Good news from Afghanistan. And naturally, not a Pashtun to be seen.
PARAKH, Afghanistan - Slashed across the side of a rugged mountain like the sign of Zorro, the Z Road started as a simple $59,000 US project to put a radio tower atop a small peak in the Hindu Kush, so people in the remote Panjshir Valley could for the first time pick up commercial radio from Kabul, about 60 miles away.
After road crews conquered the mountain's 270-foot face last November, other forces took over. By the new year, private companies had extended the road to the next hilltop, two-thirds of a mile away and 640 feet higher, for a bank of cellphone towers. Then came another half-mile extension to the next peak for a television tower, then plans for a wind farm, and, last month, a series of switchbacks down the far side of the range to give villages in the next valley their first road to the outside.
This is the way reconstruction in Afghanistan was supposed to be. A little bit of US pump priming, combined with profit motive and human need, would be harnessed by a grateful, liberated population to transform their lives and country. In the process, the people would become loyal allies in the fight against terror.
It hasn't always worked that way. Afghanistan is besieged by a growing insurgency that is shifting US money and manpower from reconstruction to security, undermining vital road, electricity, school, and other projects that are designed to extend the authority of the national government and win hearts and minds.
But in Afghanistan's famed Panjshir Valley - a remote, sparsely populated mountain region that is almost entirely ethnic Tajik - an unprecedented synergy among the local government, the people, and US soldiers has helped spark a development boom that is modernizing and transforming the valley, which became Afghanistan's 34th province three years ago. Underpinning it all is an unusual sense of calm that has come with the people's success in keeping the Taliban at bay.
When a US reconstruction team recently returned to Forward Operating Base Lion about 10 miles inside the valley, troops parked their military vehicles for the duration of their stay and traveled throughout the province in regular sport utility vehicles, without body armor and helmets. They often eschewed convoys and went out on missions in single vehicles.
Ambassadors, politicians, and NATO and US military officials "all ask the same thing: Can we do this in other provinces?" said Governor Bahlol Bahij of Panjshir. He extols his zero tolerance for opium poppy cultivation and his systems for working with the US military and foreign aid workers, and for stopping the spread of the extremist Taliban into his province.
In addition to being mostly Tajik, Panjshir Province is almost entirely Sunni Muslim, so the region lacks many ethnic, religious, and cultural differences that have fueled the insurgency elsewhere in Afghanistan. The province, about 1 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island, has 300,000 residents and is isolated. An indigenous intelligence network with a knowledge of the landscape enabled Panjshir fighters to repel repeated Soviet, mujahideen, and Taliban offenses in the 1980s and '90s and helped this region remain the only unconquered area of Afghanistan.
That explains so-o-o-o-o much.
The fighters were led by national hero Ahmed Shah Massoud, the so-called Lion of Panjshir, who was killed in an Al Qaeda suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. Today, nomad sheep herders graze their flocks on the valley floor among rusting Soviet tanks and decrepit armored vehicles. Terraced gardens line the lower slopes, which climb to slate gray mountaintops scarred by foxholes and trenches.
Pictures of Massoud peer out from the windows of mud-brick houses, car windshields, billboards, and storefronts. Women in all-encompassing sky blue burqas walk along roads with girls in black dresses and white shawls - the traditional school uniform in the valley. Irrigation canals feed groves of walnut, almond, and mulberry trees and fields of potatoes, beans, and grapes.
"This is the safest part of Afghanistan, because the people of Panjshir stick together," said Mansor Azimi Panjshir, 23, a construction worker.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/15/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Had not Massoud been killed by AQ, I think things would be much better in Afghanistan today.
The guy had great prestige, fantastic leadership skills and was actually pro American.
#4
Apart from the usual slant of the hack ("fallujah, abu graib, no WMD, fought to a standstill, etc, etc..."), this is an interesting article, I wonder what would lotp or other think of that meeting.
#6
In his tour de force book Planet of Slums, Davis observes, "The Pentagon's best minds have dared to venture where most United Nations, World Bank or Department of State types fear to go ¡ [T]hey now assert that the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World - especially their slum outskirts - will be the distinctive battlespace of the 21st century." Pentagon war-fighting doctrine, he notes, "is being reshaped accordingly to support a low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor".
The only way such a dismal scenario will happen is if the First World leaders continue to ignore the dire necessity of killing despots and tyrants like Mugabe, Kim Jong Il and Islam's host of ghouls. Better that these hellholes are cleansed with nuclear fire than allow them to drag the civilized world into their bottomless cesspool of incorrigible criminality and eternal human degradation.
#7
To the rest of the world, at least, it's clear enough that the Pentagon knows how to redden city streets in the developing world, just not win wars there; but in Washington - by the evidence of this "Joint Urban Operations, 2007" conference - it matters little. Advised, outfitted, and educated by these mild-mannered men who sipped sodas and noshed on burnt egg rolls between presentations, the Pentagon has evidently decided to prepare for 100 years more of the same: war against various outposts of a restless, oppressed population of slum-dwellers one billion strong and growing at an estimated rate of 25 million a year. All of these UO experts are preparing for an endless struggle that history suggests they can't win, but that is guaranteed to lead to large-scale destruction, destabilization, and death. Unsurprisingly, the civilians of the cities that they plan to occupy, whether living in Karachi, Jakarta, or Baghdad, have no say in the matter. No one thought to invite any of them to the conference.
#8
Ralph Peters had an execllent book on the future of warfare and it's urban component (which would dominate becauese fighting Uncle Sam in the open is suicide).
He laid out tactics used by the Chechyans and others. Hanging wounded or dead Russians in front of machine gun nests because it made the Russians less likely to fire back. Basically the third world learned the lesson from the Vietnamese that the only chance to win is to drag the combatants into the most vile barbarism imaginable, but hope that the west walks away rather than goes genocidal.
#9
The 20th Air Force has seen the future and the answer is napalm.
Posted by: ed ||
10/15/2007 17:58 Comments ||
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#10
My 2c worth. Iraq (Baghdad) will be the last large urban battlefield the USA and its allies fight in, for a generation.
I have several reasons for thinking this.
Occupying an enemies capital isn't even 20th century thinking, it's 19th century thinking. Occupying Baghdad was a mistake that wouldn't have been made were hindsight available. I recall the discussion at the time of just going around it and keeping going into the Sunni heartland north and west. The calculation was that taking Baghdad would end the war sooner.
Another reason, is the places where I foresee future conflicts don't have large cities - South Caucasus, the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, East Siberia, South China Sea.
A third reason is we know how to contain urban conflicts. The British did it in N.Ireland and the Israelis have done it in Gaza and the W Bank - fences, surveillance, intelligence, limited raids to snatch or assasinate people, but otherwise leave the urban slums alone.
#11
You've got a point, Phil, on military considerations. But there are also political ones. If you leave a city, not just the capital, in enemy hands, they will have control of the civilian residents, civilian communications systems and the ability to broadcast any view of misery, fauxtography, or terror that they choose to audiences foreign and domestic.
Americans don't have the patience for what we have had to do in Iraq let alone seige or encirclement warfare. I look for lots more combat in cities and banlieus, especially in EUrabia.
#12
A third reason is we know how to contain urban conflicts. The British did it in N.Ireland and the Israelis have done it in Gaza and the W Bank - fences, surveillance, intelligence, limited raids to snatch or assasinate people, but otherwise leave the urban slums alone.
Excellent analysis, phil. Iraq must serve as a comprehensive object lesson regarding what to avoid in all further campaigns against Islam and other hostile regime changes. NO MORE NATION BUILDING. Break the bad boys' toys and get the hell out. Preferrably after having looted their treasuries to pay the bill.
Governor NWFP Lt. Gen (Retd) Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai said on Sunday that peace and calm will soon return to restive Waziristan agencies as enough progress has been made in this regard.
Talking to reporters after offering Eid prayer at Karnal Sher Khan Shaheed Stadium, he said, We are sure that our peace efforts will soon bear fruit and we have achieved some progress in it as well. However, at the moment I could not disclose it due to certain reasons. The peace will be restored predominantly through dialogues and jirgas, he added.
The Governor said, he made lot of efforts to avoid breaking of the peace agreement but certain elements in the tribal fold for the fulfilment of their nefarious designs broke the peace truce. He said losses on both sides were not good and expressed great remorse over the damages being caused there to both the security forces and the local population.
In reply to a question, the Governor said, the tribesmen have now realised that they have no other option except to go for peace. To another query, he said, patriotic tribal people will support the government endeavours for the establishment of peace in the tribal regions and will flush out the miscreants from their areas.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/15/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
"...and I won't come on your check, and my mouth is in the mail..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/15/2007 7:42 Comments ||
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#2
Yeeeeah...just ask my wife...Morgan Fairchild.
Posted by: Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai ||
10/15/2007 10:59 Comments ||
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#1
The Democrats do one shameful thing after another to try to discredit Bush and hang a loss in Iraq around his neck. They are traitors to the country. These traitorous SOBs and DOBs (daughters of...) ought to be all tossed out of office ASAP.
#2
The Turks tormented their Kurdish minority for decades - and express outrage when Kurds respond. Now they're threatening to invade northern Iraq, while whining that honor-killings, pervasive corruption and anti-Western venom shouldn't deny them membership in the EU.
Despite all that, we've got to kill this resolution. It's not the wording - but the timing.
Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.
All right, I'm convinced. Halt the declaration for now. I'm also convinced of something else. The Turks need a smackdown of monumental proportions. Someone in Washington ought to tell Ankara that if they betray America one more time we'll see to it that hell freezes over before Turkey ever gains admittance to the EU.
America's democrats need to think long and hard about their own treachery as well. The republicans are total idiots for not getting the message out about what's really going on with this declaration. Their dumbfounding silence will ensconce Hillary in the Oval Office. This administration's consistent inability to mobilize information is a signal failure of stupendous proportions. Islam and the democrats are given free run of the media without so much as a peep from the Right. Their idiocy is a near-match for the liberals'.
#3
At one time Turkey was a useful ally during the cold war. We had air bases in Turkey. They have slid from secular towards fundamentalist islamic which is trouble. They made the Iraqi war a measure more difficult when they didn't allow the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division to come through Turkey to open a second front. Instead, we had to drop a reduced number of paratroopers in the north. In this latest brew ha-ha, the donks are playing politics at the expense of our military with this nearly 100 year old genocide issue whereas the Turks are wanting to hair up the butter by coming into northern Iraq and going after what they call radical Kurds. The Turks need be told to stay out of Iraq or else. The donks resolution needs to be defeated because of the politics that are being played. You are right Zen, it is the timing of the resolution that stinks.
#4
If the Dems really want to pass a genocide resolution, let them conclude that Darfur is a genocide and let's send a brigade there to kick some ass. How spineless is it to pass a resolution 90 years after the fact? Oh, I forgot, since Bush is in office and we are still fighting in Iraq, this is urgent Congressional business. F 'em all.
Posted by: Tibor ||
10/15/2007 14:40 Comments ||
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#5
JohnQC: we still have an airbase in Turkey. It's a major supply nexus for getting stuff into Iraq.
We need supply lines that come into Iraq through the side opposite Iran.
A US officer has been sent to court-martial in connection with seven charges that may send him into prison for good, the US army said here Sunday. US Colonel William H. Steele has been convicted in three charges, while four charges are still being investigated, the army said in a release.
Steele has been charged with nine violations, including fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee, mishandling classified information and government funds, having an inappropriate relationship with an interpreter and possessing pornography.
When Steele left his job at western Baghdad's Camp Cropper detention center for another position in Iraq, he took 18,000 electronic and printed classified documents, witnesses testified. Like the Abu Ghraib scandal, the allegations against Steele have raised questions about the behavior of military jailers in Iraq. But one of the key questions about Steele seemed to be whether he was treating detainees far too well, in violation of military law.
If Steele is convicted in the other four charges during a trial to be held on October 15, he may face life sentence. Steele is now held in Theater Field Detention Facility in the State of Kuwait pending trial.
#2
He was only trying to honor the spirit of international law on treatment of detainees. It's a crime now to not be a 'war criminal.'
(I intend it as sarcasm but I suspect many of the western 'elite' would actually say it and mean it.)
#3
He's mistake was making the military a career choice. His resume speaks volumes of qualification for employment as either a Representative or Senator in Congress.
I don't think we noted this article before. Via Instapundit and Second Hand Conjecture. Long article, most of which is sitting on Page 49.
We at the Burg have known for a while that the Shi'a are increasingly unhappy with the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army, to the point where Mookie has had to disavow the paramilitary acts. It's useful to see the NYT catch on. If -- and it's not as far along -- we can do with the Shi'a what we've done with the Sunni tribal chiefs, we're a fair ways down the road in accomplishing our goals.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 In a number of Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protector against Sunni militants. Now they resent it as a band of street thugs without ideology.
The hardening Shiite feeling in Baghdad opens an opportunity for the American military, which has long struggled against the Mahdi Army, as American commanders rely increasingly on tribes and local leaders in their prosecution of the war. The sectarian landscape has shifted, with Sunni extremists largely defeated in many Shiite neighborhoods, and the war in those places has sunk into a criminality that is often blind to sect.
In interviews, 10 Shiites from four neighborhoods in eastern and western Baghdad described a pattern in which militia members, looking for new sources of income, turned on Shiites.
The pattern appears less frequently in neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shiites are still struggling for territory. Sadr City, the largest Shiite neighborhood, where the Mahdi Armys face is more political than military, has largely escaped the wave of criminality. Among the people killed in the neighborhood of Topchi over the past two months, residents said, were the owner of an electrical shop, a sweets seller, a rich man, three women, two local council members, and two children, ages 9 and 11. It was a disparate group with one thing in common: All were Shiites killed by Shiites. Residents blamed the Mahdi Army, which controls the neighborhood.
Everyone knew who the killers were, said a mother from Topchi, whose neighbor, a Shiite woman, was one of the victims. Im Shiite, and I pray to God that he will punish them.
The International Committee of the Red Cross Thingy (ICRC) has recently issued 22 passports for another group of Palestinian refugees at al-Rawishid refugee camp as a prelude to resettling them in Brazil.
Where they'll soon invent find the 2,024,967th holiest site in all Islam.
Spokeswoman for the ICRC Amman Mission Rabi Afana told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on Saturday that the mission had so far issued 22 temporary passports in groups, the last of which were 16 documents for Palestinians resettled in Brazil.
Asked by KUNA about the fate of other 2,300 Palestinian refugees stuck on the Jordanian-Iraqi border and Jordanian-Syrian border, she said the Amman Mission was responsibly for those Palestinians coming to Jordan only, while those held on the Syrian-Iraqi border fell within the responsibility of the ICRC Syria Mission.
In 2003-2005, some 900 Palestinians were stuck at the buffer zone on the Jordanian-Iraqi border, escaping the conflict in Iraq. The al-Rawishid Palestinian refugee camp in south Jordan near the Iraqi border received over 220 out of 900 Palestinians held at the buffer zone, with 70 having been resettled in Canada; 30 in New Zealand and 105 in Brazil.
However, the ICRC urged the international community to exert more efforts to find permanent solutions to those Palestinian refugees, including children, given their difficult humanitarian circumstances.
Three Muslim militants on death row for their involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings will not seek clemency from the Indonesian president, their last avenue of appeal, a report said today. We do not want a (presidential) pardon, Imam Samudra was quoted as saying by Kompas online. A pardon is a democratic law that we oppose.
Samudra and brothers Amrozi and Ali Ghufron await the firing squad for their role in the 2002 nightclub bombings on the holiday island that killed 202 people. The attacks have been blamed on local militant organisation Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). Indonesias Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the three in August but no date has so far been set for their executions.
Samudra, speaking in his usual fiery style after attending Eid al-Fitr prayers with his two accomplices at their jail in Central Java on Saturday, said his group was not guilty in the eyes of God. We will enter heaven, Samudra said. A (presidential) pardon is sought by those who are guilty and we are not guilty.
We are ready to die in any manner, as long as this death is blessed by Allah, Samudra said, adding that he would prefer to be beheaded rather than shot.
Indonesian officials have ruled out beheading, an Islamic-sanctioned punishment. Legal executions in Indonesia are carried out by firing squad. Me and my friends will go to heaven, Samudra said in English, adding in Indonesian that When we die, we will have the company of 70 beautiful angels. Isnt that something nice?
Samudra said that the bombings were well-planned actions in the name of Jihad, or holy war, and that they were not mere emotional reactions, Kompas reported. Last month, the three men signed a final statement that was reported to have read: If we are executed, then the drops of our blood will, God willing, become a ray of light for Muslims and become hell for infidels and hypocrites. The statement also said the three would continue to engage in jihad if they were pardoned and released from prison.
#4
A tombstone implies burial...which is too good for the scum.
Merely a figure of speech, 'mouse. Please recall that I advocate scattering the ashes of terrorists over deep water to prevent any veneration of them after death. Grieving relatives be damned. If Muslims knew that indecent burial awaited their participation in terrorism they might think twice.
The West is so far from a concerted effort to play upon all aspects of Islamic superstition and traditions that it is pitiful. Every single limiting aspect of their idiotic practices needs to be capitalized upon. We should be crop dusting their agricultural zones with liquified pig shit, gathering up their oldest and most revered copies of the Koran for burning and contaminating all food and medicine exported to the MME (Muslim Middle East) with porcine DNA.
#2
Some 1,000 kilometers south of Bangkok, the area has been plagued by bombings and killings since 2001.
Bombings and killings perpretated by mormon fanatics, the thai muslims are totally not involved and innocent, that's why they "violence-weary", because, it's not their fault, you know.
Iran arrested on Sunday a prominent rights activist who has campaigned against the death penalty on charges of spreading propaganda and publishing secret documents, his lawyer said. Emaddedin Baghi, who heads the Committee for the Defence of Prisoners Rights, has already served several jail terms in Iran and received awards from Western countries for his work.
Think the anti-death penalty groups in the US will come to his defense?
He is charged with spreading propaganda against the regime and publishing secret government documents, his lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told AFP.
According to the charges, Baghi obtained secret information from prisoners detained in security prisons and then disseminated this information during seminars organised by his group, the lawyer said.
Baghi is a former journalist who served a three-year jail term between 2000-2003 over his writings in several pro-reform newspapers. Over the last months, he has publicly protested against the wave of hangings, many in public, that have swept Iran as part of a campaign by the authorities they say is aimed at improving security in society.
In September he wrote an open letter to the heads of reformist partiesincluding former president Mohammad Khatami and ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubicomplaining of their silence over the increased hangings. In 2005 Baghi was awarded a prize for human rights by France for his work campaigning against the death penalty.
At least 207 the number of executions carried out in the country so far this year, already well above the figures for 2006. Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking and adultery. The Islamic republic is currently believed to be the second most prolofic applier of the death penalty wordlwide after China.
Nikbakht said a bail of 500 million rials (53,500 dollars) had been set but it was then decided to imprison Baghi as he still had a one year jail term to serve from a previous conviction. The lawyer also confirmed reports from Western rights groups that Baghi had been sentenced to three years in prison earlier this year over his activities.However he has yet to serve this sentence, which remains the subject of an appeal. He has appealed and now the case is in the hands of the court, he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/15/2007 21:30 ||
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Two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah last year reportedly have been handed over to Iran. The London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Sunday that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were seized in June 2006, have been transferred from Lebanon to Iran via a third country. Iran is Hezbollah's chief sponsor.
The third country'd be Syria, of course.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office denied the report. Israeli officials did not provide further details. Karmit Goldwasser, Ehud's wife, told Israel Radio that U.N.-mediated negotiations for the soldiers' release are well under way. She had no details on their condition.
This article starring:
Ehud Goldwasser
Eldad Regev
Posted by: Fred ||
10/15/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
In the hostage business since Prez. Carter.
Iran == Hostages R Us.
Justice Minister Charles Rizk said Saturday that Lebanon would dispatch its highest ranking judge to New York follow up with U.N. officials for the formation of the international tribunal. Rizk said senior Judge Antoine Kheir, who heads the highest Judicial Council, would leave for New York over the weekend to "coordinate" with U.N. legal officials the formation of the tribunal that will try the suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the related crimes.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced earlier in the week that he plans to appoint two judges and the UN legal chief to the panel that will select the judges and prosecutor for the international tribunal as per the UN Security Council resolution that authorized the establishment of the tribunal.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/15/2007 00:00 ||
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Lebanon's Christian leaders of the majority and the opposition have all agreed with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir on the formation of a joint committee to try reach consensus on a presidential candidate.
The committee, according to reliable sources, would comprise two or three members from each of the March 14 Majority and March 8 opposition and would hold meetings behind closed doors to try to reach a consensus on a presidential candidate under the Sfeir's auspices.
The proposal was agreed in separate meetings between Sfeir and Maronite representatives of both factions on Thursday and Friday. Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun and former MP Suleiman Franjieh, both representing the Hezbollah-led opposition, met Sfeir at the latter's seat in Bkirki on Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/15/2007 00:00 ||
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been told of a plot to assassinate him during a visit to Iran this week, a Kremlin spokeswoman said Sunday. The spokeswoman, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity, refused further comment. Interfax news agency, citing a source in Russia's special services, said suicide terrorists had been trained to carry out the assassination. Putin is to travel to Teheran on Monday night from Germany after meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/15/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Weren't the Islamists supposed to kill him last?
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.
Governor NWFP Lt. Gen (Retd) Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai said on Sunday that peace and calm will soon return to restive Waziristan agencies as enough progress has been made in this regard. 
BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 In a number of Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protector against Sunni militants. Now they resent it as a band of street thugs without ideology.
Two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah last year reportedly have been handed over to Iran. The London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Sunday that 
