Afghanistan: Looking For An Honourable Way Out
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by admin in Uncategorized, War on Terror
When President Obama announced that he intends to ‘finish the job’ in Afghanistan, I wondered exactly what job he was referring to; finding Osama bin Laden? Denying al-Qaeda a safe haven? Democratization? Promoting women’s rights? Curtailing the opium trade? All have been cited over the past eight years as reasons for staying in Afghanistan.
With public support eroding by the day, fighting al-Qaeda now tops the list of excuses. In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is telling us we must stay the course in Afghanistan to keep our streets safe. Tenuous connections between Afghanistan and home grown terrorists aside, it is clear that from Washington to Whitehall there is a concerted effort afoot to buy time for the coalition to achieve an honourable exit.
NATO's Road to Nowhere
34,000 additional troops for Afghanistan – that’s what media reports are suggesting ahead of President Obama’s official announcement. It doesn’t matter if it’s 3,400, 34,000, or 40,000 plus troops; in my view, the situation in Afghanistan is no longer salvageable. As far back as early 2006 I was arguing that a tipping point had been reached. That year, British and Canadian forces were dispatched to Helmund and Kandahar to battle a resurgent Taliban. It was abundantly clear even then that more troops were needed to dominate the ground, but with so many NATO countries refusing to deploy to hard areas, there weren’t enough willing to do the job. Instead of demanding more support, NATO commanders bowed to political pressure. If there’s one thing I learned during my twenty-three years as a soldier, it’s that Generals who drop their pants for politicians lose military campaigns.
Earlier this year, I wrote in The Circuit that Afghanistan had passed the point of no return and that all out civil war is inevitable. I still stand by that assessment. Discord between the Pashtoon and the Northern Alliance is as strong as ever. The West can send more troops, swell Afghanistan’s security forces and press President Karzai to clean up his government but what will all this achieve in the long run? Most Afghans have lost faith in the coalition and Karzai. NATO countries can ill afford to keep pumping money into the military effort (money which in Britain’s case would be better spent fighting terrorism at home). The Pashtoon insurgency shows no signs of abating and as I’ve argued before, there is nothing to stop NATO-trained Afghan forces from joining the opposition when the West does finally leave.
What is the point of sacrificing more blood and treasure to what has become an unwinnable campaign? The bottom line is US and NATO forces need to pull out now. It may sound callous, but only the Afghans can sort themselves out.
It’s understandable that western leaders are keen to show they’ve achieved something worthwhile in Afghanistan, if for any reason than to justify the deaths of so many brave, young soldiers. Instead of flannel about al-Qaeda posing a threat to our streets, coalition countries would do well to focus on another unfinished job relating to Afghanistan – tracking and capturing Osama bin Laden ( if indeed he is alive and in the region). It would not require a prolonged troop commitment; just good human intelligence followed by a clinical drone air strike (which have been very effective at eliminating al-Qaeda leaders in recent months). Taking out bin Laden would be a concrete achievement. Besides, wasn’t he the reason the West invaded Afghanistan in the first place?
Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and best-selling author of The Circuit. To read more blogs, please visit: www.bobshepherdauthor.com
Al-Qaeda Magazine: Do They Take Freelance Pitches?
Posted on 24. Nov, 2009 by admin in Uncategorized, War on Terror
The Taliban in 2001 was famously suspicious of television cameras. The Taliban of 2009? They have press secretaries, one of whom—described as the “chief spokesman of the Taliban in Swat” was recently arrested.
Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, has a magazine empire. The al-Qaeda of 2001 now has splintered into various divisions, and each one has its own media outreach, according to Gregory Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen and currently a PhD candidate at Princeton. He tracks Yemen on the blog Waq al-Waq but points out that even al-Shabaab in Somalia has media productions and spokesmen.
Johnsen translated the latest issue (the 11th) of Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battles). The magazine is published online by the recently merged al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Qaeda Arabian Penninsula.
But who did the cover shoot?
Now, you might be asking yourself, “What would be in such a magazine?” Sure, the cover features a grenade in the background and a beaker filled with liquid in front of it. But there are publication staples like a front-of-the-magazine piece (this one by the leader of AQY/AQAP, Nasir al-Wahayshi), congratulatory notices (for weddings and suicide bombs) and a women’s column (describing how to support your jihad man). There’s no advertising, like we would think of, although there is an editorial e-mail.
But primarily the magazine is concerned with theological and legal reasons to explain AQ’s actions. “They have their target market,” Johnsen says, “mostly in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. And they’ve done a very good job in Yemen creating a narrative.”
According to Johnsen, the magazine is most useful as a gauge for what’s happening within the organization. And the article that struck Johnsen most was an anti-Shia screed (“The Apostates: Stages of Confrontation”) by a former Guantanamo Bay detainee named Ibrahim al-Rubaysh.
“Yemen and Saudi Arabia are very different,” Johnsen says. “Anti-Shia [writings] are not common in Yemen, and a growing anti-Shia rhetoric suggests a much more Saudi influence. Whether this means the beginning of a trend or it’s a one-off is impossible to tell.”
But something to watch, especially as Yemen teeters on.
–Michele Mitchell
Afghan Security Forces: The Weak Link in NATO’s Exit Strategy
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by admin in War on Terror
Part II
When NATO military officials meet in Brussels later this month, they will be asked to contribute more resources to step up the training and expansion of Afghanistan’s security forces. In the second instalment of this two part series, Bob Shepherd, ex-SAS soldier and best-selling author of The Circuit examines how politically motivated recruitment and training schedules compromise the safety of coalition soldiers and threaten to undermine the justification for the war in Afghanistan; containing the threat from al-Qaeda.
Rapidly accelerating the expansion of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police is understandably attractive to western military and political leaders sick fed up with explaining mounting war causalities to an increasingly sceptical public. But what looks good on paper has already proved tragically short-sighted in practice.
In Part I of this series, I explained how poor recruit-to-mentor ratios severely diminish the efficacy of ANA training packages. But of all the deficiencies surrounding the development of Afghanistan’s security forces, none has more far reaching consequences in my view than the failure to adequately vet recruits. The importance of due diligence on ANA and ANP recruits cannot be overstated. Without proper checks, Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers and other undesirables can infiltrate training programs, gain valuable intelligence and even target coalition troops directly. Tragically, this issue received long overdue scrutiny when five British soldiers were killed by a ‘rogue’ ANP trainee earlier this month.
ANA Recruits: What are we doing?
Investigations into the shootings are ongoing but there’s little doubt in my mind that the drive to fill recruitment quotas and meet unrealistic training deadlines played a role. You only have to look at ANA training schedules to see that politics is taking precedent over military best practice when it comes to ramping up Afghanistan’s security forces. ANA recruits are given ten weeks of basic or ‘warrior’ training. NATO is quick to point out that this is the same amount given to US infantry soldiers in Fort Benning, GA, USA. The comparison is highly misleading in my opinion. Unlike the majority of US military recruits, the vast majority of Afghan security trainees are illiterate and do not speak the same language as the NATO mentors overseeing their instruction. As a seasoned commercial security trainer in hostile environments and former military instructor, I’ve seen forty minute lessons stretch into two hour marathons when a translator is thrown into the mix. NATO’s training schedules make no allowances for this; otherwise ANA warrior training would be well over ten weeks.
Politics would also appear to be trumping best practice in NATO’s ANP policies. Afghan National Police are often assigned to serve in their own communities. This is not the case with ANA soldiers who are deployed outside their home provinces far from the reach of tribal affiliations. In fact, tribal links are viewed as so insurmountable that the ANA doesn’t recruit soldiers from Taliban strongholds such as Helmund and Kandahar provinces. Yet NATO is content to recruit police from Taliban areas.
Beyond the immediate threat posed by possible Taliban infiltration of NATO mentored training programs is the disturbing question of what will happen when coalition forces do finally pull out of Afghanistan. How many dodgy Afghan recruits will transfer their NATO taught skills, not to mention a good deal of NATO weapons and equipment to the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Rather than attempt to step up training schedules, NATO would be wise to take a step back and examine the potential fallout of its current Afghan policies.
For more blogs by Bob Shepherd visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.
A War in Pictures
Posted on 17. Nov, 2009 by admin in Energy Security, Uncategorized, War on Terror
Russia and Georgia just can’t get enough of not getting enough of one another. The latest weapon: celluloid. In March, Russia released a film about its 2008 war with Georgia. That film, called “Olympius Inferno,” was about an American reporter who came upon evidence that Georgia actually started the war. (The non-partisan EU report on the war supported this claim, though it blamed both countries for escalating the violence.)
Not surprisingly, “Olympius Inferno” wasn’t very popular in Georgia. And now a new film is being shot with Andy Garcia in the part of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Val Kilmer as a war correspondent. The extent to which the film will be pro-Georgian remains to be seen, but it has the full cooperation of the Georgian government. Significantly, the film’s director Renny Harlin, best known for “Die Hard 2” and “Cliffhanger,” is originally from Finland, the one country that successfully repelled the Russian Bear in the run-up to WWII.
Is a picture worth a thousand bombs?
Although Russia dwarfs Georgia in population and military might, Georgia has continued antagonizing Russia like it was 2005 (the time when Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were staging revolutions against perceived Russian hegemony). Taking stock of these three countries now, has the hope of those revolutions materialized?
Despite the anti-Russia fervor of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has been politically chastened due to its failure to clean up corruption or fight back against Russia’s natural gas blockades. While the EU is no fan of Russia’s energy politics, calls for Ukraine to join NATO have grown quieter, and its EU membership prospects seem as distant as ever.
Preliminary polls in Ukraine show that the presidential election this January will kick out Viktor Yushchenko, who’s estimated poll number barely breaches 2 percent. Yushchenko spearheaded the Orange Revolution – and perhaps was poisoned from political rivals because of it, though the evidence remains inconclusive. Moscow-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovich – Yushchenko’s bitter rival in the last election – currently leads polls with an estimated 26 percent of the vote.
While the Tulip Revolution promised greater political independence in Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek has been careful to appease Moscow in recent years while wringing as much money as possible from the US for the use of its military base servicing soldiers in Afghanistan.
Georgia alone seems to be upholding the old revolutionary fire. Yet has it overplayed its hand? Will its feisty independent spirit – and close relations with the US – give it the upper hand against its giant neighbor and former Imperial master? Will its movie win an Oscar, or at least the international box office?
Only time will tell if Georgia gets its desired Hollywood ending.
- Ivan Weiss
Can Nepal Charm Its Neighbors?
Posted on 13. Nov, 2009 by admin in War on Terror
Once again, Nepal is caught between the tiger and the dragon. A few months ago, Indian police uncovered a counterfeit currency racket led by India’s most wanted criminal, Dawood Ibraheem, and involving agents in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. For Nepal, initially the bust was a public relations mess—among those charged in the racket was former Nepalese Crown Prince Paras Bir Bikram Shah Dev, who was heir apparent to the throne before the country’s monarchy was abolished in 2008.
But the bust was yet another incident that has led to current concerns about Nepal as a safe harbor for international criminals. There are over 100 known armed groups along Nepal’s border with India. Despite government efforts, abduction, thievery and other criminal activities are on the rise. And, Indian critics accuse Nepal of allowing itself to be used for drug trafficking and producing counterfeit money.
Does it bite?
The Nepalese government recently agreed to cooperate with the UN and Interpol to curb international crime, and this would seem to dovetail nicely into the decision last month by Interpol to issue special passports to its senior investigators that would allow them to enter any of the group’s 188-member countries without visas to make it easier to apprehend international criminals.
However, most member countries haven’t decided yet whether they’ll allow Interpol officers without visas. And therein lies the tight spot for Nepal: what will India and China do?
Often, Nepal’s neighbors complain about Nepali crime and have conflicting viewpoints on international criminal cases. Despite India’s trade dominance in Nepal, tensions between the two countries have grown as Nepal’s ruling Communist party has boosted ties to China. Yet China’s government has complained recently about Nepal’s harboring of Tibetan refugees.
Nepal’s Home Minister Bhim Bahadur Rawal admitted that the government is still deciding whether to accept Interpol’s request, and in the coming weeks it will most definitely be closely studying how India and China would respond. This is another example of the delicate balancing act Nepal must undergo in order to appease its larger neighbors, and a wrong move in either direction could have serious repercussions.
- Rajneesh Bhandari
Afghan Security Forces: The Weak Link in NATO’s Exit Strategy
Posted on 12. Nov, 2009 by admin in War on Terror
Part 1
When NATO military officials meet in Brussels later this month, they will be asked to contribute more resources to accelerate the training and expansion of Afghan security forces. In the first of this two part series, Bob Shepherd, ex-SAS Soldier and best-selling author of The Circuit offers a sobering reality check on the efficacy of NATO’s mentoring programs and what it means for western exit strategies.
Since 2004, I’ve had occasion to see Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police training programs in action. I’ve shared live fire ranges and training areas with ANA and ANP recruits and accompanied journalists doing stories on security sector reform. What I’ve witnessed has convinced me that in its present form, NATO’s mentoring of Afghanistan’s security forces is at best woefully inadequate and at worst, dangerously short-sighted.
One problem which I’ve seen time and again with ANA training programs is poor instructor to student ratios. In order to achieve an effective training package, there should ideally be one seasoned instructor to every dozen recruits. In April this year, I watched a single NATO mentor give two hundred ANA trainees a lesson on how to strip and assemble an M 16 rifle. The recruits were sat in semi-circular rows stretching the length of the Kabul Military Training Center parade square. As some parts on the M 16 are tiny, it was clear to me that only the trainees positioned front and centre had a clue what they were being taught. The rest were talking to each other or nodding off in the hot afternoon sun. Over the years, I’ve seen identical lessons at the KMTC with the same distorted mentor/recruit ratio; the only difference was prior to 2009, the trainees worked with AK 47s.
ANA Recruits at the KMTC: Does The Instructor Have Everyone's Attention?
Live fire exercises are another area where a scarcity of NATO mentors can render a lesson pointless. I’ve watched fifty ANA recruits lying in the prone position, firing at targets which most of them missed (I could see the rounds striking the ground in front and to the side of them). The recruits received virtually no coaching during the exercise. The few NATO mentors on hand were too busy trying to keep them from hurting themselves or each other. The mentors didn’t check the targets at the end of the exercise because the tight training schedule didn’t allow it. The recruits had to be rushed off the range to make way for another group of trainees. In my view, they learned nothing aside from how to convert live rounds into empty casings.
In light of such episodes, the idea that Afghan forces will be ready to take over from NATO troops in the next few years is nothing short of absurd. Yet it remains a cornerstone of western exit strategies from Afghanistan. Next week, in Part II of this series, I’ll examine how the drive to step-up recruitment and training of ANA and ANP compromises the safety of coalition forces and risks undermining the justification for the war in Afghanistan; containing the threat from al-Qaeda.
For more blogs by Bob Shepherd visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.
Hey – What’s Your Deal, Guy?
Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by admin in Economy, Energy Security, War on Terror
(An Ongoing Series About Your Finest Public Servants At Work)
Health care reform has launched Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) back into the spotlight. After four terms, we thought, perhaps Lieberman sprinkles legislative magic from Hartford to the Hart Building. Let’s take a look.
Lieberman is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. One of the most important functions of that committee (and of Congress) is not just to spend money but to keep track of it. In fact, checks and balances are the whole point. But Lieberman held no hearings. None. Possible malfeasance by the Bush administration? Nope. Checking up on the progress of the Department of Homeland Security? Not hardly.
“We like to do legislation,” he told reporters. “We don’t like investigating … just to see who is at fault.”
Aetna, I'm glad I met ya!
This must extend to the role of Alberto Gonzalez, too. The former attorney general was supportive of the now-infamous torture memos. Lieberman said this: “As he leaves public service, the Attorney General deserves our appreciation for his work for our nation.”
Then again, Lieberman was also supportive of waterboarding, voting against a ban, saying, “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological”
He has been repeatedly and publicly foggy on the war on terror, calling Iraq “the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01,” and in 2005 stating that “The last two weeks have been critically important and I believe may be seen as a turning point in the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism.”
Nearly $1 trillion spent on the war later, let’s look at health care reform, which Lieberman worries will increase the national debt.
Lieberman’s nickname (as told by one of our favorite congressional sources) of “Senator Aetna” comes from the $110,000 in campaign donations this year alone that the insurance giant has given him.
The senator, who is up for re-election in 2010, has promised to filibuster health care reform, and hold an investigative Homeland Security hearing on the recent shooting at Fort Hood by a Muslim soldier.
Perhaps he’s scheduling this flurry of activity between his ubiquitous television appearances. Hey, Senator Lieberman—what’s your deal, guy?
Little Green Shoots: A Coffee Cup Half Full?
Posted on 09. Nov, 2009 by admin in Economy, Middle Class Crunch
“The whole market is doing great,” said Nathan Slusser, a salesman at the upscale kitchen store Sur La Table in New York’s Soho neighborhood. He pointed to a shelf shining with coffee machines in all sizes and colors and added, “In fact, vendors are regularly releasing new models because of the demand.” Slusser’s hand came to rest on a particularly fancy machine with stainless steel casing and a price tag of $229.95. This was the Breville Café Roma Espresso, which makes both espresso and regular coffee. “These are very popular,” Slusser said. “It’s an investment.”
Bringin' it all back home
The economic crisis has gone a long way in re-domesticating coffee brewing. While Starbucks recognizes this and has responded – a spokesperson told us, carefully, “[G]iven the current economic status in the U.S., we’ve implemented a variety of a value based offers to address customers’ desire for everyday value” – home brewing seems to be percolating.
“I make it at home and bring it to work,” said Millee Moctezuma, on a cigarette break outside an office building on Broadway. “I used to go to Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, but not anymore.”
A New York City government worker, Chris regularly bought his morning coffee at places like Starbucks until a year or so ago, when he started making his coffee at home. “It’s a matter of habit now,” he said, “and I’m saving money too.”
Other coffee vendors are feeling the effects, too. Moshe Nisanov, who runs a little coffee stand called Kosher Luncheonette on Fulton Street in downtown Manhattan, readily admits, “Business has slowed down… because people just don’t spend money.” To keep his regular customers coming, Nisanov often lowers the price of a regular-sized cup of coffee from $1.25 to one dollar.
And over at ‘Wichcraft, an outdoor café in Midtown’s Bryant Park, server John Newman says, “People are generally buying smaller sizes.”
- Oli Foster
Afghanistan: The Biggest Loser?
Posted on 06. Nov, 2009 by admin in Energy Security, War on Terror
We have our first guest blogger today in Bob Shepherd, who has frequently appeared on Film@11 shows like “Common Sense.” Shepherd is, hands down, one of the savviest people when it comes to Afghanistan. He has traveled throughout the country many times over the last five years, providing security for journalists and dignitaries. He is considered one of the best in the security business – something he describes in his excellent book The Circuit, which takes a critical look at the lucrative military contractor world. And he is also a marvelous photographer (you can see some of his work here), SAS veteran and proud Scotsman.
Shepherd recently launched his own blog, http://www.bobshepherdauthor.com, which we are very pleased to feature as our first “Blog We Like.” Anyone interested in Afghanistan should make it a required reading stop.
Bob Shepherd, on the scene
The Taliban must have been rubbing their hands when the White House and Downing Street congratulated Hamid Karzai on his default Presidential victory. ‘What is astonishing is two weeks ago they were arguing that the puppet President Hamid Karzai was involved in electoral fraud,’ said a Taliban statement, ‘… but now he is elected as President based on those same fraudulent votes, Washington and London immediately send their congratulations.’
The West’s hypocrisy is nothing exceptional in Afghanistan. As a matter of necessity, Afghans always back the winning side. Thirty-five years of civil war have taught them to value survival over political principals. I know one Afghan who jumped from the Soviet Army to the Mujahudeen in the 1980s. When the Taliban came to power, he joined them. When they were ousted, he went to work as an interpreter for the US military. Basically, whoever has the upper hand in Afghanistan has his support.
Through my work as a security advisor to the media in Afghanistan, I’ve met Karzai five times. He’s no different than the majority of his countrymen. Educated or illiterate, Afghans can run rings around the average westerner when it comes to surviving. Karzai has kept the West’s backing in part because he is a puppet, but mostly because he’s left them no alternative. For eight years he’s done what is necessary to rein in potential rivals. Appointing warlords and drugs traffickers to ministries is one example (better to have them in government than on a battlefield). Rigging elections is another.
As a retired member of the British military, I am sickened and outraged that British troops were maimed and killed securing polling stations for a sham election in an inherently corrupt political system. Now, the White House is deciding whether to commit 40,000 additional troops to a campaign that has and will in all likelihood continue to make a mockery of the ideals the US and NATO are fighting to promote. I understand why General Stanley McChrystal is asking for more boots on the ground. He wants to prevail. That said, in my view, more troops will not achieve this. Sending more soldiers to Afghanistan will only result in more coalition and civilian deaths.
As the former Soviet Union learned all too well, troop deployments are no silver bullet. At the height of its ten-year occupation, the Kremlin had approximately 120,000 troops in Afghanistan. By the end of this year, the US and NATO will have approximately 108,000. If Obama grants McCrystal’s request, the coalition will definitely surpass the Soviet campaign in boots on the ground.
The Soviets finally tired of sacrificing soldiers to the futile task of trying to convert Afghans to a system of government they didn’t want or respect. They are the biggest failures in Afghanistan in modern times. If the US insists on committing more troops to the conflict, the coalition could very well usurp that title.
- Bob Shepherd
Inhofe Takes His Ball and Goes Home
Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by admin in Environment
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) does not believe in global warming. He will not take it from the EPA. He will not take it any day. He would not take it from a pup. He would not go to a markup… All right, so our meter is slightly off. But Inhofe (an old pal of ours, as you can see here, here and here) might have shown the maturity of the average Seussian reader when he refused to attend the markup of the Senate climate bill in the Environment and Public Works committee.
I will not attend your global warming meeting, James I am
Committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) can’t hold the markup unless at least two GOP senators are present. And this is where Inhofe—who says a real economic analysis of the bull hasn’t been completed—was able to rally all of his fellow Republicans to boycott the meeting (Sen. George Voinovich’s 15-minute appearance hardly counted).
It could be said that Inhofe is simply doing a grand job of representing his constituents. Or perhaps he is taking a cue from the bully wing of his party, which is making it more difficult for moderates (those who play well with others) to serve even in moderate districts.
We were unable to find out for sure. Senator Inhofe declined to comment on this story.
- Michele Mitchell