The attached BBC report/video by John Simpson describing Afghan attitudes toward the US/UK exit struck me as bizarre. The weight of Simpson's gist is that most Afghans do not want us to leave. But the report based most of its information on interviews in Kabul and only a short part (the wobbly part) on the countryside where the vast majority of Afghans live — i.e., Helmand. Simpson did not mention of Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and the border areas with Pakistan,nor did he mention the western areas like Herat, or the Northern areas. So I asked an Afghan friend who follows events in Afghanistan closely for his take on this report. Attached below the video link is my friend's reaction and a NYT piece with yellow highlights.
(BBC) The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson visited Kabul, a city he knows well, to discover what shape Afghan government forces are in and whether the Taliban could take over after UK and American troops leave.
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Email from Mr. X
(a highly educated Afghan — ethnic Pashtun — an expat living in Europe)
Iran: For the record. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report passed to member states that Iran “has ceased enriching uranium above five percent” fissile purity at the Natanz and Fordo facilities. The report also said that Iran was also converting its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium into uranium oxide, a diluted form.
The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster. The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs. This will be the fourth time for the Brits. For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs. Predictably, President Obama's surge in 2010 failed to stem the downward spiral, largely because its central premise: namely the plan to rapidly build up competent professional Afghan security forces was a logically flawed. Now, according to recent polls, a larger percentage of Americans oppose the war than was the case in VietNam. Yet in contrast to Vietnam, the American people are not angry — they seem to be disinterested, tired, and want to move on; one thing is clear, however, they show no sign of energizing a political desire to hold the military accountable for the Afghan or Iraq disasters.
Today, Versailles on the Potomac is far more lathered up by former defense secretary Robert Gates attempt to protect the Bush clan and to distract attention away from the Pentagon's culpability by fingering Obama for the Afghan failure. To be sure Obama deserves a great deal of blame for the debacle, particularly the consequences of his bungled decision to escalate what he said was the “good war.” Moreover, Obama can not say he was not warned about the dangers of escalating well before the fact. On the other hand, as Patrick Cockburn explains below, the roots of the Afghan mess go back to the failure to defeat the Taliban in 2002 and the toxic mix of corruption and warlordism in the regime we imposed on the Afghan people — and those are problems Obama inherited. In short, there is plenty of blame to go around, not to mention the warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his infantile sidekick Lindsey Graham.
Cockburn' essay gives the reader an idea of the dire state of affairs in Arghanistan. He summarizes a devastating 30 December 2013 report written by Thomas Ruttig of the esteemed Afghan Analysts Network, also attached in PDF format [below the line after the article] for your convenience. I urge you to read Ruttig's report.
I am writing to share with you my new article, “Russia, Iran and China in Latin America,” just published by the American Foreign Policy Committee in their e-journal “Defense Dossier.” The work comparatively examines the activities of the three extra-regional actors in Latin America and the Caribbean, including ways in which commercial and governmental initiatives by each compliment (and occasionally conflict or compete with) each other. I emphasize that each actor presents a different type of challenge to US interests in the region, on a different time-scale.
Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia: Has House of Saud Seen Its Stalingrad?
The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result of two predominately Eurocentric world wars. When George Orwell wrote his book 1984 and talked about a perpetual war between the fictional entities of Oceania and Eurasia, he may have had a general idea about the current events that are going on in mind or he may have just been thinking of the struggle between the Soviet Union and, surrounded by two great oceans, the United States of America.
So what does Volgograd have to do with the dizzying notion presented? Firstly, it is not schizophrenic to tie the events in Volgograd to either the conflict in the North Caucasus and to the fighting in Syria or to tie Syria to the decades of fighting in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. The fighting in Syria and the North Caucuses are part of a broader struggle for the mastery over Eurasia. The conflicts in the Middle East are part of this very grand narrative, which to many seems to be so far from the reality of day to day life.
Attached is a very different analysis of emerging politics in the Middle East. I do not know what to make of it. Some of it rings true to me, like the pressures on Turkey to shift gears … but taken together, I just don't know. I welcome any comments, pro or con, about it.
I do not know anything about this publication or the writer. The web site says Al-AkhbarEnglish is based in Lebanon and its editorial aim is to make debates and analyses circulating in Arabic media accessible to English speakers worldwide. It also says it wants to uphold standards of high journalistic integrity while remaining true the the principles of anti-imperialist struggle, progressive politics, and freedom of expression. If the highlighting and reformatting distraction, the original format can be found at the link. CS
By Sharmine Narwani – Sat, 2013-12-21 18:11- Sandbox
Many observers are correct in noting that the Middle East is undergoing yet another seismic shift – that the Russian-brokered destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, a US-Iranian rapprochement, the diminished strategic value of Saudi Arabia and Israel, and a US withdrawal from Afghanistan will all contribute to changing regional dynamics considerably.
Map of ‘Security Arc' by S. Narwani, E. Adaime, A. Amacha
But what is this new direction? Where will it come from, who will lead it, what will define it?
It has now become clear that the new Mideast “direction” is guided primarily by the “security threat” posed by the proliferation of extremist, sectarian, Islamist fighters in numbers unseen even in Afghanistan or Iraq.
This shared danger has been the impetus behind a flurry of global diplomatic deals that has spawned unexpected cooperation between a diverse mix of nations, many of them adversaries.
These developments come with a unique, post-imperialist twist, though. For the first time in decades, this direction will be led from inside the region, by those Mideast states, groups, sects and parties most threatened by the extremism.
Because nobody else is coming to “save” the Middle East today.
Syria: President Bashar Asad Monday called for a battle against Wahhabism, the political and religious theology embraced by the Saudi Arabian government that backs the Sunni uprising against his regime.
“President Assad said that extremists and Wahhabi thought distort the real Islam, which is tolerant,” state news agency SANA reported. He underlined the role of men of religion in fighting against Wahhabi thought, which is foreign to our societies, according to Asad.
Wahhabism is an ultra-conservative Muslim tradition, which is predominant in Saudi Arabia and whose intolerant precepts govern Saudi religious, civilian and political life. It is a sect of Sunni Islam, whose leaders profess has no sects.
