The Guardian is reporting a lucrative "non-military" aid package to Pakistan. Sen. Biden is one of the principal agents behind the deal.
The aid package, being put together by the Democratic senator Joseph Biden, will mark a decisive break in US policy on Pakistan, which for much of the past nine years focused on President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military as Washington's primary partners in the "war on terror". Officials in Washington said yesterday that the shift had already been made.
"Senator Biden wants to show the relationship is much broader than a military one, and that we are willing to sustain it over time," one of the senator's senior aides said yesterday.
A US administration official said: "Each day Musharraf's influence becomes less and less. Civilians are in control. People aren't meeting with Musharraf any more ... we are very pleased with the new civilian government."
I certainly like the shift in strategy, most of the monies will be earmarked for civilian purposes...
The New Deal
· $1.5bn a year in civilian aid for at least five years
· $1bn "democracy dividend" as a reward for holding elections and forming a coalition government
· Counter-terrorism aid will be performance-based
· The Pakistani government will be consulted before any further air strikes against militants on Pakistani soil by US unmanned "Predator" aircraft
· More counter-terrorism assistance will be given to civilian law-enforcement and intelligence organisations
Interestingly, The Pakistanis want us to curb our Predator drone usage...
Pakistani officials say they have been given assurances by Washington that there will be close consultation with the civilian government, not with Musharraf, before any future strikes.
However, the use of Predators is held as a closely guarded secret and US intelligence is reluctant to share information about targets, and there is some scepticism in Islamabad over whether the deal will stick.
"We'll have to take them at their word, won't we," said the new information minister, Sherry Rahman, in an interview in Islamabad. She added that Washington's previous emphasis on ties to Musharraf and the Pakistani military "hasn't provided the results that were supposed to happen on the ground".
We definitely hadn't gotten anything from the previous $10 Billion, maybe this new approach will accomplish something... In a side note, the article described the results of the $25 Million reward for Osama Bin Forgotten and AQ..
Furthermore, much of the money being used for counter-terrorism is being misspent, both Pakistan and US government officials say. As an example they say that Musharraf distributed the $25m reward money for capturing or killing "high value" al-Qaida targets in the form of an "inverted pyramid".
"A few thousand would go to the police constable on the ground who actually spotted the guy, but the millions go to the generals up the chain," a Pakistani official said. No wonder, he added, that the tip-offs stopped coming in and the number of high-profile arrests dropped.
OT- Where were these when we were pounding pickets for miles...!
Aaah, I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning...! I was scanning the news out of Iraq and two articles leapt out at me this morn. First this one jumped out at me with this headline: "US presses Iraq neighbours at security meeting." I said to myself that's interesting and notable that we're at least talking to them and I read it. I admired this particular snippet...
In a final communique, the participants "welcomed the positive cooperation between Iraq and its neighbours in the fight against terrorism," noting that such cooperation had already led to "an improvement in security".
"Control of the borders is the responsibility of Iraq and its neighbours," it said.
Apart from the US, the meeting drew diplomats from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, as well as representatives from Russia, France, China, the UN and Arab League.
Okay, that's cool and so I continued along and lo and behold this one screamed at me! With this headline: "Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its borders." How could I pass that up? So I read it and some very interesting tidbits of info popped up, such as:
Analysts say the anti-Iranian groups are tempting assets for the U.S. They say it would be a surprise if the groups were not receiving U.S. funding, but that the strategy would probably not work.
"It will give more encouragement to Iran's hard-liners to step up their own efforts to assist anti-American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Among the most active groups is the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, known by its Kurdish acronym, PEJAK. It has hundreds of well-trained fighters along with camps in northern Iraq.
Hmmm... Who is PEJAK?
PEJAK emerged this decade as an Iranian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, an armed group formed to fight a separatist war against the Turkish government.
Former members say PEJAK was meant to circumvent Western restrictions on contacts with the PKK, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union.
"The PKK wanted to have a relationship with America, so it formed and used PEJAK," said Mamand Rozhe, a former commander who defected from the group four years ago.
Wow, we're subsidizing a known terrorist organization, but wait, there's more...
The secretive Mujahedin Khalq, also regarded by the U.S. and EU as a terrorist organization, may have little support among Iranians, but its networks extend deep into Iranian territory, and it is credited with exposing Iran's nuclear program in 2002.
Other groups include Jundollah, which operates out of the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, and Arab groups in Iran's southwest.
The leftist Komala Party of Iran hasn't staged any military operations inside Iran since 1992, but several hundred or so fighters continue to train at their base camp in Zergwe in the autonomous Kurdish northern region of Iraq.
Abdullah Mohtadi, a leader of one of two Komala factions, said he met with White House and State Department officials in 2005 and 2006 to discuss Iran.
Imagine that! We're aiding and abetting terrorist organizations against Iran in the region! What was Washington demanding at that Security meeting... Oh yeah...
Washington urges Iraq’s neighbours to show strong commitment in halting flow of terrorists, weapons to country.
The participants also noted...
"Terrorist facilitation networks operating throughout the region continue to be a significant threat to the stability of Iraq, and by extension, the entire region," the statement said.
"The influx of foreign-made weapons used by and seized from the criminal militia elements involved in fighting Iraqi Security Forces, which was thrown into stark relief during the recent flare-up of violence in Basra, the southern provinces, and Baghdad, is another serious threat which this group should address," it said.
There they go again, saying it's criminal elements, lets reflect back on those 'criminal elements'...
We have been repeatedly "informed" of highly questionable assumptions. Most prominent amongst them is that the "firebrand" and "radical" Moqtada Al-Sadr -- leader of the millions-strong Shia Sadr Movement -- led a group of "renegades", "thugs" and "criminals" to terrorise the strategically important city(Basra).
US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has framed Iranian activities in Iraq as a "proxy war" with the Americans, even as administration officials have hailed the retreat of Al-Qaeda due to increasing involvement by Sunni tribal chiefs.
Crocker on Friday foresaw a similar reaction in Iraq, saying that Iran's support for militias fighting the Iraqi government may cause a Shiite "backlash."
Yet the Bush administration has launched "an interagency assessment of what is known about Iranian activities and intentions, how to combat them and how to capitalize on them," the Washington Post reported Saturday.
This is an excellent summation of the world of shit we're in...
Brookings Institution expert Suzanne Maloney said that "disastrous Bush policies fostered a sectarian Iraq that has helped empower Iranian hardliners.
"Rather than serving as an anchor for a new era of stability and American preeminence in the Persian Gulf, the new Iraq represents a strategic black hole, bleeding Washington of military resources and political influence while extending Iran's primacy among its neighbors."
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Thursday he will dispatch Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to go to Kenya to demand a halt to the violence that has left more than 1,000 people dead.
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Sending a person who has screwed the pooch on every assignment she's been given (National Security Advisor before 11 Sept. 2001, running the post-'major combat action' situation in Iraq) is not competent diplomacy, let alone having her make "demands" of people we've largely ignored (beats me who else they'd dispatch from a department filled with political hacks in leadership positions). They've been down that road with the British, who only understood how to play on the ethnic divisions present. I feel safe saying the best we can hope for from this "initiative" is that we won't make things worse.
A delegation of people who see Kenya as 'a country full of black folks' is as useful as planning an operation in Iraq before knowing the differences between Sunni and Shi'a.
***
I have yet to talk about the conflict in Kenya because I was hoping it would fix itself. No, I'm not that naive but I guess I was hoping the process over there wouldn't explode the way it has, given the political reconciliation five years ago. Also, when I talk to people about Kenya (and Africa in general), their eyes generally glaze over and they walk away shaking their heads. "Doesn't F-man know Kenya, and the rest of Africa north of Pretoria, is a lost cause," they mutter as they get farther away. Most folks only see Africa as a place "we send money to", intimating we don't get any return for our dollar. (The subject of a post for another day is how little we actually do give in foreign aid.)
Kenya gained their independence from Great Britain in 1963 and has moved forward in spurts. There has always been a divide between the 'haves' and 'have nots', the commissioners of the eight Districts running them as personal fiefdoms (they learned well from the British), not to mention the army's influence in the process. I learned quite a bit about how Kenya works and its place as a potential counter to South Africa as a power broker on the African continent when I did research for my novel Technocracy. It is one reason I used Kenya as a metaphor for Africa and as a beginning point for the unification of the African economy and eventually bringing the entire continent to First World status. Ah, but were reality as easy to manipulate as the plot of a novel.
For most of its existence a multi-ethnic nation of strongmen with one legally recognized political party, corruption ran rampant over 40 years and the wealth is concentrated in the ruling class, regardless of the democratic reforms in the past half-decade. Most in the country live in poverty and from what I understand, the friction has been building for quite some time. Now, at the time when Kenya should finally be realizing its full potential, this conflict threatens to set the nation back 20 years:
Kenya is at a pivotal moment in its history. A bungled election has brought to the surface a myriad of deep social tensions that have been left to simmer in Kenyan society since independence. Political deadlock has added more fuel to the fire, with the fallout having serious consequences for Kenya's economy and society.
Ha, see, caught ya. I know your index finger is already on the mouse, ready to click away to something less eye-glazing. Well, if you do, you’ll miss this link to the Meatball (not work safe), who metaphorically explains Kenya’s yearning to be a player on the world stage, a major one on the African stage:
I only turn our attention to Kenya as I remain troubled by freaky memories of giving fire sale golf lessons to a strapped Kenyan ambassador who hoped that learning golf with his embarrassing entry level set of Mizuno clubs would aid in networking his way into the boozing echelons of G8 diplomats.
…
Kenya has the potential to be that player, already a center for communications and transport. The major economies have seen that potential too and are invested there, though the political unrest and corruption (and rights violations) have always mitigated the amount investment needed to be competitive with South Africa. Safari tourism has also been affected, especially in the Rift Valley region, where the wildlife and scenery tempts tourists to visit and explore.
…
Violent ethnic clashes marked by swinging machetes, flying stones and the whiz of arrows have since left hundreds dead. Victims with arrows, sometimes poisoned, lodged in their heads and chests have become increasingly common, say officials in Rift Valley hospitals.
…
The Rift, home to the Luo, Kikuyu, and Kalenjin tribes, is one of the places the unrest is concentrated. Tanzania is drawing a lot of that bleed off, many tribes tourist-friendly and understanding of the economics of tourism. As investors and tourists leave, the gap between rich and poor will widen even more, most likely prolonging the conflict.
Kenya is a prime example of a nation that would benefit from leadership by the US or another major entity willing to invest in these people. Considering the situation in Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire, a strong Kenya would be another anchor of stability and prosperity on the African continent.
Unfortunately, western (namely US) interests are more oriented toward 'resource protection' at this point. And this point brings us to why I even give a damn about the potential of a nation on the east coast of Africa. It is because we are all in this together and, in the 21st Century, the world is getting smaller.
I grew up at a time when TVs were black and white, when you had to yell for the other party to hear you when you made a long distance call, and it took weeks to carry on a correspondence with someone on another continent. Now, as I look at the site stats every week for the Brain, I see readers who stop by daily from every part of the world.
We see how economic disturbances here affect markets in almost every nation, how our unilateral actions in other countries have unexpected blowback effects. (I was in Afghanistan in the early '80s when we were arming Osama and his Mujaheddin, unwittingly nourishing the roots of what would become al-Qaeda.) It is time we start caring about what happens in the Third World because they are our future. It is not a place where we can fight proxy wars (and then leave) and expect not to feel the consequences years down the line. If we don't start giving a damn now, our children and theirs will feel the effects of our actions (or lack thereof) today.
It's time to show some interest in places that don't have resources we feel the need to exploit. It's time to give some real attention to places where the resource most valuable to us are the people who live there. If we invest in people, we can only profit from their success.
Update:
It seems other nations see what I do. The Chinese have been investing in Kenya's infrastructure and offshore oil projects. Looks like Administration d'Bush dropped the ball* once again:
...
China's stance is consistent with its policy of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs. An editorial in Beijing's People's Daily on January 14th upset Kenya's opposition by saying that "Western-style democratic theory simply isn't suited to African conditions but rather it carries with it the root of disaster. The elections crisis in Kenya is just one example."
...
The Chinese get it. Any wonder why NYC Public Schools are offering high school level language curriculum in Cantonese and Mandarin?
As I said in the post below, I've lived all over the damn world. I try to respect others' cultures and religions. If it gives you peace to worship some kind of deity, well have at it. That said, I got big problems when cultures use their god to take vengeance on the defenseless.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.
...
Hmmmm ... Didn't we go through this a couple hundred years ago? Women, generally defenseless in a male-dominated society, being scapegoated for their society's ills? Ah yes, I believe they called it Salem.
...
The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.
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Of course when we killed American witches (usually by very cruel methods), we had ample evidence of their treachery. At least as much evidence as the Saudis have against this woman:
...
In Falih's case, the judges who convicted her in April 2006 relied on a coerced confession and on the statements of witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them, according to the group.
...
Now, I've been bewitched by women, I rather enjoy it, but all I want to do is make love to them. I certainly don't want to kill them. Is there something wrong with me?
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The Saudi court cited an instance in which a man allegedly became impotent after being bewitched by Falih, the rights group said.
...
You know, being a first generation American of German descent, I know about finding a scapegoat for one's problems. It's easy to do. I believe the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and crazy people were all responsible for the downfall of Germany after the First World War and stood in the way of the Fatherland's return to glory, just as women are responsible for making Saudi men impotent.
Reiterating: I don't care who one worships or what kind of culture they built for themselves as long as they don't force me to believe or adopt their ways. I do care, however, when a culture commits inhuman acts in the name of god or 'national security'. I do care when my nation embraces those who commit such acts as 'friends', just because they control a resource we have become addicted to.
Instead of using what we've learned from experience (and I'm talking about the 'white, western experience' over the past 500 years) to pressure our 'friends' to put a stop to such practices, we conveniently look the other way, so long as the oil continues to flow.
But, then again, the United States is no longer in a position to be the moral arbiter on anything.
Via today’s Agonist we learn that US military officials have decided that Afghanistan is going to be easy pickings this Spring.
The Taliban are unlikely to launch a spring offensive in Afghanistan this year because all their energies will be focused in Pakistan, United States military officials said. But as that battle heats up, US officials added that they do not have enough intelligence on the ground in Pakistan.
KARACHI - With the Taliban's spring offensive just months away, the Afghan front has been quiet as Taliban and al-Qaeda militants have been heavily engaged in fighting security forces in Pakistan's tribal regions.
But now Taliban leader Mullah Omar has put his foot down and reset the goals for the Taliban: their primary task is the struggle in Afghanistan, not against the Pakistan state.
Mullah Omar has sacked his own appointed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, the main architect of the fight against Pakistani security forces, and urged all Taliban commanders to turn their venom against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, highly placed contacts in the Taliban told Asia Times Online. Mullah Omar then appointed Moulvi Faqir Mohammed (a commander from Bajaur Agency) but he refused the job. In the past few days, the Pakistani Taliban have held several meetings but have not yet appointed a replacement to Mehsud.
Maybe you ought to pay attention to what your enemy says. So far, they've done exactly what they have declared they would do. I dunno, it just seems easy to me, although I lack a degree from Army Vo-Tech and advanced training from the glamor school.
2. From the same article, here’s some on-the-ground intelligence for US military officials:
This major development occurred at a time when Pakistan was reaching out with an olive branch to the Pakistani Taliban. Main commanders, including Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the main Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan, Sirajuddin Haqqani, signed peace agreements. But al-Qaeda elements, including Tahir Yuldashev, chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, undermined this initiative.
"We refused any peace agreement with the Pakistani security forces and urged the mujahideen fight for complete victory," Yuldashev said in a jihadi video message seen by Asia Times Online. Yuldashev's closest aide and disciple, Mehsud, last week carried out an attack on a Pakistani security post and then seized two forts in the South Waziristan tribal area.
I know you’re really aching to get stuck in combat in yet another country, but look – you can’t handle the two countries you’re stuck in now. Why not allow Pakistan, a sovereign country, to handle its own internal affairs?
Pakistan bombed South Waziristan and sent in heavy artillery and tanks for a major operation against Mehsud. Other important commanders are now in North Waziristan and they support the peace agreements with the Pakistani security forces.
Pakistan's strategic quarters maintain the planned operation in South Waziristan is aimed particularly at eliminating Mehsud.
"While talking to government representatives in the jirga [peace council] we could clearly discern a grudge against Baitullah Mehsud and the Mehsud tribes by the security forces. And there are signs that the government is obsessed with a military operation to make Baitullah Mehsud a martyr," a leading member of the peace jirga in South Waziristan, Maulana Hisamuddin, commented to Voice of America.
Yes, we’re all concerned about the possibility that Pakistan might fall to a fanatical Islamist movement, and thereby the nukes might come under their control. Well, leaving aside the fact that George Bu$h engineered this danger by his refusal to properly prosecute the Taliban and al-Qadeda (headed by O b L, scion of a family the Bu$h family has done business with for 30 years) it might be a good idea to use the nuclear bunker busters that Mr Cheney has been slavering to use in Iran on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons instead.
By the way, gentlemen, if, as MG David Rodriguez suggests, you’re not concerned with the Taliban making a spring offensive, why is GEN Dan McNeill asking for another 3,000 troops?
As NATO forces struggle to contain a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, the US is expected to send 3000 more marines to that nation in advance of an anticipated spring offensive.
U.S. Army General Dan McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, made the formal request for reinforcements this week. It has already received the backing of Central Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is likely to get quick approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
However, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company, the move has already been under consideration by the Pentagon for the last three months, while the Bush administration "has dragged its heels," partly out of fear that it would be seen as "an admission the US was far too absorbed in Iraq, while it left Afghanistan to dangerously deteriorate."
Isn’t this actually a reversal of your decision last year to not allow the Marines to concentrate in Afghanistan?
A confused man might not be able to decide whether you gentlemen have no frickin idea what to do with the mess the neocons left you with, or whether you just have too many uniformed PR flacks practicing public diplomacy through misrepresentation.
One of the basic principles of Generalissimo Field Marshal Fred Kagan’s escalation was to send a lot more troops into Iraq to kill as many Iraqis as possible, (although truthfully males of fighting age were preferred to woman and children) and to die and bleed, and be wounded and maimed in order to allow the Shiite Maliki central government to have some room to make political changes with a view towards some sort of reconciliation.
Of course, many people with working brains can see that the real goal was to raise enough dust to quiet those who had the bad taste to note that the tar baby is just soaking up our blood and treasure, and to ensure some vague resemblance to “success” so that more criminals could be elected in 2008 under the banner of the republican Party.
Many wondered whether arming Sunnis and ex-Baathists was a wise solution, but they were willing to kill Saudis and Yemenis, and so the Army went ahead and put ‘em on the payroll – all 70-80,000 of them, at $300 each per month. Just don’t call them “Saudis and Yemenis” though because Mr Bu$h’s family has this long, profitable, on-going business relationship with the House of Saud.
Suddenly, if you were anti-occupation and wore a keffiyah you were automatically “al-Qaeda” (unless you were on the payroll as a ”concerned local citizen.”)
Hell, even this guy would have been “a-Q” because he fit the profile: foreigner, hated Western occupation, had the headdress and the robe, even.
The fly in the ointment is that the Shiites have just about zero interest in joining hands with the Sunni for anything, unless it’s to help the Sunni climb the steps to a gibbet. So political reconciliation was unlikely unless it was forced upon them, and in a confusing change in policy, our alleged Russian expert Condoleeza Rice doesn’t want to dictate to the Maliki government about stepping up the pace of reconciliation.
Despite the almost-universal distaste for change, something has snuck through. I know you will join me in applauding it.
The three stars that represented Saddam Hussein's Baath Party will be removed, to address the concerns of Iraqi Kurds.
They have refused to fly the flag since the fall of Saddam Hussein, saying it is too closely associated with a regime that repressed and killed their people.
The flag was also changed in 2004, when a line of script, allegedly in Saddam Hussein's own handwriting, was changed to Kufic script.
But the latest change - passed by 110 votes to 50 - is only temporary, as a design for a new flag will be sought after one year.
Well, that was momentous, wasn’t it?
The Arabic phrase shown above is pronounced as Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, and is a beautifully poetic phrase which offers both deep insight and brilliant inspiration. It has often been said that the phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim contains the true essence of the entire Qur'an, as well as the true essence of all religions.
Muslims often say this phrase when embarking on any significant endeavor, and the phrase is considered by some to be a major pillar of Islam. This expression is so magnificent and so concise that all but one chapter of the Qur'an begins with the words Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.
The common translation:
"In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate".
fails to capture either the true depth of meaning or the inspirational message of this beautiful phrase. So, let's look deeper into the meaning of these wonderful words.
The rest ought to be a snap now that they’ve straightened out that flag thing.
Friday was the beginning of the feast of Ashura, a festival holy day for Shiites, which commemorates the martyrdom of Husseyn, grandson of the prophet Muhammed at the battle of Karbala in 680, C.E.
Shiite pilgrims traveling to celebrate the holy day in Karbala included some members of a millenialist sect called the Soldiers of Heaven who believe that the 10th Imam is about to return to end injustice in the world. Comparisons to some of our more remarkable christianist lunatics just can’t be avoided.
The country was spotted by violence and death: a two-hour running gun battle between a group believed to be the Soldiers of Heaven in Basra and Nasariya in the South brought about the deaths of dozens, including several prominent Iraqi central government figures as Naji Rustum, the commander of the Special Operations, and Zamil Rumayid, head of Dhi Qar Governorate Intelligence Department.
The deaths of these two men is significant because it indicates that they were prepared to go out into the street fighting in order to take personal control of the fighting.
Unless you want to take the position that they didn’t trust their men to fight properly, you’d be forced to the conclusion that these men died of leadership. Reports that the fighting was quelled within two hours in the south seem to hint at the abilities of the Iraqi Army and National Police in that area.
The fighting, which started off with small gun battles in the vicinity of the Basra corniche, quickly spread to other areas of the city. There has been speculation that other groups took advantage to try to pile on, yet were apparently smothered pretty quickly.
I can’t help but recall that this is the area where MNF-I was claiming the British screwed the pooch and failed to train the security forces properly. A cautious man might think the MNF-I could be wrong.
A rocket attack killed seven people and wounded 20 in Tal Afar, a northern city. The attack marred an otherwise uneventful Ashura celebration, said Maj. Gen. Najim Abdullah, the mayor of Tal Afar.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar Province, suffered some of its worst violence in months when three suicide car bombers attacked a police station just outside the city. Five policemen were killed and seven were wounded, Lt. Col. Thamir Ali Suleiman said.
A Marine Corps spokesman in nearby Falluja said there was a report of a suicide attack late Saturday afternoon about five miles from Ramadi, but further details were not immediately available.
Two Shiites celebrating Ashura were killed in Kirkuk, the northern city where Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen are vying for control. They were killed by two improvised bombs hidden in trash near a Shiite mosque. Seven others were wounded.
In Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a restaurant in Sadr City, killing one person and wounding 13, an Interior Ministry official said.
Weren’t all these areas declared pacified in the wake of the surge escalation designed by Generalissimo Field Marshal Fred Kagan, and carried out so superbly by GEN Saint David Petraeus? Here we have quite a few separate incidents of violence. I get so confused when reality doesn’t agree with Bu$h malAdministration pronouncements…
The NY Times article quoted immediately above tries to make the MNF-I point that the fighting in and around Basra shows the South is not pacified, and the Iraq national forces are vulnerable. I’m not sure that statement is supportable. They were faced with a tough situation, reacted, and squelched the gunmen. Of the 66 dead in the Basra area, 50 are reported to be gunmen.
Professor Juan Cole, in writing about these incidents yesterday, makes a point worth considering:
Some will say that it is good news that the Iraqi security forces were able to put down the uprising by themselves. This is true, though how much help the US gave, exactly, is shrouded in mystery on these shores. But it is also true that the cultists were able to kill one high ranking army officer and to wound two others, and to kill several police and military troops. And it is further true that this group is relatively tiny, whereas if the Mahdi Army really did launch a challenge to the government, it is not clear whether it could survive.
Ah, yes. The “radical Muslim cleric” Muqtada al-Sadr. His six-month mandated stand down period for the “Mahdi Army” is almost over, and many wonder what he will do.
When discussing fighting and deaths in Iraq you have to keep an open mind about the accuracy of reports. This may be one of these glass-half-full moments, but if in fact the object of the exercise is to enable the Iraqis to stand up for themselves, and thereby facilitate our standing down (and unassing the George Bu$h ego-war) then it appears at first reports that the central government forces did what they were supposed to do.
UPDATE: Frequent reader and good friend Dubhaltach, of Gorilla's Guides has smacked my hand for forgetting we're waiting for the 12th Imam and not the 10th. He has also pointed out that some news stories have made the argument that the millenialist gunmen were not disposed of as easily as first reports would indicate, but we don't know for sure since Iraq is in electrical blackout for 12 hors pf the day\.
The US general in charge of training the Afghan police has criticised British-backed plans to arm local militias in an attempt to defeat the Taliban. The remarks by Maj-Gen Robert Cone, the second most senior US soldier in Afghanistan, are likely to deepen the row between London and Washington over how to counter the insurgency.
General Cone, who is in charge of rebuilding the Afghan police force, is the second US commander to condemn the initiative. He said: "Anything that detracts from a professional, well-trained, well-led police force is not the answer."
Last month, Gordon Brown said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai". The arbakai system involves arming untrained Afghani men, who agree to come running at the beating of a drum if their village elders feel threatened.
British diplomats and military strategists in the restive southern province of Helmand hope the idea might bolster Afghanistan's fledgling police force, which is unable to defend itself against attacks by Taliban insurgents. At least 10 officers died yesterday in a Taliban attack on a checkpoint in Kandahar. But US officials fear that arbakai fighters would fall under the command of warlords disloyal to the Afghan government. Their reluctance to endorse the plan follows a disastrous international initiative to build an "auxiliary" police force, which was scrapped last year.
Auxiliary officers were given assault rifles and uniforms after just a few days of rudimentary training, on the understanding that they would be required only to police the area they came from. "The auxiliary police was an attempt to take short-cuts," said General Cone, warning that there were similarities between the doomed auxiliaries and Mr Brown's arbakai plan. "It is very important to understand why the Afghan National Auxiliary Police Force did not work, as we look at any informal programme that doesn't promote professional policing," he added.
Analysts also fear the introduction of arbakai would undo years of effort by the United Nations to disarm illegal militias.
General Cone's remarks follow earlier criticism of the idea by the commander of the 37-nation Nato coalition in Afghanistan. General Dan McNeill said the plan would work only in small parts of the countryside which did not include Helmand, where most of Britain's 7,700 troops are stationed. He said: "My information, from studying Afghan history, is that arbakai works only in Paktia, Khost and the southern portion of Paktika, and it's not likely to work beyond those geographic locations."
General Cone is leading a root-and-branch reform of the Afghan police force, which has been ill-equipped, badly paid, poorly trained and dogged by corruption since 2001. The US government has pledged $7.4bn (£3.7bn) to improve Afghan security forces between now and October. But General Cone admitted there was no "model of what policing should be" in the country. "When Afghan people understand what well-trained, well-paid police do, they will demand it," he added. "But right now they are just not familiar."
He said he backed greater community involvement in the police if it meant "neighbourhood-watch type programmes" rather than arming and paying local people.
Britain has faced increasing criticism from allies in recent months for championing alternative tactics to defeat the Taliban. The Prime Minister promised more "tribal engagement" during a recent visit to Kabul. But last month the Afghan government expelled two UN and EU diplomats for meeting commanders sympathetic to insurgents.
There has been a lot of recent criticism of NATO efforts in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Gates fired off a broadside claiming that the NATO allies who agreed to come to Afghanistan after Mr Bu$h screwed it all up with his childish ego-war in Iraq in search of oil and his mother’s approval have in fact not been killing and dying enough.
British commanders were outraged after the US defence secretary criticised other Nato troops for their role in the bloody conflict in Afghanistan.
Robert Gates said the 30,000 US troops in Afghanistan were "doing a terrific job" in confronting the Taliban insurgency.
He added, however: "I think our allies over there, this is not something they have any experience with."
Mr Gates's comments caused an international outcry following months of simmering tensions between the U.S. and its allies over strategy in Afghanistan.
Senior British officers in Afghanistan said he should "wind his neck in".
…
Mr Gates told the Los Angeles Times he believed America's allies lack the skills to pursue successful counter-insurgency operations against Taliban guerillas.
It’s accurate to say that Denmark, Germany and Canada do not have the COIN experience that the US has purchased so expensively in Iraq. However, Mr Gates might have forgotten that Britain has had the only successful counter-insurgency campaigns in the history of the NATO member states. Even though Saint David Petraeus got to put his name on a book written by others, in true American military/management style, Britain defeated an uprising in Malaya and a particularly brutal and long-running insurrection in Northern Ireland. (My good friend A.E, might disagree with me that Northern Ireland was an apt example of COIN.)
Just because we’re in the middle of a pissing contest with the UK because they feel they’ve accomplished their mission in Southern Iraq and we wanted them to be tied down for 50 years like us is not a good reason to play Calvinball with them. They did what we asked them to, with a proportionately larger slice of their Army than we have stuck into the tarbaby.
What’s your problem, Mr Gates? Not enough Germans dying in Afghanistan? It was an American general who put them in the quiet part of Afghanistan.
Plus, no fair saying the Brits are not allowed to do in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq! We’ve taken civilians in Iraq who are kinda-sorta ex-brigands, thieves, murderers and all-around not nice people and given them lots of guns, lots of money, and lots of free fire zones because they have a better dislike of Saudis than our government. We called that a great success, although in reality it’s only a temporary marriage of convenience. The Bu$h malAdministration was just seeking a propaganda victory. Sooner or later the US is going to stop paying these Anbaris baksheesh and then it will be Katie bar the door, with 70,000 well-armed and pissed off locals out of work.
The Shiite central government has decided that no more than 20% of these Iraqi mercenaries concerned local citizens will be permitted to join the army or national police forces and the other 80% are going to be left kicking the curb.
While there might be a legitimate concern that some of the Afghan police auxiliaries might be Talibani moles, we have seen that there are takfiri moles in the Iraqi Army. It’s going to happen when your colonialization policy includes kicking crates of rifles and bags of ca$h off of helicopters in a desperate attempt to stop them killing US troops in the runup to a national election.
I know I’m right, you know I’m right, and less importantly, but better-publicized, is the fact that Secretary Gates pulled in his horns the next day.
WASHINGTON - U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates scrambled Thursday to praise Canada and other NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan, saying reports that he's unhappy with their efforts don't "reflect reality" or the views of the American government.
Countries like Canada that are committing combat troops are "playing a significant and powerful role," Gates told a news conference called to quell an international furor after he told the Los Angeles Times he's worried some allied forces weren't trained in counterinsurgency operations.
…
Asked whether his comments this week fit "the Washington definition of a gaffe, which is accidentally telling the truth," Gates replied: "No, I don't think so."
And he insisted the additional U.S. marines, something Canada has been requesting for some time, doesn't "reflect dissatisfaction" with the military performance of allied forces.
U.S. military analyst Bruce Riedel said Gates was venting growing unease about a badly stretched U.S. military which is facing two serious insurgencies - in Iraq and Afghanistan - without the resources to fight them both effectively. [emph added]
If Mr Gates is unhappy with the flavor of his soup he’d do better to complain to the chef, who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr Bu$h has been taking a premature victory lap in the Middle East lately and apparently still warning everyone about the evil Iranians.
Speaking in Israel, he’s been especially solicitous, remembering that country is in charge of our foreign and military policy in the Middle East and the hard right barking dogs over there are very quick to shut down the flow of ca$h to the republican Party if it looks like there’s any sort of tendency to stop paying attention to the region. Facing a really tough election in November, the r’s need all they can get because the most important allies, the Billionaire’s club and Wall Street can’t carry it all themselves, and many of the lower-level supporters are disenchanted by what the party is offering this year by way of Maximum Leader.
While visiting Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust in Israel, Mr Bu$h apparently teared up while viewing an aerial photograph of Auschswitz. This happens. I’ve visited Dachau several times and the effect is horrible. My wife had never seen me cry before, and I think that is the response of most people.
Apparently Mr Bu$h took a cue from Avner Shalev, the head of the museum commission, and after discussing the matter with our alleged Russian expert Condoleeza Rice in front of the photograph, our Great Warrior Leader decided that President Roosevelt should have given the order to bomb Auschwitz in order to stop the exterminations. Not bomb the camp, but rather the railroad tracks leading to the camp because that would have somehow stopped the slaughter.
Considering the inaccuracy of US bombing during that war, the bombing would probably have crept to the camp and that would have been doing the German government of the time a favor. And if somehow they Americans had managed to hit the railroad tracks and not killed the prisoners in the camp, what would have happened? They Germans would have unloaded the cars short of the bomb point and walked the prisoners into the camp.
So this happy little bit of Bu$h mental wandering and pandering wasn’t about saving the Jews on Auschwitz, but rather about saving the Jews in Israel by stopping the Greatest Evil The World Has Ever Seen ™ Maumoud Ahmadinejad.
(If you talk to the oldest Germans you can find, you will learn that none of them were Nazis, they all hated Hitler and deplored the Holocaust, and you come away wondering how Adolph Hitler held off the Allies for 6 years all by himself.) In much the same way
we are being told today that this one man, Ahmadinejad, all by himself, is compelling a nation of 70 million people to destroy Israel. This man who has no authority to order the transfer of one soldier from one camp to another, whose job is to talk to the international community, who has no voice in the decision of items of national importance, has been inflated by the Bu$h malAdministration into some great monolithic commander-in-chief dedicated to one goal. And the government of Ehud Olmert has been happy to cooperate in this lie. Mr Ahmadinejad has been falsely elevated to the position that Mr Bu$h secretly desires for himself.
Led by the lies and siren call of Big Oil’s greed and the loyal treason of the Likudnik agents of PNAC, America has been dragged into the tarpit of Iraq , which of course is only the first step in enabling Israel’s expansion to the Litani River which Israel needs to continue to grow.
Led by the lies and siren call of Big Oil’s greed and the loyal treason of the Likudnik agents of PNAC, America has been dragged into the tarpit of Iraq , which of course is only the first step in enabling Israel’s expansion to the Litani River which Israel needs to continue to grow. An expanding Israel needs not only new land, but more important, more water resources.
The danger for America is two-fold: the continuing drive to serve Israel’s interests in the Middle East by eliminating its potential enemies does serve America’s long-term strategic interests. A strong military position in that region ensures control of the oil, thereby denying it to economic rivals such as Russia China and India. But the rising cost of this military posture and power projection is becoming a crippling economic threat to the middle class, which is the only basis for democracy. The ongoing and soon to be permanent tax cuts for the millionaires like Messers Bu$h and Cheney (and many if not most of Congress) impose a growing strain on a drowning middle class as the nation struggles to pay for a Defense Department consuming more money than all the other countries in the world combined.
The second great danger for America is in that Mr Bu$h dearly loves his position as dictator-in-all-but-name. He is not the stupid dolt that many think he is, but rather a sly, scheming man with a badly damaged psyche.
He has said it at least twice. (This clip’s audio is very poor and you will have to pay close attention to hear the sound bite.)
America should be seriously considering whether Mr Bu$h will actually leave the White House in January 2009.
The constant (and rising) drumbeat of war against Iran would provide him with the perfect reason to “postpone” the November elections due to a self-created “national emergency.”
Can you seriously imagine the Democratic “leaders” in Congress stopping him?
Nethoggers’ Cernig has picked up on Larissa Alexandrovna’s echoing of my commentary 10 days ago regarding the post-shooting bomb blast at the assassination of the Bu$h malAdministration’s beard, Benazir Bhutto. (I’m not being harsh about Ms Bhutto. Her death was a tragedy for Pakistan, despite her family’s rather spotted record of corruption and alleged skimming of that country’s national treasury.)
Three former US intelligence officials have told Raw Story that not only is the gunman dead, he was likely the actual target of the suicide bomber.
According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination.
"He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there," said this source. "We don't know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to."
I certainly don’t know anything about political assassinations, because I will deny that’s a skill set the US Army teaches its soldiers. But if I wanted to take a very important political target I wouldn’t use just one hitter. I might have a gunman in close in case the opportunity presented itself, and I might back him up with a dedicated zealot willing to kill himself (and the target) with a bomb. (This would also ensure the gunman couldn’t talk later.)
The fact that Ms Bhutto was in what is reported to have been an armored vehicle might well have mandated the bomb, should the pistol attack have failed. Providentially (or unfortunately) the pistol worked, and the bomb created further death and chaos, as well as silencing the shooter. It’s probably just coincident that the person with the vest bomb just happened to be standing right next to the shooter, eh?
Never one to leave a healing scab on a wound, I speculated further,
In case of failure I’d also have a couple of teams along the route of retreat, possibly with sophisticated anti-vehicle weapons, like RPGs. And I would need a spotter at middle distance to advise the cutoff teams whether the first attack failed, to alert them of the target’s approach.
While the suspicion of the world community has rightly settled on President Musharraf, having an inconvenient competitor eliminated in what can be passed off as a regrettable terrorist incident saves a lot of face for the Pakistani government. Face they promptly lost when they initiated an on-again, off-again series of speculations and laughable explanations about car roof levers and such. Shutting up the doctors after the fact was a nice touch, because it immediately switched the focus of the news cycle buzz from the killing to the cover up.
The danger in all this lies with the possibility that the USG might lose confidence in Musharraf, or at least more confidence than they had lost as evidenced by the insistence of Mr Bu$h and our alleged Russian expert, Ms Rice, that only Benazir Bhutto could save Pakistan from a fate worse than death. Or something.
And the only thing that could have pushed the Bu$h people to change course in Pakistan would have been the commentariat and punditocracy figuring it all out, spurred by a lot of questions from the man in the street inside the US.
Fortunately the only news audience that the Bu$hies ever pay attention to is domestic consumption. Propaganda Public diplomacy at its best, Bu$h-style. And the US corporate media has cooperated magnificently, speculating endlessly about neck wounds and moon roof levers and fortunately ignoring the first rule of political assassination: cui bono? How lucky.
As I said at the time,
I’m not saying anything. I‘m just saying eventually the truth will surface.
It should be obvious to any conscious mind that Ms Bhutto in exile was a minimal threat to President Musharraf. She was out of the country and has been noted in many places she was basically the heart and soul of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. While it is true that any exiled politician with strong domestic support is a danger to incumbents, the simple fact is that she could not have re-entered the country without the state’s permission, and the PPP was sufficiently neutered so that there was no chance of a “students’ rebellion” a la Iran, 1979, which would gave paved the way for her triumphant return to replace the incumbent President.
I still find it hard to believe that the Bu$h malAdministration really believed they were going to get President Musharraf to shuffle off into retirement so easily, so they must have figured that they could prevail on Musharraf to allow Ms Bhutto to be Prime Minister and actually allow US forces to operate in the NWFP and FATA in order to somehow to something to distract the Taliban and al Qaeda from operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we have seen before that, they take counsel from their dreams, rather than from their fears.
Cernig ends his piece on a high note.
Can Bush at least stop selling the General-in-plainclothes advanced weaponry (e.g. nuke-capable fighters, anti-tank missiles, airborne early warning platforms) more useful against his neighbours than extremists, even if it does help line US arms manufacturers pockets with US taxpayers' money?
The very well-respected blog Mountain Runner is one of the leaders of the pack on this topic, and posted this up several days ago. I was lazy took my time about mentioning it.
Another slap in the face of George Bu$h’s elitist contempt for the average American.
French Warship to Deliver 10,000 Books to Disadvantaged U.S. Children
This Christmas, Santa Claus is leaving his reindeer behind and hitching a ride on… a French warship! The Jeanne d’Arc, a helicopter carrier which serves as a training ship for French navy midshipmen, will dock into New York Harbor on Friday December 28 carrying over 10,000 books destined for disadvantaged American students, giving new meaning to the expression “turning swords into ploughshares.” The French books, including dictionaries and textbooks, but also novels and comic books, will be offered to the children participating in New York’s newly launched French-English dual-language programs, as well as to New Orleans schools devastated by hurricane Katrina.
A delegation of students from the Jordan L. Mott Middle School (CIS 22) in the Bronx, one of the three schools that have launched a French-English dual-language program this year (the other two are PS 125 in Harlem and PS 58 in Brooklyn), will be welcomed on-board the ship at 2pm on the 28 th. Following a performance by their school band and a tour of the two French ships (the Jeanne d’Arc will be accompanied by the antisubmarine warfare destroyer Georges Leygues), they will take delivery of the books on behalf of all the schools involved. Sixty of the eighty crates will remain in New York, while the rest will be shipped overland to New Orleans.
At 3pm, the ship’s commander, Captain Hervé Bléjean, will hold a press conference in the presence of Catherine Petillon, the French Embassy’s Attaché for Educational Affairs.
…
This unusual delivery was initiated, coordinated and financed by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, but the books themselves have been donated by two French associations, Adiflor and Biblionef. Both specialize in providing French-language books, which are either new or in excellent condition, to needy children throughout the world. The French Embassy’s contribution comes in addition to the $100,000 the French government has recently earmarked to support dual-language programs in New York City public schools.
Students participating in these dual-language programs are being partially immersed in a French-language environment, with half of their classes taking place in French, and half in English. They are expected to become completely bilingual after five years of such bilingual teaching.
The Jeanne d’Arc will remain moored in New York until January 2 at Pier 92 ( West 52th Street). It will be open for visits by New York area children learning French and their parents from December 29-31 (schools with French-language programs will receive the necessary registration information).
Jeanne d’Arc shows its respect to George Bu$h
The Bu$hCo has spent its time, efforts, and our tax money, performing what it interprets as the proper venue for “public diplomacy” – domestic propaganda, with a little bit of spillover around the word. Its record precedes it, and the stench of evil, predatory fascism has spread an oil slick of contempt for all civilized behavior. The nations of the world have quire properly returned that contempt.
Can you remember back to 2002 when the French were roundly criticized by the room-temperature IQs of the never-right for refusing to join the great glorious crusade to get even with someone who had done us no harm? Oh, what great fun we had, laughing about “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” and “Spanish salad dressing! Morons like Patrick McHenry (Fascist-VA) took repeated victory laps before the fawning news cameras for his little bit of cleverness. After we got well-stuck in the tar baby, and France, in its own orgy of bigotry over immigrants, elected its very own Fascist, all was forgiven.
France was the country that came to the aid of a desperate Colonial Army in 1778, and poured money, international assistance and recognition, soldiers and naval support into our struggle. The two countries found themselves allied once again during the war of 1812, and the friendship and mutual admiration society was off and running. It was France, not Great Britain, that honored American Freedom with a magnificent tribute, a gift that has been the lodestone of oppressed peoples around the world.
And now, in the days of George Bu$h’s No Child Left Behind, when only white children attending Christian private schools seem to be entitled to a great education, once again France has stepped forward.
This morning’s Gorilla’s Guides points up a thematic of irregular warfare espoused by Lt Col T E Lawrence, of the General Staff, Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Yes, that Lt Colonel Lawrence. Some of the picked out passage is quite apt to our shaky occupation of Iraq, and perhaps we should look to see if the dynamics of war in the desert of 1916-1918 are still viable today. (This will be a brief look because one could write a book about the topic. I see no reason to give it all to you for free when I might be able to score some beer money.) OK, I’m kidding about the beer money.
The piece was first published in Army Journal and Defence Quarterly, October, 1920 and is available on microfilm, I believe.
As I recall, most of Colonel Lawrence’s writings were not well received within the ranks of Britain’s small professional Army in great part because of institutional prejudice against a temporary officer who had “gone native” and served with irregular forces rather than with one of his country’s regiments. His very well known “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” was quite well-received throughout the world, but not in Britain. (cf: Matthew, 13:57, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.)
It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts.1 It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy.2 Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent. active in a striking force, and 98 per cent. passively sympathetic.3 The few active rebels must have the qualities of speed and endurance, ubiquity and independence of arteries of supply. 4 They must have the technical equipment to destroy or paralyse the enemy’s organized communications,5 for irregular war is fairly Willisen’s definition of strategy, “the study of communication” 6 in its extreme degree, of attack where the enemy is not. In fifty words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.[emph added]
1. Aware readers will recognize that some of Lawrence’s requirements exist in Iraq. The resistance has enjoyed freedom not only from attack but from fear of it only because the occupying US troops were unable to exert their technological superiority of intelligence-gathering and observation until, within the last year UAVs had been brought to bear monitoring group movements. Direct intelligence gathering has suffered due to a lack of qualified translators. This is due in part to a failure within the Armed Forces to perceive that the Russians would in fact not be coming through the Fulda Gap, and future strategic threats might evolve in other theaters, and to prepare accordingly. Additionally the failure to supply sufficient ground forces to carry out the occupation is directly attributable to the ideological insistence of the civilian leadership that the invasion and conquest of Iraq would be a “cakewalk” and their eagerness to seek advice from “yes-men.”
2. Until the application of UAVs the occupation was severely limited in obtaining real-time information regarding movements of resistance bands. Direct intelligence gathered from the populace was often prompted by motives of clan and sectarian revenge.
3. It has been estimated that the actual “resistance” never comprised more than about 45,000-60,000 fighters gathered from all sources, including disgruntled ex-Iraq Army officers and senior NCOs, Sunni tribesmen, principally from Anbar province, and some Shiite dissidents from the Badr Corps and Mahdi Army, both of which held some degree of loyalty to Iran, the principal wellspring of the Shia sect of Islam. There were also a small number of non-Iraqi fighters drawn to Iraq in opposition to the presence of US troops on “Arab soil.” It has been variously estimated that these fighters were about 65-75% Saudi. As you can see these forces total less than the 2% figure presented by Lawrence, (Iraq’s population being estimated at 25 million) yet were able to hold the occupation for almost four years and inflict grievous losses.
4. The rebels, having grown from youth in the hardpan of Iraq, with its brutal Summer temperatures, were well-adapted to urban combat in the country. US troops were at a considerable disadvantage because of environmental conditions and the necessity to weigh themselves down with a great deal of equipment, which slowed them down and forced them to slower movement on the ground. The resistance fighters were adapted to operating in small, semi-independent bands of 4-8, considered an optimum size for guerrilla warfare. Such small groups can more easily go to ground, disappearing among the populace, more readily than larger bands.
(This is a core point of guerrilla warfare: strike with overwhelming force where the enemy is weak, create casualties, and melt back into the populace.)
5. It’s important to understand that Lawrence uses “communications” here in the sense of unit communication on the ground, i.e. logistical (supply) and tactical support of nearby fraternal units, and not voice and date communications as enabled by the use of radio and data link. This reference to Willisen’s (Lt Gen Karl Wilhelm von Willisen) dictum about communications describes the need in early 19th century warfare to maneuver ground units – infantry battalions and artillery batteries – in close contact in order to maintain cohesion and deliver a killing blow at the schwerpunkt of the battle., where the enemy was weakest, and most vulnerable to a strong penetration of his defenses. When you lose contact with a neighboring unit and find enemy troops moving into the breach, a commander’s instinctive reaction is to withdraw.
6. Lawrence exploited this weakness well, moving rapidly into the Turkish Army’s rear areas, spreading destruction and panic. Nothing like this has occurred in Iraq, but the resistance has maintained a strategy of slow abrasion. The death of 10,000 cuts, wearing down soldiers weary from long days of patrolling and defensive watch at their bases. The overstretching of combat forces and the slow but steady attacks against the supply convoys that the occupation depended upon has been classic communication strategy as practiced by Lawrence. The prodigious use of military-quality explosives left unguarded during the invasion afforded the resistance access to generous supplies of the means to bleed the occupation.
Utilizing its technological superiority in intelligence gathering, a temporary combat superiority through massive infusion of troops, and utilizing the Israeli method of walling off districts into sectarian enclaves, the Occupation forces have managed to create a lessened level of violence in Baghdad. It has long been a military rule that control of a country’s capital is a primary strategic, tactical, and propaganda goal. Through these means the “surge” has apparently tamped down the violence in Baghdad, lending a veneer of control to the central government.
The occupation has adapted one of Lawrence’s rules to its own use. The co-option of native forces through the argument of self-interest has enabled them to create a large force of semi-trained, lightly armed auxiliaries in Anbar province. It should be noted that the Shiite central government has little interest in incorporating these units (estimated as high as 75,000 armed men) into the country’s security forces. Some have speculated that only the payment of monthly salaries by the US has kept these tribesmen calm.
Failure to replace these salaries with gainful employment will keep the restive West a tinderbox, and the tribes tied to the US by monthly stipend. The Shiite central government is resisting the idea of political reconciliation, which would have to include economic development of the tribal areas. The strength of tribal and religious enmity is too great to bring about reconciliation, it seems.
Maintaining peace on the ground will last only as long as the Occupation forces continue to pay off the tribesmen.
In a comment to the article “Pakistan Remains Troubled” reader and frequent commenter (and new Daddy!) Dubhaltach notes that Islam prescribes a 40 day period of mourning.
Ms Bhutto was killed on December 27th. If you’ve already bought your 2008 calendars and desk diaries, take a moment and circle February 5th on them. That ends the 40 days. There just might be some very interesting effects after that date.
Amaze your friends and family with your political prescience.
Gorilla’s Guides published a nice article yesterday about the Anbar Awakening, giving some toothy background details about the movement that Western readers had not read before.
"Our goal was always to drive off the U.S. occupiers from our country, but we and al-Qaida have different goals. We want to liberate our country … while al-Qaida wants to establish their own extremist Islamic State in Iraq," said Ahmad Hameed, 35, a member of a local Awakening Council-style group in the Ghazaliyah neighborhood of Baghdad.
"We decided to fight the al-Qaida militants because they started to assassinate fighters and leaders from the resistance groups. They tend to kill indiscriminately." said Hameed at the checkpoint at the neighborhood entrance with a pistol on the hip and an assault rifle in his hand. [emph added]
Americans who might have been living in Cloud Cuckoo Land would be wise to memorize the above paragraph. The Anbar Awakening was part of the resistance. They stopped killing Americans for two reasons: the a-Q interlopers (i.e. Saudis) were becoming a serious problem and had to be eliminated, and they are remaining quiet only because the US is paying them to stay quiet. You might think that one the Saudis and their colleagues in a-Q are finally disposed of, the tribes could very well become ”restive” again.
The Saudis apparently were not nice people:
Sa’ad al-Rawi, 27, accused al-Qaida terrorists of luring young Iraqis, even children, into planting bombs and killing them later when they refused to obey any longer.
"We saw al-Qaida doing terrible things. They were killing and displacing Sunnis, Shiites and Christians. We could not leave our houses and were afraid of snipers. Therefore we decided to fight them," said Rawi.
That comment about a-Q displacing people is interesting because it hints at ethnic cleansing which heretofore was considered a tactic employed only by the Shiite militias.
The middle-class East Ghazaliyah area houses about 5,000 residents. One of the two highways surrounding it leads to the Baghdad Airport and used to be the most dangerous road in the world for the U.S. troops.
Once a ghost town with bodies dumped in the streets, the neighborhood now is seeing a recovering as shops are open and people begin venturing out, with CLCs manning the checkpoints and searching vehicles seriously. The Iraqi security forces, who are predominately Shiites, guard only at the outer checkpoints.
Deeply frustrated by the failure of national reconciliation and slow buildup of a capable Iraqi security force, the U.S. seems pleased to jump at the windfall of the showdown to relieve the strained troops and is encouraging the growth of the CLCs by means like paying.
Omer Adnan, who dropped out of college last year to take care of his family following his father’s death in a car bombing, said he had just signed a new three-month CLC contract with the Americans but he complained that the pay of 350 U.S. dollars per month is not enough to support his family.
Great. Less than a year into our 21st century practice of paying off this version of the Barbary Pirates and we’re already looking at a pending demand for more tribute.
If you’re not familiar with the circumstances, there is a brief explanation of the Barbary Wars here.
The cost of tribute became unsupportable, and the US had to fight a long, painful, and expensive war to defeat the Barbary pirates.
A cynical observer might well conclude that bribing the people who were killing your soldiers just a short time ago might not work, long term, especially so if part of the bargain is to give them more and better armaments. It’s probably unfortunate that the ultimate beneficiaries of all this – Big Oil – won’t have to pay the price of tribute.
Coincidently, IraqSlogger (subs req) has an article today noting that the Shiite central government plans to absorb no more than 20% of these Sunni tribesmen into the security forces.
Also coincidently, IraqSlogger (subs req) has another article today detailing a memo sent our by GEN Petraeus to the troops of MNF-I, patting himself on the back for “significant progress” and warning them of future “unforeseen challenges.” The disappointment of only 20% of these tribesmen getting jobs might qualify as a “challenge.”
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto will keep the pundits busy for days if not weeks as they endlessly anal-ize (GI-speak for talking out of your fourth point of contact) the matter.
Unsurprisingly, the American Corporate Media are treating the story as if it’s all about them, which is to mean (breathlessly) how will this affect the Presidential horse race and Sophomore Class King or Queen of the Prom? Yesterday we were treated to ghoulish discussion among the bobbleheads about how Ms Bhutto’s death is good for Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. Or maybe it’s good for Mitt Romney. Or maybe for Barack Obama. Anyway, it’s got to be good for someone.
Parents will recognize this reaction. If you’ve raised children you’ve undoubtedly noted that 5 year olds consistently live in a centric universe. Everything revolves around them, and so it is with the children of our corporate media.
If Ms Bhutto’s assassination doesn’t impact the horse race then it means the children with the microphones are no longer important!
Frequent commenter Shanks opined that possibly the Pakistani security forces failed to discover the assassin with his pistol and bomb because there was a dark plan to slip a couple of “special weapons” to the evil Iranians in the ensuing chaos, but he knows that’s not realistic, and was just winding my watch stem to see what happened.
This assassination was intended to remove a domestic danger to the status quo in Pakistan. Whether the agent(s) of change were set in place by President Musharraf, the ISI or some other entity like a-Q may eventually be determined.
I will tell you this: a-Q tends to use the bomb for assassination. They attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 by bomb. They attacked the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam by bomb in 1998. The attacked the World Trade Center again in 2001with flying bombs. And you will remember that Ahmed Shah Masood, the “Lion of Afghanistan” was killed by a-Q proxies with a bomb concealed in a video camera on the same day the WTC was successfully destroyed. Of the almost 4,000 US troops killed in Iraq, the majority have died by bomb, either placed and fired off by a-Q or by the Iraqi resistance in imitation.
The gun is more a weapon favored by Westerners, but do not impute anything special to this fact because it has been used throughout the Arab world. The bomb is just more spectacular, and perhaps more certain.
Attaturk points out that there are many correlations between deaths in the Bhutto family and the Pakistani military, taking up a cut from a report from a McClatchy article this morning.
The assassination occurred in this garrison city housing the headquarters of the Pakistan army, an institution that has always seemed opposed to Bhutto. A couple of miles away across Rawalpindi, a previous military regime had executed her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first democratically elected prime minister, in 1979, when she was 26.
Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts. As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: "Willing to die for Benazir."[emph added]
To drive the point home, Attaturk adds,
When people just dismiss the anger of Pakistanis at Musharraf and the military regime in Pakistan over Bhutto's death, the lack of context is staggering. Not only because Benazir Bhutto's close relations were killed at the hands of the military; but because even if her death was not directly caused by the regime, it set in place the forces that probably did.
I certainly don’t know anything about political assassinations, because I will deny that’s a skill set the US Army teaches its soldiers. But if I wanted to take a very important political target I wouldn’t use just one hitter. I might have a gunman in close in case the opportunity presented itself, and I might back him up with a dedicated zealot willing to kill himself (and the target) with a bomb. (This would also ensure the gunman couldn’t talk later.) In case of failure I’d also have a couple of teams along the route of retreat, possibly with sophisticated anti-vehicle weapons, like RPGs. And I would need a spotter at middle distance to advise the cutoff teams whether the first attack failed, to alert them of the target’s approach.
I’m not saying anything. I‘m just saying eventually the truth will surface.
In the meantime, let’s examine some of the consequences. The US plan to use Ms Bhutto as a moderating influence on President Musharraf is in tatters, just in case they were ever serious about letting the flowers of democracy blossom in Pakistan. That would be a first, by the way, because they haven’t shown any interest in democracy in Iraq or the US, but it did look good in newspapers.
The resultant civil unrest throughout Pakistan seems to require a harsh hand to clamp down right now. Perhaps fortunately, President Musharraf recently made some changes in the national Supreme Court, who will most likely endorse any suggestions he has for emergency measures to restore calm. And he’s no longer commander of the Army, so there’s that clear arms-length distance to ensure propriety if he declares martial law.
We’ve poured billions of dollars into Pakistan, claiming that it is a bulwark in the fight against the International War of Terror™ and for our troubles we’ve gotten A Q Khan giving nuclear reactor and weaponry information to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Our best friend President Musharraf sentenced Mr Khan to house arrest after pardoning him.
The Taliban and a-Q have been proliferating in safety in the North West Provinces, specifically Waziristan. The Pakistani Army seems unable to deal with the G’s up there. There were plans to use American Special Ops personnel in the North West, starting in January in an effort to track down some of the G’s hiding places.
There was great play about Secretary of State Rice going to Pakistan in order to straighten out President Musharraf and his working arrangement with Ms Bhutto, thereby restoring some degree of domestic and international legitimacy to a strongman, and now that’s down the tubes.
A man blinking in dazzled despair might ask how many more ways can the Bu$h malAdministration screw the pooch in Pakistan?
Dec. 27, 2007 | The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday provoked rioting in Islamabad and Karachi, with her supporters blaming President Pervez Musharraf, while he pointed his finger at Muslim extremists. The renewed instability in Pakistan came as a grim reminder that the Bush administration has been pursuing a two-front war, neither of which has been going well. Bush's decision to put hundreds of billions of dollars into an Iraq imbroglio while slighting the effort to fight al-Qaida, rebuild Afghanistan, and move Pakistan toward democracy and a rule of law has been shown up as a desperate and unsuccessful gamble. The question is whether President Musharraf now most resembles the shah of Iran in 1978. That is, has his authority among the people collapsed irretrievably?
The article is well written, and quite authoritative, as Professor Cole’s work tends to be. If you’re unfamiliar with the entire history of Pakistan as the wellspring of charismatic Islamic fundamentalism, this would be a good quick primer. But to answer Professor Cole’s question,
The obvious answer is that the Bu$h malAdministration doesn’t do “Plan B’s,” as many will remember from the Iraq Study Group report of earlier this year.
Professor Cole continues:
Pakistan's future is now murky, and to the extent that this nation of 160 million buttresses the eastern flank of American security in the greater Middle East, its fate is profoundly intertwined with America's own. The money for the Sept. 11 attacks was wired to Florida from banks in Pakistan, and al-Qaida used the country for transit to Afghanistan. Instability in Pakistan may well spill over into Afghanistan, as well, endangering the some 26,000 U.S. troops and a similar number of NATO troops in that country. And it is not as if Afghanistan were stable to begin with. If Pakistani politics finds its footing, if a successor to Benazir Bhutto is elected in short order by the PPP and the party can remain united, and if elections are held soon, the crisis could pass.
Several observers have noted that the Bhutto family is the PPP, and apparently there is no nationally known politician waiting in the wings.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a political rival of Ms Bhutto, had returned from exile at the same time as Ms Bhutto, and he had also been the target of an unsuccessful sniper attack yesterday. He was ousted as Prime Minister when General Musharraf staged his coup in 1998. Since he was convicted of terrorism by the Supreme Court and blocked from participating in national politics for 21 years, it would seem he is barred from replacing Ms Bhutto as a candidate for Prime Minister. Since he is technically still under ban, its unlikely he will be able to run in the January elections.
The news of the successful attack against Benazir Bhutoo has been all over the news and everyone is wondering two things: Who did it and what will happen now?
The general suspicion is that ex-General and now-only President Musharref ordered the killing or at the least had knowledge that it would happen. This is probably wrong for several reasons. Bhutto was a political opponent of Musharraf, as was seen by the mass demonstrations of joy at her return. The USG put tremendous pressure on Musharraf to take off his uniform and theoretically divest himself of his Army connections. General Musharraf appointed his Best Uniformed Friend as his successor as head of the Army, and obviously that doesn’t pass the smell test, but if you look at it logically, is he required to appoint his worst enemy? If you take a look at Mr Bu$h, you never saw him appointing generals who didn’t toady up to him and say exactly what he wanted them to say.
(One shouldn’t take away from that last paragraph that I’m necessarily comparing the US with Pakistan, a country ruled by a madman who is despised and hated by the citizenry, beset by internal religious and political strife, housing religious fanatics, with a shaky hand at the button controlling nuclear weapons.)
However President Musharraf and Ms Bhutto had at least publicly committed themselves to some sort of power-sharing in order to quiet internal unrest, and her death will undoubtedly cause more domestic dissent.
The next most logical actor would be a takfiri jihadist. One reason for this would be the fact that a bomb was used. It was a pretty impressive bomb, since apparently about 25 other people were killed by the bomb. There has been a wave of bomb attacks recently in Pakistan, causing a number of deaths and somehow it seems eerily similar to what happened in Iraq.
The BBC is reporting that Ms Bhutto had just left a rally and was standing up in her car, waving through the sunroof of her car when the assassin stepped forward, and shot her in the neck and chest and then triggered his bomb. Chalk that up to a failure of the security services in failing to examine the cheering throngs for weapons.
I suppose.
The BBC is reporting a large number of spontaneous demonstrations in the region around Karachi, which is the home area of her greatest political support. There have been several reports of cars and buses set afire, and at least four people have been killed. There are also reports of unrest in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Islamabad.
Now we can start worrying about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and what will happen to it if there is a major upheaval in the country.
On another negative note, this certainly puts paid to the Bu$h malAdministration’s attempt to rein in President Musharraf and get him to loosen up his internal harsh grip. The narrative has been that Washington has wanted to loosen up President Musharraf’s rule, provide a greater degree of democracy, and refocus his military attention from India towards what the US considers the real threat, the al Qaeda and Taliban supporters in Waziristan. The US has been pouring millions of dollars into Pakistan recently, with the money dedicated specifically to supporting the PK military forces engaged in controlling the wild tribes in the North West, and Waziristan in particular.
The US learned earlier this week that, disappointingly, these funds have not reached the military forces in the North West provinces. As Bernhard points out,
Short of an unlikely military coup against Musharraf, I currently see no way how the U.S. can again get the upper hand over him. The bribing of the tribes and planed [sic] operation of U.S. special forces in North Western Frontier may have ended before they really started.
Which means, I suppose, that the Eternal War Against Terror will continue, unendingly, right through the administration of whatever Democrat wins in November 2008, until the Twelfth of Never. Regrettably, it looks as if Mr Bu$h’s promise to get Osama bin-Forgotten has once again been foiled. The US military will require ever-larger sums of money to fund their growth, which will inevitably lead to a diminution of funding for programs that support the elderly, children and other helpless and unfortunate Americans.
A truly cynical man would understand that it is time to buy more Defense Industry stocks.
UPDATE: Juan Cole is associated with a second blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs and it has linked to a series of Getty Imagesphotos taken during the rally before her death in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.
Yesterday’s NY Times has an illuminating video report about the Awakening, describing it as facing an uncertain future after having helped calm one of the flashpoints of Iraq. There’s no URL for this report. It’s located on the front page, immediately below the slugged main stories.
As the video points out, Anbar has transitioned from being a textbook example of chaos and anarchy to a relatively calm and quiet area, despite ongoing sectarian tensions. Sunni Anbar distrusts the Shiite central government and wants nothing to do with it.
The Anbaris are fine about American money, however, as the report highlights an Imam happily sticking a fistful of bills into a plastic bag.
“…the Americans are handing out millions of dollars. Imams in Falluja like this man, whose mosque once blared anti-American screeds, now happily visit American bases to collect $15,000 grants.
If the American handouts stop or diminish will he still cooperate?”
Indeed, will they? It may be an exercise in jaw-banging to discuss what would happen if we left, because we aren’t leaving. The USG has invest billions of dollars in massive “enduring bases” and the fabled largest embassy in the world to support the planned American hegemony in the Middle East. The Democratic Party, which seized a Congressional majority on the promise of getting us out of Iraq, has been disgracefully unwilling or incompetent in keeping that promise.
A cynical man might wonder whether politicians like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer were really serious.
The report points out that the issues surrounding the strength and persistence aren’t only about money. There is also the issue of sectarianism in Sunni Anbar. Sheikh Mahmoud Abeb Shabeeb sees the central government as his enemy, in much the same way that millions of Americans think about our overlords in Washington.
The sectarianism that shows itself in every part of life in Iraq even infests the need for improvement and rebuilding. There is a perceived competition for infrastructure repair and reconstruction.
A police commander in Ramadi:
“If Ramadi and Anbar tribes are not treated fairly, Baghdad is not safe.”
Nice.
The Shiite central government of course is fearful of the Awakening because they don’t want to think of a well-trained and well-armed group of Iraqis who say they are quite willing to do their own ethnic cleansing if they aren’t given a proper share of governing. As I pointed out here, the central government wants to disband the militias of the Anbar Awakening as soon as possible.
http://www.mainandcentral.org/archives/2007/12/differing_views.html
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force. … The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government's most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence.
The militias, more than 70,000 strong and often made up of former insurgents, are known as Awakening Councils, or Concerned Local Citizens.
Just in case you felt the video report was too grim, there’s also a nice little slideshow with text commentary about the attempts to bring the Awakening to Baghdad.
There’s been a great deal of discussion of this topic recently and it might be prudent to investigate the matter. Two of the better blogs who regularly discuss this topic are Mountain Runner and Swedish Meatballs. Both are good reads, although Meatballs has been accused of being NOT WORK FRIENDLY if you’re a corporate drone working in cubicleland or are employed by say, a fundamentalist christian church.
Despite what you might think, “public diplomacy” these days is not about the public talking with people in other countries. Instead, it means a government (and I do mean this here thing we’ve got across the back of our necks) outreaching to a public. What you call your basic “We care” message distributed to folks in other countries where we have need for their natural resources and don’t want them to get all upset when they find our hand in their pockets.
A good example was Karen Hughes when she was the Assistant Secretary of State for - I forget the exact title – maybe it was “Bullshitting the Third World” or something like that.
In Ms Hughes’ much ballyhooed tour through the Middle East the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs traveled through a number of countries speaking to women’s groups. The “listening tour” mainly consisted of Ms Hughes telling the various Muslim women’s groups how the United States intended to spread democracy in the region. The women were expected to listen, which was probably not what they expected, having thought Ms Hughes’ “listening tour” meant she would listen.
The Bu$h malAdministration has invested a lot of effort in public outreach in the US. When we see this sort of effort in dictatorships we call it “propaganda.” Umm. I may have made my point here.
Mountain Runner has a wealth of information about this topic, and explains what’s good and what isn’t.
Swedish Meatballs specializes in Information Operations and public outreach. You can learn a great deal there. Just put the kids to bed before you dial ‘em up, OK?
One of the best forms of public diplomacy was something I remember fondly – and vaguely, because it was a long time ago – that always happened on Christmas Eve. Way back in the dim mists of time, when the danger to our nation was outside the country, the intrepid airmen of NORAD kept watch 24 hours a day, ever on the alert for Soviet bombers, and later missiles. coming to get us with their dread thermonuclear bombs of socialism. NORAD operated a string of radar stations across the far north, always on watch.
We’d sit around the living room, listening to Christmas records on the radio, watching the tree, and I’d be fighting to stay awake because I wanted to see those lovely wrapped packages appear from Santa’s bag. Starting around 7:30 there would be an announcement on the radio from NORAD about unusual traffic around the North Pole and the game was on!
When you’re seven years old you didn’t consider the logistical difficulties of Santa visiting millions of homes in one evening; you just believed. And NORAD confirmed the truth!
NORAD doesn’t do those Christmas Eve alerts on radio or TV any more. We’re in the 21st century now and the intertubes are usually available.
But he’s still put there, braving the cold, flying through the skies at about a zillion miles an hour, making children’s wishes come true, I know it’s true because NORAD says so.
This, and the Marine Corps’ “Toys for Tots” are probably the best public diplomacy the US Armed Forces, and hence the USG, are still doing. So, thank you, gentlemen and ladies, for what you do. And may you all be home for Christmas next year.
