Passing the peace pipe instead

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6421.shtml

Passing the peace pipe instead
By Jayne Lyn Stahl
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Oct 7, 2010

No sooner has the ink dried on the first copy of Bob Woodward’s tell all book which, among other things, outs the conflict between Obama and his military advisors over the direction of the Afghan war, than the Washington Post reports that the Karzai government is now in “high level,” preliminary talks with the Taliban in an attempt to negotiate an end to the nine year war. This information was provided anonymously by Afghan, and Arab sources.

One can only marvel at the convenient timing, less than a month away from a crucial midterm election in which a Democratic Congress is about to lose its shirt and at a time, too, when public awareness of rising drone attacks in neighboring Pakistan has never been greater.

While Mr. Obama has said from the start that he favors diplomacy over warfare, only the most ingenuous would deny the egregious political expediency of passing the peace pipe given that July 2011 endgame in the region gets closer with every passing day.

Reportedly, too, the Saudis have held what are called “inconclusive meetings” to reconcile the Taliban with the Karzai government until about a year ago. You may recall that Osama bin Laden hails from Saudi Arabia. Why, over the past nine years, haven’t the Saudis arranged to have a pow-wow with him?

Another gaping question is, given all the controversy surrounding Hamid Karzai’s brother, and the pervasiveness of Taliban influence to be found throughout Afghanistan from its police force to its poppy farmers, how can these negotiations be seen as anything but a public relations ploy designed to obscure the obvious: to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan war, one would have to believe that the insurgents are fighting themselves.

But, indeed they are not. This is not a civil war. What is happening in Afghanistan is altogether different from what happened in Iraq. It is not about faction A Taliban fighting faction B, but instead access to Helmand Province’s lucrative poppy field, and ongoing control of the region including, as also recently disclosed, access to the area’s mineral wealth. .

America’s short-term memory deficit must astound the world. Does anybody remember the Obama administration’s stated objective being counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, or merely to divest the Afghan/Pakistan border of al Qaeda? How quickly that goal was forgotten. .

General Petraeus, too, appears to endorse “high level” Taliban representatives reaching out to the Karzai government: “This is how you end these kinds of insurgencies,” he is reported to have said. Now he tells us! After the surge, troop increase of 30,000, not to mention escalation of the drone campaign, after many thousands of American, and Afghan lives, ending the war is as simple as taking a meeting.

One thing is clear. Any meeting between Taliban representatives and the Karzai government that doesn’t include, and affirm Pakistan’s sovereignty will be counterfeit as any withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in July, 2011 will then mean only redeployment to Islamabad.

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published poet, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter, member of PEN American Center, and PEN USA.

Karzai accuses US troops of killing civilians

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cadec530-eb4a-11dd-bb6e-0000779fd2ac.html

Karzai accuses US troops of killing civilians
By Jon Boone in Kabul
January 26 2009

Hamid Karzai accused US troops yesterday of killing 16 civilians during a weekend military raid, putting further strain on the already brittle relationship between Afghanistan and the new Barack Obama administration in Washington.

The Afghan president flatly contradicted claims by the US military that all those killed during the attack early on Saturday morning were militants, and claimed two women and three children were among the dead.

In a year in which Mr Karzai intends to run for reelection, he was quick to respond to popular fury at the reports of casualties, which village elders put at 22, even though it will be days before a joint inquiry by US and Afghan officials is concluded.

Up to 1,000 Afghans protested yesterday in Mihtarlam, a small town about 50 miles north-east of Kabul, near where the incident took place. The crowd shouted anti-government slogans and pelted the provincial governor with stones.

The US military said there was no information to support the villagers' claims, saying US forces had been attacked by men and one woman firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades during an operation against a prominent Taliban commander.

Mr Karzai has become more vocal on the issue of civilian casualties in recent weeks, but yesterday's statement was the first public criticism of the US since Mr Obama took office.

The new US president's foreign policy team has made clear that Mr Karzai will have to address the weakness and corruption in his government, which they say is strengthening support for the Taliban.

But Mr Karzai says it is the deaths of civilians at the hands of foreign troops that "weaken government rule and empower the terrorists".

The presidential palace confirmed yesterday that it had sent a proposed new agreement to Washington and its Nato allies that would give Afghanistan more say over operations by foreign military forces and ban foreign soldiers from conducting house searches.

President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/24/pakistan-barack-obama-air-strike

President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2009

Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.

Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the "war on terror" policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.

The US believes they are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said "the time is right" to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.

Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.

The US missiles were fired by unmanned Predator drones, which hang in the sky gathering intelligence through surveillance and, when commanded and directed by remote control, to launch attacks.

The strikes will help Obama portray himself as a leader who, though ready to shift the balance of American power towards diplomacy, is not afraid of military action.

The first attack yesterday was on the village of Zharki, in Waziristan; three missiles destroyed two houses and killed 10 people. One villager told Reuters of phonethat of nine bodies pulled from the rubble of one house, six were its owner and his relatives; Reuters added that intelligence officials said some foreign militants were also killed. A second attack hours later also in Warizistan killed eight people.

The Pakistan government publicly expressed hope that the arrival of Obama would see a halt to such strikes, which stir up hostility from Pakistanis towards the government; in private, the government may be more relaxed about such attacks.

There is a lot of nervousness in the new administration about the fragility of Pakistan, particularly as it has nuclear weapons, but it also sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being linked. In the face of a Taliban resurgence, there is despair in Washington over the leadership of the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, and there will not be much disappointment if he is replaced in elections later this year.

But Washington insists on seeing as one of its biggest problems the ability of the Taliban and al-Qaida to maintain havens in Pakistan. Obama on Thursday announced he was making veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke by phone to the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari.

Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=IG1ZSIRJ0UOFPQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/12/30/wbhutto230.xml

Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
By Philip Sherwell in New York
31/12/2007

Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

But the plans collapsed because President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, according to senior aides.

"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her US representative. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."

Ms Bhutto's entourage discussed deals with the American Blackwater operation, this newspaper has learnt. Sources within the British private security industry said that she also had negotiations with the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East - last night the company said that it had no knowledge of any talks.

A Blackwater spokesman confirmed the negotiations. "We were approached to provide prime minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," she said. She declined to go into the precise details.

Ms Bhutto contacted officials, diplomats and friends in America, Europe and the Gulf to urge Gen Musharraf to improve her security following the suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on Oct 19.

Indeed, US diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential US intelligence about militant threats to her life.

Pakistan's interior ministry also passed on details of plots against her and aides said that letters containing death threats had been smuggled into her home.

Husain Haqqani, a US-based Bhutto adviser, confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said that the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan.

He added that America, which has arranged for private contractors to guard the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and leaders in Iraq, was reluctant to press Gen Musharraf, its ally, to change his mind. This was despite Washington seeing Ms Bhutto as a lynchpin in its crucial diplomatic attempt to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy.

Mr Siegel's comments will add to the long-running controversy over Ms Bhutto's security arrangements, which were widely regarded as woefully inadequate given the seriousness of the threats against her from al-Qaeda, the Taliban and others.

She relied largely on using a "human shield" of loyal followers who would form a ring around her, but as Thursday's attack proved, it was little real protection against a determined assailant.

Some security industry specialists have suggested, however, that there may have been other reasons why the help of foreign security firms was not enlisted.

Being surrounded by foreign bodyguards would have added to criticisms that Ms Bhutto was in the pocket of the West - an accusation levelled at President Karzai - and might not have been welcomed by her own Pakistani security staff. But the companies could have taken a back role as consultants and trained locals in bodyguard techniques to maintain a Pakistani face to her entourage.

"It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the US apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return.

"I can't explain why the Bush administration didn't pressure Musharraf to do more. Her death leaves the US with a Pakistan policy that is completely bankrupt."