“For the Taliban, Islam is about propaganda... For us, it’s about faith.”

In recent years, the army has recruited 50 men known as hafiz — those who have memorized the Koran — in addition to dozens of clerics. Those officials work to ensure that Islamic law is observed within the ranks and that the intensity of the war doesn’t overwhelm soldiers’ religious obligations. The army’s cadre of spiritual leaders, most of whom carry religious texts, not weapons, are also meant to send a message to Afghan civilians, as walking symbols of the military’s faith.

Obama must decide whether to talk to the Taliban

Neighboring countries and most Afghans believe that the endgame has begun for a post-U.S. Afghanistan. There are just 14 months for the U.S. military surge to show results while Washington simultaneously prepares to begin its July 2011 troop withdrawal and handover to the Afghan government. Already, efforts to jockey for future control of Afghanistan have been seen among Pakistan, India, Iran and even Russia. Several NATO countries eager to withdraw forces are frustrated. It is clear in the region that someone will have to mediate with the Taliban, but in the absence of U.S. leadership, a tug of war is taking place over who will do it, when, how and where.

Pakistan's War of Choice

Although Pakistan is stepping up its efforts, this article alludes to the main reason they refuse to commit fully.

Pakistan seems unwilling to move much more of its army away from the Indian border, meaning a further delay before operations commence in North Waziristan — home to the Haqqani network, a radical group headed by the Taliban commander Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which is believed to be behind some of the largest attacks in recent years.

I did not meet any Pakistanis who actually seemed to wish to see the Afghan Taliban back in power. But the country simply does not have the military capacity to make major moves against the Afghan fundamentalists. And, less understandably, Pakistanis tend to see Indian conspiracies behind what is happening in Afghanistan, and fear being trapped between their longtime nemesis on one side and an Indian puppet on the other.

At the headquarters of the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, I was told that India was suspected of providing explosives to Tehrik-i-Taliban extremists through Afghanistan. Many Pakistanis claim that the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai is essentially a reincarnation of the old Northern Alliance from the Afghan civil war — a union largely made up of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks and partly financed by India. (This despite the fact that Afghanistan’s ministers of defense and interior are Pashtun, as is President Karzai.)Pakistanis wonder why India is building so many consulates in Afghanistan, and even Indian-subsidized health clinics are considered suspicious.

Afghan militants use white phosphorus

This is just another ploy by the Taliban to turn the populace even further away from the U.S. I know that we surely aren't using Willie P, but locals might believe it is us firing the artillery.

Taliban Seize Vital Pakistan Area Closer to the Capital

Confronting Two Key Challenges in Afghanistan

Here is a link to the full report: Confronting Two Key Challenges in Afghanistan

The first is whether and how to talk to the Taliban, and the second concerns the lines of authority for the U.S. and coalition forces. Resolving these two issues would make a fundamental contribution to the overall goal of the mission, which is to build a safe, secure and effective Afghan state.

It's Always Sunny in Pakistanelphia

20 in Pakistan Die in Bombing


Pakistan to deport Afghan refugees

Zardari has pledged his co-operation in the US 'war on terror', but he must tread carefully given strong domestic opposition to his country's alliance with Washington.

This balancing act has become increasingly complicated because of increasing US missile attacks against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in Pakistan's northwest and more recently by Zadari's comments to The Wall Street Journal suggesting he had consented to the strikes.

"We have an understanding, in the sense that we're going after an enemy together," the newspaper quoted him as saying on Saturday.

US, Britain, and UN weigh options amid rising violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan

Pakistan leader's India comments irk establishment: analysts

Pakistani and American Troops Exchange Fire

Not good... we need to get Pakistan on board and give them guarantees that we will not leave them all alone in fighting the Taliban. Otherwise, they will continue to distrust both sides.

A Man, A Plan, Afghanistan

This is a wonderful outline of possible measures that could be implemented in Afghanistan to "win" the war. Outlining the deteriorating state of Afghanistan, Peter Bergen writes:

Don't be surprised. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan achieved wonders--but only in the short term. Today, Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders are running free. Pakistan seems unable or unwilling to clamp down on leading militants on its territory, and jihadist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan have increased enormously in the past year. More Pakistani citizens died in militant violence in 2007 than in the previous five years combined. Similarly, in Afghanistan's eastern provinces, violence is up by 40 percent in the last several months; more American soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And, as is by now well-known, U.S. intelligence assesses that Al Qaeda has regrouped along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Citing how few security forces are present in Afghanistan, Bergen says that an Afghan draft could be used to create an Afghan National Guard with NATO taking the lead for training them. Despite this suggestion, Bergen paints a grim picture by comparing troop levels in Iraq to Afghanistan. Remember, General David Petraeus outlined a much larger force for counterinsurgency operations, what I will call the "necessary" force to "win." We still do not have the "necessary" force in Iraq, what we have is the "sufficient" force that does an adequate job of keeping the peace and treading water. In Afghanistan, we do not even have the "sufficient" force:

Iraq has around 550,000 members of the Iraqi security services and some 140, 000 American soldiers stationed there, while Afghanistan--which is one-third larger and has four million more citizens--has only 140,000 soldiers and police and around 70,000 US and NATO troops. You can't bring security to the country with those low numbers. And, without security, you can't have reconstruction.

Still, Afghanistan does not need a lot more American boots on the ground. It needs the right kind of boots. Because the U.S. military and NATO are now stretched to breaking point, the vast majority of additional soldiers and policemen must be supplied by the Afghans. To that end, the coalition must send more Special Forces and civilian advisers who specialize in the training of indigenous forces.

In addition to a draft, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also been contemplating the formation of tribal militias in order to hurt Taliban authority:

Ordinary Afghans tend to trust their tribal shuras to solve their problems, and these "Sons of Afghanistan" would fill the security void until the Afghan army and police reached levels at which they could secure their country--many, many years from now. Such tribal militias could be paid with U.S. funds just as the Sons of Iraq are. Such a plan, though, must be implemented carefully, to avoid recreating the warlord-led militias that have been so successfully disbanded since the fall of the Taliban.

In addition to more troops, Bergen argues for three projects that the troops should be working on to complete in order to keep regular Afghans' support: 1. Fixing the electrical grid, 2. securing the Kandahar-Kabul road, and 3. "finishing the Kajaki dam in southern Afghanistan should become a top priority; when completed, it will provide electricity to some two million Afghans, most of whom live deep in Talibanland."

Finally, Bergen deals with American drug policy in Afghanistan:

Also currently feeding the Taliban's ranks is America's boneheaded counternarcotics strategy. America's primary policy prescription is poppy field eradication, and a more failed policy is hard to imagine: Afghanistan continues to produce ever-larger amounts of opium and its derivative, heroin--providing 93 percent of the world's supply--and the Taliban insurgency is financed in good part by this trade. What's more, two million Afghan farmers and their families survive on poppies, and those whose crops are destroyed are generally the poorer ones who can't pay the bribes to have their fields left alone. No surprise that those farmers are easy recruits to the Taliban cause.

Instead of penalizing these poor farmers, the United States needs to invest in the legitimate Afghan agricultural economy--though subsidies, price supports, and seeds for alternative crops--and to build roads to get those crops to market. As it did with Colombia's drug kingpins in the 1990s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration should make use of Afghanistan's shame-based culture and make public the list of the country's top drug suspects, including government officials.

My take on this situation revolves around U.S. policy towards Pakistan. Bergen deals with this towards the end of the piece, but not at length. Though citing how the ISI tolerates the Taliban because they fear that the U.S. will make a sloppy withdrawal, Bergen makes no mention of a U.S. brokered peace between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. This should be of even greater importance to the U.S. than the Israel-Palestine situation. Pakistan has tried to embrace the United States for years, and we have turned the other way, instead embracing India more. On the Indian front, we still haven't even gotten them to crack down on the drug trade which runs through India to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Our neophyte policies toward the India-Pakistan conflict must stop, and hopefully will with a new administration. We could better focus our diplomatic efforts on the India-Pakistan conflict than on the Israel-Palestine situation. On a similiar note, the U.S. must also deal with that Kurdistan-Turkey problem in Iraq as well... the next administration should attempt for broker a peace deal there too. Just think, we could have four democratic, predominantly Muslim nations if we broker peace between a new Kurdistan, Turkey, Iraq (sans Kurdistan which should be given independence), and Pakistan.