Aryn & Aisha in Afghanistan posted by Richard Seymour

This is a really terrific story about war propaganda, war profiteering, and the networks of influence and privilege that make for an attention-grabbing Time magazine story:

Labels: afghanistan, imperial feminism, insurgency, NATO, taliban, US imperialism

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: afghanistan, counterinsurgency, insurgency, isaf, NATO, occupation, resistance, taliban, US imperialism

Pakistan's ruling class circles the drain posted by Richard Seymour

A good piece by a Pakistani socialist:

The Pakistani rulers are in tatters. They are being attacked in their offices, the barricaded headquarters, that is, almost everywhere they hide. The imposing structures from where they rule stand today as prisons of a bygone power. The rulers are forced to sneak-a-peak and disappear again. They are reduced to issuing statements of sorrow and condemnation at the 'suicide attack'. They cannot appear with prior notice, their appearance has to be discrete, instantaneous and surprising, else they will be surprised by the unseen enemy.

This unseen enemy is also daily lambasted by the US and its imperialist allies. They denounce and everyone is asked to fight it, wreck it and finish it off from the face of earth. But the unseen enemy keeps on reappearing. It is also hidden, shadowy, instantaneous and surprising. But you cannot see it, you cannot find it, you cannot attack it. But the imperialist powers demand us in Pakistan to fight it. We are told as a nation, as rulers and as spymasters to muster all our energies and fight this unseen enemy. We are reminded, on a daily basis, its not USA's war, its yours, Pakistanis war and Pakistanis will have to fight the unseen enemy. And how do we know it is the unseen enemy that has attacked us?

Every time there is a bomb explosion in a city it is instantaneously claimed by the hidden ministry of interior, and the military public relations office and all sorts of sneak-a-peak rulers that the explosion was a suicide attack carried out by the Taliban or most recently India. To catch the suicide attackers every day scores are arrested in raids at Afghani, Waziristani and Swati localities all over Pakistan. This is how we are made to see the enemy. So the mountain inhabiting Pushtoons are portrayed as uncouth, greedy and rural. Pushtoons are made to look like uncivilized, hot-headed and terrorist in making. We are reminded that since we cannot see the unseen enemy but see a Pushtoon and therefore we should be watchful of their behavior. If we see them anywhere and we think they are acting suspiciously we must inform the police, spy on them and help save the nation. We are made to support the raids, search operations, arrests in the cities and killings in the rural areas only because we are made to accept the propaganda of the state. This is how Pushtoons are made to become the unseen enemy. Scapegoating the Pushtoons as the unseen enemy is aimed at creating a Pushtoon as a Taliban in our imagination.

So they win our imagination but have they won the wars? Despite the propaganda of winning the war in Swat and nearly winning the one in Waziristan we can see that attacks continue to happen on city centres and of course on the ruling class. Now we are told that it is an allout war, as if the military operation on Waziristan and Swat were not. On a daily basis it is officially claimed that 40 to 70 terrorists were killed in Swat/Waziristan operation. But we are supposed to be shocked at the 'suicide attack' only!
And hence we are told to get prepared to fight this war. Now does that ring some bells? Yes, first the US told us that it is Pakistani's war and now the ministry of interior and military's public relations tells us that the Pakistanis will have to fight it. But wasn't the Pakistani military supposed to fight Pakistan's enemies? But that is not enough now, comes the response, we need laskhars, defence committees and need to arm them.

So here we go again. Once more it is a jihad but now it is against the bad jihadists. So once again the minister of interior visits the local death squad organizers, the militias that control the cities, and asks them to join this war. Thus you see the pictures of the minister with the preferred sectarian leaders who are willing to give thousands of their madressa students and militant lower-middle-class MQM cadres to fight alongside the Pakistani military. Does that sounds familiar? Yes back in the 1980s it was the madressa students who were urged by the US and Pakistani rulers to fight the infidel Soviets in Afghanistan and the lower-middle class Jamaat e Islami came along as well. Now it is the good madressa students and the MQM which will get the arms to fight the bad madressa Taliban. Very soon we will be told that these good have also become bad and once again there will be another war of the people to be fought with the people. A war leads to another war.

So what can the people do? The ruling class has decided that it will speak from its prisons, rule from broadcasting stations and only police its own safe houses. The middle class has decided to pack its bags or for the moment allow the goons of the lower-middle class to fight the monster, the unseen enemy. The problem remains with the under-class unemployed, hungry, disempowered and the working class. It is these who are now forced to decide the side they are going to hold their sway.

The ruling and middle classes, if they had their way, they will make everyone else fight this unending and non-sensical war until they wipe out half of the population. They have already displaced record number of people in a single calendar year and are famous for shedding blood of 3 million at the least 39 years ago. They are already making the ordinary Pakistani soldier, coming from the lowest echelons of the peasantry, to give their lives to occupy the Pushtoon land. They have already bombed over 4.5 million people to punish them for siding with the unseen enemy. Now whenever they are attacked in their military or police or torture headquarters the next day a city centre is bombed. As if to ensure that if the war is between the Taliban and the military then it should appear as a war of Taliban against the Pakistani people. Hence they wish to create a false polarization.

Taliban leadership does not have an agenda for the under-priviliged, they themselves are willing to impose an order from above. Hence the false polarization is rapidly becoming a real polarization. This is between those who are against the Taliban and those who are with the Taliban. In other words those with the Pakistani rulers and those against. That means those against the US and those with the US. Hence condemnation of Taliban becomes an act of endorsing US-led aggression to occupy Afghanistan and now Pakistan. And this is a reactionary polarization. It is not a polarization of the under-priviliged against the privileged, the ruling class against the working class. It is polarization that sheds blood at every moment of its existence, it is reactionary to its core.

Therefore the underprivileged and the working class, the city dwellers and the countryside petty worker has to do is to refuse to accept that it is our war, demand the warring military to stop its military operations, force the US led imperialist occupiers out of our land and call for an all out peace.

The rulers are cornered, they have no way out. The middle class is besieged and the military bitterly divided. The imperialist power USA stands defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. They all want to spread the war, make it the war of Pakistani underclass. They want to use the military against ordinary Pushtoons, they want us to form lashkars and arm them, they want us to form defence committees. We should refuse to fight their war and refuse to accept that there exists an enemy which we or they could not see. We should refuse to scapegoat the Pushtoon and the Afghan and demand an end to extrajudicial killings and raids and arrests. It is not the unseen enemy we can fight back against, it is always the enemy we see that we have to organize against. The more the war spreads the more will be a mutated response against it. Its not our war, we should not let it be fought in our name.

Labels: 'war on terror', afghanistan, pakistan, pashtun, taliban, US imperialism

Encircling Kabul posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: afghanistan, british troops, counterinsurgency, insurgency, isaf, NATO, taliban, US imperialism

Straining for effect posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: afghanistan, british troops, imperial ideology, NATO, taliban, the liberal defense of murder, US imperialism

Afghanistan - a few pessimistic notes posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: afghanistan, barack obama, NATO, taliban, US imperialism

Peace in the valley posted by Richard Seymour

The Swat valley peace deal is over, which is exactly what President Obama wanted. The US and its allies opposed the deal from the beginning, applied immense pressure to the Pakistani state to overturn it, and finally offered another massive bribe to get them to resume war. This has resulted in the Pakistani army resuming its indiscriminate attacks, "flattening villages" into the bargain. As a consequence, the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) rescinded the deal and yesterday took control of the valley's largest town. The latest refugee exodus, apparently taking place on the instructions of the Pakistani state, comes on top of 1m refugees who had already fled Obama's air strikes and the attacks of the Pakistani army. The US administration has been using the threat of a nuclear-tipped "Talibanistan" to justify this intensified aggression, and that scaremongering has worked with the American public. (The surrounding press campaign also seems to be working with some antiwar liberals.) So, the Obama administration is now driving a regional apocalypse, using much the same propaganda tactics as the Bush administration to galvanise a sceptical public. Needless to say, it is also continuing that titanic air war in Afghanistan, which has just killed another 100 civilians in a single massacre. The next thing you'll hear is that the TTP caused the breakdown of the peace deal by seizing Mingora and that it just goes to show that you can never negotiate with such people.

Labels: 'global balkans', afghanistan, insurgency, pakistan, resistance, taliban, US imperialism

Afghanistan poll results posted by Richard Seymour

Another year, another BBC poll [pdf] to find out if those lucky Afghans are happy with their lot under the benevolent rule of the Jelly Amir. Even with the characteristically loaded questions, it isn't very good news for Obama. He wants to increase troop levels by 30,000, but this is opposed by the majority of the people polled, 44% of whom want a decrease in troop levels, indicating that patience with the occupiers is running out. Indeed, 52% want a timetabled withdrawal within one or two years, and 58% say support for NATO forces is weak or non-existent in their area. The escalation in the air war isn't very popular either, with 77% saying the air strikes are unacceptable. Although the Talibs remain unpopular among most, only 8% of the people blame the country's problems on the Taliban, with the majority citing US-allied warlords and other sources of violence, as well as joblessness and poverty, as their main concern. This is perhaps why most of those polled (64%) would rather have a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, which has been Karzai's stated goal for some time. The new US administration is reported to be losing interest in Karzai, and may well ditch him if he steps too far out of line. This could be dangerous, as the Karzai administration, for all its faults, commands far more popular support than NATO.

Intriguingly, the Obama-Biden administration is decreeing a 'new realism' with respect to Afghanistan, with all of the embarrassing stuff about spreading democracy removed. Once again, the natives have let us down: we had such high hopes for them, and now we must revise them down - from building a vibrant democracy to ensuring 'security'. The problem, apparently, is that Obama's advisors have told him that the war is going very badly, while the US military ascendancy are urging him to focus on Pakistan, with the whole country apparently considered "al Qaida's headquarters" (so reports The Guardian). Now, hold on. No one, but no one, believes that 'Al Qaeda' is about to take over Pakistan, or any other country. It has no mass support anywhere in the world. It is a marginal outfit, it has probably lost most of its funding and mobility. And, while it is capable of barbarous violence, this is unfortunately not a USP. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, 'Al Qaeda' and the Taliban are not natural allies. It is a mistaken assumption, originating in the mythologies used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, that bin Laden and Mullah Omar were buddies. They may have agreed that Hasan al-Turabi was dangerously progressive when it came to womens' rights, and Omar did agree to put bin Laden and his acolytes up. However, as Lawrence Wright has shown, this was always an alliance of convenience based on the low diplomatic costs at the time and the rewards of money and weaponry that bin Laden could bring to bear in the struggle against the Northern Alliance. The Taliban were quite ready at one point (before September 11) to turn bin Laden over to the Saudi ruling family and allow them to dispose of him. Moreover, while 'Al Qaeda' operated globally, the Talibs were a local force and wished to remain that - the bloody adventurism that culminated in 9/11 was never a Taliban project. The original myth of the war on Afghanistan is that it was a logical response to the attacks on the United States, and that logic is now being gradually and insidiously extended to the case of Pakistan.

If the renewed focus on Pakistan were really about combating 'Al Qaeda', it would be far more logical to negotiate a truce between the governing Uzbek warlords and the Talibs, and withdraw the troops. The bin Ladenists would never get a look-in. In reality, it is becoming a war for strategic control of central and southern Asia (Obama really listened to Brzezinski's spiel about the 'global Balkans'). Pakistan is falling out of the grip of US power, and neither parliament nor the brutal army can deliver for America any longer. This is to a large extent the result of America's past policies, not least the support for Zia and their funding the development of the reactionary Wahabbi cadre under the control of Pakistani intelligence. Now the US is using its military power to back up pro-American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while bombing and attacking various insurgent groups supported by the ISI, or a dominant faction in the ISI. It is hard to see how this won't escalate into a torrent of bloodshed if Obama gets his 30k+, especially with added support from presently reluctant NATO allies. I can hardly wait for the BBC's Afpak poll, which will probably be out within the year at this rate.

Labels: 'al qaeda', afghanistan, islamism, occupation, pakistan, polls, taliban, US imperialism

Afghanistan by the numbers posted by Richard Seymour

Over NATO 100 trucks and 70 humvees destroyed in a single attack. 72% of the territory of Afghanistan has a permanent Taliban presence. Three of four supply routes to Kabul are susceptible to Taliban attack. And if you want to understand how this state of affairs could possibly have come about, there is no better guide than Jonathan Neale.

Labels: aghanistan, NATO, resistance, taliban, US imperialism

While you were watching your money disappear... posted by Richard Seymour

As the Bush administration taps US taxpayers to keep refilling the vessels of the Danaides, largely with the connivance of congressional Democrats, something on the periphery of mainstream political vision is troubling. A frontier of the war on terror is expanding. Every day, it seems, there is a new report of an attack by US troops inside Pakistan. Then there are increasingly regular reports of engagements between said US troops and the Pakistani army, who are nominally US allies. One reads that Bush has authorised strikes in Pakistan without seeking the consent of the Pakistani government. Then said strikes take place, followed by astonished denunciations from the Pakistani government. Look, the government says, we are your friends: we are killing the evil-doers, and being killed by them. They say they've killed 1,000 'militants' in one operation alone. No matter: the US Secretary of Defense knows that the US can't expect Pakistani support for the strikes, but says they will carry on regardless.

Why, you might ask, would the United States persist in operations that clearly destabilise Pakistan and undermine the effectiveness of its government? Let there be no doubt that this is what is happening. The International Republican Institute (IRI) takes, as you might expect, a great interest in Pakistan. It's a strategically vital zone for preserving US hegemony in southern and central Asia. Their regular polls [pdf] show great dissatisfaction among Pakistanis both about the general direction of the country under administrations that are to a large extent subordinated to US interests, and overwhelming opposition to the 'war on terror'. Only 1% of Pakistanis regard 'Al Qaeda' as a serious threat, though the majority consider religious extremism of various kinds to be problematic. They much prefer negotiations and dialogue to military strategy adopted by the state. And I daresay the bombing of the Marriott hotel reinforced the widespread doubts that military operations can cope with the problem. Some reports suggest that Pakistan's future as a country is being put at risk.

However, one thing that the Bush administration and Obama's campaign agree on is the need for a renewed focus on winning the war in Afghanistan. That is to put it somewhat coyly: there is no immediate prospect of winning the war, and the chances of winning it in the distant future are vanishing. It would be nice to get a better insight into official thinking on this, but the National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan, reportedly "grim", is being kept classified. Avery significant report coming out of Afghanistan suggests the US client-state is isolated, and that the 'Taliban' - rather, a constellation of military rebels with limited coherence - is advancing on the capital. NATO forces are reportedly stuck in "stalemate". Taliban leaders boast, probably with some justice, that their success owes itself to being rooted in and supported by much of the civilian population. Previous reports by the pro-war Senlis Council have suggested that the level of support for the insurgency in southern Afghanistan is woefully underestimated by the occupiers. Nonetheless, a consensus in the US political class has clearly emerged: Iraq is less important, strategically, than Afghanistan. A managed 'withdrawal' from Iraq, leaving behind permanent bases protected by a status of forces agreement (in which the comprador elite may well have to pay the US for its 'protection') will enable a greater commitment to Afghanistan. The UK has already committed to sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan, having started the withdrawal from Iraq. Global allies of the US are being pressed to escalate their military role, while the US has engaged in a terrifying amplification of its bombing campaignss. Major General Charles Dunlap Jr. of the US air force has argued that the bombing raids should be intensified further, regardless of the impact on Afghanistan's civilian population, and that probably reflects the mainstream in US military thinking - it certainly reflects the conduct.

And so, expanding the war into areas of Pakistan where the 'Taliban' and sympathetic forces operate in and retreat to, knowing that the widower president could not conceivably approve of such actions if he wanted to avoid being assassinated, is a logical further step. "Logical," that is to say, from within the twisted purview of terror warriors. As Paul Rogers points out, even if Islamabad tacitly acquiesces with Zardari theatrically shaking his fist for public consumption, US military attacks inside Pakistan are likely to raise opposition both among the Pakistani public as a whole, and - crucially - in the army. It is insanity, plainly, and raises the prospect of an escalating engagement that becomes a war to subdue much of Pakistan. Those who want to "stay the course" vaunt the prospect of prolonged 'civil war' in Afghanistan, of rising politico-religious extremism, of regional states moving in to defend their interests, and of the country becoming a "narco-state" which incubates threats to global security. What staying the course actually means is prolonged, intensifying and spreading civil war, probably stimulating what are for the moment quietest, conservative bazaari layers into military insurgency, and a ramping up of the opium trade that at the moment funds US allies in Afghanistan more than it funds the 'Taliban'. As for threats to global security (to the extent that this term is not used as a synonym for the security of US geo-economic interests), one could hardly imagine a worse prospect than the breakdown of a nuclear state and an expanding civil war that interplays with deadly regional dynamics. Nor does one fancy the entirely probable escalation in the conflict in Kashmir with a further radicalisation of India's own 'war on terror', and potentially renewed hostilities between India and Pakistan. And, incidentally, as the recent crisis in Georgia has demonstrated, America's struggle for supremacy in the region produces the danger of major inter-imperial rivalry and a revivified global arms race. One could go on: it's just that while the financial system is tanking, the 'war on terror' is going to strange and dangerous new places that may well cost more than $700bn.

Labels: 'war on drugs', 'war on terror', afghanistan, islamism, pakistan, taliban, US imperialism

It has come to something... posted by Richard Seymour

...when you think a Status of Forces Agreement would be an improvement. The recent massacre in Afghanistan turns out to have killed up to 96 civilians (a "legitimate strike", says the Pentagon), and after a series of incidents in which US soldiers have murdered civilians and declined to take responsibility, the Karzai administration is getting desperate. But such agreements always entail immunity for US troops, and no US administration is going to negotiate one that doesn't. Historically, these agreements have tended to be seen as humiliating in themselves. In fact, one of the earliest opposition statements from Khomeini attacked such an agreement between the US military and the Shah, which he said reduced the status of an Iranian to beneath that of a dog, since a US soldier would have more to answer for if he ran over a dog in America than if he ran over a human being in Iran.

This just speaks of the subjection of the Afghan parliament, and its absolute lack of authority either with its paymasters or in Afghanistan as a whole. Every indication is that they are struggling to keep their heads above water even as a nominal administration. The Taliban have long held most of the country, it seems. And this article by Jason Burke suggests that the Taliban are winning simply by creating a "parallel administration, which is more effective, more popular and more brutal than the government's". Maybe take Burke's reporting with a little pinch of salt, however: apparently, he doesn't know when he's talking to a well-known member of the Taliban and minister in Mullah Omar's cabinet.

Labels: 'war on terror', afghanistan, air war, hamid karzai, taliban, US imperialism

Afghanistan under the knife and hammer posted by Richard Seymour

The procedure is quite simple. Choose a country in the world that seems to be suffering, in some way dysfunctional, ripe for 'intervention'. Perform some 'surgical' air strikes and, after a quick and painless stitch-up, auction it off to the highest bidders. Having done that, so the theory goes, you can return home and contemplate your good deeds. But, sticking with the medical metaphor for a second, you are not a doctor and you wouldn't know the hippocratic oath if it was printed in reverse lettering on your forehead. Whatever 'illness' you were supposedly dealing with has metastasized while the body is resisting your implants. In fact, the 'patient' keeps trying to kick your ass every time you come near him. Time to give up? Hell no. While Bush sends more troops to Afghanistan, Gordon Brown has insisted that there will be no 'artificial timetable' for British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Okay, but how about a real timetable?

Take a look at what's happening. The current propaganda, being widely repeated in various fora, is that the occupation - despite all the difficulties and the terrible burdens we must bear - is ameliorating the situation of Afghanistan. Thus, practically every commentator is repeating the incorrect claim, floated by Laura Bush, that infant mortality has declined by 25% since the occupation began. In fact, one study led by the World Bank, which is heading reconstruction and development programmes in Afghanistan, said last year that infant mortality had fallen - not by 25% or 26%, but by 18%. And that study excluded the worst-hit regions of Afghanistan, such as Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar, Zabul and Nuristan, because of security concerns. That is, it excluded 15% of the population from its scope. On the other hand, mortality among under fives has certainly risen. So, in 2005, 20% of the under-five population perished. In 2006, 25% died. Okay, so infant mortality in the least war-torn regions fell by 18% in five years, while in just one year, the rate of child mortality across the whole country increased by 25%. So, what are we supposed to be celebrating? More children get to live beyond their first 12 months before biting the dust from starvation, treatable diseases and, er, the odd bomb or bullet? As for the 75% who get past the age of five, if they do ever get to be grown-ups, they will at least have some interesting prospects - the torture chamber, rape, starvation, the destruction of their farms at the hands of DynCorp, murder at the hands of a local patriarch flush with dollars and self-regarding pomp, thermobaric bombardment...

There is no Lancet survey for Afghanistan. We have had some estimates of deaths in the first year of the war, the highest of which was supplied by Jonathan Steele of The Guardian, who estimated 49,000 direct and indirect deaths resulting from the war. There are occasional estimates of civilians killed, but the detection rate is likely to be extremely low - to my knowledge, there is no consistent effort to actually trace the number of deaths there. The UN provides figures, estimating the rate of deaths among civilians in the hundreds over the last six months. Frankly, that is just unbelievable (and, actually, I would like to know how they distinguish between a combatant and a civilian - presumably they rely on the occupation authorities for this kind of information). Consider just one facet of the war. In Iraq, between 50 and 100 Iraqis die as a result of air strikes every day. When the secret air war on both Iraq and Afghanistan was confirmed, the figures showed that the biggest spike in bombings was in Afghanistan where the number of major raids reached more than 800 per month. And we're supposed to believe that the death rate resulting from air strikes alone is lower than in Iraq, where the number of mass bombings - though very high - was less? In Iraq, in a period of three years, 78,000 violent deaths were caused by air strikes in Iraq (this was before the big spike in aerial bombardments). In Afghanistan, where the rate of aerial bombardment has always been higher, the figure must be higher. One informal estimate of deaths last year was carried out by Associated Press. It suggested that a total of 5,100 people had died violently in the first 9 months of 2007 (and most were killed by the occupation). Given that such passive surveys tend to massively underestimate the true scale of deaths, we are really talking about tens of thousands of deaths in that period, at least if we want to be realistic. Given the longevity of the war and its increasing brutality, if a Lancet-style survey can ever be carried out in Afghanistan, the total deaths may even be higher than in Iraq.

One index of the rate of destruction is the rate at which the insurgents are able to recruit and expand. Where the occupation is most bloody, the resistance is most concentrated. Until recently, south-west Afghanistan has been what the 'Sunni triangle' was in Iraq. It was where the US was most unpopular, and where attacks generally occurred most frequently. But now, the 'Taliban' - realistically, we know that most insurgents are not actually Talibs, and many of the actual Taliban leaders are on the receiving end of serenades from Hamid Karzai - are controlling more of the country than the US. The rate at which occupying troops are being killed has been rising year on year, peaking in June this year, and surpassing the rate of 'coalition' deaths in Iraq for the first time. The insurgency controls ever larger tracts of the country.

The verities of Afghanistan are poorly gauged, as I have indicated, but so far as we can tell what is happening, we know that the occupiers no longer command the support of most Afghans. The patience and forebearance of Afghans was and is enormous, despite the abuses, despite the torture chambers, despite the indiscriminate killings, the bombing raids resulting in massacres, and despite the obscene 'Green Zone' style luxury for occupiers and their auxiliaries in Kabul while much of the population is actually starving. Despite the obvious unpopularity of the Taliban, most people appear to want to negotiate a deal with them rather than prosecute a long and bloody war. Even the puppet administration of Hamid Karzai and the very meek and gentle General Rashid Dostum would like to cut some sort of a deal. Of course, there are those for whom the war is working out just swell. The warlords whom the US pays off to keep order are seeing their private armies expand greatly as they reap greater profits from the opium crop. Power is increasingly localised, and Hamid Karzai doesn't have a finger of real influence beyond Kabul. Contractors such as DynCorp are making out as well, because their role is to destroy the opium farms (those belonging to the poor farmers, not the big local rulers who are effectively under Nato protection). Curiously, DynCorp never seem to succeed in reducing drugs production wherever they are despatched to do so, yet they continually get the contracts. And as for Washington? The last thing they want is to get out. Both Democrats and Republicans are intent on increasing the commitment to Afghanistan, if necessary by scaling back the war in Iraq. They know they are in danger of losing the whole situation. Not only is the war in Afghanistan turning the population against the occupiers. In Pakistan, where the government is assaulting 'Taliban strongholds' with great ferocity, local populations are actually becoming more and not less supportive of the Talibs. The US is increasingly projecting its force across the border, and sabre-rattling against the Pakistani government (even Karzai is getting in on that act). The danger of a regional war is escalating in that "global Balkans" - as Brezinski, Obama's foreign policy advisor, dubs the region - and the United States government is raising the stakes.

Labels: 'war on terror', afghanistan, pakistan, taliban, US imperialism

An Uncontroversial Point posted by Richard Seymour

These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers:

Labels: 'al qaeda', afghanistan, mujahideen, taliban

Big up the Taliban posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: eurotrash, prince harry, royal scum, taliban

Afghanistan: 54% Taliban coverage, and the Nato+ solution posted by Richard Seymour

The pro-occupation think-tank, the Senlis Council, has another report [pdf] out about Afghanistan. It reports that the Taliban has a presence covering at least 54% of the land mass in Afghanistan, and is closing in on Kabul. Missed by polls and media coverage, the report suggests that the Taliban are rapidly winning political credibility among those who hated them six years ago. The international combatants of 'Al Qaeda' are said to be bolstering the insurgency, but ordinary people are increasingly being won over. Part of the problem, the report says, is that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding despite massive cashflows into the country, with conditions worse than in the worst parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This is a map describing Taliban presence in parts of Afghanistan:



However, what's most intriguing is the Council's support for a very hawkish policy of the kind being pushed by the bipartisan imperialists in the US Houses of Congress. The proposal is simple: given that there is no intention of withdrawing, a huge boost in troop commitment has to be demanded of all NATO members, and the war has to be expanded into Pakistan. The Taliban is known to operate across borders, and the Pakistani army is reluctant to engage in battle with them for a variety of reasons. Clearly, part of the US pressure on Musharraf is aimed at his inability to be a reliable puppet, while Benazir Bhutto's rhetoric about 'extremists' is clearly intended to capture that vital Washington constituency. There have already been cross-border attacks, but would Bhutto or any future Pakistani government permit the US to operate extensively in Pakistan? Would such actions hinder or boost the popular movement resisting Musharraf's dictatorship? The report doesn't ponder on such questions, or the obvious answers.

Perhaps most importantly, the report states that 'foreign fighters' from across what Brzezinski calls the "global Balkans" including Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, are acting as force-multipliers for the Taliban insurgency. How much of this is real information and how much is 'intelligence' obtained through torture, or straightforward propaganda? Unlike other parts of the report, which comprises some independent research, much of this appears to be distilled from pro-imperialist think-tanks and Western newspapers. At any rate, though the report strikes a technocratic note, the context makes clear that the "Nato+" solution would constitute an aggressive strike to bring south Asia under US hegemony. When both Obama and Clinton make noises about potential aggression in Pakistan, we have to take it as a warning sign. This war may send the whole region up in flames.

Labels: afghanistan, occupation, taliban, US imperialism

Come Back, Taliban: all is forgiven. posted by Richard Seymour

The UK has supported plans to bring senior Taliban into the Afghan government, according to The Guardian:

As British troops are being withdrawn from Iraq, the military presence in southern Afghanistan is to be bolstered in the next few months by the deployment of the Parachute Regiment and new Eurofighter/Typhoon fighter-bombers.

At the same time, however, British officials have concluded that the Taliban is too deep-rooted to be eradicated by military means. Following a wide-ranging policy review accompanying Gordon Brown's arrival in Downing Street, a decision was taken to put a much greater focus on courting "moderate" Taliban leaders as well as "tier two" footsoldiers, who fight more for money and out of a sense of tribal obligation than for the Taliban's ideology.

Such a shift has put Britain and the Karzai government at odds with hawks in Washington, who are wary of Whitehall's enthusiasm for talks with what they see as a monolithic terrorist group. But a British official said: "Some Americans are coming around to our way of seeing this."

I'm afraid I don't believe that Washington 'hawks' think that the Taliban are a "monolithic terrorist group", because they have the same information that the British government has, but then that's the kind of uninteresting shibboleth you have to revert to when you don't have any proper analysis of their strategy. Suppose Washington is unconvinced that bringing Taliban leaders into the government will have any substantial impact on the resistance they're facing? Suppose they're concerned that bringing 'moderate' Taliban into the government will both legitimise the military opposition and undermine the puppet government's supposed crucial advantage, which is that however murderous and venal it is, it is not the Taliban? Suppose they're worried it will undermine the evangelising moralism with which they sounded the launch of the invasion? Suppose their warlord friends are opposed to it? Suppose they don't feel the need to negotiate, since they can easily escalate the bombing?

As for the UK, what is guiding its strategy? Jason Burke's interesting report discusses the contours of this multi-layered war, as it unfolds in an increasingly autonomous network of warlord-controlled territories that could comprise a state in itself, an area that the occupiers are committed to placing under the firm control of a client regime which they think they will require a few decades to effect. He relates a widespread recognition by the occupiers that the Taliban have fought them to a standstill. Given this, the attempt to incorporate leading Taliban - who, after all, were allies not all that long ago - is only logical. It would only be puzzling if you thought that the occupiers wanted Afghanistan to be a Human Rights Protectorate, the global hub of women's liberation, or even a free and independent state. However, if the last six years weren't enough to disabuse you of that notion, then your delusions will undoubtedly survive any incursion of reality, however traumatic. Taliban leaders, for their part, have demands, which include control of most of the south and the withdrawal of the occupation. A national unity government, then, in which the one-eyed man could again be king? I doubt it. More likely is that a segment of the Taliban will be wooed, but the guerilla war will continue on the basis of grass-roots opposition to the current regime.

***

Meanwhile, you may be interested to know that despite the overwhelming opposition of Germans, the Grand Ruling Class Coalition has voted to remain in occupation for at least another year - and, as many predicted, the Green Party dismissed the vote against continued occupation at their recent national conference and voted to prolong the committment to ISAF. Josckha Fischer has, predictably enough, attacked his own party for slipping toward its pacifist roots. The only party now representing German people on this, as on so many key issues, is the Left Party. It is telling that the mildest efforts by the right-wing SPD leader Kurt Beck to shift party policy slightly to the left of Merkel's agenda of welfare cuts has faced a savage rebuke from the former party chairman and vice-chancellor. The SPD has been in straight decline for several months and it now polls less than 30% of the popular vote, but any alternative to the neoliberal agenda is apparently a threat to electoral credibility.

Labels: afghanistan, germany, NATO, occupation, taliban

Afghanistan: suicide attacks increase; Taliban may enter the government. posted by Richard Seymour

Why do we know so little about the occupation of Afghanistan and the resistance to it? After all, we get regular detailed reviews of the security situation in Iraq, discussing reconstruction, attacks, operations, public opinion, etc etc. All of this from the US Department of Defense, provided in ideological camouflage, sure, but still quite useful because the ruling class requires accurate information. Nothing of the kind, so far as I can tell, about Afghanistan. I have seen detailed studies of provinces from the Senlis Council [pdf]. Every now and again an NGO discusses human rights abuses, insurgent violence, reconstruction problems. The UN provides us with breathless accounts of (ho ho) 'Peace Day' [pdf]. But there is no detailed, authoritative study of the kind we get about Iraq - none that is made public at any rate.

Well, there are two recent studies, one by the UN and one by the Associated Press, reported here and here. The UN estimates in the Secretary-General's report that suicide attacks in Afghanistan have increased by 30% in the last year, and states that 75% are directed at occupying forces and Afghan security forces. Recently it was suggested by the UN, quoting a Taliban commander, that over half of the suicide attacks are international combatants rather than people from Afghanistan. However, this seems to conflict with a study carried out by the same body which showed that suicide attackers are Afghans "motivated by a variety of grievances such as foreign occupation, anger over civilian casualties and humiliation rather than a 'martyrdom culture'". This confirms what General Dannatt said about the resistance as a whole. The UN explains that they are "duped" into carrying out the attacks, or coerced, but they know perfectly well that it is never that simple. On the other hand, though most of the focus on violent deaths is on that caused by the insurgents, most of the deaths appear to be caused by the occupiers. Associated Press estimates that the total deaths from all violence in Afghanistan in the last 9 months is approximately 5,100, most of them "militants" killed by the occupiers. That's almost certainly a vast underestimate of the actual deaths, and there's always the problem of the 'mere haji rule'. (Anyway, since when were AP in the business of doing body counts?).

Curiously, the US is signalling a possible rapprochement with the Taliban, cautiously endorsing Hamid Karzai's plans for a meeting with Mullah Omar. Hold on a minute. Go back over that a minute. Mullah Omar? Isn't he evil? Didn't America have to invade in order to get the evil-doer? Apparently, the empire is all-forgiving. Karzai has said he will offer Taliban leaders posts in exchange for giving up violence, and he has for a long time supported the idea of including the Taliban in the government. The Taliban are for the first time seriously considering his offer. This isn't because by bringing the Talibs into the government they can stop the war: the root cause of the war is not the Taliban. The Taliban is a heavily armed force that taps into popular discontent rather than a popular movement itself, and the puppet regime has always felt it's better to have such a force inside the tent pissing out. With the Taliban on the side of the government, they could help enforce the crackdown on small farmers by the ruling elite of landowners and rentiers rather than arming the small farmers as they presently do.

Labels: afghanistan, karzai, resistance, taliban, US imperialism

Who are the insurgents in Afghanistan? posted by Richard Seymour

The one-word answer supplied in most news reports to this question is, of course, "Taliban". It would be astonishing if this was all there was to it, so occasionally we get the admission that it includes other elements. For example, a UNAMA spokesperson says:

"The Taliban are not the only component of Afghanistan's insurgency. There is factional fighting in parts of the country, insecurity caused by drug traffickers and those fighting because they have been intimidated or paid to do so ... They all form important elements of this insurgency.

There is, of course, a way to put this that saves the basic underlying claim that anyone resisting the occupiers, in military or other ways, must have obscure and disreputable motives. The occupiers are innocent, everyone else is guilty until proven innocent. USA Today put it thus last year: "The insurgency is a loose alliance of Taliban guerrillas, followers of former prime minister and fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, al-Qaeda terrorists recruited from across the Islamic world, opium traffickers and local fighters whose murky motives are rooted in tribal politics." Pro-occupation think-tanks like the Senlis Council and the International Crisis Group advise the occupiers to meet the grievances of the local population, who can thus be won away from supporting the insurgency. The Senlis Council's report, focusing on Helmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar, describes a number of reasons why local populations are increasingly turning toward support for the insurgency, and thus putting local politicians under pressure to support it as well, and the main one is Dyncorp's destruction of the opium farms of the poor (those belonging to the wealthy warlords are left well alone). Senlis has advocated legalising opium production for medicinal purposes There is a misperception that opium production is especially controlled by the Taliban. It is true that the biggest increase in product lately has been in Helmand - taking it to almost 70,000 hectares. But across the country, according to the UNODC, total production last year was 165,000 hectares. In those areas controlled by US-allied warlords, and for Afghanistan's wealthy landlords more generally, opium production is a vital component of their continued control. Various commentators have suggested legalising opium production rather than destroying livelihoods, but this sort of misses the point: keeping it illegal makes it an excellent source of funds for covert action, and right now it is providing America's allies in Afghanistan with enormous leverage over the country. In other words, the current war to secure a successful client regime relies on extirpating production that could generate revenue for the opposition, while leaving the resources of the ruling elite well alone. Indeed, billions of US dollars have been ploughed through the channels of a patrimonial state into the hands of the pro-American rentier elite. The "war on drugs" is what it has always been: a free-form, wide-ranging counterinsurgency campaign; meanwhile, the insurgency has, as a result of this, an element of class warfare, since what is now fuelling it, in part, is the misery of poor farmers being deprived of their means of livelihood, with massive starvation and misery, while the rich prosper.

So, then, perhaps we should also ask a question about who exactly the Taliban are. For, although we assume we know, Najib Manalai, an Afghan government adviser, insists that the Taliban are a very different kind of movement today:

the Taliban are no longer a single group, one single entity. The Taliban, at first, were students -- Afghan students who traditionally wanted to study theology. In the beginning, they were a group of Afghans who had very good intentions after five years of anarchy in Afghanistan -- they just wanted to bring peace to Afghanistan. They were very popular. Then this movement was somehow hijacked by Pakistani intelligence services and by international terrorist groups. Now when we talk about the Taliban, we are talking about a kind of amalgam of different forces, such as people who are unhappy about government forces because they can't find their place in the present confederation of Afghan policies; people who are committed to other interests -- foreign interests, mainly from the Pakistani circle; and there are people with the fundamentalist ideology of the international Islamic movements. "The Taliban" is a composite of these components.

There is a great deal of euphemism in that. Afghanistan's current polity is a sectarian one, which largely excludes Pashtuns (Karzai is in this respect a useful token). Recall that the initial success against the Taliban involved the ethnic cleansing of some 50,000 Pashtuns. But this sectarian dynamic is in part a result of the failure of the US to win Pashtun allies prior to the war beginning. They had tried with Abdul Haq, the anti-Taliban 'moderate' who had broken with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb e-Islami before fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan under the CIA-funded Yunus Khalis. But he wouldn't follow orders and publicly criticised the bombing of the country. It was his aim to mobilise a domestic insurgency independently of the CIA and the ISI. One or the other of these two agencies leaked his plans to the Taliban during the bombing and ensured his death. At any rate, the US was only interested in pro-American Pashtun leaders, and could find precious few. As such they had to rely on the Northern Alliance with whom they started making a secret alliance in 1999. So, those who "can't find their place in the present confederation of Afghan policies" are those who are being specifically excluded. The predominantly Pashtun Taliban regime was in fact more representative of the different ethnic groups than the current one. Aside from the various groups in the south, there is a growing insurgency in the north-west of the country, due to conflict with the warlords in government such as Ismail Khan, and the ridiculously brutal spate of Nato bombardment (apparently these recent massacres are the result of a deliberate policy shift).

Aside from the growing armed insurgency, there is of course an unarmed political opposition developing. The Taliban era was a desperate one, but this regime is hardly more progressive. Aside from the fairly serious matter of occupying troops rampaging through cities, airplanes lobbing bombs at villages, secret prisons, torture cells, kidnappings and so on, there is the small problem that the state built and the groups empowered by the occupiers are client despots. They murder and torture their enemies with impunity, and their police chiefs rape and extort. They steal taxes, bulldoze houses, steal land. Northern Alliance rulers kidnap people and ransom them back to their families with the pretense that they were Taliban arrestees. There is nothing the attorney general likes more than to lock up media workers who displease him. Critics like Malalai Joya are unwelcome (she has recently been suspended for the remainder of her term). The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice continues to operate. Reports last year that it would 'return' after a resolution passed by Karzai's cabinet last year were misleading: the department, although now synonymous with Taliban terror, had actually originated under the US-recognised Rabbani regime, and continued under Karzai's regime in various forms. The Vice and Virtue squads continued to operate in Kabul, warlords like Ismail Khan imposed the old regime, and Karzai's 'Accountability Department' took over many of the roles of the department. In this respect, it is worth noting that, as NGO workers Chris Johnson & Jolyon Leslie point out in their widely praised Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace, that the Taliban have been demonised out of all proportion. This isn't simply an artefact of war propaganda, but in part a result of NGO misconceptions. Their repression, as brutal as it was, should not have been understood as simply an emanation of their own peculiar, reactionary ideology. It was rooted in the common social practises of the most conservative elements of society in Afghanistan, which fused with the conditions of war, and then civil war, to produce a militant war on 'sin' and 'vice' (with well-known, and savage punishments such as stonings and amputations). If you go back and have a look at the scholarly studies of Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban, this is a frequent theme raised by the regime in justification for some of its worst policies (excluding girls from education for example). Nasreen Ghufran noted in Asian Survey in May 2001 that the regime's claim was that it needed time to develop the correct environment for girls and women to be educated and work: it saw its model, ironically, as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nevertheless, women's struggles were able to exert some effects. As Jeanette O'Malley wrote in 2000: "In early June, supreme leader Mullah Omar issued an edict allowing for the expansion of mosque schools for young boys and girls. The mosque schools are apparently little more than a substitute acceptable to clerics and hard-line officials for state-run schools, as they offer the same curriculum." NGO groups who worked in Afghanistan were able to set up schooling for girls by simply telling local Taliban officials that it was a mosque. The point is that the assumption that hardline religious and social conservatism was something that could be pinned exclusively on the Taliban has been at best a misguided one. Today, of course, the imposition of the burqa is still enforced even if not by edict. Women must now struggle against empowered warlords, who are given to raping women (and children) they like the look of. A recent study found that most women in Afghanistan suffer mental and physical abuse. So-called 'honour killings' continue, as do slavery and stonings.

Now, whatever the prevailing barbarism in Afghanistan, the insurgency doesn't command significant support anywhere beyond the southern provinces at the moment. If the only dynamic involved here were the insurgency, which is widely understood as a Taliban affair and whose tactics are becoming increasingly brutal, then this state of affairs would remain permanent. However, it is not. The attempt by the United States to impose and maintain a pro-US regime is developing several oppositional currents. Its barbaric air campaign is galvanising communities of resistance in surprising places, while also driving people into the arms of the Talibs and their allies. This is why British military leaders are worried that they may lose Afghanistan. They couldn't possibly lose militarily to a rag-tag collection of militants: it is the political nature of the war they are fighting, the fact that is for US domination, that is producing this resistance, and that will ensure - if we don't force our governments to end the occupation - that a prolonged and vicious war is afoot. This may also take the form of a civil war at some point. Unfortunately, the resources for a left or even secular nationalist movement in Afghanistan are extremely limited. Military resistance to the this brutal occupation is obviously legitimate, and no occupation force has a right to complain if it is tormented by its enemies ("awe, shucks, the insurgents are holding up all our good work"). However, if there is hope for Afghanistan it lies in a broader, more grassroots and less fissiparous movement than the austere and brutal Talibs or Hekmatyarists could ever deliver. How much chance is there of that happening? After almost thirty years of devastating war in which the most reactionary elements have been promoted and defended by imperial interlopers, in which rival imperial powers have tortured the people of Afghanistan for decades, it is easy to be pessimistic. After all, neither the CIA or the ISI will ever leave Afghanistan alone, and even if they did it would be a long struggle to unite a sufficient coalition of women and the poor to displace the conservative elites. A great deal depends on external factors such as what happens to the US in Iraq, whether we can force our states to withdraw their troops, whether Musharraf survives in Pakistan and who replaces him, etc. But, the more the insurgency becomes an armed movement of the poor, the more political independence they will have to develop, and the greater chance they will have to confront the landlord class. And groups like RAWA and fiercely independent figures like Malalai Joya are still fighting.

Labels: afghanistan, occupation, resistance, taliban, US imperialism

Bullshit story posted by Richard Seymour

This is bullshit and I claim my five pounds. Do not, guys and gals, get me wrong. I am fully aware that insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan have engaged in some grizzly, grotesque spectacles. However, this story is caked in shit and is currently drawing more flies than a carcas in the sun. This one AP story has been repeated in at least 260, count em, 260 news items. On the calculation that at least half of you are too lazy to click on the link, it says that the Taliban tried to trick a young boy who doesn't appear to know his own age into becoming a suicide bomber, but he escaped into the arms of the Afghan troops. Oh, it's the usual: poor detail, no corroboration, lots and lots of emotionalism (a bunch of war-hardened men, some of whom have dropped cluster bombs on ickle children, well up and touch their eyes and sniffle and castigate the evil menace that would do such a thing). There is lots of the giveaway "colour": irrelevant but evocative details about the child's appearance, mannerisms, hobbies, background - and the allegedly besotted reactions of those who are in fact parading the child. And then they all have a whip round and give the kid $60. You would think that if Afghan troops defused a vest on the kid that they would be able to confirm the story, but apparently not. Now get this - this is a classic line:

Thomas said the case would force soldiers to think twice before assuming children are safe.

"This is one incident. We hope it doesn't repeat itself. But it gives us reason to pause, to be extra careful," he said. "We want to publicize this as much as we can to the Afghan people so that they can protect their children from these killers."

Oh yeah, you certainly want to publicise it. So, Major Thomas, what are you going to do if you see a child in a dirty coat running toward you? To be on the safe side, I mean? Hamstring him? Pepper him with plastic bullets? Destroy the brain instantly, utterly?

In other news, claims that the US army have used an impoverished child to legitimise the killing of other impoverished children left the editor of Lenin's Tomb incensed. "I kicked in the television screen and wept. How can anyone use a child in this way," he mourned, wiping away horrible tears. "This is an evil, cowardly act. Relating to these kids as someone who has not as yet impregnated anyone, I think, well golly, what if I did have children and someone tried to do that to them? I'd have to take the $60 off them."

Labels: afghanistan, occupation, propaganda, taliban, US imperialism

Well, duh. posted by Richard Seymour

Occupiers have killed more civilians this year than the 'Taliban'. That doesn't include the civilians they killed in Pakistan. But it does include this latest massacre. Now, as usual, the occupiers say that it was the 'Taliban' what made them do it. When shall we hear solemn press-releases, solemnly recounted by newspapers, in which the 'Taliban' explain that they meant to hit only occupying troops with their latest suicide attack, but that the occupiers forced them to strike in civilian areas by hiding in humvees and helicopters and Bradley tanks, driving through densely populated areas and thus using the surrounding people as human shields like the cowards they are?

Labels: afghanistan, massacre, occupation, taliban