Foreign commanders in Afghanistan said they believe more than 30,000 international troops will be needed to secure the country as interim leader Hamid Karzai struggles to contain growing unrest. Days after Karzai asked world leaders for more troops, commanders with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told AFP it would be hard to arrange the kind of force needed to stabilise Afghanistan. I wrote a couple months ago (November 15th, if you're interested) that peacekeepers "would only work if the peace-keepers were authorized to use force as necessary to pacify the parties -- acting, in fact, as a national army for Afghanistan until all the factions had been disarmed." Much to my surprise, and probably to the surprise of the Afghans themselves, the peacekeepers deployed haven't been ineffectual conscripts from countries that avoid wars led by hack officers. For the most part they're real soldiers. Northern Alliance political initiatives have tried to keep them confined to Kabul, but it's becoming obvious this won't work - which was the original idea. It's also obvious that 30,000 plus troops aren't going to come from Britain, Turkey and whatever other countries would do some good by providing them.
An Afghan national army is a good thing, taking troops from all ethnic groups and combining them into one unit for national defense. But using your national army for internal security is a bad thing. In fact, it's a Very Bad Thing. It sets an awful precedent, and will lead down the road to a state something like Pakistan, with a heavy involvement of the military in politics. In Afghanistan of all places that's something to be avoided.
That leaves the police. Afghanistan can use a national police corps, even a paramilitary service. The Northern Alliance started on this before they entered Kabul, and one of their first foreign initiatives was to ask for help from India in this area. The US has also agreed to help.
We've remained outside the Northern Alliance-provisional government tensions. We're busy trying to round up the al-Qaeda and Taliban stragglers and preventing them from regrouping. More importantly, it's their country, not ours. They're free to screw it up as they please or to turn it into an earthly paradise. We might hope they do the latter, but it's up to them. We can offer advice, though, and we can offer support to interested parties behind the scenes. We probably need to be more ruthless pragmatic about which "warlords" we back, rather than remaining genuinely neutral. And we have to push those we back - based on their success and their demonstrated pro-American sympathies - into genuine alliance with Karzai, rather than mere polite deference. And these are the guys who should be supplying the internal security forces, all 30,000 of them.
Your remark about "using your national army for internal security is a bad thing. In fact, it's a Very Bad Thing" is a very good point that cannot be repeated too often! For that reason I agree it might make sense SHORT TERM for effectual peaceMAKERS (i.e. Britain, Turkey, Canada) to kick some butt on Karzi's behalf as they will *not* be there for the long term. India could also play a very positive role here as it too actually has a meaningful army and the fact that Pakistan will hate them being involed will actually be a political plus in Afghanistan, given the understandable hostility to Pakistan felt by much of Afghan polity. Posted by Perry de Havilland 2/3/2002 5:14:36 PM
The usual hyperbole about peacemaking has objectives such as "bringing Afghanistan into the 21st century", which is silly considering what has to happen before that glorious end. More practical is implementing such Victorian ideas such as building roads and utility grids, and establishing local police forces and effective judiciaries. Only after the locals begin to see the benefits of competent government will they become willing to invest in the taxes and political legitimacy needed to create a modern, 21st century society.
In re: Indian aid to Afghanistan. One of the less recognized facets of the Northern Alliance operations through the fall of Kabul was the close liaison between the NA commanders and the Indian and Russian intelligence personnel. To a large extent this was motivated by having a common enemy in Pakistan and the ISI supported jehadis and Taliban. I haven't read much about this liaison lately, but assuming that silence implies absence is foolish. How this ties in with the Karzai administration is hard to say, but on the ground the troops in control of everything north of Kabul are folks who are very friendly with the Indians. The yahoos fighting over Gardez in Paktia are another breed of cat who were affiliated with the NA and who will probably be a good advertizement for not going forward with a loose national confederation of local banditti and drug smugglers of the Colombian narco terrorist sort. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/3/2002 5:50:54 PM
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Afghanistan must rid itself of warlords, Hamid Karzai said, as tensions remained high after factional battles in the east and north of the country. At least 50 people were killed in a battle between rival warlords in eastern Gardez last week, and fresh fighting broke out between ethnic rivals in northern Mazar-i-Sharif. Karzai has sent a delegation to Gardez to resolve the conflict there where his appointed governor Padsha Khan was routed by the forces of Saif Ullah, who refused to give up power. He said the team was holding a loya jirga, for two to three days in Gardez to resolve the conflict.
Nationbuilding, anyone? Oops, sorry, we don't do that. Posted by ssh!_peanut_gallery 2/4/2002 7:59:26 PM
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Afghanistan's postal service resumed operations in the capital on Saturday for the first time in more than two decades. Hundreds of customers queued up at 18 post offices which opened in the capital to buy stamps or make international telephone calls from new booths erected by authorities. Letter writers did brisk business on the pavements outside, while vendors selling pens and paper quickly staked out their patches.
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A Turkish newspaper reported that Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit was preparing a letter to Saddam Hussein warning him to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq or face the threat of war. Sabah daily said Ecevit, who met Bush in Washington in January, would urge Saddam to allow the inspectors in and "stop the production of weapons of mass destruction."
"If you do not, the United States ... may consider an operation against Iraq, and the whole region will be dragged into war," the newspaper quoted the letter as saying.
Iraqi newspapers on Saturday condemned "the dwarf Bush" as savage and aggressive and Iranian parliamentarians called him a threat to world peace and security. This is the latest step in the dance that will end up with Sammy doing the Mussolini in some square in Bagdad. Bush and Rumsfeld are probably hoping that the example and the pressure of being on the same list will help the Iranian moderates establish themselves.
Saddam Hussein ought to consider the implications of the latest US Defense budget requests. While the Bush administration may be less reluctant to expose US servicemembers to the dangers of becoming casualties than the Clinton administration, what is really different is the willingness to bet the barn on spending enough to finance a significant long term war effort. The size and scope of the increase requests are pretty dramatic, and may be especially dramatic considering the emphasis on introducing next generation technology in several weapons systems and revamping the US command and control structure. Iraq or Iran were 15 years behind the US in 1990, and the interim has not been kind to the Iraqi armed services. Revolutions in military technology and doctrine are exponential in their effects if one side persists in never addressing those revolutionary influences, and Iraq and Iran last fought themselves to a standstill using WW I tactics. The implications of this were clear in the Gulf War when the Iraqi Army fell apart. Why should events unfold more beneficially for Hussein in 2002-3? Posted by Tom Roberts 2/3/2002 5:34:23 PM
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Police in Pakistan appeared no closer to finding US journalist Daniel Pearl 11 days after his abduction, despite detaining several people and ruling out a claim that he is dead. A hitherto unknown group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, which sent a series of e-mails earlier in the week with photos of Pearl in captivity, had threatened to kill him first by Thursday then by Friday. Police dismissed an e-mail sent Friday claiming Pearl had been killed, and another e-mail sent Saturday saying he "may be" alive, blaming it on a teenager in Lahore. A 16 year old had admitted to sending the e-mail. Although the investigation had led to several people being detained in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, police said no charges had been laid. An intelligence officer said authorities were now only treating e-mails carrying photos of Pearl as genuine, branding any others as fakes.
Based on other events in region, I wouldn't be the least surprised to learn that OBL was sipping tea upstairs in some remote hacienda while Pearl was incommunicado in the basement. Local security being provided by the ISI, of course. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/3/2002 5:20:19 PM
There was a false alarm this afternoon that Pearl had been found, shot through the head and dropped near the cop shop. Turned out to be some other poor soul. I was surprised that it was a false alarm.
I don't think OBL's involved. I think it's amateurs, possibly amateurs associated with the 16-year-old. I hope the Pak cops are hitting him very many times. I don't think they're investigating very hard, though. I think they're afraid of finding some of their own people involved.
Posted by Fred 2/3/2002 5:48:40 PM
Has it come as a surprise that someone got pissed off at the WSJ? This could well be a personal grudge, not OBL or the ISI. Posted by Kristin 2/4/2002 8:55:50 PM
Doubt it. I don't think it had anything to do with the WSJ. I think it was the nationality. Posted by Fred 2/5/2002 12:35:17 AM
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Foreign mercenaries, especially of the Lashker-e-Taiba, have been indulging in street fights and have let loose a rein of terror on Kashmiri youths in training camps located in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The mercenaries, including those of Lashkar, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al-Badar, who shifted their bases at the behest of ISI to PoK after the US toughened its stand against promotion of terrorism, have virtually launched a violent campaign against Kashmiris, including recruits of Hizbul Mujahideen. Recently, Lashkar militants attacked Hizbul Mujahideen and made a near fatal attack on their leader Ismail Zaheer. Lashkar wanted the Hizb to disband itself in the area which the Lashkar claims as exclusively its own. The militants have confirmed the incidents and said that a flood of Afghan mercenaries, who arrived in PoK after the American strike in Kabul, were treating locals very badly. Seems all is not well in Thugland. The Afghans and the "Arab" buddies have their own ideas of how things should be run. The Afghans were glad to see them go because of their lordly and ruthless ways, and now the Kashmiris get to put up with them.
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Time carries an interview with Egyptian fundamentalist Montasser El Zayat. Zayat says that bin Laden and Ayman El Zawahiri have left the Islamist movement in ruins. "He made us a chewable morsel of bread under America's jaws, to kill and fight us under the assumption that we are all terrorists responsible for Sept. 11. He led to the downfall of a country that used to offer refuge to Islamists who were on the run from their country. Governments started to chase individuals and groups that had nothing to do with violence... But bin Laden underestimated the strength of his enemy. They miscalculated, so they lost the Taliban and they lost Afghanistan."
And what's going to happen now? "In the coming period we will purify the movement of what might encourage or initiate violent activities. But this process cannot be one-sided, it is strongly linked to the reevaluation in the positions of the governments. A balance has to be struck. If this movement is allowed to exist and to encourage the moderate elements from within it to express their views, then I am sure that the propagators of violence will find it very difficult to move." Will the coming days see the Islamic Purges? Will the gunnies and bombers start to disappear, one by one, never to be seen again? It's possible, but it will be a localized phenomenon. It probably won't happen in Israel/Palestine. The gunnies are still the boys with power there. It won't happen in Lebanon, for the same reasons, unless Syria decides to make it so. The stage may already be set in Kashmir with the resentment of the locals against the Afghan Talibs and the "Arabs." But Egypt and Saudi Arabia, representing respectively the brains and the pocketbook of the fundos, will be the ones to watch. If Egypt begins, Saudi Arabia may discretely follow.
"I do not know how bin Laden reached this judgment that all Americans should be killed. This is really wrong and Islam does not condone that at all," Zayat says. What he really means is that bin Laden miscalculated on the same scale Saddam Hussein miscalculated in Kuwait. Right or wrong has no relevance to the terrorists mindset; it's replaced by useful and not useful. Declaring jihad against the strongest country in the world from a rathole like Afghanistan, and goading it to fury, was an act of apalling stupidity. Binny seems to have had some halfassed idea of being the leader of the Muslim side in a war between civilizations, but that's the identical mistake Saddam made.
Now the "moderate" fundos (the ones who beat their own wives) will have to go down with the gunnies and the exploders and the blood-thirsty mullahs; or they'll have to purge the movement of the extremists, who aren't going to quietly begin decomposition. Will we see a fundo civil war?
Aren't we having one already? How many of those Lutheran senators are Missouri Synod? Posted by nails_in_church_door 2/4/2002 8:39:50 PM
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Indian troops killed 12 Kashmiri Mujahideen in separate encounters. The dead included seven members of the Lashkar-i-Taiba. Three of the Lashkar men were killed on Friday evening when troops "encircled a house where militants were hiding", a police spokesman claimed. Police alleged the slain fighters were Pakistanis, and one of them, Abu Hyder, was serving the group as "company commander". In another encounter, Indian forces shot dead four more Lashkar fighters at Upper Sanar, near Surankote, 530 kilometres south of Srinagar.
A gunny and an Indian soldier were killed in a three-hour long encounter on Friday night in Kupwara district. Three other Indian soldiers sustained injuries during the gunbattle. Four more Mujahideen were killed elsewhere in occupied Kashmir. Police said freedom fighters shot dead three persons, including a woman in Rajouri and Udhampur on Saturday. Just the day-to-day jihadi grind: Wave a gun, holler a slogan, maybe bump a few people off, then get severely perforated and come down with rigor mortis. And they say working on an assembly line is soul-deadening?
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Following the first Palestinian suicide bombing by a woman, the spiritual leader of the Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, has come out against women conducting suicide attacks as part of the anti-Israeli uprising. "I'm saying that in this phase (of the uprising), the participation of women is not needed in martyr operations, like men," Yassin said in an interview with the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily. "We can't meet the growing demands of young men who wish to carry out martyr operations." However, he added that once the current 16-month old intifada enters its "decisive phase, everyone will participate without exception" and that "women form the second line of defence in the resistance to the occupation".
Oh, crap. Second line of defense? This feminist says it's downright ludicrous to suggest that the average teenage male can't figure out how to make his own pipe bomb. It's more like, "Girl suicide bombers who sign up 'cuz they wanna meet those 72 virgins are a species of womyn I'd rather not deal with!" And that "too much demand" business is an awfully transparent attempt to keep the young hotheads under somebody else's control. I'm sure our Palestinian sisters can't wait to hear what's coming next. "Ladies, grab your flowerpots! We're counting on you for the house-to-house fighting." I propose we just run a computer simulation, and hand everyone slated to die in all of this a ticket to Polynesia, or 40 acres and a mule instead. Posted by la_feminista 2/4/2002 8:29:32 PM
Ummm... Personally, if I were a chick, even if I were a feminist, I'd leave it to the guys. Of course, if I was a Palestinian fellow, I'd think it was a great idea for the ladies to go "boom" while I sat around smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. But that might be because I, personally, have this phobia about exploding... Posted by Fred 2/5/2002 12:32:55 AM
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
