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The Backlash In Pakistan
Yesterday a car bomb exploded in Lahore killing some 30 and wounding 250 people. Today four bombs exploded in Peshawar.
This is the backlash for the U.S. demanded campaign by the Pakistani military against the neo-Taliban. More will come.
2.4 million have fled from and at least 200,000 are trapped in the fighting areas. Some of the refugees are with relatives but many live in makeshift camps where some of the radical organizations are already recruiting new followers.
The Pakistani military lets no media into the fighting zone so reports about casualties are sketchy. I feared that it does not do counterinsurgency but fights as it was trained to do – with massive artillery barrages and air raids and with disregard of any collateral damage. Now the first accounts are coming in from refugees. It appears I was right:
Taken together, their accounts — along with those of aid workers and hospital staff — suggest significant civilian casualties, mostly as a result of aerial raids by an army more equipped for conventional war with India than guerrilla warfare with the Taliban.
…
"Civilian casualties are much higher than those of either the army or the Taliban," said Ali Bakt, speaking at a hospital in the northwestern capital of Peshawar after fleeing the Taliban mountain stronghold of Peochar. He said both sides were firing mortar shells — an inaccurate weapon that often hits targets other than the intended one.
The heavy handed campaign may well press the neo-Taliban out of Swat and other areas. Some may cross the border to Afghanistan and the U.S. hopes to fight them there. But this hammer and anvil operation will also see many flee into the big cities and the fight will carry on there.
With damage in the cities increasing and reports of civilian casualties rising the Pakistani public will at some point no longer support the armies campaign. Then the government will again have to make with the neo-Taliban.
Strategically nothing will have changed but millions will have been uprooted and thousands will be dead or wounded.
Despite what the Obama administration insists to believe the conflict can not be solved by military force. There must and will be a political solution in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan. Meanwhile the civilians have to pay the bloody price for the politicians small-mindedness.
ch2 11) right on.
AfPak’s kismet was sketched in the burning red sands the moment mom.gov.af awarded their world class Ayak copper prospects to MCC:China Copper in April, 2007, and from that very moment, the US:UK Golum lifted it’s scaley head, maw dripping with fresh corpses, and turned from Babylon towards Kabul. Remember Obama’s words? ‘We have to ‘surge’ in Afghanistan.’ Why? Well, it’s the “Right War”, it’s “Hearts and Minds”, it’s “Global War of Terror Against Those Who Would Do US Harm”, Hillary’s mouth full of marbles new age acronym GWOT@WW.DUH
Duhh… Defense USA™ is the greatest monster in human history and it needs constant feeding, in taxes and blood.
The ‘surge’ and ‘SWAT’ is all about keeping China from executing on the lease, and they only have four years to start up production, or the mining lease lapses. The US:UK placed hard economic sanctions on Iran, to make sure Iranians couldn’t build a railway to the sea. That left Pakistan. China built the Baluch port in Gwadar. The rail line had already been mapped for more than 100 years over the Khyber Pass, right through the North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the fighting is now. Then ‘surge’ became ‘AfPak’. Then it was ‘SWAT’.
US:UK isn’t clearing a path for China to build their railroad to Gwadar, they’re making sure that mining lease lapses. Yet even at this moment, tenders are out for the Afghan iron ore reserves, largest and highest grade in Asia, and Afghanistan’s billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas, all controlled by a US-based leasing advisor, all under a World Bank written Hydrocarbon and Mineral Laws, written (in English!) clear back in 2001 while Cheney feinted around in Tora Bora, preparing for the Golum’s attack of empire on Baghdad.
They needed those laws executed and the lease contracts signed, so they installed a Republican Executive form of government in Afghanistan, instead of a parliamentary one. No debate is required or allowed in Republican government. Karzai signed both Hydrocarbon and Mineral Laws in 2003, on the eve of Cheney’s GWOT, as a gift of appreciation for being secretly selected to head the US:UK Afghanistan franchise.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2042040.stm Secret electoral ballot.
Soon Karzai will sign away those iron, and oil & gas contracts, before the August presidential elections, even though constitutionally he is no longer the Executive, his term of office and those of his cabinets have already expired. A minor detail. Karzai will automatically be re-elected. His thugs, goons, and political appointees in office are beating political rally go’ers, closing businesses, driving political opponents out of the country, or murdering them (‘Taliban did it’).
We are fighting and dying and bleeding out our taxes to support a drug and natural resources extortion mafia, that will leave the Afghan people utter peons, and has left 4.3 MILLION people as refugees, the largest refugee population since Rwanda. The Jewish diaspora, that forces US to watch their Holocaust morality play each and every year, hasn’t said one word in protest. Over one TRILLION dollars in natural resources, countless BILLIONS in opium poppies, but Afghan people see not one penny.
In 15 years when all the loot has been siphoned off to Dubai, Afghanistan will be just another lawless bankrupt narco state, and by IMF:World Bank and US:UK design.
Your taxes and your investments paid for all this. Stop shopping, grow your own, and move your investments into Swiss franc bonds. But it will only delay the inevitable. The whole world is IMF’d now. Soon the whole world will be a lawless bankrupt narco state. America’s kismet was sketched in the stars the moment Ronald Reagan was elected to office by making Iran promise not to release the American hostages until after the elections. By promising Gorbechev support, then looting the Soviets. By Thatcher. By turning US:UK into kleptocracies. That fraud started the whole arms-for-drugs star wars wheel in the sky that keeps on turning, burning.
December 21, 2012.
Say goodnight, Dick.
Goodnight, Dick.
Posted by: Wu Wu Wu | May 29 2009 6:30 utc | 12
This:
The documentation of the complicity of taliban leadership in the 9/11 atrocities is incontrovertible.
simply does not follow from this:
They gave refuge to bin Laden. Over and over again.
The U.S. gave refuge to Bin Laden for a full six years or ten years, back when he was a stduent. Singapore, i think, gave refuge to him when they worked on his kidney. A gazillion more examples can also be garnered, i’m sure, of European nations as well as U.S. allies in the Middle East — hell, apparently Saudi Arabia gave refuge to him even after he was placed on the U.S.’s most wanted list.
So are you telling me that the U.S, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore were all complicit in 9-11 as well?
If we use that logic, then the U.S. was complicit in the Oklahoma City Bombing, since it gave — and continues to “give” — refuge to the right-wing, white-nationalist scum who carried it out.
No, slothrop — what you’re putting forward here not only doesn’t carry any legal or diplomatic weight of any sort, it doesn’t even pass the most basic ethical consideration. There is no content to this argument, at all.
And that link you provide backs up my own assertions, above:
The Taliban, in order to halt American concern over bin Laden, suggested, in October 1999, a trial by a panel of Islamic scholars or monitoring of “UBL Afghanistan” by the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) or the United Nations (UN).
That’s on the front page, and is one of the main points: the Taliban were fully committed to cooperating with the U.S. and bringing OBL to justice. They even offered, as is evident, to place him under house-arrest, under the auspices of either one of two neutral international organizations.
What they refused, however, was to extradite him to the United States as a prisoner.
There is nothing unethical, illegal, “complicit” or “succoring” in those propositions. The Taliban offered to have the man tried under a neutral court, and offered to assist in his incarceration. The U.S. refused. Then the U.S. invaded. Then, after invading, the U.S. discovered that it’s not an easy thing to track down a bunch of people who don’t want to be found, at least when they’re living in the Afghani mountains. Which, as i said, suggests that it would have been at least as difficult for the Taliban to manage, since they don’t have all those nifty technological toys and deadly firepower to assist them.
In the process of that learning curve, however the U.S. slaughtered untold tens of thousands of innocents, and has turned untold millions out of their homes and made them into refugees. Not to mention all of the aerial strikes that just happened to ‘miss’ and drop on top of wedding parties, and children’s hospitals, and things like that.
It really doesn’t look good, sloth, when the links you provide undermine your own argument. No, indeed — you’ve entirely lost the plot on this one.
Posted by: china_hand2 | May 31 2009 4:47 utc | 21
I went back and looked over that website again, and then read the PDf that purports to show how the Taliban “gave refuge” to Bin Laden, even despite U.S. “diplomatic” efforts to get him extradited.
First, i’ll note: there was no extradition treaty with Afghanistan. That is almost certainly because of U.S. intransigence, not the Taliban’s. The U.S. was, from very shortly after the outset of Taliban rule, working to isolate the regime so that it could replace them. That included a refusal to give full diplomatic recognition to the regime. Thus, with no extradition treaty, the U.S. had — from Afghani eyes — no legal basis to demand extradition. Even so, the Taliban repeatedly reiterated that they would consider any evidence offered, and would host an international court of neutral legal experts to adjudicate the proceedings. This, the U.S. refused, saying it would only accept the judges’ determination if the outcome was foreordained.
Second, the only time the U.S. gave the Taliban anything approaching evidence, it was essentially a power-point list of the charges against Bin Laden — not the evidence itself.
Third, 20 of November, 1999 (1998?), the Taliban openly state that, without evidence to back up the U.S. stance, turning over Bin Laden would result in the fall of their regime. Can’t get any more clear than that.
Fourth, throughout the entire time of this dialogue, the U.S. was placing increasing sanctions upon the Taliban; when the U.S. demanded the Taliban stop opium production, they did — and as the income dried up, widespread starvation hit the country. When the Taliban asked for food and other assistance, the U.S. refused to give it, citing Bin Laden as an example.
Clearly, from the Taliban’s perspective, the U.S. was trying to force Afghanistan to giving over Bin Laden — yet it refused to provide the evidence or support an official, public review of that evidence.
What is most provocative, however, is that only six months after the Afghans had concluded a treaty with China, to provide for a pipeline that would bring them the food and necessities their people required, the U.S. decided to go to war with them over harboring Bin Laden.
If the U.S. wanted Bin Laden so badly, then why didn’t it simply give over the food and supplies, stop trying to isolate the Taliban, and arrange to have a public, UN sponsored judicial review of the evidence against Bin Laden? It would have been an easy enough thing, and — in theory, at least — 9-11 would never have happened. It worked rather well in Nuremberg, right? Milosevic? Please name me any other instance where the U.S. went to war against an entire nation simply to secure the person of an alleged war criminal —
one single instance, please.
Oh, wait — i know why they didn’t do it –
because the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the ICC, nor of any binding adjudicative power of the U.N.
Really, Slothrop — it was the U.S.’s provocation and anatagonism towards the Taliban that resulted in their failure to secure Bin Laden. If the U.S. had tried any of those shenanigans with, say, France — or even Serbia — they wouldn’t have worked, and everyone in Europe and the U.S. would know why. But the Afghanis are Muslim Darkies, so obviously they should jump when the U.S. yells, and then kiss their ass and thank them for the privilege.
The only reason the U.S. got away with invading Afghanistan is because the government succeeded in convincing people that the Taliban were in cahoots with Bin Laden, and the only reason that worked is because so few of the sheeple that inhabit the U.S. are even slightly aware of the harsh austerity that everyday afghanis deal with on a moment-to-moment basis.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 2 2009 5:17 utc | 52
The taliban were more the allies of Pakistan sponsors of regional terror in kashmir and against India. The taliban from the start were up to their eyeballs in international terrorism.
Nonsense. You’re inferring relationships that are not supported by the evidence — or rather, “inventing things”.
For instance, i’ve never mentioned anything about blowback. I can see it as a reasonable explanation for what happened, but i have no evidence one way or the other, and what evidence i’ve read is slim.
What is undeniable, though, is that the CIA gave money to the ISI to help them create the Taliban, Al Qaida, and other “freedom fighter” organizations. Indirect blowback is something not only debatable, but pretty much incontrovertible. The CIA may not have been running those organizations, but they were paying the people who were and didn’t see fit to worry about the future consequences — that’s what typically happens when you get a military and intelligence establishment that are run by ideologues who want to rule the world.
The Taliban don’t and didn’t care about Kashmir or India. They have only ever cared about Afghanistan, and about bringing law and order to their communities. They weren’t interested in exporting Islam, nor their influence — they were (and remain) intent on keeping their peoples and lands independent of foreign interference. So far as their “cooperation” with organizations concerned with such things went, it would entirely have been at the urging and handling of the ISI.
There is no evidence — none — that the Taliban ran or helped run Pakistani ISI creations. The most they can be blamed for — if you can say that — is not provoking a second civil war to try and purge their country of those elements.
Something had to be done. There’s just no way the int’l communi9ty can permit the band of pashtuns to run afghanistan.
It’s not your choice. It’s not the “international community’s” choice, either — but let’s get real. You don’t really mean “the international community”. You mean “The U.S., Britain, and their clients of the moment”. China, Russia, Pakistan, most of Africa, most of the Middle East, and most of Central and East Asia couldn’t really care less if the Taliban run Afghanistan.
And what’s more to the point: it’s none of your damn business who runs Afghanistan. It’s the Afghans’ choice, and — like it or not — some day the U.S. is gonna hafta find some way to co-exist with the Taliban and the Pushtun.
See, the problem is this: there are people like you, in the U.S. government, who think they get the power to choose who thinks what, and who runs what, all over the world. That’s the root of this problem.
If the U.S. had given full recognition to the Taliban and worked with it as the representatives of the sovereign nation of Afghanistan, then the Taliban would have been more cooperative vis a vis Bin Laden. Even with that cooperation, however, the U.S. would still have needed to submit to some basic principles of international law — which it refused to do. So what we have here is a hubristic, corrupt nation that believes it can reserve the right to dictate to other nations what the law will be, and how it will be interpreted, and how it will be enforced, and reserves the right to wage full-scale war upon the peoples of that nation if it refuses to submit to its authority and vision.
This theory explains clearly the relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan and accounts for all of your supposed “justifications” —
yet, as i have pointed out again and again, your account does not allow for the realities of the internal Afghanistan at the time. Commanded by the world to stop opium production, the Taliban did (and since the U.S. has been in Afghanistan, opium production has dramatically risen). Yet when the predicted falloff in revenues created the predicted famine and hardship, the world community that was so unilaterally dictatorial about stopping the flow of opium turned its back on the Afghanis and let them starve — led, of course, by the U.S., who was crying and weeping over the Taliban’s inability to follow through on the proposed pipeline project, and Bin Laden.
But of course, now we’re back to the original problem: the Taliban couldn’t really hand over Bin Laden without having some sort of firm, incontrovertible evidence that he was doing something wrong — something they could show their people, to justify handing over this man to what was clearly their enemy, the United States. Yet everything up to that step, they did: they curtailed his movement in-country, they cut off his connections to neighboring countries, and they cut off his contact with local peoples. Beyond that, they would have had to start a second civil war to eliminate him — and clearly, that’s something they were unwilling to do.
Anyone who has the slightest understanding of the last forty years of Aghan history can easily understand why, too — but for some reason, the U.S. diplomatic offices couldn’t. They just couldn’t figure out why the Taliban weren’t willing to provoke that civil war. They just couldn’t figure out why these darkies weren’t jiggy-dancing when commmanded. They just couldn’t figure out why there might be some need for the U.S. to compromise on some of these core “principles” — if you can call them that — regarding international law, state-to-state relations, and Afghan independence.
Call it what you want — State Terrorism, extortion, tyranny, whatever — but it’s certainly not fair, just, reasonable, nor — in any society, anywhere — acceptable.
The fault for not bringing in Bin Laden lies squarely at the feet of the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, and the U.S. and British petrochemical industries, all of whom were squarely fixated upon regime change as the only option.
This explanation of events accounts not only for all the documented evidence — as in, every last shred, including petrochemical meddling and the State Dept. policy of regime change, neither of which you feel the need to include in your own account — but it also manages to show why the Afghan government’s actions were not, in fact, the addled insanity you would like to portray them as, but were in fact careful and calculated overtures towards cooperation that were overtly, purposefully twisted and ignored by the U.S. mechanisms of government.
So yes, we’re back to the beginning: you lose. Again. Get with it, Slothrop — if you’re going to talk foreign policy and declare that you have tangible, real solutions, then you’re going to need to do more than just pretend like there’s one side to the argument.
There is a world that exists beyond the borders of your country, and believe it or not, they aren’t your niggers.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 3 2009 5:12 utc | 58
I agree, r’giap.
@sloth:
Arrogant? No. You’re confusing righteousness with ego. I feel frustration at your antagonistic rhetoric, and sizzable dismay at your mundane refusal to reconsider, but not much else beyond that.
Your first set of documents, “Taliban Godfather?”, reinforce everything i’ve said above: that the Pakistani ISI was managing all of these various groups, that the Taliban was only one client amongst many, and that the Taliban maintained a firm and superior independence from the rest of the ISI’s clients.
In the earlier group of documents higher above, it’s made clear that Bhutto — who,i should add, i consider little more than a shill (but yes, slightly more) for the most cynically greedy elements of Pakistani and U.S. society — and her clique were “worried” by the Taliban. Documents linked to earlier today on this blog make clear that, among the various juntas vying for control of Pakistan, Musharraf was a moderate secular actor from within the Pakistani military; Sharif had fired quite a few generals who represented a more secular view, while also pushing forward Pakistan’s nuclear plan, and at the same time proposing a more conservative legal system based on the Qu’ran — i.e: clearly, a Saudi Wahhabist representative, and it was that country to which he fled at the time of his forced exile.
What your first set of documents present now is nothing more than a list of various groups funded and promoted by the ISI, on behalf of the Saudis, to at one and the same time antagonize India and Iran while supporting “Islamic Fundamentalism” in Afghanistan. It’s all about Pakistani influence over the various groups, and throughout the documentation no mention is made of Taliban co-dependence, or assimilation of these groups into the Taliban. Instead, it is repeatedly reiterated that these groups are independent operatives concerned with non-Afghani objectives.
Thus, we have the grand triangle: the independent Taliban, the confused Pakistani elite, and the foreign jihadis balanced between them.
Once again, i reiterate: the Taliban are not the ISI, and they weren’t the handlers of the ISI’s clients. The most the Taliban can be accused of is going along with the ISI’s plan — or, in other words, the Taliban and Pakistan are much like the U.S. and Israel.
But now we get back to the real problem: the only reason ISI influence over the Taliban wasn’t ameliorated is because the U.S. Dept’ of State wanted to keep the Taliban at arms length, to isolate them, because they had already fixed upon regime change. There were many, many opportunities to draw them closer, but the U.S. was determined — for reasons of profit, and ideology, and geopolitical greed — to make them an enemy.
The second group of documents you present confirms that analysis: because of the combined targeting of Al Qaida and the Taliban, and because of the undeniably inhuman missile strikes the Clinton administration made upon Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia, the U.S. wound up driving these two enemies into one another’s camps.
But let’s re-examine that: if, in 1998, Al Qaida and the Taliban were just discovering their affinity for one another, then there were many months — if not years — before the 2001 attacks during which the U.S. could have made rapprochement with the Taliban and isolated Al Qaida.
But they didn’t. Because the U.S. wanted regime change. Because the U.S. felt it could dictate the terms upon which the Afghan-U.S. relationship would develop. Because the U.S. just didn’t think Bin Laden was really all that dangerous a guy.
In fact, throughout that entire period, the Taliban were constantly giving the most simple and reasonable preconditions for cooperation:
* U.S. recogniation of a neutral, third-party adjudicator to review the evidence being called against Bin Laden,
* Full recognition of the Taliban-led government by the U.S, and
* A public review of the claims against Al Qaida.
But one would be a fool to believe that these three points were the only places the U.S. could have made headway on the relationship.
Medical and food supplies could have been delivered; agricultural and fiscal aid could have been delivered; beyond that, the U.S. could have simply facilitated greater trade between the Taliban and European countries, or could have pressured the Saudis to curtail or mollify their promotion of such ferocious Wahabbism, or pushed to reduce the tensions between Pakistan and India —
any of those measures would clearly have been either welcomed by the Afghan government, the Pakistani government and ISI, or welcomed by the local peoples– but the U.S. didn’t do any of those things. Instead, it chose to enforce sanctions against the Taliban and Afghan people while dictating to them the terms upon which their surrender would be accepted, economicall isolating Afghanistan and making the Taliban into martyrs of the people, while at the same time pouring pots of money into the Pakistani government and ISI — money which was then used to finance the self-same organizations that the U.S. is now claiming were consequences of the Taliban ascendancy.
Mistake, after mistake, after mistake, and every one following the same pattern of over forty years of mistakes —
you insist that the Taliban were never capable of negotiation and diplomacy, but the facts suggest the opposite: the U.S. was the intransigent dictator in that particular relationship, and it was the Taliban leadership who slowly underwent a transformative shift against the aggression being aimed at them.
Again: no arrogance here. Just facts.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 3 2009 18:17 utc | 62
So, [the Taliban]’re “independent”–ok. So what? This has nothing to do w/ the argument, but ok, I’ll play along.
It has everything to do with it. As independent players with the most stable and ubiquitous power in Afghanistan, the Taliban were not ideological clients or a puppet regime of the ISI, but were mainly beholden to its money and weaponry — for obvious reasons: it kept their people fed.
If independent, then this makes the taliban were all the more culpable for aiding AQ.
An “Independent” force is not equivalent to an “authoritative” force.
In the U.S., the U.S. government and military are the authoritative, undisputed governors of force. In Afghanistan, the Taliban were only one player that was balanced among many — more powerful than the rest, to be sure, but still susceptible to fragmentation, conspiracy, and rebellion.
Since the Taliban were not the authoritative force in Afghanistan, it’s just stupid — stupid, bullheaded, and ignorant — to claim that they “harbored” Al Qaida and these other groups.
It would be like claiming Italy “harbored” the Americans during and after World War II. The only difference between the foreign Jihadis in post-revolution Afghanistan and the Americans in post-World War II Italy is that the Americans eventually left.
The Jihadis stayed because the chaos in that land was so great, their coffers so deep, the area so secure, the rest of the world so hostile, and their relative power so great that staying was more attractive than leaving.
See, in order for you to say the Taliban “harbored” these groups, its you who needs the proof. Does the Republican Party harbor the white nationailst groups in the U.S.? Does it harbor christian fundamentalist terrorists? Did it harbor the leadership of the Contras? To make those claims, one needs to provide proof — proof of a client-patron relationship, proof of the power to protect and influence, proof of the intent to utilize and exploit the client as a tool of state.
You have provided none of those things. You have provided a bunch of documents wherein the Taliban openly state that if they were to hand over Bin Laden, there would be renewed civil war. You have provided documents where the Taliban respond to unilateral U.S. demands that they abrogate Bin Laden’s civil and human rights with reasonable requests for a formalized state-to-state relationships and regular, public legal hearings.
That’s not “harboring”; these are the mundane responsibilities of international diplomacy and national leadership. Unless you can show tha the Taliban were protecting the Taliban with the intent of funding, supporting, directing, and utilizing them as a tool of state — unless you can show that, at any time, the Taliban had it fully within their power to unilaterally expel the Taliban, without risk of destabization, then your proof is simply inadequate.
Basically, the problem here is simple: you don’t believe anything the Taliban say. You think everything they said was actually a code for something else they really meant; i wouldn’t have a problem with that, except that you don’t apply the same cynical guesswork to the actions of the United States — instead, you take the pronouncements of that bureaucracy at face-value.
I’m not such a simpleton. I am as skeptical of the Taliban as i am of the United States; in every case, i insist on weighing who stands to profit, how, and what the long-term goals of the actors appear to be.
In the case of the Taliban, that’s easy: they wanted to bring peace and security to a land ravaged by decades of total warfare.
In the United States, however, it’s not so easy: why, exactly, was the United States so concerned with a country that is, quite literally, on the opposite side of the globe from them? And why, exactly, did the U.S. decide antagonism and, ultimately, regime change were the only fitting responses to the rise of the Taliban?
Time has given us the answer to that: oil. Natural resources. Isolation of China. When faced with the possibility of rebuilding Afghanistan, the United States turned away — just as it did when the Taliban were in power, just as it always does once its guns have achieved the desired short-term effect.
It has repeatedly happened in Central America, and South America, and Africa, and in so many other places, as well.
The problem is, you can’t see the forest for the trees. So maybe it’s time you took a step backwards and reconsidered the world from the perspective of human needs and human rights, rather than a game.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 4 2009 3:23 utc | 71
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