US has won the Afghan war?

[ComradePashtun]

ghundal aka unknownprince Pakistani ISI associate! Why have you decided to post under a differnt name now?

Back to the topic, you somehow think that me or BLS are dreading over U.S. withdrawal or defeat, well I tell you what - we could hardly give a crap, at least I don't. In fact I am happy that they get their aas kicked a little bit and never allowed to get too comfortable. My concern is my people: non-Taliban and Taliban alike.

While focusing back on the topic, it is hardly genious to think that this is a low intensity war that has almost all signs that it is a stalemate. However, I will reiterate again that puting all pieces together both looking at the the tactical and strategic level militarily, and also politically, it is far-fetched to say that anything critical is abound unless something calamitous afflicts the US and NATO i.e. cutting and running if allience were to descent on planet and help Talibs as partners for universal domination. I am still of the view that U.S. will continue to preserve the level of force unless there is critical progress on the political front. The cost of doing otherwise would be way too much and doomed, even for you as a little Paki American ISI associate. Either way, they would have to leave be a year or 5 years from now. think eventually both sides will make a deal, after all Taliban leaders are with ISI. So concentrate and fixate your focus on how things will turn out betweem U.S. and ISI/Pakistan.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

I haven't gained anything from the US, nor the pakistanis, nor the Soviets before them. If they go, pa Khudae dae maal shee ao dagha pakistan ham dae warsaraa waakhlee. I am not concerned just on withdrawal but what withdrawal and situation is beneficial for my people. I don't know why you can't see this simple point.

[ComradePashtun]

We have always been the political losers.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

We have always been the political losers.

Yupp. Despite all the great wars against Britain, skirmishes/fights, we gained very very little politically and we lost even more during the Soviet-Afghan war. I don't know why certain people want a repetition of something counter to their interests.

[ComradePashtun]

I have a wishful dream, BLS,

May be this time around inshallah Allah will help disburden us of all the harmful around us. Maybe U.S. will get expelled with cost of some Talib cannon fodders and robots, and the remaining can hopefully kill and get killed by NA and hence cross each other out too. Lastly but finally Inshallah we will be left with all these fkers uprooted and annihilated from all around us. But what if this doesn't happen?

[BLS_1919v2.0]

Ahhh a clean slate approach...I have a dream with certain similar elements as well...I will share it with you one day. Yaraa wrora we have to have a little bit of hope and a lot of cynicism...however if we have survived this much and more, I think there is a way out for us.

[ghundal]

You are a lost soul ghundaka.

OK

I have asked you before to answer this exactly question. In order to have properly discuss the issue I have you to have it in a professional and structured manner so you do not resort to sentimental BS, anecdotes and your usual diatribe and the rest which can be considered mere slurs.

In all due respect, you are the one who fails to provide evidence about your claims about Afghanistan and the Taliban, but lets leave that for now. I am reasonable, unlike you, I will give you a way out. Lets hope you do not fall flat on your face for the 100th time.

So here again, I ask you: define winning and losing for the U.S. and Taliban.

First of all, winning and losing is either obtaining your goals or not. So this depends then on the goals of the respective parties to this war.

The stated goals of the US in regards to Afghanistan have changed on several occasions as we all know, but here is the objectives listed in the White paper on US policy in Afghanistan, released in 2009. My words are in red, obviously.

White House white paper on U.S. policy to Afghanistan and Pakistan | The Cable

Achieving our core goal is vital to U.S. national security. It requires, first of all, realistic and achievable objectives.


These include:

• Disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks.
  Who were the terrorists? Where are the terrorists? Maybe people just need to take a look in the mirror. You could say the succeeded here, but was that their real goal. I doubt it.
  

• Promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people and can eventually function, especially regarding internal security, with limited international support. they are failing if not outright failed, here. The US along with their Afghan counterparts have committed fraud after fraud. The Afghan 'government' is a huge fraud entity with people siphoning aid money out as quickly as it enters Afghanistan. Not accountable at all. Private security companies have been committing crimes with impunity. There is no security, no law and order. There has only been chaos and crimes, all perpetrated against the Afghan people by the foreigners and their puppets. As a result, the Taliban are gaining ground here, and Taliban support and control in Afghanistan has increased (please look back to previous links to US reports on the Taliban (other thread)) As Taliban arose out of the chaos before, they are again rising due to the same reasons.

• Developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance. this has not happened. Attrition rate of the ANA/ANP is very high. The ANA will only become attractive once they break away from, and oppose the foreigners. Till then, they lack all professionalism just like the US army, and have been guilty of the same war crimes being perpetrated against the Afghans. As we all know, the ANA is also not representative of the whole Afghan nation, and the pashtuns are not represented. This is mostly because pashtuns will never serve in a foreign backed force. The same reason they mostly refused to participate in the sham elections. In regards to the other point, the objective of any Afghan army should only be to protect its citizens, not to fight wars for others that in the first place should not be fought on their soil. Here, ANA continuing a counterinsurgency is a euphemism for the continuation of a civil war. The ANA lack the enthusiasm and the stomach to fight a war against their fellow Afghans. There are a lot of NA there, but most All are there for a paycheck, not an idea, anymore.
  

• Assisting efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan and a vibrant economy that provides opportunity for the people of Pakistan. mostly BS and fluff here, I guess they were presenting this to a panel of 'experts.' With Pakistan, they have found an accomplice to commit fraud and continue a failed war. They have only been pouring military aid to the Pakistan army to support their failed war effort.
  

• Involving the international community to actively assist in addressing these objectives for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an important leadership role for the UN. fail here, too. The international community have been using Afghanistan as a reason to siphon and steal money from their own tax-payers. While in cities like Kabul, you may see a few buildings here and there, in the rest of the country, there has only been destruction brought by the international community with continued war against the people. I assure you Mortenson will not be the last person to benefit from the misery of the Afghan people. The UN has given their blessing for all these projects, projects where the money seems to disappear, and never reach the people of Afghanistan. FAILED here
  

I am not saying they have and they will never achieve their objectives soley militarily. The end of this war is political just like all wars have been throughout the mankind history. So where are the U.S. and in Taliban in their respective political goals?

The Afghan resistance (Taliban, HIG, and the common Afghan) have one clear, unchangeable goal: to remove foreigners from their land. They have waged a war of attrition, and so far all those US operations have resulted in failure (Kandahar being the most recent). You had them withdraw not just from the publicized Pech Valley, but from several other areas. Operations are launched as quickly as the previous one ends with no result.

You have to remember that this is not about U.S. only but the overwhelming majority of Afghanistan and its government against the Taliban.
This is false. You can look back to the links to the US reports I posted that reveal that the Afghans support for the Taliban to be high and rising in Afghanistan.

Once again I ask you to name me 2 provinces or 5 districts that Taliban control.
Paktika, Paktia, Nuristan, Kunar, and Helmand, the list can continue. What was your point to bring this up? You can obviously draw from the wild claims of "reversible progress" made by Gates and Co (not Obama- he is keeping silent for some reason). They have also gone beyond Pashtun strong areas of the South and East to the Northern areas too. This breaks the ethnocentric hysteria. Afghans are united in their opposition to the foreigners.

Taliban takes hold in once-peaceful northern Afghanistan

I am not saying Taliban are insignificant, they indeed are a significant political organisation who needs to be incorporated into long term solution in Afghanistan, but they are not winning and will not win against the rest of Afghanistan. We on the other hand think that they are the sons of the soil like the rest of us who are misguided and fallen in to the hands of strangers, where their leaders are held hostage. Saying this, the issue of US presence can only be dealt with once we Afghans come together from which point they will be making the move back to USA. United we stand and divided we fall.

that is your opinion. Provide evidence that they are not winning, and that they will not win. In the other thread, I gave you Dr. Schueuer's article which points out why the West has already lost. You failed to refute the article with evidence. Afghans are united in their opposition against foreigners and criminal elements in their society (whether they be expats or war lords).

You are a Pakistani so it is best you worry about your own country.

You are a member of the Flat Earth Society, and you should understand that semi-normalcy in Kabul does not translate to the rest of Afghanistan, especially the areas of strong resistance. This you should understand. You should also understand, that regardless of what you want for our country, foreigners will never be tolerated. They have never been tolerated before, and nor will they be tolerated now. Ahmad Shah Baba did not tolerate them, and nor did Mirwais neeka. They buried them. I doubt it Afghans had this discussion back then. Back then, all Afghans/Pashtuns from all areas would heed the call of their leaders and unite in common defense of the homeland. Thats why they won. InshAllah, I know I am about to see Afghanistan move forward and prosper. This I am sure will see in my lifetime

[ghundal]

I haven't gained anything from the US, nor the pakistanis, nor the Soviets before them

Agreed. I assume when you say I, you are speaking of Pashtuns, and I am wondering why you didn't mention NATO as you always do in regards to Afghanistan?

If they go, pa Khudae dae maal shee ao dagha pakistan ham dae warsaraa waakhlee.

I want them all out, and preferably wish they destroy themselves, and in fact I think we are all witnessing a very historic shift in global power for this century.

I am not concerned just on withdrawal but what withdrawal and situation is beneficial for my people. I don't know why you can't see this simple point.

So, please correct me if I am mistaken, are you then implying that the presence of foreigners will help our people? What beneficial situation do you imagine? The only thing foreigners have brought is death of Afghan children, women, and men. Before you answer, let me say, you have never explained the beneficial situation elsewhere.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

By I, I mean myself personally. US is the important part of NATO, everything else is mostly crumbs or sideshow.

No, one doesn't imply the other. You just have to understand in context, when you do, you will see what I am talking about.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

By I, I mean myself personally. US is the important part of NATO, everything else is mostly crumbs or sideshow.

No, one doesn't imply the other. You just have to understand in context, when you do, you will see what I am talking about.

BLS wrorre,

I would have intellectual contentions with two main points you make:

1) That if NATO leaves or withdraws, the Afghans and others will somehow be worse off and suffer, as if NATO props up their stability. Its rather as Hoh mentioned in his Nation article: Wherever NATO beefs up its presence, per the Afghan study group, instability and IED detonation increases:

"And so the cycle began. We add more troops, which strengthens the Taliban and weakens support for the government. Suicide attacks, IEDs, military and civilian dead or wounded—all rise commensuratelywith eachincrease in foreign troop or Afghan government presence"

http://www.thenation.com/article/157...-insider-talks

2) In regard to the suffering of the Afghans, I think this is also an illegitimate reason for demanding that any insurgency comprimise with NATO. Its very premise is to fight occupation and its demands appear to be that not a single NATO base remain in Afghanistan, which is contrary to the wishes of NATO. As long as that intellectual stalemate remains, there is no reason for the Taliban or any other element of the insurgency to seak out an accord with NATO. They have all the time in the world to continue this war of attrition.

Regarding oppression and suffering, I remind you of God's own words in reference to where the moral imperitive is:

Quran 2:217 They ask thee concerning fighting in the Prohibited Month. Say: "Fighting therein is a grave (offence); but graver is it in the sight of Allah to prevent access to the path of Allah, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members." Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter.

Now, Toramana and others will interject here and attempt to claim I am advocating a religious duty and not taking it upon myself. I urge them to think calmly before they reach into their big ANP sloganeering red hats and think about what I am about to say:

However, my issue with your view that there ought to be comprimise with NATO on this issue is that you are not addressing why that particular member of the Islamist insurgency is fighting NATO in the first place: Defensive holy war is actually a religious obligation that they feel they are fulfilling. Per Islamic doctrine it becomes an obligation to defend any Muslim soil the minute a non Muslim soldier takes a step onto the soil with the intention of war and occuoation. Now, me personally? I am fine with whatever the Afghan decides... should he decide he wants to farm, be a jiggalo, be an astronaut, or do nothing at all. If, however, he decides to follow this moral imperitive, I think youd have a very difficult time arguing against doctrine that 100% of scholars are decided on. The only contention with defensive holy war fare that Hamza Yusuf and others are able to generate (i.e. war that requires no caliphate approval) is in regard to the instructions against the Dajjaal. However, they have had a hard time being able to extend such orders as an abrogation of the defensive religious warfare doctrine. Regardless, youd have to tell that Afghan, Commander Duran, or other Afghans fighting against NATO presence that they do not have the moral imperitive here and explain why to them.

3) As an extension of point 2: I think attempting to limit the insurgencys right to the moral imperitive is a little bit like telling any group fighting against occupation, whether they were Tecumseh in the US fighting American occupation here, or whether it was Che Geuvara and Castro in Cuba, that they ought to submit so that people dont suffer. They would likely answer that in war, people do so suffer, but people fight wars in order to free themselves from what they see is tyranny and oppression.

4) Regarding whether the scenario has shifted and whether the Taliban have mass support or not anymore: It matters little. Even when they initially took the country back in the 90s, within the muj groups they had to contend with Sayaaf and Hekmetyaar and obviously did not have universal support, even within religious Pashtun circles. However the circumstances that I detailed above or in the Barakzai thread show that NATO and Mr Karzai (e.g his support of Warlord Abdul Razzaq and Gul Agha Sherzoy) are setting up a similar situation into which the Taliban first swept into in the 90s. A part of this is in regard to how much of the population sees Islam as under attack from the Western occupation:

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/19/s...-nato-invaded/

"The poll also showed majority support in Southern Afghanistan for secession and the creation of an independent Pashtunistan (potentially including some of Pakistan’s tribal regions), and that 40 percent of the population believed NATO was occupying Afghanistan as part of a goal to destroy Islam."
(International Council on Security and Development Polling)

There is also the February US military Paktika polling showing immense support for the militants in Pakitika province and the previous polling showing their support and view as an incorruptible force in Kandahar.

The bottom line is that I think:
A) NATO lacks the moral imperitive B) Scheuer is 100% correct in regard to the US's national security interests... he defines a win and a loss in regard to what the intelligence community deems as such C) The strategy of the insurgency may not at all require an immediate departure of NATO... rather, did you think about the idea that the world wide Islamist insurgency is perfectly happy with NATO staying in Afghanistan and bleeding out slowly as their written goals intend?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Also wrorre,

Here is an interesting article really showing just how astute Mr. Scheuer is on Afghan affairs despite various folks here chiding him without any evidence against his expert opinions. I think its rather eerie how well he is predicting the pace and outcome of events. This article was from last October yet is so very prescient. It contradicts your view regarding where money has been spent in Afghan provinces (.e. the great amount has been in the south yet the insurgeny is stronge rther.. It also makes some very important predictions that have come true in the form of the recent increase in northern afghan attacks. Some unrealistic folks here are attempting to blame the Quran riots of the north as well on the ISI, etc, but I think their ferocity and their occurence in the north in the first place supports his contentions below. Also note a few things announced today: Petreus moving to the CIA and the 9 Americans taken out in a Kabul base.:

http://the-diplomat.com/2010/11/01/g...ober-surprise/

General Petraeus’s October Surprise


The timing of Gen. Petraeus’s good news on Afghanistan is strangely convenient for Washington—and glosses over the reality of a likely civil war.

Last month saw a surprising flood of good tidings from Afghanistan. We learned that the US-NATO offensive in Kandahar is succeeding; that drone strikes are breaking al-Qaeda’s back; that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are at daggers drawn; and that the Taliban is ready to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Afghan war.
What a change since September, when the outlook was so gloomy! So what prompted these changes? Good policy? Military heroism? The Taliban realizing that it was beaten? Or was it something to do with tomorrow’s US mid-term congressional election?

My guess is that last one. After all, if you recall, the same Gen. David Petraeus who now commands in Afghanistan also delivered a similar package of remarkable and unexpected good news about Iraq when he was in charge there—just before the 2008 US presidential election. The ‘surge’ and the ‘Sunni Awakening’ had ‘succeeded,’ claims that were enough to broadly keep the Iraq war off the political agenda during the late stages of the campaign (much to the relief of both Barack Obama and John McCain). Today, it’s clear that much of the so-called success in Iraq is unravelling, with al-Qaeda returning to Baghdad and Anbar Province, and Iraqi society headed toward sectarian civil war.

This time around, Petraeus’s batch of happy news comes at a time when neither party wants to talk about how far the Afghan war is off the tracks. And, looking at the US media, the ploy has worked again.
The first three items of Petraeus’s supposed good-tidings package can be dealt with quickly. The Kandahar offensive is progressing because Petraeus and his predecessor gave the Taliban and other mujahedin eight months advance warning. As a result, insurgent leaders—never eager to stand and fight conventional forces—long ago moved most of their men and materiel to safer venues. Essentially the US-NATO campaign is succeeding because there’s so little opposition, save for the IEDs, mines and booby-traps with which the Taliban has laced the region.
Next, while drone strikes hurt al-Qaeda (no group welcomes casualties) they have no strategic impact on Osama bin Laden or his organization. Leaders are replaced and fighting goes on not only in South Asia, but also in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and North and West Africa, in each of which al-Qaeda is far more potent than it was on 9/11.


Meanwhile, the day after bin Laden threatened France via audiotape, the French defence minister announced that Paris might well begin to withdraw its Afghan force in 2011. Such an appeasing response hardly suggests a broken-backed al-Qaeda. And as for the existence of a debilitating al-Qaeda-Taliban contretemps, there are many claims about this, but no openly available and credible data.

But the most important—and problematic—of Petraeus’s so-called good-news items is the claim that the United States, NATO and Hamid Karzai’s regime have started peace negotiations with the Taliban. If such talks are occurring, they would have been initiated by a US-NATO coalition that knows the war is lost and which is looking for a way out of Afghanistan that will entail the least number of casualties and humiliation. Taliban leaders, on the other hand, would know that if they are talking to NATO, they are doing so because victory is nearing and that the very occurrence of the talks will tear apart relations between the US-led coalition and its only Afghan ally, the remnant of the late-Ahmad Shah Massoud’s alliance of northern Afghanistan’s minority groups.

For Afghanistan’s Tajik, Shia, Uzbek and Turkmen minorities, the arrival of US-led forces in Afghanistan in October 2001 provided not only an opportunity to break the mainly Pashtun-dominated Taliban’s hold on power, but also to build a new Afghan society to replace the one that had kept the non-Pashtun minorities at the bottom of the pecking order for more than 300 years. On entering Kabul on the back of US and NATO military vehicles in late-2001, the minorities controlled the city, northern Afghanistan, and the new Afghan regime, even though Pashtun Karzai was at its head.

Since then, though, the road has been largely downhill for the leaders of the northern minorities. Their US and NATO military allies prematurely declared the war over after the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces withdrew to Pakistan, and they watched Karzai surround himself with Pashtun cronies while his brother and other family members established a power base in Kandahar Province rumoured to be based on diverted foreign aid and the heroin trade.

In addition, much of the Western and Indian financial aid that was funnelled into the country (and which was not immediately stolen) was used to build infrastructure projects—power plants, roads, irrigation systems, dams—in the country’s Pashtun regions in the southern, eastern and western provinces. Most dire for the northerners, who had helped infidels destroy the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, the US-NATO coalition’s near military inertness for the five years after Kabul’s capture allowed time for the re-emergence of a better trained, armed, led and hungry-for-revenge Taliban funded by heroin profits and contributions from the donors in Arab Peninsula. Even as Gen. Petraeus delivered October’s good news, then, the Afghan minorities were watching the gradual return of the Taliban-driven nightmare they lived through from 1994 to 2001.


All this means that US-NATO-Karzai negotiations with the Taliban will be interpreted by the northern minorities as their erstwhile allies throwing in the towel and admitting defeat. Faced with this reality, the northerners will have to prepare for a renewed civil war against the Taliban after US-NATO forces are gone. And in this effort they’ll have no shortage of foreign help. Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, remain eager—as they were before 9/11—to use northern Afghanistan as a buffer zone between themselves and the Pakistan- and Arab-supported Islamist Taliban. Each country will be more than willing to fund, arm and train a re-formed northern military force. India and Iran also will help—the former to protect whatever it can of the large monetary and political investment it has made in Afghanistan since 9/11, and the latter in an effort to shield its Shia brethren from renewed persecution and murder at the Taliban’s hands.

Talking to the Taliban is also likely to earn US and NATO forces some pain inflicted by their former northern allies before withdrawal is complete. Revenge is a sentiment always bubbling away under the surface in Afghanistan, and the northern mujahedin will want to ensure that the US-led coalition pays a price for abandoning them. Indeed, the coalition may already be starting to incur that cost. Throughout 2010, for example, the pace of insurgent attacks on the Karzai regime and coalition targets in northern Afghanistan has steadily increased. While there are pockets of Pashtun populations in the northern provinces, they are neither numerous enough nor geographically dispersed enough to be responsible for all the attacks that have and are occurring. In the months ahead, there are certain to be escalating attacks on US-NATO supply routes into Afghanistan from Central Asia—the US-led coalition’s weakest link in the north—and it won’t always be clear if the attackers are Taliban Pashtuns or America’s jilted northern allies.
Petraeus’s October surprise may well have gotten Democratic and Republican candidates through tomorrow’s mid-term elections without a debate on the Afghan war; this is apparently now an ongoing (if demeaning) job for four-star US generals. But by late spring next year, the odds are that Petraeus, Obama and the US Congress will no longer be able to hide the disastrous demise of the almost decade-long campaign in Afghanistan.

[kakargirl]

Barakzai abdali wrors posts are spot on all is true exactly as it is.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

Also wrorre,

Here is an interesting article really showing just how astute Mr. Scheuer is on Afghan affairs despite various folks here chiding him without any evidence against his expert opinions. I think its rather eerie how well he is predicting the pace and outcome of events. This article was from last October yet is so very prescient. It contradicts your view regarding where money has been spent in Afghan provinces (.e. the great amount has been in the south yet the insurgeny is stronge rther.. It also makes some very important predictions that have come true in the form of the recent increase in northern afghan attacks. Some unrealistic folks here are attempting to blame the Quran riots of the north as well on the ISI, etc, but I think their ferocity and their occurence in the north in the first place supports his contentions below. Also note a few things announced today: Petreus moving to the CIA and the 9 Americans taken out in a Kabul base.:

http://the-diplomat.com/2010/11/01/g...ober-surprise/

General Petraeus’s October Surprise


The timing of Gen. Petraeus’s good news on Afghanistan is strangely convenient for Washington—and glosses over the reality of a likely civil war.

Last month saw a surprising flood of good tidings from Afghanistan. We learned that the US-NATO offensive in Kandahar is succeeding; that drone strikes are breaking al-Qaeda’s back; that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are at daggers drawn; and that the Taliban is ready to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Afghan war.
What a change since September, when the outlook was so gloomy! So what prompted these changes? Good policy? Military heroism? The Taliban realizing that it was beaten? Or was it something to do with tomorrow’s US mid-term congressional election?

My guess is that last one. After all, if you recall, the same Gen. David Petraeus who now commands in Afghanistan also delivered a similar package of remarkable and unexpected good news about Iraq when he was in charge there—just before the 2008 US presidential election. The ‘surge’ and the ‘Sunni Awakening’ had ‘succeeded,’ claims that were enough to broadly keep the Iraq war off the political agenda during the late stages of the campaign (much to the relief of both Barack Obama and John McCain). Today, it’s clear that much of the so-called success in Iraq is unravelling, with al-Qaeda returning to Baghdad and Anbar Province, and Iraqi society headed toward sectarian civil war.

This time around, Petraeus’s batch of happy news comes at a time when neither party wants to talk about how far the Afghan war is off the tracks. And, looking at the US media, the ploy has worked again.
The first three items of Petraeus’s supposed good-tidings package can be dealt with quickly. The Kandahar offensive is progressing because Petraeus and his predecessor gave the Taliban and other mujahedin eight months advance warning. As a result, insurgent leaders—never eager to stand and fight conventional forces—long ago moved most of their men and materiel to safer venues. Essentially the US-NATO campaign is succeeding because there’s so little opposition, save for the IEDs, mines and booby-traps with which the Taliban has laced the region.
Next, while drone strikes hurt al-Qaeda (no group welcomes casualties) they have no strategic impact on Osama bin Laden or his organization. Leaders are replaced and fighting goes on not only in South Asia, but also in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and North and West Africa, in each of which al-Qaeda is far more potent than it was on 9/11.


Meanwhile, the day after bin Laden threatened France via audiotape, the French defence minister announced that Paris might well begin to withdraw its Afghan force in 2011. Such an appeasing response hardly suggests a broken-backed al-Qaeda. And as for the existence of a debilitating al-Qaeda-Taliban contretemps, there are many claims about this, but no openly available and credible data.

But the most important—and problematic—of Petraeus’s so-called good-news items is the claim that the United States, NATO and Hamid Karzai’s regime have started peace negotiations with the Taliban. If such talks are occurring, they would have been initiated by a US-NATO coalition that knows the war is lost and which is looking for a way out of Afghanistan that will entail the least number of casualties and humiliation. Taliban leaders, on the other hand, would know that if they are talking to NATO, they are doing so because victory is nearing and that the very occurrence of the talks will tear apart relations between the US-led coalition and its only Afghan ally, the remnant of the late-Ahmad Shah Massoud’s alliance of northern Afghanistan’s minority groups.

For Afghanistan’s Tajik, Shia, Uzbek and Turkmen minorities, the arrival of US-led forces in Afghanistan in October 2001 provided not only an opportunity to break the mainly Pashtun-dominated Taliban’s hold on power, but also to build a new Afghan society to replace the one that had kept the non-Pashtun minorities at the bottom of the pecking order for more than 300 years. On entering Kabul on the back of US and NATO military vehicles in late-2001, the minorities controlled the city, northern Afghanistan, and the new Afghan regime, even though Pashtun Karzai was at its head.

Since then, though, the road has been largely downhill for the leaders of the northern minorities. Their US and NATO military allies prematurely declared the war over after the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces withdrew to Pakistan, and they watched Karzai surround himself with Pashtun cronies while his brother and other family members established a power base in Kandahar Province rumoured to be based on diverted foreign aid and the heroin trade.

In addition, much of the Western and Indian financial aid that was funnelled into the country (and which was not immediately stolen) was used to build infrastructure projects—power plants, roads, irrigation systems, dams—in the country’s Pashtun regions in the southern, eastern and western provinces. Most dire for the northerners, who had helped infidels destroy the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, the US-NATO coalition’s near military inertness for the five years after Kabul’s capture allowed time for the re-emergence of a better trained, armed, led and hungry-for-revenge Taliban funded by heroin profits and contributions from the donors in Arab Peninsula. Even as Gen. Petraeus delivered October’s good news, then, the Afghan minorities were watching the gradual return of the Taliban-driven nightmare they lived through from 1994 to 2001.


All this means that US-NATO-Karzai negotiations with the Taliban will be interpreted by the northern minorities as their erstwhile allies throwing in the towel and admitting defeat. Faced with this reality, the northerners will have to prepare for a renewed civil war against the Taliban after US-NATO forces are gone. And in this effort they’ll have no shortage of foreign help. Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, remain eager—as they were before 9/11—to use northern Afghanistan as a buffer zone between themselves and the Pakistan- and Arab-supported Islamist Taliban. Each country will be more than willing to fund, arm and train a re-formed northern military force. India and Iran also will help—the former to protect whatever it can of the large monetary and political investment it has made in Afghanistan since 9/11, and the latter in an effort to shield its Shia brethren from renewed persecution and murder at the Taliban’s hands.

Talking to the Taliban is also likely to earn US and NATO forces some pain inflicted by their former northern allies before withdrawal is complete. Revenge is a sentiment always bubbling away under the surface in Afghanistan, and the northern mujahedin will want to ensure that the US-led coalition pays a price for abandoning them. Indeed, the coalition may already be starting to incur that cost. Throughout 2010, for example, the pace of insurgent attacks on the Karzai regime and coalition targets in northern Afghanistan has steadily increased. While there are pockets of Pashtun populations in the northern provinces, they are neither numerous enough nor geographically dispersed enough to be responsible for all the attacks that have and are occurring. In the months ahead, there are certain to be escalating attacks on US-NATO supply routes into Afghanistan from Central Asia—the US-led coalition’s weakest link in the north—and it won’t always be clear if the attackers are Taliban Pashtuns or America’s jilted northern allies.
Petraeus’s October surprise may well have gotten Democratic and Republican candidates through tomorrow’s mid-term elections without a debate on the Afghan war; this is apparently now an ongoing (if demeaning) job for four-star US generals. But by late spring next year, the odds are that Petraeus, Obama and the US Congress will no longer be able to hide the disastrous demise of the almost decade-long campaign in Afghanistan.

Khaana one has to remember these are two analysts, at best, who are looking at things from their respective points of view that is what they percieve to be US interests. I can't entirely rely on them entirely for information. They can provide one view. We also have to look at it from our perspective.

The issue is not whether or not Afghans need NATO, that was never the point. They have their interests, like the British before them. Tomorrow when they leave, regional powers will come in and have theirs. At the end of the day, the importance is not to repeat the mistakes of the 90s and to collectively come out with a future deal/outcome relatively better than the soviet withdrawal.

[ghundal]

Khaana one has to remember these are two analysts, at best, who are looking at things from their respective points of view that is what they percieve to be US interests. I can't entirely rely on them entirely for information. They can provide one view. We also have to look at it from our perspective.

The issue is not whether or not Afghans need NATO, that was never the point. They have their interests, like the British before them. Tomorrow when they leave, regional powers will come in and have theirs. At the end of the day, the importance is not to repeat the mistakes of the 90s and to collectively come out with a future deal/outcome relatively better than the soviet withdrawal.

You never say anything directly, but are you still suggesting that the US-NATO presence is a source of stability, or am I mistaken? People in Afghanistan know this is not true.

Let me respond now. US-NATO is a source of insecurity and aggression against the Afghan people. Just turn the TV on, or go to CNN.com, and you will get a dose of the thousands of Afghan civilians dying and suffering due to airstrikes, night raids, and random killings here and there that seem to not even be considered news anymore. The chaos you continue to allude to of the 90s is happening right now, it is by foreign forces against the Afghan people (no sensationalism here, or playing with words) Go and read a report from Dr. Miraki, Juan Cole, or Seymour Hersh. Articles are abound on the internet about the aggression brought by US-NATO forces, to suggest/imply otherwise is veering on the road to insanity. Better yet, go and ask Afghans in Afghanistan whose family members and friends have been killed.

As the Afghan resistance (Taliban) were a response to the chaos of the 90s, they are again a response to the US-nato sponsered chaos and death of Afghans, which is why their reach has spread throughout the country.


What outcome are you thinking of that appears to involve the presence of foreigners in Afghanistan? Between the lines, that is what you are saying.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

You never say anything directly, but are you still suggesting that the US-NATO presence is a source of stability, or am I mistaken? People in Afghanistan know this is not true.

Let me respond now. US-NATO is a source of insecurity and aggression against the Afghan people. Just turn the TV on, or go to CNN.com, and you will get a dose of the thousands of Afghan civilians dying and suffering due to airstrikes, night raids, and random killings here and there that seem to not even be considered news anymore. The chaos you continue to allude to of the 90s is happening right now, it is by foreign forces against the Afghan people (no sensationalism here, or playing with words) Go and read a report from Dr. Miraki, Juan Cole, or Seymour Hersh. Articles are abound on the internet about the aggression brought by US-NATO forces, to suggest/imply otherwise is veering on the road to insanity.

As the Afghan resistance (Taliban) were a response to the chaos of the 90s, they are again a response to the US-nato sponsered chaos and death of Afghans, which is why their reach has spread throughout the country.


What outcome are you thinking of that appears to involve the presence of foreigners in Afghanistan? Between the lines, that is what you are saying.

How is 90s happening right now? For that to happen, NATO would have to entirely withdraw and the power vacuum would have to ensue. For once try to listen instead of jumping the gun.