spokesman said 5 November, Afghan Islamic Press reported. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF) press office said it had received information about the incident and had launched an investigation to ascertain its veracity. The ISAF will release further details once the investigation is complete.
Comment: As noted previously, defection to the Taliban is contagious. Once it takes root among the Pashtuns, it will become unstoppable.
Taliban: A Taliban leader named Mullah Aminullah – an authentic associate of Mullah Omar — gave a televised interview to a Karachi television station in which he restated the longstanding Taliban position on negotiations. He said the Taliban will not engage in any peace talks as long as the Americans are in Afghanistan. The Taliban announced jihad when the infidels came to the country from everywhere, hence the movement will not negotiate. When these foreigners leave the country, the Taliban can speak about peace then.
Comment: Many would-be leaders pretend to speak for the Taliban without the authorization of Mullah Omar. Others pretend to speak for other anti-government groups, who are misinterpreted as the Taliban. Aminullah is in neither group. Taliban are in no hurry.
Russia-CSTO-US-Afghanistan: Russia and six former Soviet republics in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Thursday urged NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to end their “ineffective tactics” of pushing militants from combat zones in the south to other areas, especially the once relatively peaceful north.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, speaking on behalf of the CSTO, told the UN General Assembly that four of the organization's members – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – are in the central Asian region bordering Afghanistan and are concerned about the growing instability in the north caused by ineffective NATO tactics.
Churkin said the campaign by international and Afghan forces against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds is ineffective because it is “squeezing militants from the combat zones, which allows them to maintain their combat power and relocate to other parts of the country including northbound.”
Churkin also said Russian troops engaged in anti-drug operations will continue. One Afghan elder in Shinwar District, Nangarhar Province said after last week's NATO-Russian-Afghan drug raid, that if he had known there were Russians, he would have killed them.
Comment: The Afghan presidency has accused the NATO command of agreeing to re-introduce Russian troops without his consent, even though Afghan police participated in the raid. The press accounts indicate somebody forgot to tell the Afghan president that the Russians are back.
Obviously there is more to the story than what is in the press. Nevertheless, any serious student of Afghanistan must know that the Pashtuns hate the Russians more than the Americans. The prospect of killing Russians is a larger recruiting incentive for the Taliban than killing Americans.
LONDON — Months after he was released from Guantánamo Bay, Abdul Rahman was back in the company of terrorist leaders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But he was a double agent, providing Taliban and al Qaeda secrets to Pakistani intelligence, which then shared the tips with Western counterparts.
The ruse cost him his life, according to a former Pakistani military intelligence official, Mahmood Shah. The Taliban began to suspect him, and after multiple interrogations executed him.
The case of Rahman, which Shah recounted to The Associated Press, falls in line with a key aspect of the fight against terror — Western intelligence agencies, with help from Islamic allies, are placing moles and informants inside al Qaeda and the Taliban. The program seems to be bearing fruit, even as many infiltrators like Rahman are discovered and killed.
It was a tip from an al Qaeda militant-turned-informant that led international authorities to find explosives hidden in printer cartridges from Yemen to the United States a week ago, Yemeni security officials say. Officials say the explosives could have caused a blast as deadly as the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.
Phi Beta Iota: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) done right, in the context of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) done right, is the cheapest, fastest, and most effective means of creating intelligence (decision-support) at all levels from strategic to tactical. After ten years of letting CIA get away with doing both badly, and ten years of the Pentagon's recovering from treating its HUMINT and CI people like shit, it appears that adults are finally back in charge. We continue to under-budget for operational HUMINT and OSINT, and we continue to grossly over-spend on contractor vapor-ware for technical capabilities that simply do not deliver 96% of what what we need, but that is a separate issue. It is good to see HUMINT (not OSINT) making some progress. However, the continued absence of a strategic analytic model and honest governance means that these capabilities are not being focused on transnational crime or on white collar crime, where the most significant gains in the public interest are to be achieved.
