This Week in Afghanistan Watch:

• Defense minister says al-Qaeda planning Iraq-style attacks in Afghanistan
• Commentary by Ivo Daalder, Alex Their, and Andrew Reynolds
• Sixty Taliban killed in latest offensive; assassinations and kidnappings continue
• Featured Article: "Fighting a long, half-forgotten war": an infantry battalion comes under fire
• Featured Article: "The Other War"
  

June 23, 2005

Commentary:

• Fallout from the War on Terror - Part II: Yale Global, 16 June 2005: "A pattern of human rights violations and prisoner abuse risks hurting US credibility in the Muslim world." By J Alexander Their, a national fellow at the Hoover Institution and former legal adviser to Afghanistan's Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions

• Ivo Daalder: "Iraq—The New Afghanistan" at TPM Cafe: "No wonder that a majority of the American people have concluded that the Iraq War has made us less -- not more - secure."

• Butterfly ballots in Afghanistan? "…this flowering of democracy poses a serious logistical challenge." By Andrew Reynolds, professor of political science at University of North Carolina and adviser on constitutional design issues in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan.
  

This Week's News:

Afghan defense minister says al-Qaida regrouping, planning Iraq-style attacks

KABUL, June 17 (AP) by Paul Haven — Al-Qaida has ferried about half a dozen Arab agents into Afghanistan in the past three weeks, two of whom detonated themselves in suicide bombings in the south targeting a packed mosque and a convoy of U.S. troops, Afghanistan's defense minister said Friday.

Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press he received intelligence that Osama bin Laden's terror group is regrouping and intends to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to Afghanistan. He also warned that the country could be in for several months of intense violence ahead of key legislative elections.

This could be the tip of a trend we discussed last week here.

Karzai Asks Musharraf for Border Help

KABUL, June 22 (WP) By N.C. Aizenman—President Hamid Karzai asked Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in a lengthy telephone conversation Tuesday to halt what Afghan authorities said has been a stream of terrorists coming across the border with the tacit consent of Pakistani authorities, a senior Afghan official said….the Afghan official's account of the phone call, which was initiated by Musharraf, presented a bleaker picture of relations between the two countries. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Afghanistan feared that Pakistan was seeking to destabilize its neighbor as parliamentary elections approach in September and was allowing insurgents linked to the ousted Taliban regime to launch a campaign of violence…

"There are obvious signs and proof that these people are coming from Pakistan, and the hard evidence makes it less convincing when we are told all this is happening without the Pakistani government knowing, and without it being able to control it," presidential spokesman Jawad Luddin said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Pakistan condemns US envoy remarks on Taliban leader

ISLAMABAD, June 18 (IRNA)—Pakistan on Saturday described as "irresponsible" remarks by the outgoing US ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad that Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar has been hiding in Pakistan….Zalmay Khalilzad told an Afghan TV station that a Pakistani TV channel had interviewed a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, at a time when Pakistani officials claimed they did not know the whereabouts of Taliban leaders.
"If a TV station can get in touch with them, how can the intelligence service of a country, which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces, not find them," Khalilzad said in the interview with Aina broadcast on Friday evening.

Afghanistan donors conference postponed until end of year

LONDON, June 17 (AFP)—An Afghanistan donors conference, planned for London on Tuesday, has been postponed…"at the request of the Afghan ministry of finance," a spokesperson for the Britain's Department for International Development told AFP….A spat broke out between the Afghan government and the international donors during a forum in Kabul in April. The Afghan government wanted to run a bigger part of the international aid itself.

Afghan police chief arrested over aid-worker killings

KABUL, June 15 (AFP)—Afghan authorities have detained a police chief for questioning over the killing of five Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid workers one year ago, the government said.

Wet weather set to boost Afghan opium output

LONDON, June 17 (Financial Times) By Victoria Burnett—US and Afghan officials do not expect Afghan opium production to fall this year, despite an intensifying battle against the drug industry that is set to cost the US hundreds of millions of dollars.

As we first mentioned several months ago, last year's bad weather (and low yield) meant that there was a vast 'surplus capacity' for opium production. In 2004, despite increases of 64% in hectares cultivated, total production only increased 17%. In 2005, even if Afghan authorities have success in decreasing cultivation, we will probably see an increase in net opium production.

Another wave of assassinations, hostage-taking in Helmand, Kandahar, Khost

'Taliban' execute police chief, murder judge

KANDAHAR, June 19 (AFP)—Suspected Taliban militants ambushed and killed a judge and two other officials in the latest violence to hit Afghanistan's south, an official said. The judge, an intelligence official, and an employee in Helmand province's education department were killed as they returned home from a dinner in the Nad Ali district to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.

Taleban Claims to Have Killed Provincial Police Chief in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, June 19 (VOA) by Benjamin Sand—Taleban insurgents in southern Afghanistan say they have executed a provincial police chief [in Kandahar] and are holding 30 local officials hostage. (Audio available)

Seven Afghan medics gunned down

Khost, June 15 (AFP)—Taliban militants killed a doctor and six medical attendants [in Khost] during a spate of violent incidents in southern Afghanistan that left a total of 17 people dead, officials said.

Featured Articles:

Fighting a Hard, Half-Forgotten War

This report, by N.C. Aizenman, describes a search mission by a U.S. infantry battalion that found itself in the line of fire—in contrast to expectations that their time in Afghanistan would be quiet. One excerpt from this excellent report:

QALAT, June 22 (WP) by N.C. Aizenman—…By now, [Lt. Col Mark] Stammer judged the ice sufficiently broken to instruct an interpreter to ask Satar the question on everybody's mind: "Have you seen any Taliban around here?"

"He says the Taliban haven't been through for months," the interpreter responded.

The assertion was nonsense, Stammer said. "But that's okay," he added peaceably. In a region where informing could cost a person his life, Stammer said, a villager who lied about the militia's whereabouts was not necessarily a Taliban supporter.

So Stammer moved on to what he called his "unity" speech. He stressed that the U.S. military was there only to help the Afghan people, and he urged Satar to organize villagers to present their needs to Zabol's governor and vote for an official representative in parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Satar smiled and nodded. But one of the interpreters said afterward that the elder later confided to him that even this modest proposal was too risky.

"He told me, 'If I do that, I won't stay alive very long,' " the interpreter recounted. "He said, 'You guys are very nice. But you only come around once in a while. The Taliban will come here as soon as you are gone.' "

The Other War

June 21 (Military.com) by William S. Lind—In view of the steady stream of bad news from Iraq — five dead Marines in Saturday's paper, two more in Sunday's and four soldiers in Monday's, along with the Baathist element of the resistance so "weakened" it is now striking targets in Iran -- it is easy to forget that we are fighting, and losing, not one Fourth Generation war but two. Five U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan last week. On June 9, the Washington Post reported that

Insurgents linked to the former Taliban regime have set off a wave of violence in Afghanistan, launching a string of almost daily bombings and assassinations that have killed dozens of U.S. and Afghan military personnel and civilians in recent weeks ... a virtual lockdown is in effect for many of the ... roughly 3,000 international residents of Kabul ...

As recently as April of this year, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, said he envisioned "most of (the Taliban) collapsing and rejoining the Afghan political and economic process" within a year. He seems to have projected the winter's quiescence as a trend, forgetting that Afghan wars always shut down in wintertime, as war did everywhere until the 19th century. Afghanistan is not so much Iraq Lite as Iraq Slow, the land that forgot time. Our defeat will come slowly. But it will come.

The reason we will lose is that our strategic objective is unrealistic. Neither America nor anyone can turn Afghanistan into a modern state, aka Brave New World. In attempting to do so, we have launched broadscale assaults on Afghanistan's rural economy and culture, guaranteeing that the Pashtun countryside will eventually turn against us. Afghan wars are decided in the countryside, not in Kabul.

The Pashtun countryside's economy depends on opium poppies. Columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave, an old Afghan hand, recently wrote that poppy cultivation generates 12 times more income than the same acreage planted in wheat. 400,000 acres now grow poppies.

Ministers or their deputies are on the take. Police cars carry opium through roadblocks ... Former anti-Soviet guerillas, known as the mujahideen, now populate the national highway police, which give the smugglers total security on the main roads.

Opium is the Pashtun economy. Yet we are now waging a war against it, a war where every victory means impoverishing the rural population. A story in the March 25 New York Times, "Pentagon Sees Antidrug Effort in Afghanistan," reported that

On March 15 the American military in Afghanistan provided transportation and a security force for 6 D.E.A. officers and 36 Afghan narcotics policemen who raided three laboratories in Nangahar Province ...

Under the new mission guidance, the Defense Department will provide "transportation, planning assistance, intelligence, targeting packages" to the counternarcotics mission, said one senior Pentagon official.

American troops will also stand by for "in-extremis support," the official said, particularly to defend D.E.A. and Afghan officers who come under attack ...

Our assault on traditional Afghan culture is also guaranteed to unite the rural Pashtuns against us. A story in the May 10 Christian Science Monitor began,

A bearded man from the bazaar is whisked into a barber shop, where he's given a shave and a slick haircut. After a facial, he visits fashion boutiques.

In a few tightly edited minutes of television, the humble bricklayer is transformed into an Afghan metrosexual, complete with jeans, sweater, suede jacket and sunglasses.

This was on Kabul's new Tolo TV, which was established with a grant from U.S. A.I.D. The story goes on to note that "Modesty in male-female relations and respect for elders are two important parts of Afghan culture that Tolo is challenging." Not surprisingly, in March Afghanistan's senior Islamic council, the ulema shura, criticized such programs as "opposed to Islam and national values."

In consequence of these blunders, assailing rural Afghanistan's economy and its culture, de Borchgrave reports that "Britain's defense chiefs have advised Tony Blair 'a strategic failure' of the Afghan operation now threatens." That term is precisely accurate. Our failure is strategic, not tactical, and it can only be remedied by a change in strategic objective. Instead of trying to remake Afghanistan, we need to redefine our strategic objective to accept that country as it is, always has been and always will be: a poor, primitive and faction-ridden place, dependent on poppy cultivation and proud of its strict Islamic traditions.

In other words, we have to accept that the Afghanistan we have is as good as it is going to get. Once we do that, we open the door to a steady reduction in our presence there and the reduction of Afghan affairs to matters of local importance only. That, and only that, is a realistic strategic objective in Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan Watch is prepared by Carl Robichaud, a program officer at The Century Foundation.

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