The Mound of Sound

It’s hard to know if they’re serious but there have been several accounts in the past two months warning of a major offensive by the Taliban planned for the Spring.

If it happens at all, it might be part of a larger, general uprising against the Kabul government by a coalition that unites the Taliban, the Mujahadeen, the drug lords and ordinary peasants acting out of nationalism or grievances against the government security forces.

This general uprising threat is particularly grave for the NATO mission because it would be so decentralized as to tax, if not overwhelm, NATO’s already undermanned forces in Afghanistan. You simply can’t be everywhere in a country as large as Afghanistan with the limited number of soldiers available to NATO.

The reality of a general uprising, however, may be just a Taliban dream. When the Viet Cong launched their nationwide attack during Tet, 1968, they also predicted a mass uprising by South Vietnamese angry at their government. The uprising never materialized and US and South Vietnamese forces were eventually able to crush the Viet Cong to the point where they never returned as a significant threat to South Vietnam.

The Asia Times published an article today describing what the Taliban has in mind:

“The battle lines have been drawn on the Afghan chessboard for what is likely to be a decisive confrontation between foreign forces and the Taliban-led tribal resistance. Both sides have fine-tuned their strategies, have engaged their pawns, and are poised for action. The Taliban’s efforts are focused on next spring, after the harsh winter weather eases, while North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces aim to “nip this evil in the bud”, using the province of Kandahar as their strategic base.

“From there, they want to contain and encircle the Taliban in their bases all over southwestern Afghanistan, according to a source familiar with NATO who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.

“Central to this plan is the use of air power, even though the Taliban have come down from the mountains and entrenched themselves in civilian populations in carefully chosen pockets. They also have a headquarters in the rugged mountains of Baghran Valley in Helmand province.

“To date, the Taliban have mostly engaged their pawns against NATO, with key leaders based safely in the tribal belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Once the final push starts, though, they will move to the fringes of the southwestern Pashtun heartland, Baghran, in preparation for the removal of President Hamid Karzai’s administration in Kabul.

“Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Taliban’s military operations in Afghanistan, is in the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan – a virtually independent region in Taliban hands. The one-legged former Taliban intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah is also in Pakistani territory, shuttling between South Waziristan tribal area and border areas near Pakistan’s Balochistan province and southwestern Afghanistan.

“Haqqani and Dadullah, on the instructions of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, are talking to tribespeople in southwestern and southeastern Afghanistan to smooth the path for the Taliban taking control. The Taliban are pledging to share everything with the tribes, including land, power and resources.

“This process is still ongoing and, according to people close to the Taliban, once it is completed the Taliban will call for a full mobilization of troops and Mullah Omar will go to Baghran to command them personally in the push to Kandahar and ultimately Kabul.

“Legendary former Afghan premier and mujahideen Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who operates near the Pakistani side of the Afghan Kunar Valley, has become involved in his own agenda, causing a bone of contention between the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA). Hekmatyar has been considered an important player in the Taliban-led insurgency.

“Hekmatyar has steadily regrouped his men, from within Parliament to the mountain vastness of Afghanistan. Most of the bureaucracy in southeastern Afghanistan, including Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Kunar, Nanaghar, Logar and Ghazni, is dominated by former HIA members who remain in contact with Hekmatyar.

“At the same time, Hekmatyar has successfully rallied his guerrillas around Jalalabad, Khost, Kunar and Paktia. However, Hekmatyar’s ties with such people as Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar, and previous association with Karzai stop him adopting an all-out offensive. (Hekmatyar has on several occasions been wooed by Karzai to help break the Afghan deadlock.)

“It appears that Hekmatyar, well aware that in the eventuality of an armed national uprising or Taliban victory he will play second fiddle to Mullah Omar, is jockeying to be in a position to help foreign forces achieve a safe exit from Afghanistan, in return for which he would want the leading political role.

“In these circumstances, once an uprising began, Hekmatyar would be in a straight race with Mullah Omar to reach Kabul and seize control of it.

“Once all issues between tribal leaders and the Taliban have been hammered out, Mullah Omar will move to Baghran, the northernmost district in Helmand province. It is the last Pashtun-speaking district in the southwest before one gets to the neighboring Persian-speaking western provinces, such as Ghor.

“Baghran has always been an important hub for the Taliban, serving as a rallying point to mend differences between Tajik commanders and pro-Taliban Pashtun commanders. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Baghran remained one of the few strongholds of the Taliban and all top commanders, including Mullah Omar, took refuge in its mountains.

“During the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan starting in 1979, Soviet troops withdrew from Baghran in the early days and never regained a foothold there, and it became the headquarters of the mujahideen. Its isolated and inhospitable terrain makes it a perfect base, and it has many escape routes through the mountain passes.”

It is hard to know what to make of these Taliban pronouncements. They’ve been speaking openly with journalists, including some Westerners, for quite a while now. As demonstrated at the battles in Panjwai a few months ago, they’re no longer simply using guerrilla tactics and will sometimes stand and fight even against superior NATO firepower.

We’d be foolish to dismiss these warnings of a spring offensive.

The Chicago Tribune today warned readers to brace themselves for a powerful Christmas day storm driven out of the Pacific by a massively-powerful jet stream:

“…the potential for a second powerful storm, which could take shape late this weekend in the Gulf of Mexico then swing north toward the Midwest Christmas Day and night (Monday and Monday night) is linked to the future movement of a pocket of powerful 230 mph jet stream winds observed Tuesday over the Pacific. Winds of that strength, even at jet airplane altitude, are rare and have major meteorological implications. A 190+ m.p.h. speed max produced last week’s crippling Pacific Northwest storm which sent hurricane strength winds roaring through the region’s mountains and set a new Montana wind record of 165 m.p.h. at Snowslip Mountain in Glacier National Park last Wednesday. The new, even stronger speed max aloft is to drop surface pressures precipitously in the western Gulf of Mexico when it arrives there Sunday.”

And, as the Times of London explains, this very same jet stream, coupled with an unusually warm Atlantic ocean, is to blame for northern Europe’s bizarre winter weather:

“This year, the summer and autumn were unusually hot, boosting the warmth on the surface of the sea. A strong flow of southwesterly wind has swept over that sea and blown that warmth across western Europe. The driving force behind that flow has been a vigorous jet stream. This river of wind a few miles high is created by cold Arctic air colliding with subtropical air. At this time of year the Arctic air moves farther south, setting up a greater clash and driving the jet stream faster.

“For several weeks the jet stream has been at speeds of more than 200mph and taking direct aim at Europe, driving depressions and warm air deep into the Continent. Why it has taken such a direct course, and why it is so fast, is less certain.”

Here on Vancouver Island we’re bracing for our fourth major windstorm in a week. Today’s not supposed to be quite as bad as the past – winds of 80 km./hr. – but that’s bad enough. It’s certainly enough to send more trees, some of them weakened by the earlier storms, crashing down. It’s plenty to cause more massive power outages. It’s more than ample to bring down fences that were merely damaged before.

There are so many trees down in Stanley Park that officials are hoping they can get the damage cleared away in time to re-open the landmark by summer.

Around the planet, we’re getting used to strange weather conditions. Australia is now in year five of record droughts. As the Times of London reports, even the Russian Bear is getting the winter off this year:

“Traditional scenes of pristine snow and ice have given way to rain and muddy grass from Reykjavik to Moscow as unseasonably warm weather puts a damper on festivities.
Russians normally revel in the bitter harshness of their winters, but the warmest December since 1879, when records began, has left Muscovites despairing about a lack of snow to see in the new year.

“Moscow experienced a record winter high last Friday of 9.3C (48.8F), far above the average of -5C. The city received a light dusting of snow yesterday for the first time this month, but it was not expected to stay on the ground for long. Temperatures are predicted to rise above freezing again before the weekend. This winter is in stark contrast to last year, when temperatures in the capital plunged to -40C in the coldest winter since 1940.

“Nature is equally confused. Flowers and herbs have bloomed unexpectedly, while mushroom picking — a pastime about which Russians are fanatical — has been possible in the forests outside Moscow.

“Even Siberia is not immune, though here “warm” is a relative term. Temperatures in Novosibirsk, Western Siberia, have risen to -3C, well above the average of -16C.

“Many of Europe’s capital cities should be well in the grip of winter by this time of year, but Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, Vienna and Sofia are all wondering where the snow is — as are the Continent’s ski resorts.

“The forecast is similar for Norway and Denmark, and even Iceland is struggling to live up to its name: Reykjavik is forecast to be 10C over Christmas, with heavy rain.”

I’m dreaming of a green Christmas. I just hope I won’t have to spend it fixing that damned fence again.

There was a time when we almost always came up with answers to our problems. We identified something that seemed wrong, tossed about a couple or even a few plausible solutions, and then picked the one we found most suitable.

We’re not coming up with answers any more. At times it seems that we’re actually working very hard to avoid finding answers to the problems of the day.

Iraq: no good answers. Afghanistan? No good answers. Global warming? Nothing workable on the table yet. Overpopulation? Why even bother? Resource depletion? Don’t bother me now, I’m busy. Land mines, starvation, disappearing ice packs, air and water pollution, ethnic and religious conflict – it’s all too much.

Are we really out of answers? No. We’ve just run out of the political will to acknowledge the answers and the social and moral will to accept them.

Maybe it’s just that today’s problems look so big and, in fairness, some of them are. A lot of what is surfacing to endanger us today and in the future is rooted in generations long past. We’re brought up, conditioned, to take responsibility for our own acts and even that’s not an easy sell. Having to take responsibility for the misunderstandings or ignorance of those now long gone is tougher yet.

The problems in much of the Middle East today can be blamed, in part, on decisions taken in the colonial era to accommodate the interests of colonial powers. Who is going to pay the price for that because it remains very much outstanding? We’re not even looking very hard for answers. Pointing fingers and laying blame is a convenient way to distract attention and leave the mess for future generations.

Think we’re not preparing to dump problems like the Middle East on those to come? Think again. We’ll try to control the troubles, keep the situation ticking over and get by with as little inconvenience as possible. George Bush has already sluffed off the cost of his ill-conceived war on terror to be borne by future generations. He cut taxes, logged huge deficits and borrowed funding from foreign lenders. Irresponsibility of galactic proportions. This is not the mentality needed to tackle grave threats.

Hardly a day passes that the scientific community’s concensus on global warming and climate change doesn’t strengthen. One by one their predictions and timelines are shown to have been too conservative. During the Cold War the US spent 4 to 10% of GDP annually to hold communism at bay. Today it cannot muster the resolve to spend 1% of GDP to combat global warming. To the contrary, it’s leader howls with outrage at the indignity of his economy having to bend ever so slightly to effectively curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Answers are meaningless until they’re given life through decisions. We’re not accepting answers or even looking for them. Hence there’s nothing to decide, no action required. The problems, however, don’t merely drift along. They grow and gather speed. Eventually they become so large and so powerful that they shatter our indifference. Then, and only then, we are left to draw upon a shrunken list of atrophied solutions only to find that we have squandered the initiative and, with it, any real hope of finding good answers to intractable dangers.

Endless fields of corn, seas of golden wheat, no forget those. America’s numero uno cash crop is pot, marijuana, call it what you will.

US production is reported to have increased tenfold in the past twenty-five years and marijuana is now worth more to its producers than corn and wheat combined to other America farmers.

“Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they’re not getting rid of it,” Mr Gettman told the Los Angeles Times ahead of his report’s publication yesterday in The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. “Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement.”

Figures issued by the State Department and other government agencies show marijuana production increased from an estimated 2.2 million pounds in 1981 to at least 22 million pounds. Some estimates put the current crop as high as 50 million pounds.

President George Bush has a zero tolerance policy on marijuana, including medical marijuana, but his policies have done little to curb production or use.

“The fact that marijuana is America’s number-one cash crop after more than three decades of governmental eradication efforts is the clearest illustration that our present marijuana laws are a complete failure,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of Washington’s Marijuana Policy Project.

Paul Martin was right to move to decriminalize limited possession of pot. It is here to stay and turning moderate users into criminals simply makes no sense.

The West is awash in ‘think tanks’, many of them thinly-disguised loudspeakers for hard ideologies. There are a few, however, that are both intelligent and intellectually honest. One of the best of the best is Britain’s Chatham House.

Chatham House has now issued a report that passes judgment on a decade of British foreign policy under Tony Blair and it’s not flattering for the PM. The paper gives Blair fairly good grades for his achievements during the Clinton years but an “F” for pretty much everything he did after George Bush seized the presidency.

While the report said there had been qualified successes in Mr Blair’s first term, the decision to provide diplomatic cover for Mr Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was the defining moment of his foreign policy and premiership.

“It will shape his legacy – for better or for worse – for many years to come,” it concluded.

As so often with British prime ministers, Mr Blair thought unwavering public support for the US would bring private influence and lead to changes in US policy favouring British interests, but this had not happened.

Mr Bulmer-Thomas, author of the report, said there had been an “inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way, despite the sacrifice – military, political and financial – that the United Kingdom has made”.

Given the Byzantine complexity of Washington politics, it was always unrealistic to think that outside powers – however loyal – could expect to have much influence on the US decision-making process, he said.

“The bilateral relationship with the United States may be ‘special’ to Britain, but the US has never described it as more than ‘close’ … Tony Blair has learnt the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for very little,” the report said.

It said there was no evidence that British pressure was responsible for Mr Bush’s announcement that the US would accept a two-state solution in the Middle East, because this was simply a restatement of policy under the Clinton administration.

The report added that, whoever was the prime minister in future, there would “no longer be unconditional support for US initiatives in foreign policy”.

It’s like that Fed-Ex commercial where the two guys are stymied on how to get a parcel to Germany. We’re taking another shot at Panjwai, this time to win their minds. How are we going to go about that? Let’s use massive aerial bombardment.

A few months back, Canadian General David Fraser led a force on what was called “Operation Medusa” to cleanse Panjwai of the Taliban and bring it back under the control of the central government. When the dust cleared we got the usual “Mission Accomplished” verdict. The bad guys were gone – driven out. We’d killed hundreds upon hundreds of them, the bodies were – I guess somewhere? We were on a roll and the bad guys were on the run and running out of time.

Reality check. We’re back in Panjwai again, this time with a load of Brits,Americans and others to boot. What happened to Medusa? As the Toronto Star’s Oakland Ross writes:

“Initially considered a major blow against the Taliban, last September’s Operation Medusa proved to be a short-lived victory, as the radical Islamic rebels soon filtered back into this mountain-walled, grape-growing region, the main hotbed of their political support, a short distance west of Kandahar city.”

“Code-named Operation Baaz Tsuka – or Falcon Summit in the Pashto language spoken here – the current offensive was launched Friday and is aimed at forging a rift between leading Taliban insurgents and their local supporters, who may well be tiring of the conflict.”

“NATO planners hope the strategy will help to pacify this beautiful but troubled region, bristling with warriors and flanked by craggy mountain ranges that patrol the horizons to the north and south, like twin trains of granite elephants.”

“Rather than descend upon local villages in full fighting mode with cannon ablaze, coalition forces aim to coax their adversaries into submission rather than kill them.

“They are hoping to entice wavering Taliban adherents to put down their weapons and instead accept peace offerings in the form of cargo containers stuffed with Yuletide treasures – farming implements, cooking oil, seeds for planting and other necessities of life, all scarce commodities in this war-ravaged territory.

“Wherever the offer is spurned, however, coalition forces are prepared to respond in more bellicose fashion, training their weaponry upon Taliban fighters while trying to avoid civilian casualties.”

And, as we all know, nobody is more moved by Yuletide treasure than a Muslim peasant, right? And, of course, the fighters who put down (bury) their weapons and help themselves to an armful of farming implements, won’t ever go back to those weapons and their old ways once the foreigners have left, right?

Of course we could just stay in Panjwai. We probably have enough soldiers to secure the entire district and keep the Taliban from returning. We can reclaim Panjwai for the Kabul government. Of course that would mean letting the rest of Kandahar province fall under the influence of the Taliban. No, scratch that idea.

The International Crisis Group has presented a bold, even startling set of proposals to stabilize Iraq.

The ICG report contends that Washington must go far beyond the Baker-Hamilton, Iraq Study Group, recommendations if Iraq is to be salvaged.

The first recommendation is to transform the peace effort into a true, multilateral process involving all five permanent members of the Security Council, Iraq’s six neighbour states, and all parties to the current sectarian conflict, not merely the existing government and security forces.

With all these parties or ‘stakeholders’ aboard, the second recommendation calls for prolonged, forceful diplomacy:

“…This is not a military challenge in which one side needs to be strengthened and another defeated. It is a political challenge in which new consensual understandings need to be reached. A new, more equitable and inclusive national compact needs to be agreed upon by all relevant actors, including militias and insurgent groups, on issues such as federalism, resource allocation, de-Baathification, the scope of the amnesty and the timetable for a U.S. withdrawal.”

The third, and perhaps most critical, recommendation calls for a complete overhaul of American foreign policy in the Middle East:

“A new U.S. regional strategy, including engagement with Syria and Iran, end of efforts at regime change, revitalisation of the Arab-Israeli peace process and altered strategic goals. Mere engagement of Iraq’s neighbours will not do; Washington must clearly redefine its objectives in the region to enlist regional, and particularly Iranian and Syrian help. The goal is not to bargain with them, but to seek compromise agreement on an end-state for Iraq and the region that is no one’s first choice, but with which all can live.”

A Crisis Group spokesman acknowledged the recommendations will be a tough sell with the current US administration:

“There is abundant reason to question whether the Bush administration is capable of such a dramatic course change. But there is no reason to question why it ought to change direction, and what will happen if it does not.”

Maher Arar, an innocent Canadian tortured by American extremists. Or is he something else?

After being freed from American rendition and torture, Canada appointed Mr. Justice Dennis O’Conner to enquire into just what had happened and why. He considered the evidence and completely vindicated Mr. Arar.

Now, Canada has been a willing and faithful partner in Washington’s “war on terror.” We’ve even sent our soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a NATO effort to try to sort out the mess left in the wake of George Bush’s insane desire to conquer Iraq instead of finishing the job there.

Upon Mr. Arar’s return to Canada we call an enquiry but our lead partner in their war on terror, the US, refuses to co-operate. They torture a Canadian citizen and refuse to provide any explanation of why.

Our enquiry exonerates Mr. Arar but the US won’t apologize. Instead the American ambassador, treating Canada like some irrelevant minion, says his country has some secret assessment of Arar that presumably justified this outrage – only they have no intention of revealing it to us.

Wait just a goddamned minute. These morons, who have set the Middle East ablaze with their lunacy, torture one of our citizens, claim they have reason to continue to suspect him, refuse to divulge why they’re afraid of him and, being stupid enough to assume these jackasses are right, aren’t willing to share that with us?

The moral to this story: You play ball with us (in assisting our “War on Terror”) and we’ll stick the bat up your ass.

That weasel Harper came to power boasting about his party’s fervour to “stand up for Canada.” Okay Steve, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you need to get up off your Tory lardass and actually stand up for Canada.

It’s time to tell the Americans, who we’re serving so dutifully, to either put up or shut up. If they have information that we’re not worthy of receiving that Maher Arar is some sort of terrorist threat, they are leaving us vulnerable to a known threat. What sort of partnership is that? If there is reliable information that Arar is in league with the bad guys, why are we being put through this charade.

On the other hand, if the Americans are, once again, blowing smoke up our backsides, it’s time to stand up for Canada by standing up for Mr. Arar and telling these loudmouth bullies that they can either start dealing with us honestly and openly or we’re leaving their war on terror tea party.

There has been intense speculation in recent weeks that Cuban President Fidel Castro is terminally ill. Cancer is the most common ailment in the rumour mill.

US Congressmen visiting Havana have been assured by Cuban officials that Castro is neither terminally ill nor has cancer but Democratic Representative William Delahunt says he’s been told that the Cuban dictator is finished and won’t be returning to lead his country.

Delahunt says that control of Cuba has definitely passed to Fidel’s brother, Raoul.