Blasts kill 5 NATO soldiers, 1 Afghan civilian
KABUL, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Two improvised explosive devices (IED) killed five soldiers from NATO-led forces and one civilian in Afghanistan on Friday, the NATO force said in a statement.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan this year with Taliban militants targeting foreign and Afghan military convoys with roadside bombs and suicide attacks. (Additional reporting by Rohullah Anwari in Kunar; Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Tim Pearce)
US demands crackdown by Pakistani government along Afghanistan border
By James Cogan
1 August 2008
The three-day visit to Washington this week by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Rusa Gilani has set the stage for a violent escalation of the Afghanistan war into ethnic Pashtun Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Gilani was beset with accusations that the FATA were harbouring terrorists and anti-US Islamists fighting American and NATO troops over the border and demands that his government launch a crackdown. If it does not, the Pakistani leader was reminded that the US would unilaterally attack alleged insurgent safe havens inside his country.
Just hours before Gilani went into talks with President Bush on Monday, an unmanned US military Predator aircraft launched missile strikes against a housing complex in Azam Warsak, a village close to the Afghanistan border, but over five kilometres inside South Waziristan, one of the largest of the seven agencies in the FATA.
The timing was not accidental. As the two leaders sat down in the White House, Bush would have been able to confront Gilani with information that the air strike had reportedly killed Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, an Egyptian-born Al Qaeda leader on the US government’s list of the 37 most-wanted terrorists. The killing would have been exploited to lend credence to the allegation that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network are being sheltered by Pashtun tribesmen and operating unhindered by the Pakistani military.
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain also spoke with Gilani and reportedly made similar demands for Pakistani action along the border.
Pakistan has repeatedly protested against unilateral US strikes inside its territory, denouncing them as violations of its national sovereignty. Gilani revealed later that his government had not been informed of, and had not approved, Monday’s operation.
This fact did not prevent Bush from striding out of the talks declaring how much the US “supports the sovereignty of Pakistan”. Gilani played his part in the diplomatic charade, stating that his government was “committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are destroying and making the world not safe”.
In reality, Gilani heads an unstable coalition of parties that has no desire for a confrontation with the Pashtun tribes in the FATA. Since winning elections in February and taking office from supporters of US-backed dictator General Pervez Musharraf, his government has pursued a policy of truces and negotiations with militants in the border region, not military operations. This was reaffirmed as his government’s stance as recently as last week.
The pressure on Gilani to change policy was taken to a new level on Tuesday with a front page story in the New York Times. The newspaper published claims that Stephen R. Kappes, a top CIA figure, had been sent to Islamabad on July 12 to “confront Pakistan’s top officials” with evidence that members of the country’s secret service, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), were aiding the Islamist Pashtun warlord, Jalaluddin Haqqani. A June Pentagon report on the war in Afghanistan named Haqqani as the one of the principal actors in the growing anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan.
Kappes accompanied Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen during his talks with Pakistani government and military leaders. An unnamed senior US official told the Times: “It was a very pointed message saying ‘Look, we know there’s a connection, not just with Haqqani, but also other bad guys and the ISI, and we think you could do more and we want you to do more about it.’”
The fact that there are long-standing links between the ISI and Haqqani, as well as other Pashtun powerbrokers, is hardly a revelation, and especially not to the CIA. US intelligence played a major role in forging and financing such links during the 1980s, when the ISI served as the conduit for American money and weapons to flow to the Islamists waging a guerilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Haqqani played a major role in integrating Islamist volunteers from around the world, brought to Pakistan by men like Osama bin Laden, into the anti-Soviet insurgency.
Washington Post reporter Steve Coll described in his book Ghost Wars the nexus of relations that existed between Haqqani, bin Laden, the ISI and the CIA during the Islamist push to overthrow the pro-Moscow government after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1988.
Coll wrote: “He [Haqqani] was in frequent contact with bin Laden and with the ISI’s brigadiers. For their part, Pakistani intelligence and the CIA came to rely on Haqqani for testing and experimentation with new weapons systems and tactics. Haqqani was so favored with supplies that he was in a position to broker them and to help equip the Arab volunteers gathering in his region. The CIA officers working from Islamabad regarded him as a proven commander who could put a lot of men under arms at short notice. Haqqani had the CIA’s full support.”
The Afghan war ended with Haqqani and other radical Islamists firmly embedded in the bases and training camps they had established throughout the FATA. Along with other Pashtun warlords, Haqqani backed the fundamentalist Taliban regime that took power in Afghanistan in 1996 and served in its government. Since the US invasion in October 2001, Haqqani is believed to have been a major organiser of the anti-US insurgency. Between 2004 and 2006, his forces beat back Pakistani government troops who were sent into Waziristan by Musharraf. Following heavy casualties and unrest among Pashtun soldiers, the dictatorship agreed to a truce.
Sporadic clashes have taken place since between the Pakistani military and the various Taliban-linked warlords, who have spent the past several years tightening their grip over the FATA. Their influence has also spread widely throughout the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which has a majority Pashtun population of some 21 million, including several million Afghan refugees. Significant fighting has been taking place since last November in the Swat Valley, once the premier tourist district of Pakistan but now a frontline in the low-level civil war between the government and the Islamists.
Gilani rejected the New York Times claims against the ISI as “unbelievable” and praised the intelligence agency as a “great institution” during an interview with PBS’s “News Hour” program. The significance of the accusations, however, would not have passed him by. This is the first time that the White House and the CIA have used the American media to openly allege that the Pakistani military is abetting the guerilla war against the US occupation of Afghanistan.
Moreover, the claims give succor to allegations by the Afghan government that the ISI was involved in the attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai in April as well as the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last month. Elements of the ISI are, without any question, hostile to the close relations developing between the US-backed Afghan regime and India, the main rival of the Pakistani elite. Those ties are set to deepen next week, when Karzai travels to New Delhi for a range of talks on security and economic matters.
The New York Times article amounts to a threat that the US ruling elite could rapidly mount a campaign to reassign Pakistan from the category “ally” to that of “terrorist-sponsoring nation” or “rogue state” if it does not initiate a full-scale offensive against the Islamists and curb any destabilisation of Afghanistan being directed by the ISI.
The Bush administration, with the support of Congressional leaders, is placing economic pressure on Pakistan as well. Coinciding with Gilani’s Washington visit, Democrat Joseph Biden and Republican Richard Lugar secured the approval of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee for an aid package that triples funding to Pakistan to $15 billion over 10 years, including $7.5 billion over the next five years for development projects. Contained in the legislation, however, is a stipulation that all military aid to Pakistan will be withheld unless the State Department certifies that the Pakistani military is making “concerted efforts” against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The US media is already reporting that a Pakistani military operation is in preparation. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the XI Corp of the Pakistani army, comprising two infantry divisions, will be deployed over the coming weeks into the FATA to reinforce the poorly-armed paramilitary Frontier Corp, which is responsible for security in the region. The New York Times, in the same report that alleged ISI collusion with Haqqani, revealed that Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, acting US commander in South West Asia, made an unannounced visit to North Waziristan on Monday for meetings with the commanders of the XI Corp and the Frontier Corp. Gilani sidestepped a question by “News Hour” as to whether the reports were true.
Gilani has been placed on the horns of a dilemma. There is next to no popular support in Pakistan for full-scale civil war against the Pashtun tribes on behalf of American imperialism, and even stronger opposition to any unilateral US operations inside the country. Divisions that opened up in the Pakistani armed forces during the last offensive will almost certainly flare again, particularly among the large number of ethnic Pashtun officers and soldiers, who are recruited from NWFP. A half-hearted attempt by the government last week to place the ISI under greater civilian control fell apart within hours, due to resistance from the military.
If Pakistan does not take action, the prospect exists of US cross-border operations in open defiance of Islamabad’s opposition—in other words, war with Pakistan. Indicative of the fears and discussions in Pakistani political circles, Ameer Bhutto, vice-chairman of the Sindh National Front, which served in the previous pro-Musharraf government, wrote in the News International on Tuesday:
“If President Musharraf could not stand before Colin Powell’s ultimatum in 2001, there is no reason to believe that he or Prime Minister Gilani can make a stand now. Sporadic US air raids have been continuing [for] some time and there is reportedly significant American troop build-up at the Pakistani-Afghan border recently. American authorities have also confirmed that the US intends to boost its troop presence in Afghanistan in the current year. This, read with President George Bush’s assessment that Taliban and Al Qaeda activities in Pakistan pose the greatest threat and challenge to US security interests, makes it impossible to escape the conclusion that, after Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan’s turn has now come.”
See Also:
Pakistan faces mounting US demands to suppress "terrorism"
[25 July 2008]
The Obama candidacy and the new consensus on Afghanistan
[21 July 2008]
Afghanistan: The Other Illegal War
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet
Posted on August 1, 2008
So far, President Bush's plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government. Barack Obama's timetable for withdrawal of American troops evidently has the backing of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned a "time horizon," and John McCain has waffled. Yet Obama favors leaving between 35,000 and 80,000 U.S. occupation troops there indefinitely to train Iraqi security forces and carry out "counterinsurgency operations." That would not end the occupation. We must call for bringing home -- not redeploying -- all U.S. troops and mercenaries, closing all U.S. military bases and relinquishing all efforts to control Iraqi oil.
In light of stepped-up violence in Afghanistan, and for political reasons -- following Obama's lead -- Bush will be moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Although the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq, many Americans see it as a justifiable response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the casualties in that war have been lower than those in Iraq -- so far. Practically no one in the United States is currently questioning the legality or propriety of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. The cover of Time magazine calls it "The Right War."
The U.N. Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan. Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and ordered the freezing of assets; the criminalizing of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks; and the taking of necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist activity, including the sharing of information. In addition, it urged ratification and enforcement of the international conventions against terrorism.
The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article 51 of the charter because the attacks on Sept. 11 were criminal attacks, not "armed attacks" by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after Sept. 11, or Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly.
Bush's justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists. Iranians could have made the same argument to attack the United States after they overthrew the vicious Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and he was given safe haven in the United States. The people in Latin American countries whose dictators were trained in torture techniques at the School of the Americas could likewise have attacked the torture training facility in Fort Benning, Ga., under that specious rationale. Those who conspired to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people on 9/11 are guilty of crimes against humanity. They must be identified and brought to justice in accordance with the law. But retaliation by invading Afghanistan is not the answer and will only lead to the deaths of more of our troops and Afghans.
The hatred that fueled 19 people to blow themselves up and take 3,000 innocents with them has its genesis in a history of the U.S. government's exploitation of people in oil-rich nations around the world. Bush accused the terrorists of targeting our freedom and democracy. But it was not the Statue of Liberty that was attacked. It was the World Trade Center, the symbol of the U.S.-led global economic system; and the Pentagon, the heart of the U.S. military, that took the hits. Those who committed these heinous crimes were attacking American foreign policy. That policy has resulted in the deaths of 2 million Iraqis -- from both Bill Clinton's punishing sanctions and George W. Bush's war. It has led to uncritical support of Israel's brutal occupation of Palestinian lands, and it has stationed more than 700 U.S. military bases in foreign countries.
Conspicuously absent from the national discourse is a political analysis of why the tragedy of 9/11 occurred and a comprehensive strategy to overhaul U.S. foreign policy to inoculate us from the wrath of those who despise American imperialism. The "Global War on Terror" has been uncritically accepted by most in this country. But terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. You cannot declare war on a tactic. The way to combat terrorism is by identifying and targeting its root causes, including poverty, lack of education and foreign occupation.
There are already 60,000 foreign troops, including 36,000 Americans, in Afghanistan. Large increases in U.S. troops during the past year have failed to stabilize the situation there. Most American forces operate in the eastern part of the country; yet by July 2008, attacks there were up by 40 percent. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser for Jimmy Carter, is skeptical that the answer for Afghanistan is more troops. He warns that the United States will, like the Soviet Union, be seen as the invader, especially as we conduct military operations "with little regard for civilian casualties." Brzezinski advocates Europeans bribing Afghan farmers not to cultivate poppies for heroin, as well as the bribery of tribal warlords to isolate al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is "not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon."
We might heed Canada's warning that a broader mission, under the auspices of the United Nations instead of NATO, would be more effective. Our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan should emphasize economic assistance for reconstruction, development and education, not for more weapons. The United States must refrain from further Predator missile strikes in Pakistan and pursue diplomacy, not occupation.
Nor should we be threatening war against Iran, which would also be illegal and result in an unmitigated disaster. The U.N. Charter forbids any country to use, or threaten to use, military force against another country except in self-defense or when the Security Council has given its blessing. In spite of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's conclusion that there is no evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the White House, Congress and Israel have continued to rattle the sabers in Iran's direction. Nevertheless, the anti-war movement has so far fended off passage of HR362 in the House of Representatives, a bill that is tantamount to a call for a naval blockade against Iran -- considered an act of war under international law. Credit goes to United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Peace Action and dozens of other organizations that pressured Congress to think twice before taking that dangerous step.
We should pursue diplomacy, not war, with Iran; end the U.S. occupation of Iraq; and withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
Rand Corp -- War On Terrorism Is A Failure
Dan Kovalik
Posted July 31, 2008 01:00 PM (EST)The Rand Corporation, a conservative think-tank originally started by the U.S. Air Force, has produced a new report entitled, "How Terrorist Groups End - Lessons for Countering al Qaida." This study is important, for it reaches conclusions which may be surprising to the Bush Administration and to both presidential candidates. To wit, the study concludes that the "war on terrorism" has been a failure, and that the efforts against terrorism should not be characterized as a "war" at all. Rather, Rand suggests that the U.S. efforts at battling terrorism be considered, "counterterrorism" instead.
And, why is this so? Because, Rand concludes, after studying 648 terrorist groups between 1968 and 2006, that military operations against such groups are among the least effective means of success, achieving the desired effect in only 7% of the cases. As Rand explains, "[a]gainst most terrorist groups . . . military force is usually too blunt an instrument." Moreover, "[t]he use of substantial U.S. military power against terror groups also runs a significant risk of turning the local population against the government by killing civilians."
In terms of this latter observation, there is no better case-in-point right now than Afghanistan - the war that both candidates for President seem to embrace as a "the right war" contrary to all evidence. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military forces should properly be known as, "The Wedding Crashers," with the U.S. successfully bombing its fourth (4th) wedding party just this month, killing 47 civilians. According to the UN, 700 civilians have died in the Afghan conflict just this year. Human Rights Watch reports that 1,633 Afghan civilians were killed in 2007 and 929 in 2006. And, those killed in U.S. bomb attacks are accounting for a greater and greater proportion of the civilian deaths as that war goes on. As the Rand Corporation predicts in such circumstances, this has only led to an increase in popular support for those resisting the U.S. military onslaught. In short, the war is counterproductive.
Consequently, as the Rand study reports, the U.S. "war on terrorism" has been a failure in combating al Qaida, and indeed, that "[a]l Qaida's resurgence should trigger a fundamental rethinking of U.S. counterterrorism strategy." In the end, Rand concludes that the U.S. should rely much more on local military forces to police their own countries, and that this "means a light U.S. military footprint or none at all." If the politicians take this study seriously, and they should, they should abandon current plans for an increase in U.S. troop involvement in Afghanistan. Indeed, the U.S. military should be pulled out of Afghanistan altogether, just as it should be pulled out of Iraq.
Interestingly, the current study from Rand, a group not considered to be very dovish, mirrors its much earlier study which also declared that the U.S.'s "war on drugs" - that is, the effort to eradicate drugs at the source (e.g., cocaine in Colombia and heroin in Afghanistan) thorugh military operations -- is a failure. Instead, Rand opined, the U.S. would do better to concentrate its resources at home on drug addiction treatment - a measure the Rand Corporation concluded is 20 times more effective than the "war on drugs." Sadly, the U.S. did not pay attention to that study then, and it remains to be seen whether it will pay attention to Rand's current study.
Again, (and if you read my posts you will see me quote this passage often) Senator Obama was correct, both as a matter of morality as well as practicality, in calling for an "end [to] the mindset which leads us to war." This is so because war has profoundly failed us. Unfortunately however, the United States, and those running for its highest office, appear unable to escape from this mindset.
Instead, they continue to search for military options for problems which have no military solutions. In the process, U.S. soldiers die and thousands upon thousands of civilians are killed abroad. Meanwhile, the stated objective of the U.S., whether it be fighting drugs or fighting terror, is only further undermined. One look no further than Al Qaida itself -- which evolved from the U.S.'s military support for the Afghan mujahideen in pursuit of its "war on communism" -- as proof of this fact.
In short, we continue to create and re-create our own enemies through our addiction to war and force. It is indeed high time to "end the mindset which leads us to war." However, we as citizens in this ostensible democracy will have to work hard to push our leaders toward this end, for they appear unwilling and/or unable to even begin the process of moving toward such an objective.
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