from the NYT

White House Debate Led to Plan to Widen Afghan Effort

By HELENE COOPER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s plan to widen United States involvement in Afghanistan came after an internal debate in which Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. warned against getting into a political and military quagmire, while military advisers argued that the Afghanistan war effort could be imperiled without even more troops.

All of the president’s advisers agreed that the primary goal in the region should be narrow — taking aim at Al Qaeda, as opposed to the vast attempt at nation-building the Bush administration had sought in Iraq. The question was how to get there.

The commanders in the field wanted a firmer and long-term commitment of more combat troops beyond the 17,000 that Mr. Obama had already promised to send, and a pledge that billions of dollars would be found to significantly expand the number of Afghan security forces.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pressed for an additional 4,000 troops to be sent to Afghanistan — but only to serve as trainers. They tempered the commanders’ request and agreed to put off any decision to order more combat troops to Afghanistan until the end of this year, when the strategy’s progress could be assessed.

During these discussions, Mr. Biden was the voice of caution, reminding the group members that they would have to sell their plans to a skeptical Congress.

This article is based on interviews with half a dozen officials who were involved in the debate. All requested anonymity because they were discussing meetings that involved classified material and the shaping of policy.

Mr. Obama left a final White House meeting in the Situation Room last Friday signaling to participants that he was close to a decision, but that he wanted to get comfortable with what he was going to do. He mulled the issue while at the Camp David presidential retreat over the weekend. On Wednesday, he told his top aides that he had made up his mind.

In announcing a plan on Friday that could be his signature foreign policy effort, Mr. Obama said that he would send more troops — some 4,000 — but stipulated that they would not carry out combat missions, and would instead be used to train the Afghan Army and the national police. He left himself open to the possibility of sending more as the situation warrants.

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meanwhile:

from The Independent

The leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan (now yoked together in Washington as AfPak) publicly welcomed the Obama administration's new policy for the region yesterday, but experts warned that the US and its allies faced huge challenges in achieving their aim of neutralising militancy in South Asia.

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, said he supported the proposal for increased civil and military aid and highlighted a plan for reaching agreements with "moderate" elements of the Taliban. The policy was "better than we were expecting," said Mr Karzai. Pakistan's leader, Asif Ali Zardari, also backed the new strategy, which will see his country receive up to $7.5bn (£5.2bn) in non-military aid, and vowed it would not be a haven for terrorists.

Meanwhile:

Op-Ed Contributor

Graveyard Myths

By PETER BERGEN

AS President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over the United States’ prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has long been the “graveyard of empires.” In 1842, the British lost a nasty war that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands retreating from Kabul. And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to give up ignominiously in 1989.

But in fact, these are only two isolated examples. Since Alexander the Great, plenty of conquerors have subdued Afghanistan. In the early 13th century, Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes ravaged the country’s two major cities. And in 1504, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, easily took the throne in Kabul. Even the humiliation of 1842 did not last. Three and a half decades later, the British initiated a punitive invasion and ultimately won the second Anglo-Afghan war, which gave them the right to determine Afghanistan’s foreign policy.

The Soviet disaster of the 1980s, for its part, cannot be credited to the Afghans’ legendary fighting skills alone, as the mujahideen were kept afloat by billions of dollars worth of aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia and sophisticated American military hardware like anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, which ended the Soviets’ total air superiority.

In any case, today’s American-led intervention in Afghanistan can hardly be compared to the Soviet occupation. The Soviet Army employed a scorched-earth policy, killing more than a million Afghans, forcing some five million more to flee the country, and sowing land mines everywhere.

While the American military is killing too many Afghan civilians, in any given year the numbers are in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. And even the most generous estimates of today’s Taliban insurgency suggest it is no more than 20,000 men. About 10 times as many Afghans fought against the Soviet occupation.

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Gus: Hey, Mr P Bergen, all is rosy in Afghanistan and that's why NATO troops are satisfied they control ALL of Afghanistan, this is why foreigners are allowed to walk in the streets of Kabol (kabul) without escort, this is why there is no heroin coming out of Afghanistan, this is why ... after eight years of war. Peace is only around the corner...

In fact NO foreigner is allowed on the streets of Kabol even with an escort. In fact NATO troops barely control Kabol and their own camps where ever they are... Whenever they venture out it's always under dangerous circumstances.

More fighters are pouring in from Pakistan — where the situation is borderline and the army is accused by the West and Pakistani intelligence of helping the "terrorists" — and the end of this guerrilla conflict has no end in sight... About  half a million of fighters can pour out of Pakistan per year for the next twenty years...

 

from the BBC

Delegates from more than 70 countries are set to meet in The Hague to discuss Afghan reconstruction, days after the US announced major policy changes.

The UN called the one-day conference amid widespread concern that not enough progress had been made since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Support for Afghan reconstruction is being sought beyond the mainly Western countries which have troops there.

The US is hoping Iran, among others, will show a "constructive" approach.

Tehran is sending a deputy foreign minister, Mohammad Mehdi Akhoondzadeh, to the conference.

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Pressure on Hamid Karzai to scrap Afghan women's law

• Julian Borger in The Hague
• The Guardian, Wednesday 1 April 2009

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, came under intense western pressure yesterday to scrap a new law that the UN said legalised rape within marriage and severely limited the rights of women.

At a conference on Afghanistan in The Hague, Scandinavian foreign ministers publicly challenged the Afghan leader to respond to a report on the new law in yesterday's Guardian, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have confronted Karzai on the issue in a private meeting.

At a press conference after the meeting, Clinton made clear US displeasure at the apparent backsliding on women's rights. "This is an area of absolute concern for the United States. My message is very clear. Women's rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration," she said.

The Guardian reported that Karzai had signed the controversial law last month. The text has not yet been published but the UN, human rights activists and some Afghan MPs said it included clauses stipulating that women cannot refuse to have sex with their husbands, and can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission.

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This law is a "progressive" step only compared to what women experienced under the Taliban, but it is still highly discriminatory. It needs to be revoked and women's rights need to be improved by law straight away.

I have it from my various sources in Afghanistan that Mr Karzai will be on his merry way out in the next election held in August... Who knows who will take over the gig...  Apparently there are about 15 candidates, about 6 of are serious contenders. Let see what the "War Lords" allow...

Mind you there are still some funny laws in some of the US states in regard to women — think of Louisiana inheritance laws for example...

From the American Conservative

Daniel Larison Eunomia

"Indeed, as was apparent today, the latest “conspiracy” is rather mainstream stuff, like supporting Obama’s Af-Pak policy, and it enjoys healthy bipartisan support — just as Clinton’s Balkans wars did, and yes, just as Iraq did initially. Criticizing these policies is fair. But those criticisms should be aimed at a broad swath of the foreign policy establishment, on both sides of the aisle, not just at the neo-cons." ~Christian Brose

It’s a deal. No doubt when critics focus on the failures of the majority of the foreign policy establishment, they will be treated as worthy adversaries in policy debate and not dismissed as unpatriotic and anti-American goons. Isn’t that right? Somehow, I doubt it.

Criticizing Iraq policy became broadly acceptable among the foreign policy establishment once the neocons could be made into the sole villains of the piece, which was useful for deflecting the responsibility of various other hawks and internationalists. In some ways, the latter were more responsible for plunging us into the disaster by creating a respectable and broad consensus in favor of an unjustified, unnecessary war of aggression. That doesn’t mean that neoconservatives weren’t actually responsible for a great deal of harm, for which they still refuse to take responsibility, but it does mean that they became convenient scapegoats for less fanatical, more “pragmatic” types who changed their views on the war in the last four or five years. Neocons take the brunt of criticism because they were the first to call for the war and are among the last to continue to defend the indefensible, but I am more than happy to hold accountable all of the people who have blundered so horribly. There’s no need to wait–I have started doing this already. These people are blundering again in endorsing Obama’s misdirected nation-building scheme in Afghanistan, just as many of them blundered in supporting or later embracing the “surge”* as something other than a delaying tactic that addressed none of the fundamental political problems in Iraq. I fully expect them to be just as wrong this time as they have been wrong in the past. I also fully expect them to hide behind their near-unanimity as a shield against this criticism, because this is what they always do.

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see toon at top... And by the way, to add to my comments made in the blogs above, presently, most if not all foreigners in Afghanistan can only travel, in cars with a driver and an armed bodyguard, in Kabul and limited surroundings (travel in convoy)... The rest is off limits.

In a couple of comments above, regress, we mentioned the Afghanistan discriminatory family laws, now:

Karzai Vows to Review Family Law

By CARLOTTA GALL and SANGAR RAHIMI

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai ordered a review on Saturday of a new law that has been criticized internationally for introducing Taliban-era restrictions on women and sanctioning marital rape.

The president defended the law, which concerns family law for the Shiite minority, and said Western news media reports were misinformed. Nevertheless, he said his justice minister would review it and make amendments if the law was found to contravene the Constitution and the freedoms that it guarantees.

“The Western media have either mistranslated or taken incorrect information and then published it,” Mr. Karzai said at a news briefing in the presidential palace on Saturday. “If there is anything in contradiction with our Constitution or Shariah, or freedoms granted by the Constitution, we will take action in close consultation with the clerics of the country.”

If changes are needed, he said, the bill would be sent back to Parliament.

Human rights officials have criticized the law, in particular for the restrictions it places on when a woman can leave her house, and for stating the circumstances in which she has to have sex with her husband.

Europeans Offer Few New Troops for Afghanistan

By STEVEN ERLANGER and HELENE COOPER

STRASBOURG, France — European leaders offered few extra troops on Saturday for President Obama’s intensified effort in Afghanistan, with most of the soldiers only on temporary security assignment, underlining deep divisions within the alliance over the war.

For a NATO summit meeting marking the 60th anniversary of the alliance and intended to be without drama, the event has been fractious both inside the hall and outside it.

Thousands of protesters clashed with the riot police and set a hotel and a border post on fire in Strasbourg during the session. And although NATO leaders finally reached an agreement on a new secretary general — the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56 — the deal came only after days of hard negotiations to overcome Turkey’s opposition.

As expected, European allies agreed to provide up to 5,000 new troops for Afghanistan, the White House said Saturday. But 3,000 of them are to be deployed only temporarily to provide security for the August elections in Afghanistan. A further 1,400 to 2,000 soldiers will be sent to form embedded training teams for the Afghan Army and the police.

Mr. Obama is raising the number of American troops this year to about 68,000 from the current 38,000, which will significantly Americanize the war. The new strategy, which the Europeans have pressed for, is aimed at creating larger and better-trained Afghan security forces that can defend the state and allow the West to leave.

In a news conference after the meeting, Mr. Obama used his most explicit terms yet to detail his pivot from the Bush administration’s view that promoting democracy and human rights should be a central part of the American agenda in Afghanistan. While those goals are worthy, Mr. Obama said, the point of adding more combat troops is to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents.

from the New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

Afghan Women March, America Turns Away

By NADER NADERY and HASEEB HUMAYOON

LAST November, extremists on motorbikes opposed to education for women sprayed acid on a group of students from the Mirwais School for Girls in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Several young women were severely burned. Yet it did not take more than a few weeks for even the most cruelly disfigured girls to return to school. Like the crowds of women in Kabul this week who protested a new law that restricts their rights, the Mirwais students demonstrate unbending courage and resolve for progress. They don’t fear much — except that the world might abandon them.

That is why President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan policy speech last month and his administration’s related white paper are worrisome: both avoided any reference to democracy in Afghanistan, while pointedly pushing democratic reforms in Pakistan. The new policy represents critical shifts — such as a new emphasis on civilian work, and recognizing the regional nature of the problem and the inadequacy and abuse of resources. But a faltering commitment to the democratization of Afghanistan and ambiguous statements from Washington on an exit strategy have left us Afghans scratching our heads.

The Obama administration’s bold declaration of what is to be defeated (Al Qaeda) and absence of equal zest for what is to be built (democracy) inspires a sense of déjà vu. The last time the United States was seriously involved in Afghanistan, its goal was the defeat of the Soviet Union. But after that “success,” extremist militias greedy for power brought our society to its knees. In the absence of the rule of law and legitimate and democratic institutions, the militias’ atrocities allowed the Taliban to rise to power and harbor those behind the 9/11 attacks.

To defeat the forces of oppression, Washington must promote and protect the ideals of democracy and human rights. It is true that Afghanistan has miles to go before it will be a real democracy. But why won’t the new administration state a commitment to helping us get there?

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Top judge: 'use of drones intolerable'

Unmanned weapons are condemned by Lord Bingham as 'beyond the pale'

By Robert Verkaik, Legal Editgor

Monday, 6 July 2009

The use of unmanned drones as weapons of war in conflicts around the world has been called into question by one of Britain's most senior judges. Lord Bingham, until last year the senior law lord, said that some weapons were so "cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance".

In an interview with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Lord Bingham compared drones, which have killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Gaza, with cluster bombs and landmines.

His comments are bound to intensify calls for new international rules to protect civilian populations from arbitrary attacks launched by the pilotless craft.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/top-judge-use-of-drones-intolerable-1732756.html

From Chris FlyodCranks, Kleptocrats and Killers: The "Good War" on the Ground

While dozens of innocent people continue to die each week in the political and sectarian violence unleashed in Iraq by America's invasion and continuing occupation, the main attention of the bipartisan Terror Warriors in Washington – and their sycophantic outriders in the corporate media – continues to be what they call, in the imperial jargonizing that lumps the vast complexities of myriad human communities into reductive, thought-killing soundbites, the "Af-Pak" front.

This, as we all know, is the "good war," the one that most "serious" progressives touted for years as the healthy alternative to the "bad war" that George W. Bush got us into in Iraq, where his "incompetence" and "failures" tarnished the exalted ideal of "humanitarian intervention." (Known in the trade by the acronym "KTC-STC" – "Kill the Children to Save the Children.") . If only we could get out the quagmire in Iraq, cried the serious progs, and do the Terror War "right" in Afghanistan! Well, their wish has come true (except of course for the 130,000 American troops and equal number of mercenaries still prowling around in Iraq; but that's OK, because Obama is in charge now, and what ser-progs once vehemently denounced as a blatant, bloody war crime can now be described, in the immortal words of the president himself, as "an extraordinary achievement"). The Obama Administration is throwing billions of new dollars and thousands of more troops into the eight-year-old conflict, while greatly expanding the cross-border attacks on the sovereign soil of America's ally, Pakistan. And while Obama has retained the core of the Terror War directorate that Bush installed – notably Pentagon warlord Robert Gates and the surgin' general, David Petraeus – he has now put his own man in charge of the "good war": longtime "dirty war" and death squad maven Stanley McChrystal. (Expertise in rubouts, snatches and "strenuous interrogation" is obviously what you need to win "hearts and minds" in humanitarian interventions.)

So here we are, with the imperial mind bent at last on the "Af-Pak" front. But where, exactly, are we? What is the real situation on the "Af-Pak" ground? Two natives of the Terror War targets give us a view from the ground. First, Malalai Joya, from Afghanistan:

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read more of Chris Flyod...

From the BBC

The US special envoy to Afghanistan has held an "explosive" meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the country's election, the BBC has learnt.

Richard Holbrooke raised concerns about ballot-stuffing and fraud, by a number of candidates' teams, sources say.

The US envoy also said a second-round run-off could make the election process more credible, the sources said.

Concerns have already been raised about Afghanistan's election, although final results are not due until September.

A number of senior sources have confirmed the details of a meeting between Mr Holbrooke and Mr Karzai held on 21 August, one day after the election.

The meeting was described as "explosive" and "a dramatic bust-up".

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read more at the BBC and see toon at top.

Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes

 

Mr. Abdullah flew to the southern city of Kandahar to receive the tribe’s endorsement. The leaders of the tribe, who live in a district called Shorabak, prepared to deliver a local landslide.

But it never happened, the tribal leaders said.

Instead, aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali — the leader of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorabak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police officers stuffed them with thousands of ballots.

US blocks $4 billion in Afghanistan aid

 

A United States House of Representatives committee has voted to block more than $US4 billion ($4.8 billion) worth of aid to Afghanistan until the Karzai government roots out corruption.

The move comes amid reports of corrupt politicians moving huge amounts of foreign aid out of the country.

The chairwoman of the committee in charge of the budget, Nita Lowey, has described the corruption allegations as "outrageous".

The allegations were made in a Washington Post newspaper report that claimed government insiders were shipping billions of dollars of donations out of Afghanistan in cash-filled suitcases.

Ms Lowey said she would not release "one more dime" for assistance to Afghanistan until she was confident that taxpayers' money was not being used to line the pockets of corrupt officials, drug lords and terrorists.

"Too many Americans are suffering in this economy for us to put their hard-earned tax dollars into the hands of criminals overseas," she said.

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see toon at top...

From Chris Floyd

I noted here a couple of weeks ago that I was looking "forward to seeing more of the genuine revelations of heretofore undisclosed crimes that will likely be emerging from the still largely unexplored documents" released by Wikileaks last month. I have not been disappointed. (I've also been in the process of revising much of my first reaction to the document dump; but more on that later perhaps.)

As the media froth surrounding the initial appearance of the documents recedes, the nuggets of hard truth become clearer, with diligent researchers digging through the trove. For example, Bretigne Shaffer finds some of the underpinning for the media blitz now obviously under way to reverse the growing public discontent with the war in Afghanistan.

The most glaring emblem of this campaign, of course, is the recent Time Magazine cover of the horrifically mutilated Afghan girl, which was accompanied by the headline: "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." (As Shaffer notes, this was posed not as a question, but as a stark statement of fact, with this not-so-subtle-implication: "If you oppose this war, you are objectively pro-mutilation.") Of course, the atrocity committed against this young woman is indeed a wicked, sickening crime. But it has nothing to do with "our" presence in Afghanistan.

No wait, strike that; it has everything to do with our presence in Afghanistan -- a presence which is greatly exacerbating the societal breakdown and empowering the kind of retrograde extremism that together lead to the perpetuation of such practices. As Shaffer notes, there is a close parallel here to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who came to power after the United States essentially obliterated that nation with a beserker frenzy of bombing that surpassed the tonnage of all the bombs dropped by the Allies in World War II.

In any case, such horrific crimes against women and children go on all the time, all over the world, in every culture. Why would Time Magazine, which usually ignores such things, decide to highlight this particular crime, at this particular time -- and use it directly to make a "moral" case for continuing the war? Shaffer points out what she found in the Wikileaks dump:

read more of Chris Floyd...

Release the Kagan: Neocon Nabob Hired by Team Obama


Written by Chris Floyd      
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 13:21

Buried many fathoms deep in an LA Times story about the latest American scolding of its unruly satrap in Bactria, we find this little nugget:

Some senior officials are saying privately that they fear their reliance on the Karzai administration could be the weakest link of their strategy to stabilize the country. Government corruption is seen as one of the most important factors driving ordinary Afghans to support the Taliban.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the newly appointed head of the international forces in the country, has hired two experts known for their strong emphasis on fighting corruption, Frederick Kagan and Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

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That's right; Frederick Kagan, the neocon architect of the Iraq "surge," the epitome of the armchair warriors who have sent thousands of human beings (including their fellow Americans) to needless death and plunged millions more into needless suffering, has been hired by the Peace Laureate Administration to serve as guide and counsel to the Laureate's newly appointed military supremo.

It goes without saying that Kagan -- yet another spawn of "the Project for a New American Century", that gaggle of bloodthirsty Beltwayers who openly longed, in September 2000, for a "new Pearl Harbor" to scare the American public into supporting the group's hyper-militarist agenda -- is not an expert on "fighting corruption" or on Afghanistan, just as he knew nothing about Iraq. He is an "expert" on one topic only: churning out bullshit to justify war. And that is exactly why he has been hired by Obama and Petraeus