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Just Another Night Raid In Kabul
Mustafa Kazemi is an Afghan journalist. He has a blog and twitters as @combatjourno.
Starting 10:10pm in Kabul (1:10am EDT) today he twittered this:
BREAKING NEWS — Afghan & ISAF forces just conducted a raid on this guest house in Shahr-e-Naw in front of MTN HQ arresting a suicide bomber
When I got out of my room suddenly a Special Force operator held a gun on my face & laid me to ground. They then raided the room beside me.
The operators were Afghan Intelligence & ISAF Special Forces operators. They then told me they arrested a suicide bomber.
The suspect was an Etisalat employee and was suspected of being a suicide bomber, An Intelligence official just said.
I've a lot of scratches on my hands and thigh pain as a result of kicking and pushing me down to the ground by NDS & ISAF Special Forces.
An intelligence operator warningly told me to hide myself so they won't "shoot me instead of the terrorists".
The foreign SF operator left off the handcuffs when I told him I'm a journalist and spoke English to him. But kept the gun on my head.
The hotel manager tells me that the arrested person is a trustable customer of him since a long time & he doubts him being a terrorist.
I can now see the truth behind the night special operations. Led by foreigners obviously. Afghans cant even run an op independently in Kabul
After they arrested the suspect I saw a military attorney was brought inside to draft the inventory & condition of the room during operation
Downstairs, @AmiriEhsan was about to come upstairs to me, the troops told him to get away from the scene, because it's gonna get 'bloody'.
NB: the foreign special forces didn't speak a word so I couldn't make out their nationality. One of them had an Australian flag insignia.
I must expect getting arrested by Domestic Intelligence for live-tweeting their classified operation for letting people know the truths.
This was a night raid on a hotel with a long time trusted customer of the hotel being hauled off as a terrorists which he is unlikely to be. During the raid Afghans like Mustafa Kazemi were roughly manhandled by foreign special forces. Is it any wonder that many Afghans do not want such forces in their country?
The German spy service BND made some dark predictions about Afghanistan. Certain politicians and the SPIEGEL writers use this as an argument for the continuation of the military occupation of Afghanistan by western military beyond 2014. The questions they never answer is "What for?"
What are they expecting to change by keeping 35,000 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014? How will that change be achieved? If 11 years of foreign occupation of Afghanistan were not enough to achieve the desired end state how long will take and how much will it costs? Can those changes be achieved at all?
Many of the perceived problems of Afghanistan that are supposed to be changed by further western interference are the consequences of this interference. Epic corruption, rampant warlordism, high drug production and drug addiction rates were not the big problems in the Afghanistan of 2001.
Removing the foreign troops and influences will allow Afghanistan to find back to a balance where those problems can slowly heal away. Keeping troops in Afghanistan will only prolong the ordeal.
Completely disagree with Don Bacon on this:
Then it will be China/Pakistan/Pashtun/Taliban versus Russia/Iran/India/Northern Alliance (Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara)
The factions that align will be those interested in stability, whether for economics reasons, led by China, or for security reasons, led mostly by Russia, with Iran a solid contender in both ;
against those who believe they have the most to gain by further instability where they can improve their position, & those that know that they can’t compete in a stable, relatively ‘normalised’ environment.
What will be of critical importance is the showdown between different factions in Pakistan & Afghanistan, where Gulf cash, the drug mafia/corrupted state apparatus throughout FATA & much of Afghanistan, the various forms of state-linked & non-state extremist groups & the vast amounts of US ‘off-the-books’ vehicles have the largest stake in in keeping the chaos ongoing.
The Pakistani & Afghani business establishment, the middle & working classes, the ‘ordinary’ Afghani citizen, plus most of the local elites have the most to gain in stability if their concerns are taken into account in the post-‘withdrawal’.
Putin is the sharpest statesman around in my opinion, & he is already laying the groundwork for giving as many major factions as possible a stake in stability, negotiating gas pipelines & trade-routes, and the massive Chinese investments are the major keystone. These happen if there is stability – all the major factions know it, & there is enough in natural resources & trade runoffs for all the major factions to get a big piece of the pie, & it’s long-term, reliable stuff. The trick is getting enough involved, & maintaining stability for long enough to get the big projects off the ground. Once they reach a certain point in development, they take care of themselves.
Most of the major local factions now realise that the alternative is disaster, where no-one wins but the drug-lords & corruption. And while the drug-lords & corruption are well-entrenched & very profitable, most of the elites & larger factions know that this is not a growth strategy.
The central Taliban itself seems confident enough that it can compete in a relatively stable environment, as long as they have a relatively even playing field. If they position themselves as they did originally as an anti-corruption, pro-islamic force that has the backing of the central Pakistani authorities, & the Pakistani pro-stability factions are in ascendance, they will likely do very well, & know it – the US invasion has been very good for their popular appeal.
The ‘Pakistani taliban’ & various foreign focused extremist factions are the loser, as the majority of locals just want stability & a future.
If Pakistan can broker the Taliban led south & Russia/Iran the Northern Alliance led north into a deal with China investment the key bridge, things have a pretty decent chance of stabilising.
And while it is likely to get messy immediately after as the initial factions set their positions & the losers – the foreign focused extremists, drug gangs, etc. try to play spoiler, the likely spoilers just don’t have enough to offer locally if things are kept relatively local.
Uzbekistan is the only real wildcard, but are likely to play for stability & increased involvement, because it is just too risky otherwise.
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In the end, too many local players are not only big losers if Afghanistan goes completely into chaos, but are big winners if stability is achieved.
It would take a full-scale alliance between the US & the Gulf states, ala Syria, with them pouring money & arms to turn the country into the spiralling chaos that various Western pundits keep ‘warning’ will come after NATO withdrawal.
Posted by: KenM | Oct 2 2012 14:46 utc | 23
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