The battle of Marja, in Afghanistan’s southern poppy belt has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Some 11,000 U.S. and Afghan troops fighting to defeat a few hundred Taliban fighters won’t really change much in Afghanistan. The greater significance of the battle appears to be in how it is perceived in the rest of Afghanistan and in America.

The operation’s true goals are to convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year-long war and also to show Afghans that U.S. forces and the Afghan government can protect them from the Taliban.

Marja is indeed a Taliban stronghold and despite the fact that the Talib fighters are seriously outnumbered and even more seriously outgunned, at least nine coalition soldiers have died so far and dozens have been wounded. It is a serious, hard, no holds barred battle on the most basic level.

It is being hoped that a swift victory over the Taliban in Marja, followed by a robust development effort, could sway some Afghan fence sitters.

The important thing to realize is that Marja is not a place of any meaningful strategic, or even tactical importance, that even the quickest of victories there – although that doesn’t appear to be possible any longer – will not really influence the outcome of the war, except that the symbolism of a victory might somewhat help the coalition politically.

What might be more meaningful is actually straightening out the situation in Kandahar, with its tangled political rivalries. Among the local power brokers is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Karzai has been accused of being a drug kingpin and, also, a paid CIA asset. He has of course denied both allegations.

So, it seems to us, that the battle of Marja is really just an excuse not to tangle with a much more difficult situation in Kandahar as yet. Too bad, that its cost in dead and wounded is as high as it is.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, battle of Marja, corruption, Kandahar, Karzai, politics, Taliban

As we get deeper and deeper into the Afghan quagmire, ostensibly to defeat al-Qaida, along with its ever-mysterious Osama bin Laden and to defeat the Taliban, in order to prop up the Karzai government, it appears that the Taliban is always a step, or two ahead.

At this point, nearly every Afghan province has two governors – one belonging to the Karzai regime and the other to the Taliban one.

At the same time, it appears that many Afghans prefer a decisive rule to the disarray of the Karzai government.

The Taliban has established an elaborate shadow government of governors, police chiefs, district administrators and judges that in many cases already has more bearing on the lives of Afghans than the real government.

U.S. military officials say that getting rid of the Taliban’s shadow government and establishing the authority of the Karzai administration over the next 18 months will be critical to the success of President Obama’s surge strategy. But this has been complicated by the fact that in many areas, Afghans prefer the severe but decisive authority of the Taliban to the corruption and inefficiency of Karzai’s appointees.

For many Afghans, there is little, or no choice. Across broad areas of the country, especially Afghanistan’s vast rural areas, the government has little to no presence, leaving the Taliban as the only authority.

After been forced underground or into exile in 2001, the Taliban has returned not just to wage war but also to demonstrate that it is capable of delivering a different model of governance from the one offered by Karzai and his allies. Afghans who live under Taliban control say the group’s weaknesses remain the same as during the movement’s previous five-year rule. The Taliban provides virtually no social services, leaving Afghans on their own when it comes to health care, education and development.

Most Afghans celebrated Taliban’s ouster on 2001, but after eight years of Karzai’s government, many say they would happily welcome the Taliban’s return.

It appears then that whatever is defined as a “victory” in Afghanistan will not be a military one, but rather a very strong push to improve the efficiency of the central government, while cleaning out the ever-present corruption. In addition, the Afghan government forces will have to actually establish a strong, viable presence even in areas presently considered to be Taliban strongholds.

Whether the U.S. and NATO will be able to achieve that within the next 18 to 24 months remains to be seen, but the prospects do not look promising at all at this point.

Maybe if we finally gave up the search for the mythical Osama bin Laden, more resources could be channeled into actually fighting for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and to offer them a viable future, which for so many decades has seemed to slip almost out of reach?

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, government, politics, shadow, Taliban

It’s been many years since the 9/11 attacks and America’s favorite boogieman Osama bin Laden is apparently still out there…Or is he? Nobody seems to know for sure, it seems.

U.S. National Security Adviser, James Jones, says bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be periodically slipping back into Afghanistan as well. At the same time, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, says the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time – “I think it has been years” – and did not confirm that he’d slipped into Afghanistan.

The failed hunt for bin Laden has been one of the signature elements of the global “war on terror” that George W. Bush launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. The principal explanations given by both the Bush and Obama administrations for not getting bin Laden is that they simply don’t know where he is.
“If we did, we’d go get him,” Gates said.

Jones, a retired Marine general, stressed the urgency of targeting bin Laden, and spoke of a renewed campaign to capture or kill him. Bin Laden had been allowed to operate in Afghanistan by his Taliban allies while allegedly plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. When U.S. forces ousted the Taliban from power in late 2001, bin Laden reportedly fled into Pakistan from what was generally described as a complex of caves in the Tora Bora area.

Asked whether the administration has reliable intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, James Jones replied, “The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.” He did not elaborate on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he cite a time period or describe more specifically bin Laden’s apparent border crossings.

Robert Gates in turn, said: that “we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is,” although he agreed that his likely hideout is in North Waziristan.

The U.S. has targeted North Waziristan and other areas on the Pakistani side of the border with drone-launched missile strikes, killing a number of militants as well as Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani army has undertaken an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan but it has not expanded it into North Waziristan.

Obama administration officials have often asserted, as did the Bush administration, that they believe bin Laden is being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the border, along with other senior al-Qaida leaders. But Jones’s assertion that al-Qaida chief may have slipped back into Afghanistan puts a new twist on the issue.

Senator John McCain said: “that knowledgeable people have told him that bin Laden ‘moves back and forth.’”
McCain did not elaborate, except to say that although bin Laden is not currently able to establish bases for training and equipping terrorists who would attack the United States, “I think it’s important to get him.”

Gates said he does not blame a lack of Pakistani cooperation for the absence of intelligence on bin Laden. “No, I think it’s because if, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time,” he said.

During a visit to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused a stir by chiding Pakistani officials for failing to press the hunt for al-Qaida inside their borders. She said she found it “hard to believe” that no one in Islamabad knows where the al-Qaida leaders are hiding and couldn’t get them “if they really wanted to.”

A recent Senate report said bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora only three months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when American military leaders made the crucial decision not to pursue him with massive force.

Some Pakistanis believe that Osama bin Laden is actually a CIA agent.

Take a look at this video:

So, it appears that we are as much in the dark about bin Laden’s whereabouts, as we seem to be about what really and truly transpired on September 11, 2001. Lets just hope that our intelligence regarding both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban is more accurate, since nobody in his right mind wants the Afghan war to drag on forever.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, al-qaida, bin laden, cia, clinton, gates, jones, Pakistan, Terrorism, US

While perusing some other parts of the blogosphere, we have encountered some fresh postings challenging readers to come up with things that George W. Bush did wrong. Therefore it appears advisable to re-post this article, which originally has run here on October 1, 2008.

__________________________________________________________________

Lets add up the very dubious “achievements” of the last eight years.

First: The stolen election of 2000, which started it all.

Second: The attacks of September 11, 2001.

Third: The approval of the Patriot Act and its effects on our democratic system, including the creation of the all-encompassing Department of Homeland Security, illegal wiretapping and domestic spying, the firing of U.S. Attorneys, Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force, creation of a police state and an atmosphere of overall paranoia and so forth, and so on.

Fourth: The push towards the invasion of Iraq, along with totally untrue “justifications”, such as the presence of weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaida being centered in Iraq and the “urgent” need to depose Saddam, etc, etc.

Fifth: The inept and I mean INEPT attempts at nation building, which of course – besides the actual conquest of Iraq – have caused the longest-lasting war in U.S. history and have cost the lives of approximately one million men, women and children and over 4,000 American soldiers, with tens of thousands of young men and women being crippled for life.

Sixth: The total monetary cost of this artificially created conflict is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars and counting. Making certain specific, but often not even specified corporations very, very rich in the process – with U.S. taxpayer’s money, of course.

Seventh: Causing the United States to slide from a position of a beacon of freedom to most of the world, to a universally despised entity, which allows and in fact employs torture, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons and all kinds of nasty methods, formerly the domain of the most unsavory of regimes.

Eight: The deregulation of all kinds of industries, including the airlines and of course, the financial (read: debt repackaging mills) sector.

Ninth: The creation of the largest national debt and government deficit in the history of the known world. As a matter of fact, the debt clock on Wall Street – which has been switched off during the Clinton administration, because it wasn’t needed – was turned off again, this time, because they run out of digits….Yes, folks. Our national debt now totals some $56 trillion. That’s about $480,000 for every household in the U.S.  Isn’t it amazing that we had a surplus under the philanderer Clinton and a totally crippling debt under the teetotaler Bush?

Tenth: Becoming an economic cripple, with foreign creditors holding huge chunks of whatever real wealth remains in the U.S.

Eleventh: Not producing very much of anything any longer, allowing other countries to take the technological lead in many areas, allowing our infrastructure to crumble (besides the anti-terrorist barriers in front of government buildings), having an educational system that continues to produce illiterate adults, who often have no idea what lies beyond the borders of their counties and spend an incredible amount of time watching the moronic offerings of the television industry. And lets not forget the government’s peerless performance during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Twelfth: And this is the crowning, but not surprising touch of the last eight years: The seeming collapse of the debt repackaging mills, which George W. Bush had the gall to call “our financial system” and of course, another super urgent call to bail it out at a cost of another $700 billion, to a trillion dollars of taxpayer’s money. This, after bailing out Bear Stearns, Fannie May, Freddie Mack, AIG and others.

I will leave the 13^th point out of this discussion, as we all fervently hope that it won’t be needed and that point number 12 is the last serious point of damage that the present occupant of the White House and his corporate masters will cause to all of us.

In closing, allow me to congratulate all of those who have re-elected Bush in 2004!

Technorati Tags: 9/11, afghanistan, bush, damage, iraq, neocons, patriot act, torture, war

The claims and counterclaims in this case vary widely, but as it stands, Eric Williamson, of Springfield, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC is being accused of indecent exposure.

As a woman, who was walking her 7-year-old son to school tells the story; Williamson has shown himself butt-naked twice through the windows of the house he was living in.

Williamson, in turn says that he just got up and was preparing breakfast in his own house, totally unaware that anyone could see him.

It is also interesting to note that the accusing woman is a wife of a Fairfax County policeman.

Police showed up very quickly. One of the five cops who went into his house reportedly called Williamson a pervert and others looked through his belongings. They left but returned a short time later to take him to the magistrate.

A police spokeswoman would not comment on Williamson’s claim that officers entered his room without a warrant, but she did say “We don’t arrest people for being nude in their house.”

Williamson in turn, says Fairfax County police treated him “like an animal” at his home.

Considering the huge brouhaha about a sex-related show in Saudi Arabia and the sentences of lashes and prison for those involved (apparently now pardoned by King Abdullah), or the stoning and other punishment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, our domestic morals might not seem to be that strict. On the other hand, how does walking naked around one’s own house compare to miles and miles of nude people on many European beaches? Who could be considered more advanced from the cultural and moral point of view, we wonder…

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, Alive, lashes, man, Morals, naked, Pakistan, police, Puritanism, Saudi Arabia, US