Part VII of an eight part
dossier
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Simon
Jenkins in The Guardian, 29th June: “We can only wonder how far
the rumoured skepticism of the intelligence services towards the Afghanistan
operation has been adequately conveyed to ministers. There is scant public
evidence of it. To have been party to one dud war is bad enough, but two would
be more than careless.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/29/russian-spies-security-services
John Sparrow in the Observer,
27th June: “Coalition forces in Afghanistan should open talks with the
Taliban ‘pretty soon’ as part of a future exit strategy, the head of the army
said today.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jun/27/taliban-talks-afghanistan-head-army
Richard Norton-Taylor in the
Guardian, 25th June 2010: “Major General Gordon
Messenger, the Ministry of Defence’s chief military spokesman, said Taliban-led
insurgents were resorting to what he described as an ‘increasing use of single
shots at range’. British officers said it would be misleading to describe the
shots as coming from snipers, a word suggesting the use of sophisticated rifles
by well-trained fighters.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/25/taliban-long-range-fire-afghanistan
Michael Clarke, writing for RUSI 24th June 2010: “The British Coalition government repeats the commitment to make Afghanistan its most immediate security priority, but the whispers at Westminster are becoming more audible; ‘should we face a disaster now by pulling out of Afghanistan, or a catastrophe later by staying in?’ Is it winnable now in any meaningful sense?”
The fact is that for all the wider strategic reasons the UK
entered this conflict – its interests in supporting US actions, in addressing a
deteriorating security situation in the region, in counter-terrorism, NATO
credibility, and western resolve in the face of an outright challenge – it will
be US actions that largely determine the range of UK choices.
http://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C4C231770B43C9/
Robert Fox in The Guardian,
20th June 2010: “The slow progress in Sangin had fuelled the growing sense
of doubt in British public opinion ñ and the same doubts are growing in the US.
The suspicion is that UK and US forces might have ended up fighting the wrong
war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Initially, British and international
troops went to Afghanistan to rid the place of al-Qaida following 9/11 and the
Taliban regime that were their hosts. Slowly it has drifted into a de facto
occupation in many parts of the country…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/21/afghanistan-300th-british-solider-dies
Jon Boone in The Guardian, 20th
June 2010: “Scores of British troops have been killed in Sangin since
Tony Blair, egged on by overconfident British generals, dispatched more than
3,000 service men and women to Helmand in 2006.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/21/sangin-afghanistan-poppy-town-british-army
Declan Walsh & Jon Boone in
The Guardian, 22nd June 2010: “Britain’s special envoy to
Afghanistan, known for his skepticism about the western war effort and his
support for peace talks with the Taliban, has stepped down just a month before
a critical international conference in Kabul. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has
taken ‘extended leave’, a spokesman for the British high commission in
Islamabad said today. He has been replaced on a temporary basis by Karen
Pierce, the Foreign Office director for South Asia and Afghanistan.
News of his sudden departure comes as the Ministry of Defence confirmed the
300th British fatality in Afghanistan, a widely anticipated yet grim milestone
in the nine-year war.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/21/uk-special-envoy-afghanistan-quits
Marc Townsend in The Observer, 20th June 2010: “Barrett, a former British intelligence agent, confirmed that ‘a lot of talk’ was building up over the possibility of the coalition supporting negotiations with the Taliban’s upper hierarchy, including elements within the Quetta Shura, the arm of the Taliban which is directing the insurgency. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jun/20/british-advances-afghanistan-conflict-un-mission-chief
Guardian editorial, 3rd June 2010: “The fact is that for the second time in recent memory, an American force has taken over command from a British one that has bitten off more than it can chew. The parallels with Basra’s painful memories are real. In both cases, a British force went in undermanned, under-equipped, and blithely under-informed. In both theatres of war, British troops fanned out into the hinterland, only to find themselves pinned back in their bases.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/03/afghanistan-british-foreign-policy-editorial
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Robert Fisk speaking at the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum on 23rd May 2010 “…. How many times have I heard western reporters talking about ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan? They are referring, of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard the same story from Iraq. Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of course. The generals called them ‘foreign fighters’. And then immediately we western reporters did the same. Calling them ‘foreign fighters’ meant they were an invading force. But not once – ever – have I heard a mainstream western television station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan. And that most of them, ladies and gentlemen, are in American or other Nato uniforms!
Similarly, the pernicious phrase ‘Af-Pak’ – as racist as it is
politically dishonest – is now used by reporters when it originally was a
creation of the US state department, on the day that Richard Holbrooke was
appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase
avoided the use of the word ‘India’ whose influence in Afghanistan and whose
presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story. Furthermore, ‘Af-Pak’ –
by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the
conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local
policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the ‘Af-Pak’ envoy,
specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase ‘Af-Pak’, which
totally deletes the tragedy of Kashmir – too many ‘competing narratives’,
perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, ‘Af-Pak’, which
was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the state department’s
work.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201052574726865274.html
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Jonathan
Owen in the Independent on Sunday, 23rd May 2010:
“British soldiers in Afghanistan are ‘horribly over-extended’ and being killed
for ‘no good reason’, a senior military figure admitted last night. He said
talks are now under way with US commanders that would pave the way for Britain
to begin scaling down its commitment to the war, bringing about a change of
emphasis in its deployment.
Britain’s 10,000-strong force is suffering ‘appalling’ casualty rates and is set to be given a break from the worst of the fighting, according to the source.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/broke-britain-can-no-longer-afford-role-in-afghanistan-1980687.html
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David
Swanson in atimes.com, 12th May 2010: “A strong case
can be made that the war in Afghanistan is illegal, immoral, against the public
will, counterproductive on its own terms, and an economic catastrophe. The
present path of escalation there appears militarily hopeless. The most recent
Pentagon assessment once again indicates that the Taliban’s strength is
growing; according to polling, 94% of the inhabitants of Kandahar, the area
where the next US offensive is to take place this summer, want peace
negotiations, not war, and a US plan to seek local consent for the coming
assault has been scrapped.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LE13Df01.html
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Hilary
Andersson, BBC News, 11th May 2010: “The US airbase at
Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from
its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC. Nine former prisoners
have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to
abuse….In response to these allegations, Vice Adm Robert Harward, in charge of
US detentions in Afghanistan, denied the existence of such a facility or
abuses.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8674179.stm
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Jon
Boone in The Guardian, 10th May 2010: “A recent public
opinion survey in Kandahar conducted for the US army found that despite their
efforts to remain above the fray, most of the 1,994 people questioned
sympathised with the insurgents’ reasons for taking up arms against the
government. Some 94% of respondents did not want foreign forces to start a new
operation.
The US has already stepped up its secret war against the
Taliban: special forces teams have been killing and capturing mid-level
commanders and apparently squeezing the insurgents’ supply chains.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/09/afghanistan-taliban-nato-kandahar-fighting
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Jonathan
Steele in The Guardian, 4th May 2010 “Eight years
after they were overthrown by US air power, a drumbeat is starting to sound
across Afghanistan in favour of talking to the Taliban, the country’s
once-hated former rulers. An idea that used to seem absurd, if not defeatist,
is coming to be seen as the only credible way to end an ever-widening war.
Moreover, the proposed agenda of negotiations is not a Taliban surrender, but
an offer to share power in Kabul.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/afghanistan-taliban
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Gareth
Porter in Atimes.com, 4th May 2010: “General Stanley McChrystal
and the United States-North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO) International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) joint command now acknowledge officially that
the Taliban insurgents dominate a vast contiguous zone of heavily populated
territory across southern Afghanistan that McChrystal regards as the most
critical area in the country.
The report admits that the population in key districts across most southern provinces is sympathetic to or supportive of the insurgents.
The contiguous zone of Taliban political power stretches all the
way across the 13 provinces from Farah province in the far west of the country
through Helmand and Kandahar to Wardak, Logar, Paktia and Khost provinces west
and south of Kabul….A report by The Guardian’s Jon Boone last week quoted a
recent British visitor to Sangin as remarking on the ‘intense hatred of people
who hate everything you stand for’ he had felt from people there.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LE04Df02.html
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Daily
Telegraph, 29th April 2010: “…The [Pentagon] report
says that much of the country was either neutral to the government or otherwise
supportive of the Taliban insurgency….Popular anger at Karzai’s government,
which is widely seen as corrupt and inefficient, has allowed the Taliban to
‘perceive 2009 as their most successful year,’ the Pentagon report said…. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7650216/Hamid-Karzais-government-supported-by-only-one-in-four-key-areas-report-finds.html
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Richard
Norton-Taylor in The Guardian, 22nd April 2010:
“…Contingency plans include the possible wholesale withdrawal of the 9,500
British troops from Helmand …But the removal of British forces from the
province, where commanders say they have built strong relations with local governors
and tribal elders, will not be popular with UK defence chiefs. …’A large amount
of British blood and treasure has been invested in Helmand,’ another official
said.
A survey today of more than 2,000 defence analysts conducted by the Royal United Services Institute showed just 57% agreed that current operations in Afghanistan played ‘an intrinsic part in maintaining the UK’s security’…
Nato commanders, meanwhile, are far from confident about the
long-term success of Operation Moshtarak, designed to clear the Taliban out of
central Helmand, in particular the district of Marjah”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/21/afghanistan-kandahar-soldiers-taliban
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Jon
Boone in The Guardian, 22nd April 2010: “The people of
Sangin blame inter-tribal fighting and the drug trade for the dire security
situation, but also hold the foreign soldiers responsible for the chaos.
According to two farmers currently staying in Lashkar Gah who were contacted by the Guardian but did not want to be named, the behaviour of the British is by the far the biggest problem.
One said: ‘The Taliban do not even have a bakery that they can
give bread to the people, but still most people support the Taliban ñ that’s
because people are sick of night raids and being treated badly by the
foreigners’.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/22/afghanistan-british-troops-hatred
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Robert
Dreyfuss in Commondreams.org, 14th April 2010: “Twelve
days before President Hamid Karzai denounced the behavior of Western countries
in Afghanistan, he met a 4-year-old boy at the Tarin Kowt civilian hospital in
the south. The boy had lost his legs in a February airstrike by U.S. Special
Operations forces helicopters that killed more than 20 civilians. Karzai
scooped him up from his mattress and walked out to the hospital courtyard,
according to three witnesses. ‘Who injured you?’ the president asked as
helicopters passed overhead. The boy, crying alongside his relatives, pointed
at the sky.
The tears and rage Karzai encountered in that hospital in
Uruzgan province lingered with him, according to several aides. It was one
provocation amid a string of recent political disappointments that they said
has helped fuel the president’s emotional outpouring against the West and
prompted a brief crisis in his relations with the United States. It was also a
reminder that civilian casualties in Afghanistan have political reverberations far
beyond the sites of the killings’.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/13-3
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Peter
Dale Scott in History News Network, 12th April 2010: “The
first reality is that the extent of CIA involvement in and responsibility for
the global drug traffic is a topic off limits for serious questioning in policy
circles, electoral campaigns, and the mainstream media. Those who have
challenged this taboo, like the journalist Gary Webb, have often seen their
careers destroyed in consequence….CIA involvement in the drug trade hardly
began with its involvement in the Soviet-Afghan war. To a certain degree, the
CIA’s responsibility for the present dominant role of Afghanistan in the global
heroin traffic merely replicated what had happened earlier in Burma, Thailand,
and Laos between the late 1940s and the 1970s…”
http://www.hnn.us/articles/125230.html
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BBC
News, 12th April 2010: “At least four civilians were killed
and 18 others wounded when Nato forces fired at a bus in southern Kandahar
province, sparking angry protests.
Nato expressed its ‘deep regret’ over the incident and said forces treated the
injured at the scene. Crowds gathered in Kandahar shouting slogans and burning
tyres. President Hamid Karzai also condemned the firing.
Civilian deaths at Nato hands is the source of increasing friction between the
Afghan government and Nato.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8614827.stm
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Glen
Greenwald in CommonDreams.org, 5th April 2010: “On
February 12 of this year, U.S. forces entered a village in the Paktia Province
in Afghanistan and, after surrounding a home where a celebration of a new birth
was taking place, shot dead two male civilians (government officials) who
exited the house in order to inquire why they had been surrounded. The Pentagon
then issued a statement claiming that (a) the dead were all ‘insurgents’ or
terrorists, (b) the bodies of three women had been found bound and gagged inside
the home (including two pregnant women, one a mother of 10 children and the
other a mother of six children, and a teenage girl), and (c) suggested that the
women had already been killed by the time the U.S. had arrived, likely the
victim of ‘honor killings’ by the Taliban militants killed in the attack.
Although numerous witnesses on the scene as well as local investigators vehemently disputed the Pentagon’s version, and insisted that all of the dead (including the women) were civilians and were killed by U.S. forces, the American media largely adopted the Pentagon’s version, often without any questions. But enough evidence has now emerged disproving those claims such that the Pentagon was forced yesterday to admit that their original version was totally false and that it was U.S. troops who killed the women….
All of this is a chronic problem, not an isolated one, with war
reporting generally and events in Afghanistan specifically…
At the Nieman Watchdog Foundation, Jeremy Starkey, the Afghanistan war reporter
for The Times of London, has a crucial, must-read piece on all of this…. he
also recounts how NATO tries to intimidate, censor and punish any reporters
like him who report adversely on official claims. Illustratively, in response
to Starkey’s March 13 article detailing what really happened at Paktia and the
cover-up that ensued, NATO issued a formal statement naming him and insisting
that this article was ‘categorically false.’ As recently as mid-March, NATO was
still claiming — falsely — that the women in Paktia were killed prior to the
arrival of American troops.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/05-2
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Mail
on Sunday, 4th April 2010: “German soldiers
travelling to the scene of a deadly firefight with Taliban insurgents
accidentally killed six Afghan troops, the Afghan military said today.
The soldiers had been rushing from Kunduz in the north of the country to the
scene of the fighting on Friday afternoon when they encountered two civilian
vehicles.
They demanded they stop but the vehicles kept moving so a German armoured
personnel carrier opened fire on them.
The vehicles were later found to have been transporting Afghan
troops and an investigation is pending.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1263239/Six-Afghan-soldiers-killed-wounded-friendly-accident.html
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BBC report, 1st April 2010: “Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused foreign election observers of fraud during last year’s disputed vote. Fraud had been widespread, Mr Karzai conceded, but he blamed foreigners for it, saying the UN was its focal point. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8598843.stm
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Pratap Chatterjee in Asia Times Online, 19th March 2010: “Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have run a covert network of contractors to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the United States government…Another company that Furlong subcontracted was Boston-based American International Security Corporation (AISC), a company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret turned private investigator who was accused in a 1995 lawsuit by Massachusetts state trooper Robert Monahan of helping drug traffickers by providing phony Greek passports and even arranging a jailbreak in Florida…”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LC19Df02.html
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David Lindorff in CommonDreams.org, 18th March 2010: “Three months after it initially lied about the murder by US forces of eight high school students and a 12-year-old shepherd boy in Afghanistan, and a month after it lied about the slaughter by US forces of an Afghan police commander, a government prosecutor, two of their pregnant wives and a teenage daughter, the US military has been forced to admit (thanks in no small part to the excellent investigative reporting of Jerome Starkey of the London Times), that these and other atrocities were the work of American Special Forces, working in conjunction with ‘specially trained'(by the US) units of the Afghan Army….”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-7
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Julian Borger in The Guardian, 10th March 2010: “Britain will today urge the Afghan government to put more effort into the pursuit of peace talks amid fears that the war could be prolonged ñ and more British lives lost ñ as a result of incompetence and lack of political will in Kabul.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/09/david-miliband-afghanistan-peace
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Gareth Porter in CommonDreams.org, 9th March 2010: “For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a ‘city of 80,000 people’ as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.
It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. Marja is not a city or even a real town….The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinion with the effectiveness of the U.S. military in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a ‘large and loud victory.’
The false impression that Marja was a significant city was an essential part of that message.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/08-4
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David Lindorff in CommonDreams.org, 4th March 2010: “Today’s war in Afghanistan also has its My Lai massacres. It has them almost weekly, as US warplanes bomb wedding parties, or homes “suspected” of housing terrorists that turn out to house nothing but civilians. But these My Lais are all conveniently labeled accidents. They get filed away and forgotten as the inevitable ‘collateral damage’ of war. There was, however, a massacre recently that was not a ‘mistake’–a massacre which, while it only involved fewer than a dozen innocent people, bears the same stench as My Lai. It was the execution-style slaying of eight handcuffed students, aged 11-18, and a 12-year-old neighboring shepherd boy who had been visiting the others, in Kunar Province, on Dec. 26….Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to execute a captive. Yet in Kunar on December 26, US-led forces, or perhaps US soldiers or contract mercenaries, cold-bloodily executed nine hand-cuffed prisoners. It is a war crime to kill children under the age of 15, yet in this incident a boy of 11 and a boy of 12 were handcuffed as captured combatants and executed. Two others of the dead were 12 and a third was 15. These are capital offenses under the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is a signatory. So is covering up the crime, all the way up the chain of command.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/04-2
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Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of New America Foundation, 24th Feb 2010: “Our study shows that the 114 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, including 18 in 2010, from 2004 to the present have killed approximately between 834 and 1,216 individuals, of whom around 549 to 849 were described as militants in reliable press accounts, about two-thirds of the total on average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 percent.”
http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
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The attack was carried out on the apparently mistaken belief
that a convoy of vehicles was transporting Taliban fighters toward eastern
Helmand province, where US and allied forces have launched a major offensive.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB24Df01.html
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James
Meikle et al, 15th Feb 2010: “Earlier today, the
head of Britain’s armed forces admitted that the killing of 12 Afghan civilians
yesterday was ‘a very serious setback’ to military operations against the
Taliban.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said the incident had damaged efforts to win the support of local communities, but added that accidents were inevitable during conflict.
The civilians died when two rockets from a high mobility
artillery rocket system hit a house on the outskirts of the town of Marjah, in
an area of Helmand province being targeted by a joint US and Afghan force.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/15/afghanistan-civilian-deaths-nato-taliban
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Leader
in The Independent on Sunday, 14th Feb 2010: “Indeed,
everything about the selling of Operation Moshtarak adds to our doubts about
the wisdom of the strategy…the offensive seems to be designed for ready
consumption by the US media.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-let-this-operation-be-the-last-1898861.html
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Pratap
Chatterjee in Asia Times online, 9th Feb 2010:
“Like President Barack Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability
in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at
war….In recent years, many commentators and pundits have resorted to ‘the
Vietnam analogy’, comparing first the American war in Iraq and now in
Afghanistan to the Vietnam War…A more provocative – and perhaps more ominous –
analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the
contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Nixon’s secret bombing campaign
against the Cambodian equivalent.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB10Df03.html
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Syed
Saleem Shahzad in Asia Times Online, 9th Feb 2010: “In
the early days of the conflict, the Americans were not interested in any form
of reconciliation with the Taliban as the regime had been toppled in a matter
of months and its leaders were holed up in the mountains straddling Pakistan
and Afghanistan: Washington had no reason to talk to such losers.
Nine years on, the situation has changed dramatically. The
American war machine is under siege and huge swathes of Afghanistan are either
under direct Taliban control or heavily influenced by the militants. …”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB09Df03.html
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Rob
Evans and Richard Norton-Taylor, 7th Feb 2010 The Observer, “British
forces are relying increasingly on unmanned drones to attack targets in
Afghanistan, mirroring controversial tactics used by the US….Chris Cole,
director of the interfaith peace campaign Fellowship of Reconciliation, who
used freedom of information legislation to shed light on the Reapers, said:
‘Drones are the latest in a long line of new weapons used in the mistaken
belief that they will provide a clean and tidy solution to a conflict ñ time
and again history has proved that this is a myth.’
He added:’We have a number of serious concerns not least because there is a picture beginning to emerge of high civilian casualties. In addition, the use of armed drones to target specific individuals could amount to summary or arbitrary execution’.
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Jason Ditz in Antwar.com, 2nd Feb 2010: “Though there have surely been single strikes which netted a much larger death toll, like the June attack on a South Waziristan funeral, the United States today launched the single largest coordinated drone attack against a target inside Pakistan today….In the attack, at least nine of the unmanned warplanes fired some 18 missiles against the tiny village of Deegan, in Datta Khel, killing at least 17 people and injuring numerous others. The toll is expected to rise as the attacks, which hit multiple homes, left many people buried in rubble around the village.”
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/02/at-least-17-killed-as-us-drones-fire-salvo-of-missiles-against-pakistan-village/
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Simon Tisdall in The Guardian, 29th Jan 2010: “The regional approach, coupled with the emphasis on Afghan self-reliance in security matters, a progressive reconciliation and reintegration process, and ongoing financial, developmental and institutional assistance, is the way Britain and the US hope finally, and in the not too distant future, to extract their legions. Like past empires, they have learned the hard way that nobody wins in Afghanistan. London confirmed the best they now hope for is an orderly and honourable retreat, scattering alms as they leave.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/28/london-afghanistan-conference
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Julian Borger in The Guardian, 28th Jan 2010: “Taliban commanders held secret exploratory talks with a United Nations special envoy this month to discuss peace terms, it emerged tonight.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/taliban-united-nations-afghanistan
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Seamus Milne in The Guardian, 28th Jan 2010: “Eight years on, far from being swept from the scene, the Taliban controls much of the country, al-Qaida has spread across the region, the war is ?escalating, thousands of civilians are being killed, corruption is rampant and the position of many women, according to women’s leaders such as the MP Malalai Joya, is actually worse under Nato-warlord rule than under the Taliban.
Having failed to subdue Afghanistan militarily or achieve any
credibility for the US and Nato-installed Hamid Karzai, the London conference
is supposed to endorse their plan B. That can be summed up as: talk to the
Taliban and buy them off wherever possible. The one-time boasts of destroying
the Taliban or capturing its leader, Mullah Omar, alive or dead, are long
gone.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/27/only-pressure-withdraw-stop-blood-price
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Jon
Boone in The Guardian, 28th Jan 2010: “It was meant to be
a routine patrol. But when a group of 28 American paratroopers and Afghan
soldiers found themselves pinned down by the Taliban it almost ended in a
bloodbath…..it is places like Bala Murghab, in a supposedly more secure corner
of the country, that expose the immense difficulties the country has ahead of
it in building self-reliant ?security forces and persuading a new breed of
increasingly competent Taliban fighters to lay down their arms.
‘They are far more accurate in their firing here than in
Helmand,’ said Jason Holland, squad leader of the patrol. ‘In Helmand we had
more air coverage and indirect fire. We were never pinned down like we were
yesterday’.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/27/us-soldiers-afghanistan
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Mark
Landler & Helene Cooper in the New York Times, 26th Jan 2010: “On
Thursday, donor countries, led by the United States, Britain and Japan, are
expected to commit $100 million a year to an Afghan fund for reintegrating the
foot soldiers of the Taliban with jobs, cash and other inducements….’Today,
people agree that part of the solution for Afghanistan is going to include an
accommodation with the Taliban, even above low- and middle-level fighters,’
said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because
he was discussing internal deliberations.
…At the same time, the senior American commander in Afghanistan,
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, said recently that he could eventually envision a
role for some Taliban officials in Afghanistan’s political establishment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/world/asia/27diplo.html?ref=global-home
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Ahmed
Rashid in The Guardian, 26th Jan 2010: “Thus the next few
months could offer a critical opportunity to persuade the Taliban that this is
the best time to negotiate a settlement, because they are at their strongest.
Talking to the Taliban requires more than just secret co-operation among
intelligence agencies, or the CIA handing out bribes to Taliban commanders to
change sides ñ as it did with the Northern Alliance in 2001. …There are a
number of steps that should be taken before talking to the Taliban…. First,
convince Afghanistan’s neighbours and other countries in the region to sign on
to a reconciliation strategy with the Taliban, to be led by the Afghan
government. Second, allow Afghanistan to submit to the UN security council a
request that the names of Taliban ?leaders be removed from a list of
?terrorists drawn up in 2001 ñ so long as those leaders renounce violence and
ties to al-Qaida….Third, pass a security council resolution giving the Afghan
government a formal mandate to negotiate with the Taliban ñ and allow the US,
Nato, and the UN to encourage that process. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/talk-to-the-taliban-now
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Mark
Tran in The Guardian, 25th Jan 2010: “Robert Gates, the US
defence secretary, last week also held out the possibility of a deal with the
Taliban when he described them as part of Afghanistan’s ‘political fabric’.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/25/stanley-mcchrystal-afghanistan-taliban-talks
———————————————————–
Elisabeth
Bullimer in the New York Times, 22nd Jan 2010:
“The United States recognizes that the Taliban are now part of the political
fabric of Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here on Friday,
but the group must be prepared to play a legitimate role before it can
reconcile with the Afghan government.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23gates.html?ref=global-home
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Editorial,
The Independent, 19th Jan 2010: “A formidable Afghan
adversary – The attack by the Taliban on the heart o government territory in
Afganistan is strategically significant ….what the timing of this well-planned
and coordinated assault shows is that the Taliban are a group with a long-term
political plan rather than just a fractious coalition of warlords bent on
defending their patch. It underscores the extent to which this hard-line
Islamic movement has regrouped and, despite ever-higher number of foreign
troops, have steadily extended their influence”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-formidable-afghan-adversary-1872001.html
————————————————————
Richard
Norton-Taylor in the Guardian, 15th Jan 2010:
“British officials are now proposing that a co-ordinated international
initiative, described by some as a kind of trust fund, should be set up as a
key objective of the London conference on Afghanistan on 28 January. The move
reflects a growing realisation in London, Washington and throughout Nato that
the conflict cannot be ‘won’ in any military sense and that some kind of
accommodation with the Taliban insurgency is inevitable.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/taliban-trust-fund-british-government
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President
Karzai reported by Press TV, 8th Jan 2010:
“Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai says he does not need anymore ‘the favor’
of the US-led foreign forces in his war-weary country. ‘If these forces are
coming only to chase the Taliban at the cost of Afghan civilians, of course
that’s not going to produce any good consequences for us…’.”
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=115635§ionid=351020403
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Juan
Cole in CommonDreams, “You probably won’t see it in most
US news outlets, but on Monday morning in Kabul and Jalalabad, hundreds of
university students demonstrated against US strikes this weekend that allegedly
killed a number of civilians….First, the US military launched a raid in Kunar
Province two days after Christmas on a village a night, in which President
Hamid Karzai alleged that 10 civilians, some 8 of them schoolchildren, had been
killed (some say dragged out of their beds and executed). The NYT reported the
head of a Kabul delegation to the village saying,”They gathered eight school
students from two compounds and put them in one room and shot them with small
arms.” (The spokesman is a former governor of Kunar and now a close adviser to
President Hamid Karzai– i.e. not exactly a pro-Taliban source). The charitable
theory is that in a nighttime raid, US troops got disoriented and hit the wrong
group of young men.
The outraged Afghan public saw this raid as an atrocity, and on
Wednesday December 30, they mounted street protests against the US in
Jalalabad, an eastern Pashtun city, and Kabul. In Jalalabad, hundreds of
university students blocked the main roads, and then marched in the streets,
chanting ‘Death to Obama’ and ‘Death to America,’ and burning Obama in effigy…
Even
while the protests were taking place in Jalalabad and Kabul, a NATO missile
strike on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province was alleged to have
killed as many as 7 more civilians, some of them children. Now the Afghan
public was really angry….”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/04-3
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Gary Yonge in the Observer, 3rd Jan 2010:
“Casting the escalation of the Afghanistan war as a central front in the war on
terror is a potent illustration of how this delusion has continued. Al-Qaida is
now more likely to be found in Pakistan, an American ally, than in Afghanistan
and the latest threat came via Yemen. Terrorism is a strategy, not a place ñ
attempts to carpet-bomb it or occupy it or conquer it will inevitably fail.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/jan/03/yemen-anti-terrorism-rendition-security
