“The latest sad news is that the Christian Crusaders (Americans) have burned a copy of the Holy Quran in Wardak province and have thus shown their enmity with Islam and the Muslims… The saddest aspect of this incident is that the American invaders have committed this heinous crime in a province (Wardak) that has been known for long as home to mujahedeen (the holy warriors). The people of this province have taken active part in past and current jihadi movements. The people of this province have always defended their country bravely and heroically. The people of this province had played a historical role in the war against British occupiers…”

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It would have been undoubtedly a surprise if Major General Michael Flynn’s report, issued by a US think tank, the Center for New American Security, came out on Dec. 29. In the current circumstances, it was not a surprise; rather it provided a good explanation to the hardest blow the CIA ever had received on its face: the Dec. 30 deadly suicide attack on the Chapman Camp which left 7 senior and very experienced CIA and one GID, the Jordanian spy agency, official along with an Afghan officer.

There are different contradicting reports about the alleged bomber: first the Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for it and said the bomber was an Afghan National Army soldier. Later the Pakistani Taliban claimed they were behind the attack and described the bomber as a local CIA informant. But then they changed their statement and said the bomber was a Jordanian double agent, Humam Khalil Muhammad.
Though the Khost attack was the deadliest for the CIA, it was not the only strike on the international community’s involvement in Afghanistan. 2009 turned out to be the most violent year of the last 8 year’s war in terms of attacks and deaths: 522 international troops were killed, according to www.icasualties.org, a website that tracks military casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.

By now, Afghanistan has been in this war for 8 years but contrary to the people’s hopes and expectations, everything is going on the wrong way: thousands of international and Afghan forces along with thousands of intelligence personnel are fighting but the insurgency is growing; the government is in place but in a very corrupt and weak shape; thousands of people are killed every year and this number has been even increasing every month; and people no longer have hopes for a peaceful and prosperous future.

The reasons behind this mess are varying: no cooperation between the international community and the Afghan stakeholders; every country that is involved in Afghanistan has its own agendas and programs; and no clear cut international pressure on Afghanistan’s neighbor countries to stop sending weapons and fighters. And finally, which should be the most concerned, reason is this Major General Michael Flynn’s revelation in which he described the US intelligence personnel as ‘ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced… and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers.’

Result? The clueless warriors are fighting a useless war!

Read: In Afghanistan, not-so-smart intelligence

The Taliban militants, leading the world’s bloodiest insurgency in recent history, have vowed to oust the international forces from Afghanistan in 2010, claiming that the year 2009 was very successful for them in terms of political and military achievements ‘against an arrogant western and American power.’

This was stated in a fresh statement posted on the movement’s website, www.alemarah.info (Pashto page). The statement, written in Pashto, and titled as ‘The year 2009: the Mujahedeen’s success and the invaders’ confusion,’ further says that everyone now is talking about reconciliation and peace talks with the Taliban which means a defeat to the Afghan government and its international supporters.

The statement refers to the heavy casualties inflicted on the international forces in 2009 and the low turnout in the August 2009 Afghan presidential and parliamentarian elections and hails them as their military and political successes. ‘This has put our enemy in a confusing and troubling situation and is now confronting internal conflicts and public opposition; has no solid and firm policy; on one side they talk about sending additional troops, but on the other side expresses the unreasonable opinion of their hurried withdrawal and on the same time demand for a political solution to the issue,’ the statement adds.

The statement also mentions the new Obama strategy, announced on Dec. 1, 2009, in which the US President promised to send additional 30,000 troops to change the momentum. ‘In response to this, the Leadership Council of the Islamic Emirate, in a letter, ordered the Mujahedeen across Afghanistan to launch new operations called ‘Nusrat’ (victory) from Saur (April),’ the statement continued.

The statement also gives figures of the casualties of 2009 which greatly differ from the figures given by the Afghan government and the NATO-led ISAF forces and independent sources. The Taliban statement puts the total number of the international forces’ deaths as 5587, but www.icasualties.org, a website that tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, reported the total number of international forces’ deaths in 2009 as 506, of them 310 deaths were Americans, double than the deaths occurred in 2008. The Taliban statement says that 7254 Afghan soldiers were killed in 2009 and puts the Taliban fighters’ casualties only as 540. There is no independent source that could give the accurate numbers of the casualties of the Afghan soldiers and police, as well as the Taliban fighters. However, these figures greatly differ than those given by the Afghan officials in press releases.

At the end of the statement, the Taliban have repeated their determination to step up the attacks further in 2010, which, according to their claim, will eventually force the international troops out of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan in 2010: challenges and expectations.

By Abdulhadi Hairan

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, acknowledged that ‘the Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas….’

Beyond doubt, the country, ahead of its second-ever presidential election, is facing disturbing challenges that, if not addressed immediately, can result in unpredictably enormous problems for the Afghan government as well as the international community. The solution, however, is not the proposed troop increase, but, as much as I know the Afghan situation and the ground reality, strengthening the government and institutions and stabilizing the democratic process will help in the long term.

Since 2001, year by year, as the number of international troops has been increasing in Afghanistan, the insurgents grew with the same speed and the government lost its capability. As a result, districts of strategic importance fell to the the Taliban who not only established their order there but recruited the youths and increased their foot force as well.

The local people trust the government if it proves its capability to protect them. They neither trust the insurgents nor the foreign forces because, as a village elder of the southwestern Farah province put it, ‘both are the aggressors, they are alien to our culture, they kill us to defeat each other – hence, both are our enemies.’

Recently I had an opportunity to visit this largely undeveloped province, five out of ten districts of which are under the direct Taliban control. They are: Pusht Rod, Gulistan, Khak-e-Safed, Bakwa and Bala Balok. The other five districts – Anar Dara, Shib-e-Koh, Pusht-e-Koh, Lash Wa Juwayn and Purchaman – are relatively peaceful but the roads between them and the provincial capital are highly insecure, therefore, the provincial capital is disconnected with the districts.

People from all these districts said a weak government was the main reason of the insecurity and Taliban presence. The insurgents, they said, did not have enough power or strength to hold the districts under their control, only a group of village youth could force them out of their areas. But the problem was that the government did not have enough forces to protect the villagers afterwards. The Americans, they complained, do the same as the insurgents.

A district administrator (or governor) said he was paid 20,000 Afghanis monthly for all his expenses. Thus, the monthly expenses of all the 10 district administrators are equal to what is spent on two meals (one lunch and one dinner) in the Provincial Reconstruction Team (Italian) and US Marines.

This is just an example. If there are professionally trained Afghan soldiers and police, they and the other staff is paid reasonable salaries, the district administrators and other officers are provided vehicles, offices and equipment, and the development projects are implemented through their channels while their expenses are checked, it will change the situation rapidly. Development projects that bring some visible changes in the lives of the villagers can do things that contingents of soldiers will never be able to do.

This does not mean that the government should be given a free hand. There are officials reportedly involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities, and the corruption in the government offices has reached an unacceptable point. The country needs a strict legal system, and a professional police force that has the capability of cleansing all the offices of corruption. There should be a force which can keep a check on the warlords in the government circles who create troubles for the country more detrimental and grave than that of the insurgents.

 The Pakistani government in the restive northwest province on Sunday arrested Maulana Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, the militant leader in Swat, and head of Tanzim-e-Nifaz-e-Sharia-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).

 “He killed a lot of people. Again he was planning for this. We will not allow anyone to destroy peace at Malakand and Swat,” said Mian Iftekhar Hussain, Information Minister of the province, as quoted by AFP.

 Interestingly, Mr. Hussain is a part of the same government which freed the Maulana in February 2008 and allowed him to go home comfortably. He then brokered a peace deal between his son-in-law and the government. The government then did not consider the fact that he had ‘killed a lot of people.’ How a peace deal can work when it is brokered by a killer? The government ignored this question, the Swat peace deal did never work, and it had to arrest him again.

 It is not just one example of the game that the government of Pakistan, its army and its secret agencies have been playing in the region: it places the blame of the assassination of the country’s most popular leader and two-time Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and wants to kill or capture him, yet it failed to provide protection to a tribal commander, Qari Zainuddin, who rebelled against his network. Similarly, the government is fighting against the militants in many parts of the tribal and settled areas, yet it failed to support the tribal lashkars (armies) that wanted to wipe out the militants from their areas. This is enough evidence of the actual fact: Pakistan wants neither to win nor lose this game.

 As most of the Pakistanis thought the militants as their ‘strategic assets’ because their government was fully supporting them in their campaign against Afghanistan, their uprising against the Pakistani government and people has still not changed the minds and interests of some powerful elements within the government and the army. These elements are the key stakeholders of the power and they want to continue the war against terrorism in just a confusing and complicated way in order to keep both the international community and the insurgents engaged in the region. These elements need the international community for huge aids and the insurgents to use against India. The result: they can neither win nor lose this war.

 The horrendous increase of insurgent attacks across Afghanistan ahead of the upcoming presidential election says what it has behind it: the security situation will deteriorate further which means that the polling will be completed without the international observers watching. This makes it clear that if there is no security, the voting process will not be free and transparent.

 Understandably we can hope that everything will be fine. But concerns have been widely expressed about some government officials’ illegal involvement in campaign activities for certain candidates which will lead the polling to be massively rigged and results manipulated.

 It is sure that neither the international community nor the Afghan people can afford such a situation because, if there was rigging on a massive scale or the results were manipulated, a reaction similar to the aftermath of the Iranian election will come up. Thus, uprisings and countrywide protests will add up to the prevailing tension and this is very likely to paralyze the whole system.

 The idea of deploying more international and Afghan troops on the Election Day is very important in this context because insecurity will result in rigging and rigging will lead the country into chaos. Consequently, the failure and chaos will gravely undermine all the efforts the international community has so far done to stabilize the country and its government.

 So it is very necessary that the international community, particularly the United Nations, take immediate steps and make sound decisions before things reach the irreversible level.