March 2007
Monthly Archive
March 10, 2007
A genuine conundrum. Afghanistan has the wrong people in government.
Afghanistan’s majority ethnic group is the Pashtun. They’re in the south and along the border with Pakistan. They have only a marginally effective presence in their parliament and virtually none at all in the cabinet of Hamid Karzai.
The civil war was won (with essential American assistance) by the Northern Alliance, a cobbled-together alliance of warlords and murderous thugs from the Uzbek, Tajik and Hazari regions in the north. When the Taliban and al-Qaeda were driven out, the Americans helped create a supposed democracy. However, the victorious minorities were not about to see another government controlled by Pashtuns and they took over Karzai’s cabinet. This is Karzai’s conundrum.
The northerners have sought the backing of India, the traditional foe of Pakistan, and they’ve got it. India backs the Afghan government and its army, if only to give Islamabad fits. Pakistan, of course, has traditionally supported the Pashtun in Afghanistan whose tribal lands are pretty evenly split between the two countries.
Here’s the rundown. The minority northerners, who control the Afghan government and army, serve as India’s proxies. The majority Pashtun, through their home team, the Taliban, serve as Pakistan’s proxies and its main hope of keeping Afghanistan within its influence.
The map shows what an Indian-dominated Afghanistan means to Pakistan. Already outnumbered and massively outgunned by India on its eastern border, it would also face a threat along its western border. Pakistan can’t resist helping, or at least acquiescing, to the Taliban’s activities in its tribal lands. This is Pakistan’s conundrum.
It is not in the interests of the United States to see the Pashtun retake control of their government. America does not welcome the prospect of a return of the Taliban. Pakistan just doesn’t have much clout with Washington. The nation they’re courting is India, mainly as an ally in containing the threat of Chinese expansion. India is also economically far more important to Washington than Pakistan can ever dream of becoming. This is America’s conundrum.
Afghanistan cannot become a genuine democracy when minorities hostile to the majority control the government’s key ministries and its security forces. India seeks to undermine Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and so supports the minorities in control, effectively putting India also in opposition to the Pashtun majority. America also sides with the northern minorities, undercutting Pakistan’s influence.
There’s your problem – India, Pakistan and America are each exploiting Afghanistan to advance their own, divergent interests. The stability and wellbeing of Afghanistan and its supposed democracy are really secondary factors if they factor in at all. It’s the “Great Game” played out in yet another variant and history shows that it’s a game that rarely turns out well for the visiting team.
March 10, 2007
Little Bundles of Instant SunshineDuring the height of the Cold War a lot of attention was paid to the “Nuclear Threshold”, the point at which the actions of one side would cause the other side to resort to its nuclear arsenal, the point of MAD or “mutually assured destruction”, the end of everything.
Back then it was recognized that even tinkering with the nuclear arsenal could destabilize the balance of terror. During his term, Jimmy Carter considered the neutron bomb, a bomb designed to be very heavy on radiation and very light on blast. The idea was that you could use it on an advancing Soviet army, for example, without causing massive destruction and radioactive contamination of the site. The same thing for civilian targets. You could effectively depopulate a city but leave the buildings undamaged.
The neutron bomb was feasible but it was wisely rejected. Saner minds realized it would make nuclear weapons more tempting to use which would cause the other side (the Soviets) to be even more paranoid about an American first-strike.
That’s what can happen when you tinker with a nuclear arsenal. It causes everyone else to speculate on what you’re up to. It can also cause them to begin building up their own nuclear muscle just in case their worst suspicions become reality. The simple point is we don’t need to get Russia or China acting on their worst suspicions.
Now George W. Bush is doing it up real fine. He’s doing it up on foreign policy. He’s doing it up on defensive systems. He’s doing it up on offensive systems too. Let’s see – we’ve got a guy who seems to be unstable staring us in the face and he’s brandishing a new shield and a big, new sword. What could he be up to?
It’s not what George Bush is up to, it’s the perception he gives that is the greatest danger. He’s gone unilateral, withdrawn from the nuclear treaty, begun deploying a missile defence system worldwide, and is about to begin production on a new generation of nukes. Add to this his proven willingness to conquer other countries on flimsy pretexts and that he has proclaimed a doctrine of unprovoked, preventative war to ensure that his country enjoys, in perpetuity, “strength beyond challenge.”
Now I don’t like math any more than the next guy but, pretend you’re Moscow or Beijing, and run those six factors through an equation and see what you come out with. Hell, they’ve even talked about first strike being a valid option. They’ve talked about using nuclear weapons against Iran’s bunkers.
This is the most bellicose president, possibly since 1812, certainly in the past half-century of American history. He’s also deceitful, naive, impulsive and ill-informed – putty in the hands of others. Now, factor that into your equation.
Somebody has to pull this clown back from the edge. That has to start by derailing Bush’s plan for a new generation of nukes. There’s nothing wrong with the existing arsenal. They’re reliable and devastating as ever. The new nukes Bush is after would simply make them easier and tidier to use, one warhead at a time. The rest of the world isn’t fooled by this. Why should the American Congress allow themselves to be drawn into this lunacy? Why should we all be plunged into another Cold War?
March 10, 2007
Isn’t One Quite Enough?
Hate the sin, love the sinner. Jerry Falwell, hot on the heels of Christain fundamentalist James Dobson, has wasted no time embracing Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich, as you’ve probably heard, just came clean about screwing around on his second wife during the Clinton impeachment hearings and then taking up with an aide 20-years his junior. That’s like the second time the Newtster has pulled that one. However, now that he’s considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination, he figured it was a good idea to get this little pecadillo out before he got outed by a rival.
Man, the Christian Right couldn’t be happier with the guy. Even Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart had to go through a spell of fundamentalist purgatory but not Newt, no sir.
Now the fundamentalists have been going through a bad spell of their own. None of the early Republican candidates were really reliable enough – make that Christian enough – for the religious extremists. John McCain has been trying to turn himself inside out to win the born again backing but he’s still not trusted and Rudy Guilliani, well he’s a positively unrepentant sinner who is absolutely not to be trusted. Newt, however, there’s a man you can deal with and just the guy for the Christian Right.
Oh yeah, back to Falwell. Falwell literally fell over himself to grant Gingrich absolution for his serial sins. No siree, Gingrich, says Falwell, is the real deal, a man redeemed:
“Falwell, in his newsletter, said he has usually been able to tell when a man who has experienced ”moral collapse’ was genuinely seeking forgiveness. ‘My sense tells me that Mr. Gingrich is such a man,’ he wrote.”
Now if King Grinch can just get Pat Robertson on side, he’ll have the Republican Trifecta. Yes!!!
March 10, 2007
There are some parts of the world that are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and worsening storms – Bangladesh, for example, or South Pacific island states such as Kiribati and Vanuatu. We don’t tend to think of New York as one of these places but it is.
All three of New York’s airports now experience some flooding each year and no one is expecting that situation to do anything except worsen. The city itself includes a large number of old, brownstone buildings that are built upon extremely fine sand, leaving their foundations very susceptible in the event of flooding.
It’s not so much the rising water that New York fears so much as hurricane-force storms that are expected to increase in both frequency and intensity. Here’s a map of areas that may be hardest hit:
Is this just a load of alarmist pap? Well, according to the New York Times, major U.S. insurers don’t think so. They’ve already stopped renewing policies for areas they consider vulnerable:
“Among insurers, all of whom factor climate change into their risk assessments, some like Allstate are already refusing to renew homeowners’ policies in the eight downstate counties (including metropolitan New York) most vulnerable to hurricanes and other major storms that could proliferate in a warming climate.”
“Structures at particular risk from storm-related flooding include tenements, brownstones and any building with old masonry foundations, said [structural engineer] Joe Tortorella.
“Mr. Tortorella noted that much of the West Village and Lower Manhattan — neighborhoods whose low elevation renders them vulnerable to flooding — is on a precarious perch. “It’s like the finest sand you can find, so that even if you could put it on a table, you can’t mound it up in a pile,” he said
“In a hurricane or severe northeaster, Mr. Tortorella said, “if the water moves fast enough and recedes fast enough, there could be scouring like a tide that takes sand with it on the beach. As the water recedes, it pulls silt out and could undermine the building. It could be a disaster of epic proportions in New York for the smaller buildings.”
March 10, 2007
Everyone knows the government of Afghanistan and its security services are crippled by widespread corruption. It’s one of the main factors driving ordinary Afghans to support the Taliban insurgency. Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, takes the problem so seriously that he has appointed a boyhood friend to be the country’s anti-corruption czar. Just one glitch – the guy is a convicted dope dealer. From The Independent:
“Afghanistan’s new anti-corruption chief has a shady past. Izzatullah Wasifi served nearly four years in a US prison for trying to sell heroin to an undercover agent in Las Vegas for $65,000.
It is not the ideal CV for a man appointed to root out corruption in the country that is overwhelmingly the world’s biggest supplier of opium, from which heroin in refined.
“Mr Wasifi’s past came out after an investigation by the Associated Press, which pieced the story together from court records. They revealed that in 1987, Mr Wasifi was arrested at Caesar’s Palace Hotel.
“Identifying himself only as Mr E, he tried to exchange a bag containing a pound and a half of heroin for $65,000 (£34,000) in cash, unaware the “customer” was a policeman. Mr Wasifi was released on parole after three years and eight months.
“The government of President Hamid Karzai has refused to say whether it knew about the drugs conviction when Mr Wasifi was appointed to his post two months ago. A childhood friend of Mr Karzai, today he heads an anti-corruption office of 84 people.”
March 10, 2007
Peter Brookes, The Times
March 10, 2007
Steve Bell, The Guardian
March 9, 2007
Just a few days ago it appeared that France and several Eastern European states might sabotage the European Union’s ambitions plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions and lead the fight to counter global warming. They tried but they failed.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel held her ground and managed to bring concensus to the 27-nation union. From Spiegel Online:
“At first glance, Merkel — currently occupying the EU’s rotating presidency — and [European Commission President] Barroso have a lot to celebrate. Everything they wanted to get passed got approved — and even quicker than the day’s agenda called for. For the first time in its history, the European Union has a comprehensive agreement on its climate and energy policy:
“By 2020, CO2 emissions across Europe are to be cut by 20 percent as compared to 1990 emissions.
“Renewable energy sources are to make up 20 percent of the EU’s energy mix by 2020 — up from their current 6.5 percent share.”
Spiegel warns, however, that the toughest part is yet to come, implementation:
“The Council has only formulated an abstract goal. The real struggle is reserved for the EU Commission, which now has to negotiate with each individual member state over its emissions and its energy mix. At the summit, Merkel has already had a foretaste of just how much each country defends its own interests, whether that is cheap coal (in the case of Poland) or nuclear power (in the case of France).
“The decision over renewable energy in particular led to heated discussions which could only be defused on Friday morning. France joined together with several Eastern European countries to create a front against the plan proposed by Germany, the UK, Italy and the Scandinavian countries to set a binding target.”
Still, the agreement is an important step even if only a tentative, first step. Much negotiation remains to transform the political commitments into tangible emission reductions but the first step has been taken. In this the EU has far outpaced anything proposed in North America.
March 9, 2007
I’ve written at length as to why we’re not going to win in Afghanistan but sometimes it’s good to hear from an expert. Michael Scheuer is an expert – on al–Qaeda and Afghanistan. He retired from the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2005. From 1996 to 1999 he was the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center.
Scheuer recently wrote an article published in the journal of the Jamestown Foundation describing how we’re mismanaging the campaign in Afghanistan:
“Afghanistan is again being lost to the West, even as a coalition force of more than 5,000 troops launches a major spring offensive in the south of the country. The insurgency may drag on for many months or several years, but the tide has turned. Like Alexander’s Greeks, the British and the Soviets before the US-led coalition, inferior Afghan insurgents have forced far superior Western military forces on to a path that leads toward evacuation. What has caused this scenario to occur repeatedly throughout history?
Scheuer writes that Western forces keep making the same mistakes: “…the West has not developed an appreciation for the Afghans’ toughness, patience, resourcefulness and pride in their history. Although foreign forces in Afghanistan are always more modern and better armed and trained, they are continuously ground down by the same kinds of small-scale but unrelenting hit-and-run attacks and ambushes, as well as by the country’s impenetrable topography that allows the Afghans to retreat, hide, and attack another day.” Gee, remember when Rick Hillier was swaggering around, boasting that we were shipping out to Afghanistan to kill a “few dozen scumbags”?
“The latest episode in this historical tradition has several distinguishing characteristics. First, Western forces – while better armed and technologically superior – are far too few in number. Today’s Western force totals about 40,000 troops. After subtracting support troops and North Atlantic Treaty Organization contingents that are restricted to non-combat, reconstruction roles – building schools, digging wells, repairing irrigation systems – the actual combat force that can be fielded on any given day is far smaller, and yet has the task of controlling a country the size of Texas that is home to some of the highest mountains on Earth.
“Second, the West underestimated the strength of the Taliban and its acceptability to the Afghan people. When invading in 2001, the West’s main targets were al–Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Ayman al–Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar and their senior lieutenants, and because the operation specifically targeted a group of top leaders, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was not sealed, and so not only did the pursued troika escape, so did most of their foot soldiers.
“Those escapees are now returning in large numbers, and are better armed, trained and organized than on their exit. It seems likely, in fact, that the force being fielded by the Taliban and their allies – al–Qaeda, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, among others – is at least equal in number to the coalition.
“Furthermore, the membership of the force is not just a few Taliban remnants and otherwise mostly new recruits; rather, they are the veteran fighters that the coalition failed to kill in 2001 and early 2002. The Taliban forces are not new; they are the seasoned, experienced mujahideen who are – like former president Richard Nixon in 1972 – tanned, rested and ready to wage the jihad.
“Western leaders in Afghanistan are also finding that many Afghans are not unhappy to see the Taliban returning. Much of the reason lies in the fact that the US-led coalition put the cart before the horse. Before the 2001 invasion, the Taliban regime was far from loved, but it was appreciated for the law-and-order regime it harshly enforced across most of Afghanistan. Although women had to stay home, few girls could go to school and the odd limb was chopped off for petty offenses, most rural Afghans could count on having security for themselves, their families and their farms and/or businesses.
“The coalition’s victory shattered the Taliban’s law-and-order regime and, instead of immediately installing a replacement – for which there were not enough troops in any event – coalition leaders moved on to elections, implementing women’s rights and creating a parliament, while the bulk of rural Afghanistan returned to the anarchy of banditry and warlordism that had prevailed before the first Taliban era.
“Now in the sixth year of occupation, Western leaders are confronted not only by a stronger-than-2001 enemy, but also by the resurgent insularity and anti-foreign inclinations of the Afghan people.
“Today, the Afghans perceive themselves to be doubly ruled, and doubly badly ruled, by foreigners: the US-led coalition and the pro-Western, nominally Islamic, detribalized and corruption-ridden government of President Hamid Karzai. This perception of a “foreign yoke”, along with spreading warfare, little reconstruction and endemic banditry, has created a fertile nationalistic environment for the Taliban and their allies to exploit.
“The future for the West in Afghanistan is bleak, and it is made more discouraging by the fact that much of the West’s defeat will be self-inflicted because it did not adequately study the lessons of history.”
Why are we hearing no discussion of these problems, nothing from Harpo, Gordo and Hillier? Why isn’t the opposition raising these issues? Have we succumbed to “stay the course” and “support the troops” because no one has the courage to take a stand? If you really want to support the troops, don’t waste their lives on a bungled cause.
March 9, 2007
Still no word on those three Afghan prisoners Canadian forces handed over to Afghan authorities. For a while our so-called Defence Minister, Gordo O’Connor, tried to mislead Parliament and the Canadian public by claiming the International Red Cross was on to this and surely would have notified Canadian authorities if anything was amiss. Turns out Gordo was pulling that straight out of his ass.
So it’s been weeks now since a controversy erupted about these detainees and still no sign of the prisoners or any indication of what happened to them – at least none that Gordo is going to share with you or me or even Parliament.
It turns out a visit to an Afghan prison really isn’t conducive to a captive’s health or even life, at least according to the US State Department:
“Security and factional forces committed extrajudicial killings and torture,” the U.S. report says. Broader “human-rights problems included: extrajudicial killings; torture; poor prison conditions; official impunity; prolonged pretrial detention; abuse of authority by regional commanders; restrictions on freedoms of press, religion, movement, and association; violence and societal discrimination against women, religious converts, and minorities; trafficking in persons; abuse of worker rights; and child labour.”
“Canadian troops usually turn detainees over to the Afghan National Police. The State Department said, “The ANP . . . was the predominant government institution responsible for security in the country. Its performance engendered mistrust among the local population, and reports of corruption and mistreatment of citizens in custody were widespread.”
Of course Gord thinks that the Afghan National Police, the local gestapo, are a real asset to our troops in winning the “hearts and minds” of the locals in Kandahar province. The man is positively delusional.
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