Wikileaks and the Fog of (Afghanistan) War

According to the New York Times:

A six-year archive of classified military documents made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.

The secret documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.

The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

Taliban Promoting “Gentler Insurgency” Image in Afghanistan

A kinder, gentler terrorist organization:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned ones, to soften their image and win favor with local Afghans as they try to counter the Americans’ new campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds. The Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, issued a lengthy directive late last spring outlining a new code of conduct for the Taliban. The dictates include bans on suicide bombings against civilians, burning down schools, or cutting off ears, lips and tongues.

The code, which has been spottily enforced, does not necessarily mean a gentler insurgency. Although the Taliban warned some civilians away before the assault on the heart of Kabul on Monday, they were still responsible for three-quarters of civilian casualties last year, according to the United Nations.

McChrystal: bin Laden, Taliban Key to Winning Afghanistan

Eight years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden still at large, still a threat, still being talked about as a key to winning Afghanistan:

Finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and rolling back a resurgent Taliban are necessary steps toward winning the war in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there told a Senate committee Tuesday.Bin Laden remains at large more than eight years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that triggered the Afghan war, and is widely believed to be hiding along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the world’s most wanted terrorist is “an iconic figure” whose survival “emboldens al Qaeda as a franchising organization across the world.”

“It would not defeat al Qaeda to have him captured or killed, but I don’t think we can finally defeat al Qaeda until he is finally captured or killed,” McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee. But he said if bin Laden is hiding across the border, “It is outside of my mandate.”

In addition, he said, pushing back the Taliban — which allowed al Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan before 9/11 — is a “prerequisite” for destroying the terrorist network.

“To pursue our core goal of defeating al Qaeda and preventing their return to Afghanistan, we must disrupt and degrade the Taliban’s capacity, deny their access to the Afghan population, and strengthen the Afghan security forces,” he said.

Obama Expands Program for Drone Attacks in Pakistan

Obama has made drone attacks an integral part of the Afghanistan War, by bombing Pakistan more:

Two weeks ago in Pakistan, Central Intelligence Agency sharpshooters killed eight people suspected of being militants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and wounded two others in a compound that was said to be used for terrorist training. Then, the job in North Waziristan done, the C.I.A. officers could head home from the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters, facing only the hazards of the area’s famously snarled suburban traffic. It was only the latest strike by the agency’s covert program to kill operatives of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their allies using Hellfire missiles fired from Predator aircraft controlled from half a world away.

The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.

White House Re-Thinking Afghanistan War Strategy, Re-interpreting History

It is good to remember history, and to remember that over time, history becomes re-interpreted.  In light of this, a rather amazing report that the White House is thinking of letting the Taliban gain control over Afghanistan (again):

President Obama’s national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the United States, officials said Wednesday. 

As Mr. Obama met with advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan, the White House said he had not decided whether to approve a proposed troop buildup in Afghanistan. But the shift in thinking, outlined by senior administration officials on Wednesday, suggests that the president has been presented with an approach that would not require all of the additional troops that his commanding general in the region has requested.

It remains unclear whether everyone in Mr. Obama’s war cabinet fully accepts this view. While Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has argued for months against increasing troops in Afghanistan because Pakistan was the greater priority, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have both warned that the Taliban remain linked to Al Qaeda and would give their fighters havens again if the Taliban regained control of all or large parts of Afghanistan, making it a mistake to think of them as separate problems.

At this point it is important to remember the main reason why the U.S. went into Afghanistan in 2001.  They believed that the Taliban — fairly much the same Taliban as now — gave a safe haven for al Qaeda to plan and execute 9/11.  The Taliban were considered a direct threat to the U.S.  The U.S. destroyed the Taliban’s government and installed Karzai (or, at least, provided favorable conditions for Karzai to become Head of State).  In 2001, the dominant view was that the Taliban and al Qaeda are linked and mutually reinforcing.  Now, in 2009, some of Obama’s advisors are saying that the link is not as strong, and that the Taliban is not a direct threat to the U.S.  They argue that the focus should be on Pakistan which was, in part, a safe haven for al Qaeda, operationally speaking, and is becoming more so now.    Some even refer to the Taliban as an “indigenous” group, an unsubstantiated claim considering that it was Pakistan who created, trained, and funded the Taliban in Afghanistan.  They argue that at any rate, the Taliban are ingrained into Afghanistan, even though they’ve only been around since 1990.  They claim that the Taliban would not want to bring al Qaeda back with them because it was al Qaeda what got them kicked out of the country before.  They claim that surviving Afghan warlords like Hekmatyar are not jihadists, are not anti-American, but rather just want to control Afghanistan (and, likely their opium production).  This is a radical reinterpretation of history that has radical consequences for the Middle East.

Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat Region Implement Sharia

After the Taliban fought the Pakistani army to a standstill — at least, according to Pakistan and the Taliban, who had been partners during the 1990s and even after the 2001 Afghan war — the Taliban has tried to implement Sharia, or Islamic law.  This BBC article gives a surprisingly sympathetic view to this process:

Maulana Rahman is a qazi, or judge, in one of the newly appointed Islamic Sharia courts in Pakistan’s troubled district of Swat. He is addressing about a dozen people standing in front of the bench in the circuit courthouse of Mingora, Swat’s main town. They are led by a tall, fierce looking man who adamantly demands an explanation for the court’s decision. He is a commander in the Swat Taleban who fought Pakistan’s army to a recent standstill.

The Taleban had demanded the implementation of Islamic Sharia law here. The government acceded and these courts are the first step in that direction. 

But the common people in Swat have welcomed the establishment of the courts and have thronged to them. “We believe we will get quick and impartial justice from the Sharia courts,” says Umar Hayat, a local man waiting to file his petition. “In the past, cases used to drag on for years, but now they are settled in days. More importantly, everybody is equal in front of the law.”

U.S. Drone Kills 24 Taliban in Pakistan

Obama maintains policy of drone attacks within Pakistan:

Missiles fired by an unmanned US drone have killed at least 24 people in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region near the Afghan border, officials have said. Local officials said the dead were local Taleban and that the toll may rise. Thirty others were injured.

The US does not confirm drone attacks but no other countries have the power to deploy such weapons in the region.  Correspondents say this is the fifth drone attack on Pakistani territory since Barack Obama became US president.

Talking to the Taliban

Talking to moderates within the Taliban?  Though this did not work before 9/11, there is some resurgence of this idea in the Obama administration:

President Obama says the United States is open to reaching out to some moderate voices in the Taliban, but critics say that’s not the right approach.  In an interview published in the New York Times this weekend, Obama said some military leaders believe that part of the success in Iraq has come from reaching out to Sunni militants there.

The president said while the situation in Afghanistan is much more complex, there may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“I don’t want to prejudge the review that’s currently taking place. If you talk to Gen. [David] Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al Qaeda in Iraq,” he told the Times. Asked if the United States is winning the war in Afghanistan, Obama said “no.”

Given that remark, Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer who led CIA forces in Afghanistan after 9/11, said Monday that it could be difficult to get members of the Taliban to work with the United States.  “If you keep saying the Taliban are winning, what incentive is there now for individuals who are fighting against us to come over to us,” he said on CNN’s “American Morning.”

Over 70 U.S. Military Advisers Working with Pakistani Anti-Terrorist Efforts

The New York Times Reports:

More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.

Meanwhile, Taliban insurgents in the Pakistan/Afghanistan region are murdering rivals and shutting down schools for girls.  The NYTimes amazing short documentary, “Class Dismissed in Swat Valley” tells the story.

Poland Vows to Bring Taliban Killers of Polish Hostage to Justice

Poland vows vengence for Piotr Stanczak:

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Monday denounced the execution of a Polish hostage by the Pakistani Taliban and vowed to hunt down his killers. Pakistan’s umbrella Taliban group released a video of the execution of hostage Piotr Stanczak on Sunday. “The cassette of the execution, this bestial execution, is authentic and unfortunately it confirms the worst,” Sikorski told reporters. Stanczak was the father of a 13-year-old son.

“Never in Poland have we had such a situation,” said Jacek Cichocki, security adviser to Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “We see films about citizens from other countries — Americans, British — but not Poles.”