A Staten Island man spent his life savings to announce to New Yorkers that Judgement Day would be May 21, 2011. That’s tomorrow, for those of you just on your first cup of coffee.

Ads screaming “Global Earthquake: The Greatest Ever!” are plastered on subways and on bus shelters. That these posters are up at the same time as the CDC announcement on the proper procedure for a “zombie apocalypse” might be coincidental. Or not. Anyway, the believers will be raptured to Heaven. The rest of us will be stuck with student loans and the Middle East.

Anticipating a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama yesterday endorsed a two-state solution along the 1967 lines, among other things. This is nothing new. Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush all endorsed the same policy.

But in an icy statement yesterday, Netanyahu said he “expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both House of Congress.” Tricky word, “expect,” and one that Jeffrey Goldberg takes issue with:

So Netanyahu “expects” to hear this from the President of the United States? And if President Obama doesn’t walk back the speech, what will Netanyahu do? Will he cut off Israeli military aid to the U.S.? Will he cease to fight for the U.S. in the United Nations, and in the many  international forums that treat Israel as a pariah?

(Goldberg also called this “something of a hissy fit.”) So far, Netanyahu has proven, once again, he is not particularly inclined towards any sort of peace agreement. It is not in his DNA. It is not in his administration, cobbled together by extremists. His obstinence made Obama’s special envoy, former Senator George Mitchell (who pretty much resolved the Northern Ireland conflict), resign with despair and disgust.

The UN is voting on Palestinian statehood in September, something that looks likely to go through–unless the US opposes it.

Many of the far-right Christians who push for unconditional support by the US for Israel do so because they believe this will make the Rapture happen. Presumably, if it happens tomorrow, they won’t care much about 1967 lines.

Here’s our first-hand account from 2009 of the worsening situation in Hebron:

The death of kidnapped British aid worker Linda Norgrove during a rescue attempt by US Special Forces in Kunar has prompted much debate, especially after it was revealed that she may have been killed by a US grenade and not a Taliban suicide bomber as initially reported. Some are asking if the US military should have exercised more restraint or whether the operation was even necessary.

If the goal of such questions is to prevent more aid workers from dying in future, this line of inquiry is counter-productive at this stage. I sincerely doubt the British government would have green-lighted the military option had Ms. Norgrove’s life not been in extreme danger. Hostage rescue is extremely high risk and there is always a possibility that the person or persons you are attempting to free could be killed during an operation, especially in a dangerous location like Kunar (parts of which are so untameable that US forces withdrew from them earlier this year). Instead of pinning blame on the rescuing party, a more useful question is why are aid workers being encouraged to come to Afghanistan when they are such obvious targets?

Militants in Afghanistan make no distinction between foreign NGOs and NATO soldiers. It doesn’t matter that aid workers are operating in a humanitarian rather than a military capacity. As far as the Taliban are concerned, anyone working on behalf of the coalition is the enemy. The US and British governments know this to be the case, yet they still rely on NGOs to help implement the coalition’s counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

No place for Aid workers

The idea of using NGOs as “implementing partners” sounds good in theory; the military clears the area of insurgents and the aid workers follow up with development projects to win the support of locals. In practice though, this strategy falls down on two major counts. Firstly, the coalition isn’t fighting a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, it’s embroiled in a civil war. As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, having taken sides in that civil war, NATO hasn’t a prayer of winning the hearts and minds of Afghans on the other side of the divide no matter how many hydro-electric plants, girls’ schools, roads, canals and health clinics it builds.

The second and more devastating drawback of using implementing partners is that it destroys the firewall between military and non-military personnel working in Afghanistan; hence why the Taliban regard aid workers as an extension of coalition forces rather than a separate, neutral entity. The aid organization Ms. Norgrove was working for at the time of her abduction was Development Alternatives Inc, an NGO operating in Afghanistan on behalf of USAID. This association left her incredibly vulnerable. Indeed, DAI had already lost two foreign employees and a number of local workers when its offices in Northern Afghanistan were targeted by suicide bombers in July.

In the wake of that attack and the death of British aid worker Dr. Karen Woo in August, not to mention a rash of foreign journalist abductions, you’d think the FCO would advise against all travel to Afghanistan just as it has for Somalia (a country which security wise is on par with Afghanistan in my opinion). Yet incredibly, the FCO has banned travel in only certain regions of Afghanistan and has advised against all but ‘essential’ travel in others.

Politics should not dictate the FCO’s security recommendations but I suspect that is exactly what is happening here. So I’d like to offer a reality check. The security situation in Afghanistan has been steadily declining since 2004. In the past three years, it’s nosedived even in areas that were once considered relatively secure. I for one wouldn’t take a client outside Kabul at this time because the situation has grown so untenable that I cannot possibly provide them with proactive security. The best I can do is react to an attack. And as any security professional worth their salt will tell you, that’s just not good enough.

Politics aside, aid workers also need to keep in mind that they are soft-abduction targets in a country where kidnapping foreigners is a lucrative trade. It was reported that Linda Norgrove was the only long-term expatriate employee among 200 Afghans at her base location. How well were those local hires vetted? Who among them knew Ms. Norgrove would be traveling to Kunar that day, and who knew at the other end in Kunar? These questions may be politically inconvenient. They are undoubtedly politically incorrect. But they need to be asked.

Linda Norgrove died trying to make Afghanistan a better place. The loss of such a selfless and dedicated individual is beyond tragic. I hope something at long last is learned from it. The FCO and the US State Department should stop encouraging foreign NGOs to come to Afghanistan until the ground is genuinely secured. Until then, foreign aid workers be advised: you are a target.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel, a modern-day Afghan war adventure-thriller is out now. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.

Pakistan is still reeling from the torrential rains that have displaced millions of its citizens. International aid – and international media attention – have neen slow on the pickup, and there are fears that extremist terror groups will win over Pakistanis’ hearts due to their quick response.

Ali Siddiqui’s Mahvash & Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation is one moderate group trying to help. Siddiqui discusses what’s happening on the ground and the threat of extremism. (You can make flood relief donations through the Mahvash & Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation here.)

Torrential flooding has left giant swaths of Pakistan under water and driven millions of people from their homes. Ali Siddiqui, director of the Mahvash & Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation, discusses the catastrophe and its possible consequences. (You can make flood relief donations through the Mahvash & Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation here.)

When Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants to show who’s in charge he doesn’t do it by halves. His decree this week ordering all foreign and domestic PSCs operating in the country to disband by December is his most audacious power grab since he stole the Presidency last year – provided of course he really means to see it through.

Domestically, the PSC disbandment makes tremendous sense for Karzai. It will shift the balance of power away from warlords raising and operating private militias under the auspices of commercial security. These PSCs cum private armies have made millions servicing commercial and western military contracts (money which inevitably trickles down to the Taliban in the form of road taxes and other extortion schemes that keep the country’s off-the-books economy running). Come 2014, when Afghan forces are expected to take charge of the nation’s security, the last thing Karzai wants is to have dozens of well-funded private armies plotting his overthrow. In the interim, the PSC crackdown will also give Karzai a PR boost with voters ahead of Parliamentary elections, but this is more of a fringe benefit than a driving motive. After all, when it comes to listening to the electorate, Karzai’s track record is less than stellar.

Afghan Private Security

On the international front, the decree has reminded Karzai’s western allies that he can hold them to ransom whenever he chooses. Under the order, foreign security contractors will lose their residency permits and be confined to working inside foreign government and NGO compounds. Exterior security – which includes vehicle moves normally coordinated by close protection teams – will be handed over to the Afghan National Police. Pity the diplomats and aid workers. I certainly couldn’t sleep in a compound wondering whether the ANP standing watch outside my wall are Taliban infiltrators or undisciplined hacks who will turn tail and run the moment they’re attacked.

I imagine some foreign security companies in Afghanistan are flapping right now. I do hope they aren’t considering skirting the order by having their people on the ground work without weapons or armoured vehicles. That would be negligent and endanger both their employees and their clients.

The greater fallout of course is the impact the decree could have on NATO forces. There are not enough soldiers in Afghanistan to guard military supply convoys so the task (along with many other logistical roles) has been outsourced to PSCs. Under Karzai’s plan, these contracts would revert to the Afghan Interior Ministry. General Petreaus might want to consider appointing a special liaison in charge of ‘facilitating payments’ if he ever wants to see his kit again.

NATO shouldn’t let that happen nor should western governments entrust the security of their diplomats to the ANP. It could explain Karzai’s completely unrealistic deadline on the order (a convenient loophole to draw the transition out indefinitely). If it does turn out to be a bluff, NATO should still take heed. With a single pen stroke, Karzai has laid bare the vulnerabilities that result from outsourcing military tasks to the commercial sector. Sure, it may help governments in the short term by enabling them to hide the true financial and human costs of the war in Afghanistan. In the long-run however, outsourcing has the potential to cripple NATO’s entire military campaign.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel, a modern-day Afghan war adventure-thriller is out now. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.

The good old days of Walter Cronkite – and a news media that was largely trusted by the public – are long behind us. Today, with cable news and the internet, the louder and more extreme your viewpoint, the more likely your voice will actually be heard.

Among the new generation of TV pundits is Republican author/columnist S.E. Cupp. She plays the media game and plays it well, appearing regularly on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. We recently sat down with Cupp to discuss her views on such charged topics as Prop 8, the Ground Zero mosque, and the myth that all conservatives are prudes.

Check it out in the latest episode of our series on the political voices of today, Open Mic.

Dan Margolis, New York City Communist Party Chair, levels with us about the state of the nation and the future of the Communist Party USA. And what of those accusations that Obama is a socialist?

After a horrendous ordeal, British security manager Bill Shaw is on his way home. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the terrible injustice suffered by the G4S manager. Back in April, Mr. Shaw was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $25,000 for allegedly bribing Afghan officials to release two impounded G4S vehicles. Earlier this month, an Afghan appeals court finally threw out the charges against Mr. Shaw, citing insufficient evidence.

I cannot begin to imagine the hell that Bill Shaw has been through. By all accounts he is a manager of impeccable integrity who believed he had paid a legitimate fine to a member of the NDS, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. In fact, it was his attempt to obtain a receipt for the payment that resulted in his arrest and incarceration. Sadly, Mr. Shaw learned the hard way what happens to honest men in Afghanistan. He spent four months in Kabul’s notorious Pul-i-Charki prison alongside murderers, Taliban and hardcore jihadists who put a $10,000 bounty on his head.

Free thanks to his family.

Bill Shaw is not the first westerner to get caught in a web of Afghan dirty dealing nor will he be the last. Extortion, blackmail and kidnapping are endemic in the country and western security contractors, journalists and aid workers are considered rich targets. And it’s not just shady officials, crooked police officers and hooded kidnapper who pose a threat. Sometimes westerners are scammed by the ‘trusted’ local Afghan employee working alongside them (The same court that acquitted Bill Shaw found his Afghan colleague, Maiwand Limar, guilty of conspiring to defraud him).

I’m not surprised by what the Afghans did to Bill Shaw. I am however deeply, deeply disturbed that his employer and the British government allowed him to endure such a nightmare. ArmorGroup, the G4S subsidiary which employs Bill Shaw has been operating in Afghanistan since 2002. The company provides close protection and site-security for commercial, non-government and government clients including Britain’s FCO. ArmorGroup has hit some serious bumps along the way, including having a British manager shot dead during a cash-in-transit move back in 2007. In short, the firm is intimately familiar with the pitfalls of doing business in the country. The Afghans don’t play by the same rules as the west. The NDS does not have proper accounting systems to track ‘fine’ payments which mysteriously vanish into thin air. The senior managers above Bill Shaw should have understood the Pandora ’s Box he was opening when he went back to the NDS for a receipt. In my view, had they taken over the scenario earlier, events may very well have not spiralled out of control. After what Bill Shaw’s been through, ArmorGroup should make sure he never has to work another day of his life.

ArmorGroup let Bill Shaw down in my opinion. But their failure is nothing compared to the FCO which never should have allowed him to spend a single night in jail. The FCO is well aware of the flaws in Afghanistan’s judicial system because British tax payers partially fund it. The Afghan legal system does not serve the law imposed on it by the West. Like all institutions in the country, it is a pawn of powerful interests. I firmly believe the Afghan courts convicted Bill Shaw in order to curb western criticism of the country’s endemic corruption.

Why did the FCO stand by and let Bill Shaw get railroaded? I’d very much like an official answer to that question. My gut feeling is that the FCO was so focused on the greater political picture they didn’t think he was worth fighting for—that is until his family launched a high profile petition and social-networking campaign to draw attention to his plight. Shaw’s wife and daughter fought tooth and nail to make the British government stand up and listen. They even marched petitions up to Downing Street.

Bill Shaw’s family deserve every credit for his release. But not every British citizen jailed in Afghanistan has a vocal support network back home. As I write this, Anthony Malone, an ex-British soldier who went to Afghanistan in 2002 to set up a security and logistics business languishes in Pul-i-Chakri prison. Malone has already served more than two years in jail for ‘non-payment of debt’ which is NOT a criminal offence in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, Malone recently told a reporter from the Daily Mail he’s been ‘abandoned’ by the British Embassy. Why the hell hasn’t the FCO demanded his freedom?

Cowering behind excuses of ‘diplomacy’ just won’t cut it; especially when the British government encourages British businesses to come to Afghanistan. As the experiences of Bill Shaw and Anthony Malone demonstrate, no matter how much blood and treasure Britain squanders, Afghans will never embrace the institutions imposed on them by the West. It’s time for the British government to acknowledge the limitations of what it can achieve in Afghanistan before another innocent Brit like Bill Shaw is thrown to the wolves.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel will be published August 5th by Simon & Schuster UK. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.

The announcement that British forces will hand over control of Sangin to American troops has stirred some very powerful emotions. Despite military and Government insistence that the move is a logical redeployment, the decision has nevertheless provoked charges that the British military failed in Sangin and is running away.

First, let’s separate the military brass from the brave soldiers doing the hard graft on the ground. The British produce the finest soldiers in the world. I have no doubt our forces could hang on in Sangin indefinitely, as the Paras proved in 2006 during the opening phase of Britain’s woefully undermanned and infamously underequipped deployment to Helmand. Sadly, the number of boots on the ground was never increased sufficiently to allow British forces to dominate their area of operations; hence why they have managed to ‘hang on’ rather than turn the situation around.

They'll Take the Aid...

If anyone has failed in Sangin it is Britain’s military and political leaders. They never should have sent our forces to Helmand in the first place, let alone in such unrealistic numbers. As mentioned in previous posts, NATO troops aren’t fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan; they’ve taken sides in a long term civil war. The Brits never had a hope in hell of ‘winning hearts and minds’ in Sangin because the local Pashtoon population believe NATO forces and the Afghan National Army for that matter, are allied with the former warlords of the Northern Alliance – the historic enemies of the Pashtoon. Furthermore, British troops in Sangin were also unwittingly thrust into the centre of more localized rivalries between tribes and drugs lords; a scenario which has unfortunately played out in many other areas of Afghanistan as well.

In the last few months, the British media has started analyzing the Afghan quagmire with an increasingly wary eye. The late awakening is understandable, given that for years the FCO has been feeding journalists a steady diet of ‘good news’ stories about ‘flourishing markets’, health clinics, and school openings in Sangin. The Pashtoon aren’t going to turn down a health clinic, even one provided by the allies of their mortal enemies. They’ll grab the aid money with one hand…but hold a dagger in the other.

The Americans will deploy to Sangin in greater numbers than the British. They’ll likely be better equipped and supported as well. I doubt however that these advantages will make their mission more successful. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: more troops equals more causalities in Afghanistan. That’s the tragic reality of entering a conflict on one side of a civil war.

I’m over-the-moon that British forces are withdrawing from Sangin and redeploying to an area more conducive to their current force strength. There is absolutely no shame in that. It’s a sensible move. Of course, it would be an even better move if British forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan all together.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel will be published August 5th by Simon & Schuster UK. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.

After four years, the British media have finally got it. This week, the Times published a two month investigation into who was responsible for the disastrous decision to deploy British forces to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in insufficient numbers back in 2006. The answer was in the headline: The Officer’s Mess.

Of course, today it is obvious to a blind man that the Helmand mission was poorly planned and woefully undermanned. Nearly three hundred brave British soldiers have lost their lives in Southern Afghanistan and many have sustained horrific, life-altering wounds. But as far back as 2004 and certainly by 2005, it was clear to anyone who visited the province that it would never be pacified by a token occupying force.

In spring 2004, I escorted a media client to Helmand. We didn’t fly. We drove from Kabul to Lashkar Gah. Traveling unilaterally outside the security bubble of a military embed was a real eye opener. We found a poppy field growing outside the Governor’s mansion and Taliban frolicking on a nearby riverbank. It was no mystery who had the run of the place. In my conversations with locals, the disdain for foreign forces in Afghanistan was palpable. They warned that Helmand would put up fierce resistance if the coalition stepped up its campaign. I knew then that Helmand would be no walk-over.

Talib in Helmand, 2004

The outrageous thing is I wasn’t alone in my thinking. The Times investigation detailed how senior military chiefs and civil servants ignored multiple warnings that Britain was grossly underestimating the challenges it would face in Helmand. As one ‘senior serving officer who asked not to be named’ told The Times, ‘We who had bothered to put a bit of work in and had done the estimate realized that we needed much more than we were being given.’

The Times suggests that some military chiefs were putting politics ahead of sound military planning. I can’t say I’m surprised. Back in 2005 and early 2006, the prevailing mood was that all was going swimmingly in Afghanistan; a view I challenged frequently in conversations with military based there. Helmand was a particularly volatile subject. My argument that it was a mistake for British troops to deploy to the province was usually greeted with a mixture of denial, caution and/or veiled anger. Team players, it seemed, didn’t express such opinions.

I’ve said it before and it bears repeating now: generals who drop their pants for politicians don’t win military campaigns. The senior brass who signed off on the Helmand mission and those who remained silent after it was abundantly clear mistakes had been made should be held accountable. It is inconceivable to me that former Army Heads General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Dannatt retired to lucrative consulting careers with chests full of medals and strings of letters after their names. I for one would like to see them stripped of their titles and medals which is generous considering that two hundred years ago, their tenures may well have ended with blindfolds and shots fired at dawn.

It’s too late for retired military brass to make amends as far as I’m concerned. But senior serving officers can still stand up and be counted — and that doesn’t include giving anonymous quotes to the press. If a senior officer believes that the soldiers he commands are being sacrificed to poor planning, he can and should resign on the spot. During the Falklands campaign, my squadron commander resigned in protest over a scenario that would have killed his men needlessly. The scenario was corrected and the squadron lived to fight another day. In 23 years of military service, it was the only instance I can recall in which a Rupert put his men before his career. He didn’t get an official title for his troubles, but his men awarded him one: HERO.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. His debut novel The Infidel will be published August 5th by Simon & Schuster UK. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.