Afghanistan: My Enemy's Enemy

[RevolutionThroughReason]

there is no uncomfortable-ness. the guy talks in a demeaning manner for no reason in debates.

well I wouldn't blame him if that was the case, but I don't see it. Seems like you're getting butt hurt because other people aren't mesmerized by your narrative.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

youre naïve. People join the ALP and ANP for income. Arbakis that were of the people for the people by the people(hich were formed for defense of the tribe and didn't really pay anything but people were fed by the people they served)don't really exist these days(I think there might be a few) because people can make more income for joining ALP or ANP. Arbakis are probably things of the past since tribes are poor and cant compete with the national gov. to recruit their own tribesmen for the protection of the tribe.
The problem is that a conflict erupts when outside money flows in. Even if you are right and this was a peoples uprising, People stop looking at them as servants of the people if they are funded by outsiders and are taking orders from outsiders. When that happens you cease to be for the people and by the people.

Ill give you an example. Lets talk about district X with an Arbaki(ALP) unit. People ask them why they are shooting at their own people if they are servants of the people. They respond and say they shoot at us. If both sides claim to be servants of the people than they should come to a peaceful agreement which happens. They came to an agreement of not shooting at each other. When NATO planes start bombing villages, then the people start questioning the ALP of why they are not shooting back at the foreigners and they don't have an answer because those foreigners are funding them and are taking orders from them. All of a sudden the peoples opinion shifts to the other side, the side that is shooting at the foreigners.

The problem is the foreign presence. People will come to an agreement by themselves if foreigners don't directly interfere with them. Its natural for this tot happen.

This is just a rant not an argument; how you feel about the situation is irrelevant to your claim. The fact is the PEOPLE THEMSELVES rose up; it was the PEOPLE THEMSELVES who formed these groups and the PEOPLE THEMSELVES are making these decisions.

Everything YOU said otherwise; Base don this your narrative that the Taliban is a people's uprising is a bunch of baloney.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Pretty good documentary.

The commander, who is a brother of provincial council member Amanullah Kamrani does do some hawa firing and I think Najibullah Qureshi catches on to this. These are the various instances where Qureshi poses the question: "Was this a show for me?"

In Behind the Masks, Commander Duran did a little bit of the same. Refsdahl was asked by BBC whether he actually saw conveys getting hit when they were firing in Tarmak road and it turned out no convoys were hit that day.

Basically, both sides play up their credentials.

Best article so far on this subject was by the Afghan Analysts Network:
http://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/...andar-uprising

A reporter on the ground writes this abstract:

"The story of what is still being hailed by the government and media as a ‘popular uprising’ against the Taleban in Andar district, Ghazni has become one of the most ambiguous events on the battlefield for many years. The dominant and much-hyped account of what has happened presents an optimistic image of a purely popular movement of local Afghans motivated by the desire for education to stand up against the Taleban. But there are strong indications that different approaches in the insurgency, basically a Hezb-Taleban conflict, are behind it, and that government officials have actively promoted the ‘uprising’ and taken it out of the hands of its initiators. Meanwhile, there have been active attempts to reproduce it in neighbouring districts of Ghazni and elsewhere in the country. Our guest author, Emal Habib(*), has been talking extensively to sources on the ground and, in the first part of this special reportage, tells a very different story – of how some unhappy Taleban fighters reverted to their Hezb-e Islami roots and fought their brethren for control of Andar and how their ‘uprising’ was then co-opted by government figures."

All the Afghan versions of the story converge at one personality, a captured Hizbe fighter named Rahmatullah, brother of Abdul Malek...

Finally, the details of how the government itself actually instigated school closures is described:

"The ban on schooling had started in Andar and quickly spread to parts of Waghaz, Zanakhan and Gero districts, reaching Ghazni city(7) by late April 2012. What was introduced as a counter-measure to the government’s ban on unlicensed motorbikes about a year before; such bikes are used in most attacks and assassinations carried out by the Taleban. But the ban, which came to include registered motorbikes as well, not only deprived the Taleban, but also local residents of their most common means of transportation. The closure of schools a year ago in Deh Yak district of Ghazni had proved effective in allowing motorbikes at least in that district, so this was not an unreasonable tactic to use.(8)"

This is exactly why that fellow asks Lutfullah at the end of the video regarding his prior statement of fighting the US at some point.... its because Lutfullah had actually said such a thing.

Here is what the Analyists network says has happened since this Hizbe Splinter group instigated this with Asadullah Khalid in towe:

http://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/...k-in-a-dilemma

"Those old days when there was only Taleban in control are now gone. They look like the golden days compared to what is going on now,’ yearns Haji Safiullah, 43, a resident of Atal village in Andar. ‘The arbakai might have opened the schools which were shut down temporarily by the Taleban, but they have brought much bigger headaches.’
One of the new headaches for the Andar population is the presence of armed youth, who are acting as militia forces without any accountability or control. Safiullah, who had recently returned from Saudi Arabia where he earns a living by running a shop, was visiting his relatives in Miryani village when he was stopped by arbakai fighters. They took his car and never returned it. His crime: visiting a village frequently used by Taleban for mounting recent attacks on the arbakai. In a similar case, three residents of the neighbouring Waghaz district were robbed of their car, mobile phones, and other assets when the arbakai found out that they were returning from the Taleban’s head judge for the district of Andar to whom they had turned to solve a dispute.

Here is the confirmation of the links to Asadullah Khalid:

"The NDS-controlled faction for its turn is divided internally by a longstanding rivalry for leadership. While ex-governor Faizan was pushed into the number one position by Khaled from among eight initial candidates, other field commanders, such as Lutfullah Kamran and Wali Muhammad all had more fire-power on the ground (as well as late Jan Muhammad, also known as Tor, who had once beaten Faizan during a feud and was killed in fighting with the Taleban).‘Faizan is just a symbolic leader’, Amanullah Kamrani, a member of the provincial council, said. ‘My brother Lutfullah is the real one’."

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Afghan Analysts is a Swedish and Norwegian Government funded Institute and there are issues of dubiety regarding their reporters on the ground and "anonymity"; Some of the claims like "NDS controlled faction" are not explained as to how this claim was established.

All you have done is repeat the contents of the article Khushal posted.

[khushal]

^^Your grasping out of desperation. You have nothing to offer except an ad hominem fallacy and no one is falling for it.
Also Alchemist is your Bot buddy, of course your not going to see it.

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

Rtr i guess you wont be posting any articles or videos again made by western sources?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Afghan Analysts is a Swedish and Norwegian Government funded Institute and there are issues of dubiety regarding their reporters on the ground and "anonymity"; Some of the claims like "NDS controlled faction" are not explained as to how this claim was established.

All you have done is repeat the contents of the article Khushal posted.

Didn't read any other comments besides the first post. Any apologies for reproduction.

What renders AAN dubious? Miraki and a host of others reference them ( I am willing to make a logic error if reliable figures like that use them ). Their articles find support in other sources independently. I can post from a book with the exact quote from lutfullah regarding who he planned to fight and when that
led to the question at the end of the documentary by the guy in the Kabul park.

I also think its a greatly reliable article because it actually describes in detail the harsher measures taliban used in andaar and validates that there were locals that wanted to rebel; so I think you're hard pressed to show bias of any sort as they describe other factions without those shady asadullah links.

Btw, for the record I'm not Stating that locals werent upset with Taliban. But AAN provides context and shows how a hizbe guy like lutfullah is one of many actors on the scene.

So I am not for or against the other non NDS affiliates fighting with Taliban. As they are indigenous to ghazni and have a right to their own views on how they want to govern and be governed. But amanullah and lutfullah per multiple sources, as well as rahmat and Abdul Malek are disaffected hizbe ( once again thats their deal and I'm not criticizing.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Afghan Analysts is a Swedish and Norwegian Government funded Institute and there are issues of dubiety regarding their reporters on the ground and "anonymity"; Some of the claims like "NDS controlled faction" are not explained as to how this claim was established.

All you have done is repeat the contents of the article Khushal posted.

Hmmm the only vocal critic of AAN which operates in Kabul (monawar admits meeting their officials there) btw is a farsiwaan dafdar spanta acolyte named wahid monawar:
http://afgpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/0...bans.html?m=1#!

He laments how these educated white Europeans won't write what he feels as a former dog washer on karzai's payroll.

They(AAN) are referenced by the huffington post but monawar on the other hand is a favorite of neocon Frum forum.


Sorry but you're apparently wrong AAN is pristine and in the words of Edward Snowden when Cheney called him a traitor ... To be in monawars hate mail
List is "the highest honor"

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Rtr i guess you wont be posting any articles or videos again made by western sources?

I've been doing digging... hes wrong about the AAN.

https://twitter.com/AANafgh

There is their twitter feed. Their officials are actually fully based in Afghanistan, but they have European/Caucasians etc as some of their lead researchers.

lol, they have a great repertoire and even beyond the citations I mentioned, they are referred to by human rights watch:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/08/17/a...-run-elections

NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/11/145040...hurt-relations


Besides one needle in a haystack criticism from Monawar, a well known dubious figure himself who cites purely opinion in his criticism (i.e. he rails against how dare a white man named Thomas Ruttig disagree with his spiel on native-indigenous support for the Taliban), they are in high standing world wide.

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

Monawar is a clown. All he does is rant on twitter like a child.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

The co director of AAN is Thomas Ruttig.... sorry RTR, but you'd be extremely hard pressed to show me Ruttig's ISI credentials in the face of his diplomatic CV:

http://www.pukhtoonistangazette.com/...php?face_id=54

LOL, here is Josh Mull, who debated Ruttig admitting he was wrong:
http://my.firedoglake.com/joshmull/tag/thomas-ruttig/

"I’m not perfect. I don’t get everything right, not by a long shot. For example, remember my optimistic response to Thomas Ruttig’s pessimistic report on the Kabul Peace Jirga? Turns out I was super wrong about that. I understand this blogosphere of ours is an open debate, and I’m willing to reassess how I may have misjudged whatever the situation is on any given day."

At this point, we have established AAN's credentials even more solidly.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Whether there are other vocal critics; it's essentially a mouthpiece of Swedish and Norwegian Governments who are allies of NATO. The objectivity of the content is suspect because many of its contents come from "anonymous" writers or writers under false identities.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Whether there are other vocal critics; it's essentially a mouthpiece of Swedish and Norwegian Governments who are allies of NATO. The objectivity of the content is suspect because many of its contents come from "anonymous" writers or writers under false identities.

Says who? Michael Scheuer and Bradley Manning both wrote under Anonymous as well.

The onus is on you to prove that in any way the Swedish or Norwegian government impact content. Do you have a verifiable source that backs up that claim?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Whether there are other vocal critics; it's essentially a mouthpiece of Swedish and Norwegian Governments who are allies of NATO. The objectivity of the content is suspect because many of its contents come from "anonymous" writers or writers under false identities.

The onus to prove false identities also falls on you.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Whether there are other vocal critics; it's essentially a mouthpiece of Swedish and Norwegian Governments who are allies of NATO. The objectivity of the content is suspect because many of its contents come from "anonymous" writers or writers under false identities.

Also since irrespective of whether Lutfullah falls under the arbaki system or not, why would "NATO" using Thomas Rittig, write a piece that criticizes their strategy for the rest of the country which rested on the same idea implemented elsewhere? That would be like cutting off one's nose to spite their face.

We would need to see even a glimmer of proof linking NATO to somehow having Rittig write up pieces that attack their very own stratagems.

Note also, the piece is ambivalent, it doesnt attack Lutfullah nor does it spare the Taliban as it notes their excesses in Ghazni... hardly making a case that NATO is using AAN.