Barack Obama avoided going there and John McCain has trouble remembering where it is, but Pakistan is the hottest spot in the Mideast with today’s news that Islamabad’s intelligence agency, the ISI, helped plan last month’s bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

A senior US official tells the Washington Post about “significant” evidence that ISI members provided logistical support to the bombers as well as in an attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

In this CIA leakfest, the New York Times gets “new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”

Read the rest of this entry.

Let us compare two New York Times reports. First, October 2001 report: “Pakistan’s intelligence service has had a longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda, turning a blind eye to growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.” Second, August 2008: “American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service (ISI) helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.”

Two senior Indian diplomats were among 58 people killed in the July 7 attacks.

India has been pointing out the subversive role of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, for the past three decades and its active encouragement of terrorism. Periodically the US administration agrees about the nefarious role of the ISI. But then again goes off to sleep. And imagine that all this relates to America’s “closest ally in it’s fight against terrorism”!!! This is a theatre of the absurd, what else!!!

Interestingly, the NYT’s latest report about revelations regarding ISI came at a time when Pakistan prime minister was in Washington shaking hands with President George W. Bush. As a diplomatic move, Pakistan had announced on the eve of the prime minister’s visit to the US that the wings of the ISI have been clipped (see here…).

So while knowing all along that the ISI has played a tricky role with the blessings of the Pakistan presidents, why is it the US not prepared to call a spade a spade? Is it because the ISI knows too much about sensitive matters and the US administration is not ready to dismount the tiger? It seems that it is easier to remove a particular president or a leader in Pakistan but not tamper with the functioning of the ISI.

Let me quote two paras from the latest NYT report: “The conclusion (about ISI’s involvement) was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack (on Indian embassy in Kabul), the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

“The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.” More here…
(Meanwhile Pakistan denies the NYT report.)

It seems - as we saw yesterday at WORLDMEETS.US with the editorial translations of a number of regional German newspapers - that after an orgy of Obama-mania in Berlin, Germans are having some second thoughts.

Perhaps, this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland ponders, a President John McCain would be easier to refuse when he seeks more German troops for southern Afghanistan?

The editorial says in part:

“Those who cheer Obama today may have to negotiate with him over Afghanistan tomorrow. … The United States will not accept an indefinite situation in which they wear themselves out fighting the Taliban, while the Germans offer friendly help with reconstruction.”

And when will reality hit home for German voters?:

“While the government already knows what’s coming its way, the voters for the major parties could soon experience a rude awakening - when they find that Obama’s new America has the same old objectives. Up to now, Germans could refuse a more robust mandate for Afghanistan by quietly hinting that one really mustn’t follow the lead of George W. Bush. But it will be much harder after one has just applauded him, to reject the first urgent request from a President Obama.”

Read the rest of this entry »

So how are people in other parts of the world, for example Brazil, interpreting Barack Obama’s global tour. And is this trip - as John McCain charges - simply an ‘electoral caravan’ on the part of Obama’s campaign? And if it is, does it matter?

William Waack writes for Brazil’s leading daily:

“John McCain is right when he says that his adversary is only committed to running an electoral caravan. And so what? One gets a good sense of what this sensational candidate (Obama, of course) has to say about the changes he seeks to impose on American foreign policy. And they don’t seem to amount to all that much change.”

Illustrating the complexity of planning a trip like this, Waack tackles the question of how polished the Obama campaign is by writing in part:

“As his main stage, Obama chose Berlin - the capital of Germany, immediately sparking jealousy in London and Paris, which are considered more ‘Atlanticist’ (especially by Sarkozy, of course), than the ’suspect’ Germans, who have understandings, particularly with Moscow and other obscure places to the east. … Even in Germany, Obama’s monumental number of advisors (700 aides!) acted with a level of subtlety that, as far as the Europeans were concerned, wasn’t discrete enough. Obama will speak in front of the Victory Column - which is decorated with cannons that Napoleon used during several campaigns, and that later, during the wars that led to the founding of the first German empire in 1870, the Germans took from the French. In other words the following day, it will be an awkward note to arrive in Paris on. And London frankly feels itself ignored by the American Democratic candidate.”

Read the rest of this entry »

While Europe continues in its paroxysm of excitement over the impending visit of Senator Barack Obama, some on the Old Continent have begun to ask what will happen after his European triumph.

Philippe Gelie of Le Figaro writes in part:

“While Barack Obama has embarked on a tour of the Middle East and Europe, the international community is eager to learn the new direction that the Democratic candidate would give American foreign policy - if he’s elected in November. His program includes lots of good news for the allies and for certain adversaries of the United States. But these will come at a price. President Obama would require much more of his partners than the unilateralist George Bush.”

And what is that price? In regard to Europe, Gelie cautions:

“Europe, which benefited from money from the Marshall Plan and American protection during the Cold War is to be invited to repay that debt. “It’s time for the United States and Europe to renew their common engagement to fighting the threats of the 21st century.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Pakistan has come under a blistering attack from Afghanistan and India. Afghanistan alleges that Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI) and army are behind the bloody Taliban-led insurgency, calling the security forces the “world’s biggest producers of terrorism and extremism.” While India has blamed Pakistan’s ISI for the suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, and said: “ISI is playing evil. The ISI needs to be destroyed.” (What is ISI?…Click here…)

Could it be that Pakistan’s ISI believes that Taliban would be the ultimate winner in Afghanistan?

Last year the newly released US official documents stated that the Pakistani government gave substantial military support to the Taliban in the years leading up to the September 11 attacks, sending arms and soldiers to fight alongside the militant Afghan movement. The suspicion has lingered that some elements of Pakistani intelligence are still protecting the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies in the autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan border.

Islamabad has acknowledged diplomatic and economic links with the Taliban but has denied direct military support, The Guardian reported. The US intelligence and state department documents, released under the country’s freedom of information act, show that Washington believed otherwise.

Afghanistan has accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of involvement in a number of recent attacks in the country — an attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai in April, the July 7 suicide bomb attack outside Indian Embassy in Kabul that left over 60 people killed and a spate of suicide bombings and roadside bombs blamed on Taliban militants. More here…

The New York Times says: “Afghanistan is in some ways the test case of the extent to which India is willing to use its hard power to advance its strategic and commercial interests.” The NYT quotes Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: “As India’s influence grows it will become increasingly involved in the local politics of a foreign country. It cannot afford to see itself as an innocent bystander anymore.”

The NYT adds: “C. Raja Mohan, an Indian foreign policy analyst, said the time had come for India and Pakistan to look beyond their traditional rivalries and fuse a joint strategy to confront extremists operating on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Such an initiative, he argued, would be to both countries’ advantage.” More here…

Another Indian expert has this to say: “Neither the Afghans nor the Pakistanis, as distinct from their governments, concede that they and the US-led forces have a common enemy. The ‘war on terror’ is perceived widely as a war on the people, and not only because of allegedly accidental strikes on Pashtun homes and hamlets in the border areas. The fact is that the antiterrorist credentials of ‘the Americans and the agencies’ lack credibility because of a pro-Taliban past.

“Nor do the governments of the triangle see a common enemy in terrorism as such. On paper, New Delhi, Islamabad and Kabul may be allies in a US-headed antiterror front. But, in practice, they have only been busy trying to turn the alliance and its leader against each other. There would seem to be no sound reason to hope for early arrival of a time when the region won’t reverberate with terrorist blasts.” More here…

Meanwhile here is how Taliban recenly breached NATO base in a deadly clash…Please click here.. And here…

Even Pakistan’s capital city Islamabad is under serious militant threat with foreign diplomats making preparations to flee at short notice. Read the full story here…

BBC: US Suffers Heavy Afghan Losses

Nine US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in clashes with Taleban militants.

US commander Daniel Dwyer told the BBC the soldiers had been killed in clashes in the north-east of the country.

The BBC’s Martin Patience in Kabul says it is one of the biggest single losses in a day for the coalition since the start of military operations there.

The attack came as international and Afghan security forces battled militants on several fronts.

On Sunday, US forces said 40 insurgents had been killed in Helmand province in the past 24 hours.

Squeeze them out of Iraq, and they squirt into Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal areas. What’s clear is that the Bush-McCain mantra of “fight them there [Iraq] so we don’t have to fight them here” has turned out to be an oversimplification of the war on terror the US will be fighting through the next Administration and beyond.

This week, A US Marines commander reported his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April, and visiting Congressmen were told the Bush administration is “recalibrating operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq.”

Read the rest of this entry.

Joshua Foust and I have co-written an op-ed that is published in today’s edition of the Christian Science Monitor. The subject is Western myths about the Pakistani tribal region. Here’s a taste:

Given the growing reach of FATA-affiliated militants, it is becoming clear that developments in the [Pakistani] tribal areas are central to NATO’s success in Afghanistan, as well as an important factor in the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the security of both Europe and the United States.

Yet many Western policymakers and pundits misread current events, espousing views and prescribing policies that are based more on stereotypes than on a solid grasp of the region’s history and culture. Conventional wisdom suggests that the Pakistani Taliban pose a unique and insurmountable threat, that the Pashtuns are the problem, that the tribal areas are lawless and chaotic, and that the targeted assassinations are an effective deterrent against Islamic militancy. But none of these assertions are accurate.

Check out the full article if you’re into this kind of thing. Comments, critiques, and other feedback is most welcome.

It is wishful thinking for Americans of any political hue to expect that Barack Obama or John McCain will be able to fight terrorism quite differently from George Bush, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

His shoot-from-the-hip policies have created long term cages that make it almost impossible for the US to change course regardless of hope-filled audacity. The fact is that post-Bush terrorism has no purely military or non-military solution.

Victory will come, if ever, from the right mix of both but nobody knows how to blend the brew and how long that might take. There are no historical precedents or points of reference around which to build exit strategies or solutions.

Short of ordering a rapid retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, like from Vietnam, there is little prospect of disengagement without ceding large territories to those who hate America.
The continuing presence of US and allied troops foments more hate but leaving will intensify medium and long-term danger from terrorism. The menace of terrorism is clear and present and affects most of the world’s people; yet no foreign government is siding whole-heartedly with US-led military solutions.

This is partly because of fear and partly because of distrust in US competence and leadership. Everybody follows a winner but the US performance so far seems to be leading to failure. So its friends are discreetly abandoning ship.

This is already clear. Even at the height of the Iraq war, British troops made up less than 10% of the US presence. Other coalition members brought in token troops but continue to demand large political and financial favors in return. In Afghanistan, Washington’s closest NATO allies are very reluctant participants although Americans are taking the lion’s share of deaths and casualties.

Before political quarrels among Americans worsen in the run up to November, it is best to call a spade a spade. Regardless of political affiliation or anger against Bush, it is worth noting that the cages built during the past six years are so robust that they could get the best of any Houdini.

This is not an exaggeration. Terrorists and their sympathizers, who used to be holed up in backward Afghanistan, have entered vast swathes of territory in less than four years. Their most sinister gains are in Pakistan and Algeria.

In Pakistan, both the Taliban and al Qaeda are disliked foreigners in normal times. But they have gained so many local sympathizers that they are gradually taking control of the North Western provinces and Baluchistan. Those rugged territories are inhabited by such obscurantist tribal people that locating and killing terrorists hiding among them is next to impossible.

Only two paths remain to neutralize terrorists. One is to start winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan so clearly that allies return to Washington’s side to help wherever needed. That would boost the diplomatic and political tracks of installing and sustaining peace for reconstruction.

The other way to neutralize terrorists enjoying safe haven in Pakistan and elsewhere would be to turn the local people against them. That requires economic development, education and similar activities to create significant prosperity. This is a distant dream not least because the terrorists know it and have no compunctions about killing innocents to prevent stability through bomb blasts, kidnapping and extortion.

Bush is not entirely at fault. Extremists may have gained influence even in the absence of the US invasions simply because of backwardness, tribalism, ignorance and poverty. The difference is that the problem would have been for local governments to solve.

Instead, Bush’s policies have given the American people ownership of intractable situations born of medieval thought patterns light years away from them. The US is now the egg between the hammer of zealots fighting to destroy the anvil of local governments.

US involvement is a boon for both local governments and terrorists. Governments can become rich with money from American tax payers while escaping their people’s wrath by blaming US “militarism”. Terrorists gain local support by saying they are the only ones capable of purging the region of infidel US influence.

The situation is similar in Algeria, where the terrorists have reconstituted themselves as al Qaeda in the Maghreb. After over 20 years of fighting, government forces were starting to corner Islamic terrorists. In an act of despair, they contacted al Qaeda in Pakistan and received sufficient arms and training to stem defeat.

Something similar happened in Iraq’s Sunni triangle with the creation of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Currently indigenous tribal leaders are resisting al Qaeda’s foreign elements but are no less opposed to US presence in their region.

This kind of hybrid al Qaeda presence is spreading to Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, and may also have arrived in Nigeria. It is characterized by local fighters who tie up with Pakistan-based al Qaeda to gain training and weapons. In exchange they tack on to their parochial agendas, the al Qaeda requirements of adopting its name and attacking local symbols of American and allied presence.

Now that this cancer has spread so far, it is unrealistic to expect that Bush’s successor will be able to excise it quickly or cleanly whatever he might promise to get your vote.

What’s really behind Poland’s hesitation about hosting key elements of America’s anti-missile shield?

Pawel Wronski writes for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza:

“History - both recent and distant - weighs on Poland’s decision on whether to allow the installation of the anti-missile shield. … Whether these threats are realistic or not - from the point of view of Polish history it’s reasonable to act with caution. … Read the rest of this entry »

It is a commentary on our times that any report from Afghanistan and Iraq in the news blogs/media now provokes at best a cynical remark, or worst a yawn. But there are a few indefatigable columnists/journalists whose assessments of the ongoing tragic drama continues to provide fresh insights. Simon Jenkins, a distinguished journalist, is one of them.

In a recent column in The Sunday Times, Jenkins makes interesting observations about Taliban and Al-Qaeda. “In seven years in Afghanistan, America, Britain and their Nato allies have made every mistake in the intervention book…They disobeyed the iron law of postimperial intervention: don’t stay too long. The British ambassador threatens ‘to stay for 30 years’, rallying every nationalist to the insurgents’ cause. The catalogue of western folly in Afghanistan is breathtaking.

“…All hope was buried in a cascade of hypotheticals. Victory would be at hand ‘if only’ the Afghan army were better, if the poppy crop were suppressed, the Pakistan border sealed, the Taliban leadership assassinated, corruption eradicated, hearts and minds won over. None of this is going to happen. The generals know it but the politicians dare not admit it.

“The Taliban’s chief objective is not world domination but a share of power in Afghanistan. While they cannot defeat western troops, they can defeat Nato’s war aim by continuing to build on their marriage of convenience with Al-Qaeda, which supplies them with a devastating arsenal of suicide bombers.

“What is sure is that Al-Qaeda, as a (grossly overrated) ‘threat to the West’, will not be suppressed without Taliban cooperation. This means reversing a policy that naively equates ‘defeating’ the Taliban with ‘winning’ the war on terror. Fighting in Afghanistan is as senseless as trying to suppress the poppy crop. It just costs lives and money.”

More here…

Levels of violence in Iraq may be decreasing; in Afghanistan, things aren’t going so well.  In southeastern Afghanistan, the militants are making a comeback and those who know about these things will tell you that the gravest threat to the US of terrorism is likely to come from Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Iraq. (VetVoice)

On Friday, Taliban militants blew up a prison in Kandahar, allowing between 870 and 1110 prisoners to escape — including ‘a number of high-ranking Taliban members’(BBC News) — about 400 of them. (Guardian)  Kandahar is ‘one of the key battlegrounds in the Taleban’s insurgency against President Hamid Karzai and Nato and US troops.’ (BBC News)   The purpose of the attack?  ‘[D]elegitimatizing the government by highlighting its ineffectiveness while improving internal cohesion and morale as a demonstrated example of the Taliban taking care of its own.’(The Newshoggers)

Afghan officials have begun investigations to determine whether any government officials were involved in the blast. (BBC News)

Read the rest of this entry »

McCain has weighed in on the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush.  He doesn’t like it.

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to make sure that we didn’t torture any prisoners, that we didn’t mistreat them, that we abided by the Geneva Conventions, which applies to all prisoners. But we also made it perfectly clear, and I won’t go through all the legislation we passed, and the prohibition against torture, but we made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens, they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have. And my friends there are some bad people down there.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend, First Lady Laura Bush made a courageous and well-intended visit to war-torn Afghanistan. She ventured deep into central Afghanistan to see for herself what progress has been made particularly in women’s development and educational and training projects.

Emphasizing such interests, the First Lady flew to Bamiyan, one of the country’s poorest provinces, which has Afghanistan’s only female governor. While in Bamiyan, she visited a school under construction, which will also be an orphanage.

She also visited a provincial reconstruction team compound in Bamiyan where New Zealand soldiers performed the traditional warrior dance for the First Lady. The camp is very close to a cliff side where two giant Buddha statues once stood. The niches in that cliff side are now empty as the statues were blown up by the Taliban in 2001. Perhaps the First Lady saw these, too, from a distance.

In Kabul, Mrs. Bush met with Afghan teachers and students and announced a U.S. $80 million pledge for education programs, including funds for scholarships, for developing the campus of the American University of Afghanistan, and for a national literacy program.

While Laura Bush was shown schools, orphanages, hospitals, cultural sites and other projects that are important to all, but in particular significant to women–wives, mothers, grandmothers–apparently she did not visit Afghanistan’s notorious heroin-producing poppy fields.

Why do I mention wives, mothers and grandmothers in conjunction with Laura Bush’s visit and the poppy fields in Afghanistan?

The reason is simple, and it also takes us to a subject that, strangely enough, has not received much media attention. But it did catch my wife’s (a grandmother) eye and attention.

You see, we religiously read the on-line version of the Stars and Stripes, a great little newspaper published daily for the U.S. military, Department of Defense civilians, contractors, and their families–especially those serving overseas. On May 8, 2008, the Stars and Stripes carried an article, with an accompanying photo, titled “To win favor with Afghans, Marines let poppies grow.” To our amazement, according to the AP story, our own U.S. Marines are in essence closing their eyes to opium poppy-growing in Afghanistan. The article even carries a photograph showing armed U.S. Marines “peacefully” walking through the poppy fields.

According to the article:

“Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world’s largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Senior clerics from the 150-year-old Muslim seminary Darul Uloom Deoband, which is said to have inspired the Taliban, have issued an edict saying they wished to wipe out terrorism.

The Indpendent reports: “The Deoband institute was established in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising against British rule, an uprising that was brutally suppressed by the imperial forces. Highly influential, it controls thousands of smaller seminaries and madrassas around the world, from Britain to Afghanistan.

“Of Britain’s 1,400 mosques, about 600 are run by Deobandi-affiliated clerics. Seventeen of the UK’s 26 Islamic seminaries follow Deobandi teachings, which produce about 80 per cent of all domestically trained Muslim clerics.

“Analysts say the move to speak out against terrorism would be welcomed by the overwhelming majority of India’s 140 million Muslim population, many of whom believe the image of their religion has been tarnished by the actions of a small number of people.”

More here…

The Dutch people, as most Europeans, have traditionally been very close to and supportive of the United States and of Americans–politically, economically, militarily, philosophically and in just about every other manner. Especially after World War II, Americans were beloved, almost idolized. I know, because I lived in The Netherlands and its Antilles for seven years shortly after the War.

On 9/11, those ties grew closer and deeper and remained that way even after the United States attacked the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 tragedy and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But things changed when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Today, over five years later, while the Dutch still have approximately 2,000 troops serving in Afghanistan under the NATO umbrella, most Dutch people consider the war in Iraq to be a big mistake and disapprove of President Bush’s Iraq war policies.

Even in Afghanistan, where the Dutch are fighting and dying, many feel that the Netherlands, albeit a small country, should have more influence in the strategy for that war and that the Netherlands has been too “subservient” to Washington.

At least that is what the well known Dutch journalist and columnist H.J.A. Hofland says in a recent article, in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. According to him, “The Netherlands has, for more than five years, been the faithful, little follower of the most powerful man in the world, who has in the meantime actively proven to be the worst president.”

As the Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, accompanied by his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ben Bot. prepares to visit President Bush on June 5, Hofland is critical of both the Bush international policies and of the Dutch government’s “submissiveness“: “For more than five years now, we have been virtually uncritical of the most powerful nation in the world, which under President Bush’s administration is conducting two debilitating wars and in doing so has steadily lost power and respect.”

Hofland calls the upcoming visit to Washington, an “Expedition to Washington” and writes about it, and about the ongoing U.S. primaries, as follows:

By H.J.A Hofland
Translated by Dorian de Wind
May 21, 2008

In just about two weeks the Netherlands’ Prime Minister Balkenende and Minister Verhagen will visit President Bush in Washington to talk about world affairs. Six months later the American elections take place. Read the rest of this entry »

How about visiting The Taliban Towers on on the lovely beaches of Guantanamo Bay….

Could the Northern Alliance - America’s allies who helped bring down the Taliban Government in 2001 and bring Hamid Karzai to power - be behind the brazen attempt on his life during a military parade last week?

This theory has been making the rounds in Russian circles and has been enunciated by analyst Pyotr Goncharov for Russia’s Novosti news service.

Goncharov writes in part:

“Who was behind the April 27 attempt on the life of the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and what did they have to gain? Read the rest of this entry »

What’s poses the greatest danger to NATO’s effort in Afghanistan? According to Dutch Scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, the answer is clear: Afghanistan’s birth rate.

Heinsohn writes for the NRC Handelsblad of The Netherlands:

“In 2008, there are 4.5 million male Afghans within the traditional warrior age of 15 to 29 years. Out of that group come the insurgents that the approximately 35,000 NATO soldiers are now dug in to confront … and behind Read the rest of this entry »