Guantanamo Was "Hell On Earth": Former Gitmo Detainee

While it's necessary to take reports from detainees from Guantanamo with a grain of salt. However, when someone who is released when he got home, then probably they didn't belong there in the first place. While I don't doubt this man exaggerated, I also don't doubt there were psychological casualties at Gitmo, including numerous suicides.

AlterNet:

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'Some of my colleagues in the prison lost their sight, some lost their limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed,' recalls Mohamed Saleban Bare. 'I'm OK compared to them.'

A Somali just home from eight years in the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay told AFP the prison was "hell on Earth," and alleged torture there had scarred some of his fellow inmates.

Mohamed Saleban Bare, who arrived in his hometown of Hargeisa on Saturday, said he was innocent of any charges that would have caused security forces to arrest him in Pakistan in 2001 and transfer him to the U.S. jail via Afghanistan.

[..]"At Bagram and Kandahar, the situation was harsh but when we were transferred to Guantanamo the torture tactics changed. They use a kind of psychological torture that kills you mentally," he said.

This included depriving prisoners of sleep for at least four nights in a row and feeding them once a day with only a biscuit, he said.

"And in the cold they let you sleep without a blanket. Some of the inmates face harsher torture, including with electricity and beating," he said.

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US surge plays into Taliban hands

The war in Afghanistan was never winnable. What was doable, was Senator Kerry's 2004 Campaign idea of a police action against Al Qaeda.

Asia Times Online

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"The jihadi war room is now aware that the administration has narrowed its scope to defeat the so-called al-Qaeda organization, limiting its goal to depriving the Taliban from achieving full victory - ie depriving them of 'the momentum'. In strategic wording, this means that the administration won't give the time and the means, let alone the necessary long-term commitment, to fully defeat the Taliban as a militia and militant network."

The jihadi strategists now understand that Washington's advisers still recommend talking to the Taliban, the entire Taliban, but only after the latter feels weak and pushed back enough to seek such talks. Underneath this perception, the Salafi Islamists' analysts realize that present American analysis concludes that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are two different things, and that it is possible to defeat the first and eventually engage the second.

Such a jihadi understanding of the US's defective perceptions will give the Taliban and al-Qaeda a first advantage: knowing that your enemy, the United States, isn't seeing you as you really are.

Strategic engagement
The US has reconfirmed that the goal of the mission in Afghanistan is to destroy al-Qaeda and train the Afghan armed forces, but not to engage in nation-building. Unlike previous American commitments, which weren't very successful anyway, the current strategy officially ignores the ideological battle.

Hence the Taliban understand that their lifeline to further recruitment based on madrassa (seminary) graduates is wide open. Washington's efforts and dollars won't touch the ideological factory of jihadism, which is the strategic depth of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Hence, the jihadi network in Afghanistan will continue and further develop its indoctrination structures, untouched and unbothered by American military escalation. US Marines and other NATO allies will be fighting today's Taliban, while tomorrow's jihadis will be receiving their instruction in full tranquility.

By the time the US deadline to withdraw is reached, in 2011, 2012 or even beyond, the future forces of the enemy will be ready to be deployed. One wave of terrorists will be weakened by the action of the US and NATO armed forces, while the next wave will be prepared to take over later.

Deadly deadline
The administration's plan included a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan (although reinterpreted as the beginning of withdrawal). Basing their assessment on the notion of "no open-ended engagement", the shapers of the new Afghanistan strategy have told the enemy's war room on camera that America's time in Afghanistan is until 2013 maximum, after which it will be Taliban time again.

As many analysts have concluded, all the jihadis war planners have to do is to wait out the hurricane of escalation. The deadly deadline proposed in the strategy has no precedent in the history of confrontation with totalitarian forces. The Taliban have already waited out eight years; what are two, three or eight more years, if the US-led coalition's action is not qualitatively (not just quantitatively) different?

As presented to the Afghan people, the administration's new plan for the battlefield is seen as a last surge before the general exit of the country. The Taliban's war room has understood the equation. Thirty thousand more US troops will deploy with their heavy equipment, backed by another 5,000 to 10,000 allied forces. Offensives will take place in southern Helmand province and other areas. Special forces will move to multiple places and shelling will harass the Islamist militias for as long as two years or more.

The Taliban will incur losses and al-Qaeda's operatives will be put under heavier pressure: all that is noted in Taliban leader Mullah Omar's book and saved on the laptop of al-Qaeda's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Then what?

Then the time for exit arrives, and US and NATO forces begin their withdrawal. When that happens, the surviving Taliban, plus the new wave just graduating from madrassas, or the jihadi volunteers sent from the four corners of the virtual "caliphate", will have a choice to make: either they will accept the US negotiators' offer to join the Afghan government or - depending on their assessment then - reject the offer and shell the "infidel troops" as they pull out.
In a nutshell, the new strategy is convenient to the Taliban war room: they now can figure it all out until the Mayan year of 2012 - and way beyond.

All that it takes for democracies to offer the totalitarians victories is to not understand the latter's long-term goals. And the US has just done that, so far.

Dr Walid Phares is director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.

(Copyright 2009 Walid Phares.)

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Obama Vows to Finish Job

Obama is playing with fire in what will be now remembered as Obama's war. The military situation is untenable. The opium poppy production is out of control, again. Apparently he's decided by bribing everyone in Afghanistan, he can protect the troops. But what his military objectives will be have to wait until next week.

Informed Comment: Obama Vows to Finish Job; <br> Heroin Trade Thrives; <br> Afghanistan, Inc.?

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"As for Obama's hope that the US public will rally around the flag, I wouldn't count on it over the medium to long term. His Democratic base is tired of war and of our quasi-martial-law state of siege. If he wants their support, he has to fight an extremely abbreviated war.

So I think it is entirely possible that Obama will be 0 for 2 if he escalates in Afghanistan. And it is extremely dangerous for him to go on alienating his base, which wants peace and prosperity, with policies that make rightwing Republicans happy-- coddling bankers in a jobless recovery and an escalation of an eight-year-old, increasingly unpopular war. The rightwing Republicans will vote for these measures in Congress, but put the blame on Obama for them, and benefit from Democratic disillusionment in 2012."

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Killings by Afghan policeman shake British resolve

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It would appear that Obama's War will fail. It's hard to imagine how to retrieve this one with the Taliban dominating the rural areas of the country.

Killings by Afghan policeman shake British resolve

"The deaths of five British soldiers gunned down by an Afghan policeman as they made tea after a patrol has shaken public support for the war in Afghanistan, intensifying debate about the human cost of the conflict and increasing calls for a pullout.

If British troops can't trust the Afghan colleagues they are supposed to be training, critics asked Thursday, how can they fight the Taliban? And where does it leave an exit strategy that depends on handing over control to Afghan forces?"

The deaths dominated newspaper front pages, television news shows and radio phone-ins, even as the Ministry of Defense announced the death of another British soldier Thursday in an explosion in Helmand province.

Several newspapers used the same photo, of the bloodied flak jacket of one of the victims. "Gunned down as they had tea" said the Daily Mail. "A bloody betrayal," said The Times, while the Daily Mail asked: "What kind of war is this?"

Hundreds of people used Facebook and other sites to post tributes to the dead men, who included 18-year-old Guardsman Jimmy Major of the Grenadier Guards and Regimental Sgt. Major Darren Chant, the regiment's most senior noncommissioned officer.

"I don't think we ever should have gone there," said midwife Jane Cooke, 49, expressing an increasingly common view about Afghanistan. "There is an inner conflict going on there, and it's never going to be resolved."

Armed Forces Minister Bill Rammell insisted British troops must stay in Afghanistan until the country's own security forces are ready to take over.

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Are the Haqqanis next on Pakistan's hit list?

The ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency continues to be a controversial force. It appears to be getting a free pass in North Waziristan while it attacks the Pakistan Taliban in South Waziristan. Pakistan still sees the appeal of the Afghan Taliban while it seeks influence in the events in both Afghanistan and Kashmir.

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Are the Haqqanis next on Pakistan's hit list? | FP Passport.

New York Times journalist David Rohde's account of his kidnapping and subsequent escape from Taliban militants affiliated with the Haqqani network in North Waziristan region of Pakistan makes for riveting reading. It's an amazing story, and one has to admire Rohde's fortitude and survival instincts during his seven-month ordeal.

Read all of it, but I just have one comment about this bit from the epilogue:

My suspicions about the relationship between the Haqqanis and the Pakistani military proved to be true. Some American officials told my colleagues at The Times that Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, turns a blind eye to the Haqqanis' activities. Others went further and said the ISI provided money, supplies and strategic planning to the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups.

Pakistani officials told my colleagues that the contacts were part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan to prevent India, Pakistan's archenemy, from gaining a foothold. One Pakistani official called the Taliban "proxy forces to preserve our interests."

Meanwhile, the Haqqanis continue to use North Waziristan to train suicide bombers and bomb makers who kill Afghan and American forces. They also continue to take hostages.

We'll see how long this relationship holds, but if you need any convincing that the ISI at least tacitly allows the Haqqani folks to do their thing unmolested, consider this: To get to South Waziristan, where the Pakistani Army is engaged in a fierce battle with the Pakistani Taliban around the Makin area, which is dominated by the Mehsud tribal grouping, some units had to drive through North Waziristan. In fact, they drove right through the center of Miram Shah, the regional capital and Haqqani stronghold where Rohde made his escape -- and there was just one isolated IED attack along the way.

What does that tell us? At a minimum, it tells us that the powers that be in North Waziristan are being very cooperative and not coming to the Mehsuds' aid. And supposedly, the Haqqanis and their local allies, led by another Pakistani Taliban leader named Hafiz Gul Bahadar, have explicitly pledged not to interfere. The Pakistani military has struck a number of much-criticized peace deals with Bahadar over the last few years, and some say the security establishment in Rawalpindi is all too happy to keep this relationship alive so long as the Haqqanis and Bahadar only launch attacks in Afghanistan, not at home.

American officials have been hinting in recent weeks, however, that the Pakistani military is simply tackling one challenge at a time -- the Mehsuds -- and the Haqqanis may be next on their hit list. That's certainly what AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke and Amb. Ann Patterson seem to be telling Frontline, though one can detect a little daylight between the two U.S. diplomats. In Holbrooke's words, the Pakistanis "are quite clear in their own minds that Haqqani poses a threat to both Afghanistan and Pakistan." Patterson says, "[W]e're working with them on these, and I think they increasingly see these [other] groups as a threat as well" -- but Pakistan is not willing to turn on them yet.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is still conducting airstrikes in North Waziristan, which is still teeming with foreign militants and where it's widely thought that Osama bin Laden has hidden out at one point or another during the last few years. This is definitely a story to watch.

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Al-Qaeda's guerrilla chief lays out strategy

While Obama administration debates the fate of the US presence in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda regional war continues to achieve and expand it's objective. One of it's star field commanders, Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, a veteran of the Kashmiri war with India and past darling of Pakistan ISI, invites a reporter to demonstrate his death has been greatly exaggerated. He gives a fascinating explanation of Al Qaeda's regional strategy without giving anything away.

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Pakistan is at critical juncture, with the armed forces gathered in their largest-ever numbers (almost a corps, as many as 60,000 troops) around South Waziristan to flush out the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Taliban (PTT), al-Qaeda and their allies from the Pakistani tribal areas.

In these tense times, Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaeda leader who, according to American intelligence is al-Qaeda's head of military operations and whose death they wrongly confirmed in a recent US Predator drone attack in North Waziristan, spoke to Asia Times Online.

He invited this correspondent to a secret hideout in the South Waziristan-Afghanistan border area, where drones regularly fly overhead.

[..]"Saleem! I will draw your attention to the basics of the present war theater and use that to explain the whole strategy of the upcoming battles. Those who planned this battle actually aimed to bring the world's biggest Satan [US] and its allies into this trap and swamp [Afghanistan]. Afghanistan is a unique place in the world where the hunter has all sorts of traps to choose from.

"It might be deserts, rivers, mountains and the urban centers as well. This was the thinking of the planners of this war who were sick and tired of the great Satan's global intrigues and they aim for its demise to make this world a place of peace and justice. However, the great Satan was full of arrogance of its superiority and thought of Afghans as helpless statues who would be hit from all four sides by its war machines, and they would not have the power and capacity to retaliate.

"This was the illusion on which a great alliance of world powers came to Afghanistan, but due to their misplaced conceptions they gradually became trapped in Afghanistan. Today, NATO does not have any significance or relevance. They have lost the war in Afghanistan. Now, when they realized their defeat, they developed an emphasis that this entire battle is being fought from outside of Afghanistan, that is, the two Waziristans. To me, this military thesis is a mirage which has created a complex situation in the region and created reactions and counter-reactions. I would not like to go into the details, to me that was nothing but deviation. As a military commander, the reality is that the trap of Afghanistan is successful and the basic military targets on the ground have been achieved," Ilyas said.

I responded that the relocation of 313 Brigade from Kashmir was itself proof that foreign hands were involved in Afghanistan.

"The entire basis of your argument is wrong, that this war is being fought from outside of Afghanistan. This is just an out-of-context understanding of the whole situation. If you discuss myself and 313 Brigade, I decided to join the Afghan resistance as an individual and I had quite a reason for that. Everybody knows that only a decade ago I was fighting a war of liberation for my homeland Kashmir.

"However, I realized that decades of armed and political struggles could not help to inch forward a resolution of this issue. Nevertheless, East Timor's issue was resolved without losing much time. Why? Because the entire game was in the hands of the great Satan, the USA. Organs like the UN and countries like India and Israel were simply the extension of its resources and that's why there was a failure to resolve the Palestinian issue, the Kashmir issue and the plight of Afghanistan.

"So I and many people all across the world realized that analyzing the situation in any narrow regional political perspective was an incorrect approach. This is a different ball game altogether for which a unified strategy is compulsory. The defeat of American global hegemony is a must if I want the liberation of my homeland Kashmir, and therefore it provided the reasoning for my presence in this war theater.

Ilyas continued, "When I came here I found my step justified; how the world regional powers operate under the umbrella of the great Satan and how they are supportive of its great plans. This can be seen here in Afghanistan." He added that al-Qaeda's regional war strategy, in which they have hit Indian targets, is actually to chop off American strength.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

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One man's terrorist and State Sponsored Terrorism

India has been the long time one time supporter of the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka. Pakistan created the Taliban to enforce a friendly neighbor in Afghanistan. The US and Saudi Arabia created the precursors of Al Qaeda to help defeat the Russians in Afghanistan. It's all a game of deception and misdirection that needs to stop!

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One's man terrorist is another's freedom fighter. That at least was the comforting logic employed by a multitude of nations to justify their support for insurgents indulging in violence against civilian populations. In the past few months though, enough has happened to justify a more civilized course of action by all countries.

Three of Asia's most-wanted terrorists have been killed over the

course of the past few months alone: Velupillai Prabhakaran of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka in May, Baitullah Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban in August and Noordin Mohammad Top of the Jemaah Islamiah in September in Indonesia. The apparent trigger for the successes was a change in heart of the terrorists' key sponsors.

Many other terrorists have been either captured or killed, but the stories of these three terrorists point to the use of "irregulars" to do the dirty job of various countries; and particularly in their own neighborhoods.

Details via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

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US Orchestrates Pakistan-India Talks While Kashmir Smolders

The US strong arms the Pakistani and Indian government to back channel talks. But it would appear that this is just an attempt to tamp down the secondary war theater in the region.

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Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi met for over 100 minutes, while their foreign secretaries had met earlier for even longer. The countries - which have fought several wars and which still differ over divided Kashmir - revived a peace initiative in 2004, but it stalled after Pakistan-based militants carried out a deadly raid on the Indian city of Mumbai in November last year.

Speaking after the meeting, Krishna said he rejected a Pakistani proposal to conduct informal talks while they waited for official dialogue to begin. Qureshi described the talks as "frank, positive and honest", saying he had not "minced any words" and that "negotiations are the only way for peaceful resolution of [outstanding] issues between the two countries".

Qureshi continued, "Now the situation in Pakistan is ... against the militants and in favor of peace and dialogue with India. We expect our Indian counterparts to take advantage of this situation and they should also mold public opinion in favor of dialogue."

Despite Krishna ruling out informal talks, the intervention of Washington is making this happen, with Pakistan already assigning Khan as a special envoy. He is a former foreign secretary and a current Pakistan Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Asia Times Online has learned that American officials will directly mediate and oversee the process of backchannel negotiations.

Like the billions of dollars annually the United States is giving to Pakistan in non-military and military aid and loans, the negotiations are primarily meant to provide support in the fight against terror.

In a recent report by General Stanley A McChrystal, parts of which were leaked to the press, the top US commander in Afghanistan said that India's political and economic influence in Afghanistan was increasing, including significant development projects and financial investment.

The report said the Afghan government was perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. "While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter-measures in Afghanistan or India."

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

Yet all is not in favor of a solution between Pakistan and India. Kashmir looms ominously as a war waiting to happen, in the middle of a region full of powder kegs.

The trouble is that Kashmir sits on the fault lines of a region that is awash in weapons and sliding into chaos. The Kashmiri freedom struggle, with its crystal clear sentiment but fuzzy outlines, is caught in the vortex of several dangerous and conflicting ideologies - Indian nationalism (corporate as well as "Hindu," shading into imperialism), Pakistani nationalism (breaking down under the burden of its own contradictions), US imperialism (made impatient by a tanking economy), and a resurgent medieval-Islamist Taliban (fast gaining legitimacy, despite its insane brutality, because it is seen to be resisting an occupation).

Each of these ideologies is capable of a ruthlessness that can range from genocide to nuclear war. Add Chinese imperial ambitions, an aggressive, reincarnated Russia, and the huge reserves of natural gas in the Caspian region and persistent whispers about natural gas, oil, and uranium reserves in Kashmir and Ladakh, and you have the recipe for a new cold war (which, like the last one, is cold for some and hot for others).

In the midst of all this, Kashmir is set to become the conduit through which the mayhem unfolding in Afghanistan and Pakistan spills into India, where it will find purchase in the anger of the young among India's 150 million Muslims who have been brutalized, humiliated and marginalized. Notice has been given by the series of terrorist strikes that culminated in the Mumbai attacks of 2008.

There is no doubt that the Kashmir dispute ranks right up there, along with Palestine, as one of the oldest, most intractable disputes in the world. That does not mean that it cannot be resolved. Only that the solution will not be completely to the satisfaction of any one party, one country, or one ideology. Negotiators will have to be prepared to deviate from the "party line."

Of course, we haven't yet reached the stage where the government of India is even prepared to admit that there's a problem, let alone negotiate a solution. Right now it has no reason to. Internationally, its stocks are soaring. And while its neighbors deal with bloodshed, civil war, concentration camps, refugees, and army mutinies, India has just concluded a beautiful election. However, "demon-crazy" can't fool all the people all the time. India's temporary, shotgun solutions to the unrest in Kashmir (pardon the pun), have magnified the problem and driven it deep into a place where it is poisoning the aquifers.

Is democracy melting?
Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, is the most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times. Thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been deployed there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from the elements.

The glacier has become a garbage dump now, littered with the detritus of war - thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents, and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly.

While the Indian and Pakistani governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the logistics of high-altitude warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt. Right now, it has shrunk to about half its size. The melting has less to do with the military standoff than with people far away, on the other side of the world, living the good life. They're good people who believe in peace, free speech, and in human rights. They live in thriving democracies whose governments sit on the United Nations Security Council and whose economies depend heavily on the export of war and the sale of weapons to countries like India and Pakistan. (And Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan ... it's a long list.)

The glacial melt will cause severe floods on the subcontinent, and eventually severe drought that will affect the lives of millions of people. That will give us even more reasons to fight. We'll need more weapons. Who knows? That sort of consumer confidence may be just what the world needs to get over the current recession. Then everyone in the thriving democracies will have an even better life - and the glaciers will melt even faster.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

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Obama said Wavering on Troop Escalation in Afghanistan

Juan Cole weighs in on the disaster that is Afghanistan. Apparently, Obama is considering a major change in direction, perhaps withdrawing troops instead of adding more. And Biden is leading that charge. Lets hope that Obama figures out that Biden is his foreign policy expert and defers to his judgment. Hillary is just another neo-con.

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The NYT says that President Barack Obama is reconsidering his plan to greatly increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, and to be suffering "buyer's remorse" for sending 21,000 more troops there soon after his inauguration and before a proper policy review. The article suggests a stark difference of opinion between vice president Joe Biden who has the most foreign policy experience of anyone in the administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Biden is said to favor fewer US troops and a focus on al-Qaeda in the Pakistani badlands. Clinton is afraid the Taliban will take back over Afghanistan and invite al-Qaeda back in there.

[..]You can't do development aid very effectively in a country beset by guerrilla violence. Moreover, counter-insurgency requires a legitimate, effective Afghan partner that can compete with the Taliban and their allies for Afghan hearts and minds. And, if counter-terrorism is really the goal, then you don't need a 60,000-man army in a country notoriously inhospitable to foreign armies.

The Obama administration seems to be considering whether these four levels can be usefully unentangled.

In particular, incumbent president Hamid Karzai's clumsy attempt to steal the election and his continued seeming inability really to take charge in the country he de jure rules, appears to have provoked the Obama team to wonder whether they could in fact work with Karzai.

Personally, I think Biden is right and that if the administration will bet on him, they'd put us 2 or 3 years ahead of the curve.

via Informed Comment: Obama said Wavering on Troop Escalation in Afghanistan

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Taliban's bombs came from US, not Iran

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Doctored intelligence reports continue to come out of CIA and other sources that appear to continue to support the agenda of the Bush Administration. Given this article, it would appear that this intelligence is disinformation designed to further the neo-con agenda. Fortunately, we have the Federation of American Scientists who are more interested in the truth.

Could this intelligence really be promoted by Obama Administration sources? I suppose it could, but it strikes me as much more likely that this flimsy evidence is from rogue intelligence sources given how easily it can be refuted.

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Taliban claim was cited by the ODNI in written responses to

questions for the record from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence following testimony by Blair before the committee on February 12, 2009. The responses were released to the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act on July 30.

ODNI wrote that Iran was "covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government". As evidence of such covert Iranian arms supply, the ODNI said, "Taliban commanders have publicly credited Iranian support for their successful operations against coalition forces."

That statement was taken almost word-for-word from the subtitle of an article published on the website of London's DailyTelegraph and Sunday Telegraph on September 14 last year. "A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan," read the sub-heading of the article "Taliban claim weapons supplied by Iran".

The single Taliban commander quoted became plural in the ODNI version.

via Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

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Are the Taliban Beating NATO on Logistics? Why Washington Needs Iran and Russia

Afghanistan has been invaded and conquered numerous times in the past 4000 years. The various Pashtun tribes have defeated the Soviet army in a 10 year war supported by the US. Paradoxically, after installing a fundamentalist Islamic regime and allowing their long time friend and conduit of money from the west bin Ladin to live and train mujaheddin for the fight in Central Asia. And it was only after 9/11 that the money from the US was cut off.

Strange bedfellows can make for unforeseen outcomes.

Image by Army.mil via Flickr

US Commander in Afghanistan General McChrystal presented a secret report to Defense Sec'y Gates and announced the US must change strategy or lose the war.

The United States and its allies must change strategy and boost cooperation to turn around the war in Afghanistan, the top U.S. and NATO commander there said on Monday, wrapping up a much-anticipated review.

U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said the situation was "serious" but the 8-year-old war could still be won. He gave no indication if he would ask for more troops but is widely expected to do so in the coming weeks.

With U.S. and NATO casualties at record levels in Afghanistan and doubts growing about the war in the United States and other NATO nations, McChrystal is under pressure to reverse Western fortunes within months.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," McChrystal said in a statement announcing his report was done.

Meanwhile, Juan Cole has the best information on what is actually going on in AfPak.

In Chaman, Dawn reports, "At least 15 oil tankers, trailers and containers caught fire in Chaman on Sunday night after a blast in a vehicle carrying supplies for Nato forces in Afghanistan." The NATO supply vehicle became a sitting duck because the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been closed for the last few days over a dispute about whether Pakistani border guards may search Afghan fruit trucks.

On the Afghan side of the border, militants from the Hizb-i Islami or "Islamic Party" of Gulbadin Hikmatyar "stormed a NATO supply convoy and torched at least 10 vehicles in the troubled eastern province of Kunar," according to Pajhwok News Service.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have used pockets of Pashtun populations in the north of the country as a base to take over three districts that allow them to block supplies coming in from Tajikistan, according to McClatchy.

In any case, the Taliban are obviously attempting to cut the supply routes that allow the US and NATO to keep their troops supplied with ammunition, fuel and food.

the US increasingly depends on Russian good will, and Iran is influential in Herat, Mazar, the Hazarah regions and Kabul. Iran can play a positive role in its two neighboring countries, de facto acting as an ally of the US. Or it could play spoiler.

[..]The United States has been made a hostage to Iran and Russia by George W. Bush's fooling miring of the US military in the midst of 300 million hostile, anti-imperialist Middle Easterners,

[..]Obama's presidency may succeed or flounder on his success in the recondite art of logistics, both in the strict military sense and in a wider metaphorical sense, of putting the right personnel and "assets" in place for political victories.

via Informed Comment: Are the Taliban Surrounding NATO Armies and Cutting them Off?
Why Washington Needs Iran and Russia.

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Truck bomb signals trouble on Russia’s southern flank

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Putin's handling of Chechnya is back firing, like the US's handling of Iraq/Afghan/Pak. Now perhaps we see why he was so forceful with Georgia, he needs all the allies he can get in the region, since enemies are everywhere. Ronald Reagan's creation of Al Qaeda continues to give the world nightmares.

A week of extremist attacks on Russia’s seething southern flank climaxed Monday with a suicide truck bombing in Ingushetia that killed at least 20 and injured scores outside a police station in the tiny republic’s main city, Nazran.

The resulting explosion triggered a “raging fire” that destroyed a weapons room, incinerated nearby cars, and damaged nearby apartment buildings, according to an Associated Press (AP) report from Nazran. It was one of the deadliest attacks in the region in years, the AP said.

Violence by Islamist insurgents, once confined mainly to separatist Chechnya, has gradually spread throughout much of Russia’s northern Caucasus, leaving Russian authorities increasingly unable to guarantee order, or even protect pro-Moscow officials, in the mainly Muslim region. (See map.)

For Moscow, the stakes are huge. The northern Caucasus region is Russia’s gateway to the energy-rich and strategically vital southern Caucasus, which includes the former Soviet nations of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

Worsening violence in the area could seriously disrupt the planned 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi, into which former President Vladimir Putin invested about $12 billion along with his own personal prestige.

Concerns Moscow could lose control

Long-simmering concerns that Moscow could lose control in the volatile northern Caucasus, where Chechen rebels have waged a persistent insurgency since 1991, are spiking again given the past week of attacks.

via Truck bomb signals trouble on Russia’s southern flank | csmonitor.com.

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US 'biggest' threat say Pakistanis

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A survey commissioned by Al Jazeera in Pakistan has revealed a widespread disenchantment with the United States for interfering with what most people consider internal Pakistani affairs.

The polling was conducted by Gallup Pakistan - a separate organisation affiliated with the US-based Gallup Inc - and more than 2,600 people took part.

Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background.

When respondents were asked what they consider to be the biggest threat to the nation of Pakistan, 11 per cent of the population identified the Taliban fighters, who have been blamed for scores of deadly bomb attacks across the country in recent years.

Another 18 per cent said that they believe that the greatest threat came from neighbouring India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since partition in 1947.

But an overwhelming number, 59 per cent of respondents, said the greatest threat to Pakistan right now is, in fact, the US, a donor of considerable amounts of military and development aid.

The resentment was made clearer when residents were asked about the Pakistan's military efforts to tackle the Taliban.

Keeping with recent trends a growing number of people, now 41 per cent, supported the campaign.

About 24 per cent of people remained opposed, while another 22 per cent of Pakistanis remained neutral on the question.

A recent offensive against Taliban fighters in the Swat, Lower Dir and Buner districts of North West Frontier Province killed at least 1,400 fighters, according to the military, but also devastated the area and forced two million to leave their homes.

The military has declared the operation a success, however, some analysts have suggested that many Taliban fighters simply slipped away to other areas, surviving to fight another day.

When people were asked if they would support government-sanctioned dialogue with Taliban fighters if it were a viable option the numbers change significantly.

Although the same 41 per cent said they would still support the military offensive, the number of those supporting dialogue leaps up to 43 per cent.

So clearly, Pakistanis are, right now, fairly evenly split on how to deal with the Taliban threat.

However, when asked if they support or oppose the US military's drone attacks against what Washington claims are Taliban and al-Qaeda targets, only nine per cent of respondents reacted favourably.

A massive 67 per cent say they oppose US military operations on Pakistani soil.

via Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - US 'biggest' threat say Pakistanis.

War has no winners. There is such a thing as a just war. A war of annihilation must be fought, for not defending one's survival is unthinkable. Then, it is also necessary to contain the bullies of the world. But war should always be a last resort.

Stateless entities who foment war across a international boundaries seem to challenge conventional values about war. The piece that people seem to miss is that insurgencies require local support to survive. While the Taliban are seen as the aggressors, the ruthless terrorists they are, then the Pakistanis have wholeheartedly supported their suppression. But when civilians are killed, made homeless and their lives are disrupted, then entity seen as the aggressor lose the hearts and minds of the local people.

In Pakistan, their armies conventional approach to suppressing the 4000 Taliban led to creating 2 million refugees. The Pakistani government successfully deflected the blame onto the US. Thus, the US again has placed itself in a lose-lose situation. To win the war in Afghanistan, they need to deny the Taliban refuge in Pakistan. But to do that, they force the Pakistanis into a civil war, a war that will last generations if continued.

The US cannot possibly win the war in Afghanistan. The only solution is a fundamental change in US policy. John Kerry's 2004 campaign white paper for foreign policy appears to be the best hope for success.

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