Category: Key Players

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NIGHTWATCH Extract on Afghanistan

08 Wild Cards

Afghanistan: A report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that the United States does not know the capability of the Afghanistan security forces at this time, Reuters reported 28 June, citing U.S. auditors.

According to the report, rankings used to grade Afghan forces varied greatly from one region to another, personnel numbers for the Afghan army were overstated and widespread corruption and drug abuse among Afghan security forces as well as logistics issues plagued the effort to develop independent Afghan forces.

Comment: Open source information on Afghan security force casualties in April and May tends to reinforce the IG report. As US and Western force casualties began to rise, Afghan Army and Police casualties declined, in open source reporting. The data suggested the Afghans were sitting back, letting US and Western forces engage and be engaged by the Taliban, even in joint operations.

Enlistment in the security forces is a jobs program, rather than a career in the Western sense. There is a strong military tradition in Afghanistan, but it resides primarily in the Pashtuns, who are the Taliban today. When Pashtuns enlist, they are infiltrators from the Taliban. The numbers of Afghan army and police personnel are fictitious, but that should not be news.

NIGHTWATCH

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Journal: McChrystal Out Petraeus In Obama Loots On…

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Military

CounterPunch Diary
Loose-Lip McChrystal Did Obama a Huge Favor
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Counterpunch
Just when Barack Obama's presidency was drowning in BP's crude oil, a megalomaniacal US Army general called Stanley McChrystal, commander of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, did him several huge favors

Phi Beta Iota:  Absolutely worth the full read.  Both the White House and the Departments of State and Defense are “out of control” while the rest of the government is simply “out to lunch.”  In relation to the art of the possible and the science of the necessary, the US Government appears to have hit bottom.

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Reference: Small Arms Survey 2010: Gangs, Groups, and Guns

01 Poverty, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, References

Link to report

Small Arms Survey 2010: Gangs, Groups, and Guns
The Small Arms Survey 2010 reviews a range of issues related to gangs and armed groups, focusing on their use of violence, as well as emerging efforts to prevent and curb the damage they inflict on society. The volume includes studies of prison gangs, girls in gangs, and pro-government groups; it also features case studies from Ecuador and Southern Sudan. Rounding out the book is original research on the global ammunition trade and on options for controlling illicit firearm transfers by air.

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Journal: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Punjab, and Taliban

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman Recommends...
By Ahmad Majidyar  |  AEI Online
(June 2010)

Key points in this Outlook:

  • Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and al Qaeda have teamed up with Punjabi militant and sectarian groups to destabilize Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.
  • Although the militants have yet to assert the same control in southern Punjab that they did in Swat Valley or Waziristan, there are signs that such a scenario is possible.
  • Counterterrorism, intelligence, and police operations are more likely to make inroads than outright military operations.

See Also:  Press Release RAND 21 June 2010, Failed Strategy to Half Pakistan-Based Militant Groups Has Helped Lead to Rising Number of US Terror Plots; and report, Counterinsurgency in Pakistan.  Phi Beta Iota:  Pakistan has displaced Saudi Arabia as the primary sponsor of international terrorism (along with the Israeli Mossad that fills in when needed).  The US is deliberately blind to this reality.

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Journal: Why Taliban is Winning in Afghanistan–VERY IMPORTANT

08 Wild Cards, Military
Chuck Spinney Recommends

The attached article was brought to my attention by a highly-educated, well-read medical doctor of Pashtun descent now living in the UK.  It should be studied closely and ought to be mandatory reading in the White House, before the President gets stampeded by McChrystal debacle, the accession of General Petraeus, and his fellow travelers in the War Party (Democrats as well as Republicans) into backing away from President Obama's withdrawal deadline.  CS

Why the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan
By William Dalrymple – New Statesman – 22/06/2010
http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/06/british-afghanistan-government

As Washington and London struggle to prop up a puppet government over which Hamid Karzai has no control, they risk repeating the blood-soaked 19th-century history of Britain’s imperial defeat.

In 1843, shortly after his return from Afghanistan, an army chaplain, Reverend G R Gleig, wrote a memoir about the First Anglo-Afghan War, of which he was one of the very few survivors. It was, he wrote, “a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, has Britain acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated.”

FULL STORY ONLINE

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Journal: Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Military

Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp

by Ray McGovern, Consortium News, June 25, 2010
Raymond McGovern (born 1939) is a retired CIA officer turned political activist (see biography).

Is President Barack Obama so dense that he could not see why Gen. Stanley McChrystal might actually have wanted to be fired — and rescued from the current March of Folly in Afghanistan, a mess much of his own making?

McChrystal leaves behind a long trail of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. For example, there is no real security, at least during the night, in Marja, which McChrystal devoted enormous resources to conquer this spring.

Remember his boast that he would then bring to Marja a “government-in-box” and offer an object lesson regarding what was in store for those pesky Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city?

But it’s now clear that there will be no offensive against Kandahar anytime soon. On its merits, that is surely a good thing, but it is a huge embarrassment for McChrystal and his former boss, the never nonplussed Gen. David Petraeus.

When McChrystal and his undisciplined senior aides let a Rolling Stone reporter know what they really thought of the “intimidated” Obama and most of his national security team, Obama and his advisers rose to the bait.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Phi Beta Iota:  Ray McGovern is a man of intelligence and integrity.  He gives General McChrystal too much credit here for a contrived exit, while at the same time touching on the pathethic lack of integrity in the White House, happy to sacrifice lives of “the little people” if it can embroil General Patraeus, who never had a shot at the Presidency, in a one-man quagmire.  What Obama has just done is treason in the purest sense of the word: there has been no strategic analysis, no Whole of Government conceptualization of what we need to do to rescue America while disengaging from a lecacy of 50 years of colonialism, militarism, and predatory immoral capitalism.  Obama is treating the US military–and especially General Patraeus who should have known better than to accept– as a pawn on the political chess-board–at the same time that he is, with malice aforethought, doing nothing at all in the public interest, just counting the days to his Goldman Sachs retirement package.   Shame.  Shame.  Shame.

Article recommended by Chuck Spinney.

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NIGHTWATCH on Afghanistan, Pakistan, & India

03 India, 08 Wild Cards

Pakistan-Afghan: Expressing dissatisfaction about the deteriorating Afghan situation, Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi said that talks are the only solution to the Afghan problem and no military means can bring peace. Qureshi spoke in a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart Dr. Zalmai Rasoul.

Qureshi said they discussed the security situation, especially the efforts of the Afghan government to ensure stability through reconciliation. The countries agreed to enhance bilateral relations in politics, trade and economic among other fields.

The foreign minister said peace and security in Afghanistan is important for Pakistan therefore, Pakistan has sincerely offered assistance, cooperation and training facilities to Afghanistan in all the fields, including training Afghan military so that a well trained Afghan Army can take over the responsibility of the security in their country.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The meeting is significant as a sign of shifting relationships. An Afghan official tilt towards Pakistan is being reciprocated by Pakistani moves towards Afghanistan, as described in the New York Times. Since last year's presidential elections, President Karzai's relations with the US have become strained. The emergence of strain in the US relationship appears to be the precursor to a warming trend with Pakistan.

The shifting ties have mixed implications. Pakistan invested heavily in the Taliban regime in Kabul before 2001, as part of a strategy to provide depth against India. The Pashtuns were the primary beneficiaries of Pakistani support against the northerners who eventually sided with the US in overthrowing the Taliban.

Nevertheless, Pakistani behavior and continuing reports indicate the national security leaders in Islamabad have not, probably cannot, abandon that strategy. They only can de-emphasize it temporarily as a matter of expediency. The Times article and Qureshi's remarks both point in the direction of power sharing, starting with the ex-royalists, the Haqqanis.

Pakistan also is in a position to do much more, provided it has a key role in arranging the power sharing. Pakistan's tactics are more nuanced, but the policy of using Afghanistan to gain strategic depth against India appears to be still in place. Afghanistan's handling of Indian relations, aid and infrastructure construction companies will be a good indirect measure of rising Pakistani influence in Kabul. If Indian Border Roads Organization units are invited to leave Afghanistan, for example, the tilt to Pakistan

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