Afghanistan + Pakistan = Talibanistan

Talibanistan

2006-10-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

What's With This?

2006-10-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

War on West shifts back to Afghanistan

2006-10-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

Militants are being drawn away from Iraq.

The conflict in Iraq is drawing fewer foreign fighters as Muslim extremists aspiring to battle the West turn their attention back to the symbolically important and increasingly violent turf of Afghanistan, European and U.S. anti-terrorism officials say.

The shift of militants to Afghanistan this year suggests that Al Qaeda and its allies, armed with new tactics honed in Iraq, are coming full circle five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban mullahs.

Insurgent leaders in Iraq are now mainly interested in foreign recruits ready to die in suicide attacks, anti-terrorism officials say. Moreover, the conflict is dominated by violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. In contrast, an accelerating Afghan offensive by the resurgent Taliban offers a clearer battleground and a wealth of targets: U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, and the Western-backed government.

Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, director of the DST, France's lead counter-terrorism agency, says that as Iraqis have solidified control of their insurgency, the movement of foreign fighters to Iraq has

. . . significantly declined in recent months. . . There is less need for them in Iraq, because there's a need above all for kamikazes and there are not an infinite number of volunteers. The Iraqi insurgency is now very well organized around Iraqis…. Those who want to fight, but not necessarily to die as martyrs, go elsewhere.

Today they return to the route of Afghanistan, or the tribal zones of Pakistan, where clearly they are thriving. Certainly there are some Europeans, but very few. In contrast, in Afghanistan there are certainly many Pakistanis and people from Arab countries and some from North Africa.

Clearly, methods have been transposed in Afghanistan that did not exist during previous wars in Afghanistan. Like suicide attacks. And that's directly influenced by what's happening in the Middle East, in Iraq.

Muslim extremists from North Africa make the odyssey to Afghanistan through routes that converge in Pakistan, another senior French anti-terrorism official said.

"There's a new route along which [North Africans] pass through Peshawar and down into Afghanistan to carry out operations," the senior anti-terrorism official said. "And what's new is the suicide operations. That's not at all part of the Afghan mentality."

Louis Caprioli, who retired as chief of the DST's anti-terrorism division in 2004 says North Africans have been detected traveling to Koranic schools in Quetta and Peshawar. The fighters use the schools as covers for their presence in Pakistan and as staging areas to cross into Taliban-dominated areas of Afghanistan. Foreign fighters are predominantly Sunni. They increasingly prefer fighting alongside the Taliban to getting embroiled in the Sunni-versus-Shiite bloodshed in Iraq. Caprioli said,

There are a certain number of foreign jihadis who aren't interested in massacring Shiites. In Afghanistan, you have NATO troops to fight as well as Americans, all the 'crusaders.'

It is said that militants from as far as away as the Caribbean island of Trinidad, which has a large number of residents of South Asian origin, had traveled to Afghanistan via South Africa.

Sayed Anwar, who recently served as deputy chief of the Afghan Interior Ministry's counter-terrorism branch.

I think this is true that they are shifting Al Qaeda suicide attackers from Syria, and not only Syria but other countries like it, from other parts of the world, to Afghanistan through Iran and Pakistan and countries like that.

Los Angeles Times

Republican Senators Suggest Cutting a Deal

2006-10-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Monday that the war against Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan could never be won militarily, and he urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" into the government. During a visit to a military base in the Taliban stronghold of Qalat, Frist said,

Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer. Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn’t sound like it can be won. It sounds to me … that the Taliban is everywhere.

You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government. And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful.

A political solution is how it's all going to be solved.

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), accompanying Frist, said that negotiating with the Taliban was not "out of the question".

British Military Advisors Warned Against Fighting on Two Fronts

2006-10-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Britain's most senior military chiefs' advice not to commit British troops to "a war on two fronts" in Iraq and Afghanistan nearly 18 months ago was ignored by then Defense Secretary John Reid, according to a report by The Independent on Sunday

Despite clear advice that a "significant" withdrawal of troops from Iraq was needed before a new mission in Afghanistan, Reid went ahead with the Afghan deployment after coming under pressure from Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Independent reported.

The advice, prepared by military planners and endorsed by the Chiefs of the Defence Staff, was given to Reid on his inauguration as Defense Secretary last year, it said. Despite the warnings, Reid went ahead with the deployment in Afghanistan in January this year.

On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan on Saturday, stark new evidence of the suffering being endured by the British troops on the ground emerged in a series of leaked e-mails published in British newspapers.

Britain has nearly 5,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan and 900 more on the way. Around 7,500 British troops are serving in Iraq.
Independent

Musharraf Rebukes Critics on Taliban

2006-09-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Friday rebuked critics who have alleged he has failed to do enough to quash a resurgent Taliban, and urged the West to offer assistance -- rather than criticism.

Speaking to an audience of students and academics at the University of Oxford, Musharraf said his government was working hard to remove the Taliban, who have become entrenched in his country's tribal regions:

The West and anyone else that criticizes us needs to understand -- we need understanding -- and assistance, instead of criticism.

We are doing our best to bring (Pakistan) back to the previous levels of peace, tolerance and prosperity.

The most dangerous possibility for us is that the Taliban gets converted into an ethnic people's movement. We cannot let the moderates drift to the extremists. That would be a disaster.

We don't know where bin Laden is, but we're on the hunt for him. We're trying our best.

In the meantime, the Taliban opens office at a Pakistani bus stop. Taliban officials have opened an office in the capital of Pakistan's North Waziristan region, in Miramshah's main bus station. It is said to be operating with the complicity of Pakistani authorities.

And Taliban office workers have organised a pamphlet drop calling on locals to contact them on all matters relating to law and order.

NATO Facts

2006-09-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

Although no members have criticized others by name, eight of the 26 countries are providing more than three-fourths of the alliance's 20,000 troops now in Afghanistan. Many members are providing fewer than 200 troops. Poland, for example, has contributed 10 soldiers to the mission, according to NATO officials, although it pledged last week to send about 1,000 more.

The United States has 21,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, more than any other NATO member, but only 1,300 are part of the alliance's operation; the remainder are under exclusive U.S. command. Britain is currently the largest contributor to NATO's force in Afghanistan, with 5,000 troops.

The Afghan Ambassador Says:

2006-09-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United States Said Jawad said in a television interview:

I think the reason is political constraint in the region. I think there is enough military power, intelligence gathering in the region, but from the very beginning, from the days of Tora Bora, Pakistan have not allowed hot pursuit of terrorists into their territory . . . .

I think by having more than 30,000 international forces in Afghanistan and increasingly building the capability of Afghan intelligence forces, we are certain that he is spending most of his time in Pakistan. . . .

He might be able to slip into Afghanistan here and there but he is mainly spending most of his time in Pakistan...If he were in Afghanistan, there's no constraint whatsoever, political, military or intelligence-wise, to go after him, to find him and to bring him to justice . . .

There's been very recent reports about the fact that Mullah Omar is in Quetta, Pakistan. Zawahiri, I really don't know exactly, but he is spending a lot of time in close area with Osama bin Laden . . .

A lot of these people require connectivity to the outside world, which is not available in a cave in Afghanistan. And we also should consider the fact that a lot of the friends and associates of Osama bin Laden were found in major metropolitan centres, not necessary in caves or in the tribal areas, so the search should be expanded . . . .

Hindustan Times

The Real Deal?

2006-09-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole:

Afghanistan is especially important to Washington because it is the only plausible way to bring natural gas down from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The Turkmenistan alternative is being used to push Delhi away from any flirtation with an Iranian pipeline.

As Afghanistan falls again into substantial chaos, India is being forced to reconsider, and to seek to draw on Iran's Yadavan fields, with a pipeline coming down through Pakistani Baluchistan and over to the Indian border.

The turn for the worst in Afghanistan may explain the sudden warming of relations between Delhi and Tehran.

By deserting Afghanistan to run off to war in Iraq, Bush ensured that it would risk falling again into social turbulence, and thus helped seal the fate of the Turkmenistan pipeline through Herat (wouldn't the Taliban just blow it up?)

In turn, that may have ensured that Iran would be able to sidestep US sanctions by dealing, not only with China, but also with India.

And that may mean that Bush let the big fish get away by getting bogged down in Iraq, which is turning out not to be any prize for him, either.

It is like the Aesop's Fable where the dog with a piece of meet in its mouth crosses a bridge and sees its reflection, and hungers for the reflected meat, but in grabbing at the mirage, drops the piece already in its mouth, and ends up with nothing.