Character assassination by photo selection
Bush said he was satisfied with those assurances. "When the president looks me in the eye and says the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaeda, I believe him," he said.
(Bush Seeks Increased Pakistani Cooperation:Musharraf Vows Fight Against 'Talibanization'
Pamela's reporting boggles the mind she continues to produce article after article that is completely devoid of any connection to reality. Forget investigative reporting, does she even bother reading the local papers, or for that matter even the US press and her own paper?
Her analysis here - is that the lack of progress in Afghanistan in spite of the massive amounts of money being pumped in is largely due to corruption and inefficiency in the Karzai government. There are two problems with her conclusion.
------ article full text ---------
Afghan Experiment Marked by Progress And Disillusionment
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 11, 2006; A09
KARABAGH, Afghanistan -- When Mahmad Naib ventured back to his village, north of Kabul, after U.S. warplanes and Afghan fighters drove out the Taliban militia in November 2001, he found little but scorched earth. The grapevines were dead, the houses looted, the mosque in ruins and the magnificent sycamores burned black.
Today, the resettled mud-and-timber village is surrounded by ripening grapes and obscured by a thicket of new restaurants, workshops and gas stations lining the nearby Shomali highway. The roar of fast traffic drowns out the ping of hammers as workers erect a shiny tin dome on the half-restored village mosque.
"Life is hard, but it is peaceful, and that is what matters most," said Naib, 55, a mason who was shoveling debris Thursday out of the newly plastered mosque. "We do have our complaints. Wages are low, water is scarce, and the government never dug the wells it promised. But . . . by God's grace, we will finish this mosque in time for Ramadan."
One day after he spoke, a massive car bombing killed 16 people in Kabul, the capital, 30 miles to the south. The brazen midday attack underscored the fragility of peace in Afghanistan today, nearly five years after the overthrow of the Taliban rulers who imposed an extreme form of Islam and harbored Osama bin Laden.
Since late 2001, the country of 25 million people has undergone an ambitious experiment, backed by international troops, expertise and aid, to bring modern democracy to an impoverished, deeply conservative Muslim society.
On some levels, there has been remarkable progress: presidential and parliamentary elections, a new constitution, a new national army and greater freedoms for women. In poor but stable communities such as Karabagh, halting social and economic gains have been made: a part-time nurse in a clinic, carpets in a school where students once crouched on concrete, a grape harvest that is approaching half the pre-Taliban crop.
But in the southern provinces that spawned the Taliban movement, open warfare has resumed after four years of relative quiet. Insurgents are battling NATO troops and employing suicide bombs. Thousands of villagers have fled their homes, to escape both insurgent violence and NATO airstrikes. Schools have shut down, and development projects have stopped.
At the same time, opium poppy cultivation, virtually wiped out by the Taliban, has soared to record levels, largely in the south. Nationwide it increased by 59 percent in the past year alone, according to new U.N. figures. Drug traffickers have formed protective alliances with the Islamic insurgents.
"The situation in the south is difficult and fragile," said Mark Laity, a spokesman here for NATO forces. "We are conducting a number of offensives, but the Taliban have also been pushing hard. They are taking heavy casualties but standing their ground more. Our strategy is still to create secure spaces for development and governance, but the effort is taking longer and involving a lot more combat than expected."
NATO's commanding general, citing the surprising toughness of the insurgents, called last week on member nations to provide as many as 2,500 additional troops for the south. But the proposal faces questions in European capitals about the risks involved. Since taking responsibility for the south from U.S.-led forces at the beginning of August, NATO has lost 35 troops.
Senior Taliban leaders and al-Qaeda figures, including bin Laden, who is widely believed to be hiding in the wilds along the Afghan-Pakistani border, meanwhile continue to elude capture. Afghan officials have repeatedly accused neighboring Pakistan of allowing Taliban insurgents to find refuge in the border region.
In recent months, the violence has spread to the Kabul area and the east, creating a sense of insecurity that now overshadows all other national concerns. Even in the north and west, where the insurgency has hardly reached, many people today express dismay with the government of President Hamid Karzai. They say it remains weak and distant, that public services and protection are grossly inadequate, and that commanders from the war against Soviet troops in the 1980s often hold extortionate sway over daily life.
Foreign analysts and domestic critics point to a daunting list of social, economic and institutional problems that Karzai's government has largely failed to correct despite massive aid and training from abroad: impassable roads, ineffective courts, too few doctors, too few police officers. Complaints of corruption are constant, taking a huge toll on public confidence in the system.
"We have had some big successes -- the development of media, the parliamentary and presidential elections. But real successes that people can feel in their daily lives? Honestly, there is nothing," said Shukria Barakzai, 34, a member of parliament from Kabul. "Poppy is booming, but farmers are still poor. Good jobs are available, but only for the few with computer and English skills. Clinics are open, but anyone with a serious illness has to go to Pakistan for treatment."
For the first four years after Karzai came to office in late 2001, such harsh criticism was rare. The influx of foreign support -- more than $3.5 billion in U.S. economic aid alone -- brought a sense of progress. More than 6 million children were enrolled in schools; crews built a new highway between the two major cities, Kabul and Kandahar; and the economy grew at a brisk 15 percent a year.
But the high expectations that democracy would deliver jobs and development has gradually turned to bitter disappointment as reports of corruption spread and the massive doses of foreign aid seemed to produce few tangible benefits for the poor.
Kabul, the capital of 3.5 million, did acquire a veneer of commercial and social progress. Dozens of glittering office buildings and wedding salons opened; ATMs whirred and cellphones buzzed. But many neighborhoods remained without electricity and water, and urban poverty exploded with the massive return of war refugees. A major riot in late May revealed both the depth of public frustration and the failure of police protection.
Ethnic tensions deepened despite foreign efforts to craft a government in which major ethnic groups shared power.
Many Afghan Muslims also began to equate modernization with immorality. They mistrusted the emancipation of women enshrined in the new charter and disapproved of Kabul restaurants selling alcohol to foreigners. Earlier this year, an Afghan man was nearly sentenced to death for converting to Christianity.
The strong initial welcome for U.S. and other foreign troops in the country also began to chill. There were complaints about airstrikes on village compounds that killed civilians. As the insurgency erupted this year, with more firefights and bombings in civilian areas, Afghans began blaming the foreign soldiers for exposing them to danger.
"We don't want these troops patrolling here, because it only brings trouble and kills innocent people," said Akbar, a 54-year-old teacher standing beside the Kabul boulevard where a suicide bomber attacked a NATO patrol last week, killing at least three bystanders. "We were happy when the Taliban fell and the new government came, because we thought it would bring peace and development," he said. "Now the people are not starving, but with all these deaths and bombs, it seems like the Taliban time was better."
Afghan officials acknowledge that legal and democratic institutions are still weak, but they point to recent improvements such as the appointments of better-qualified Supreme Court justices and an anti-corruption commission. Human rights activists said they were encouraged by these changes but concerned that they would not trickle down to rural regions.
"We have built institutions and elected legitimate leaders . . . but in much of the country, there is no government at all, just empty locked offices," said Ahmad Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. As a result, he said, some communities are beginning to accept the Taliban, and others are turning to local militias.
With the insurgents exploiting government weaknesses and public frustrations, a variety of experts have warned that the achievements of the past five years -- and even the stability of the Afghan government -- could be in serious jeopardy.
Barnett R. Rubin, an American expert on Afghanistan, conducted a broad survey here last month. In a resulting report, "Still Ours to Lose: Afghanistan on the Brink," sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, he wrote that many Afghans had lost faith in the Karzai government and that some felt conditions in the country were "ripe for fundamentalism."
Salvaging the situation, Rubin wrote, will require a major increase and redirection in foreign aid, serious reforms in the justice and police systems, and the shutting down of Taliban support networks in neighboring Pakistan -- none of which seems likely to happen in the near future.
In Karabagh, the Taliban threat still seems far away. Schools are full, tourist shops are stocked with local pottery, smoking kilns bake mountains of construction bricks, and cargo trucks haul away crate after crate of grapes.
But even here, people here are beginning to voice the disillusionment and anxiety expressed by Afghans in more troubled regions. They complain that local officials, linked to former militia commanders, demand shares of their crop profits, bridal dowries and rationed irrigation water.
"Everyone knows the money goes into certain pockets, but at least we can walk down the road without fear," said Naimullah, 40, who was picking grapes on a rented plot Thursday with his wife, brother and four children. "I heard about the Taliban trying to come back, but no one in Afghanistan wants more fighting and killing," he said. "We have come home, so we must plant our crops and see what they produce."
Peter Bergen, writing in the Washington Post, had an excellent article on the growth of the Taliban.
But the key to the resurgent Taliban can be summarized in one word: Pakistan. The Pakistani government has proved unwilling or incapable (or both) of clamping down on the religious militia, even though the headquarters of the Taliban and its key allies are in Pakistan. According to a U.S. military official, not one senior Taliban leader has been arrested or killed in Pakistan since 2001 -- nor have any of the top leaders of the militias headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, who are fighting U.S. forces alongside the Taliban.
_______________full text__________
The Taliban, Regrouped And Rearmed
By Peter Bergen
Sunday, September 10, 2006; B01
KABUL, Afghanistan
The interpreter's hand-held radio crackled with the sound of intercepted Taliban transmissions, and he signaled the infantry patrol to wait while he translated. At 7 a.m. one morning late in the summer, peasants were already out scything wheat, with their children tending fields of pink and white poppies that would soon add to Afghanistan's record-setting opium and heroin supplies. We were 9,000 feet up, in the hamlet of Larzab, in a remote part of Zabul province -- the heart of Talibanland.
Our interpreter, Mohammed, estimated that the Taliban fighters were less than half a mile away. We walked through the fields for 20 more minutes before stopping next to a small hill. The chatter revealed that the Taliban were "watching us and waiting for us to get closer," Maj. Ralph Paredes explained to me as his men radioed to their base the likely coordinates of the hidden fighters. Soldiers back at the base -- a mud-walled compound without electricity or water -- fired mortar rounds over our heads to a hill several hundred meters from our position, where the Taliban might be hiding. We never learned whether they found their target.
Just one more patrol, and one more skirmish, in Afghanistan's war -- a conflict in which the fighting and ferocity are regaining strength with each passing month. Indeed, the U.S. military and NATO are now battling the Taliban on a scale not witnessed since 2001, when the war here began, and are increasingly fighting them in remote areas such as Larzab where the Taliban once roamed freely.
When I traveled in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, the Taliban threat had receded into little more than a nuisance. But now the movement has regrouped and rearmed. Bolstered by a compliant Pakistani government, hefty cash inflow from the drug trade and a population disillusioned by battered infrastructure and lackluster reconstruction efforts, the Taliban is back -- as is Afghanistan's once forgotten war.
In the past three months alone, coalition forces have killed more than 1,000 Taliban fighters, according to Col. Tom Collins, a U.S. military spokesman, while the religious militia has killed dozens of coalition troops and hundreds of Afghan civilians, spreading a climate of fear throughout the country. And suicide attacks in Afghanistan have risen from single digits two years ago to more than 40 already this year. Most of the victims are civilians -- including more than a dozen bystanders who were killed here Friday when a bomb-laden car struck a convoy of armored U.S. vehicles just 200 yards from the U.S. Embassy; the attack also killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded a third. Half an hour after the blast, I watched as firefighters hosed down the streets, which were littered with shards of blackened metal and singed body parts.
I recently traveled to Afghanistan for three weeks, meeting with government officials, embedding with U.S. soldiers from the 2-4 Infantry and interviewing senior American military officers. I found that while the Taliban may not constitute a major strategic threat to President Hamid Karzai's government, they have become a serious tactical challenge for U.S. and NATO troops, as the war here intensifies. And their threat is only amplified by their ubiquity and invisibility.
"In this place, they are everywhere," explained Mohammed, our interpreter. "They are sitting here as a farmer. Then they are Taliban."
When I visited Zabul province in July, Lt. Col. Frank Sturek was in charge of U.S. military operations there. Sturek, from Aberdeen, Md., earned his insurgent-fighting stripes in Mosul, Iraq, under the tutelage of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus. When I spoke to Sturek, he had recently lost two of his men in firefights with the Taliban. In a nighttime interview conducted by flashlight in the mud compound, Sturek described a two-hour struggle on July 19 against about 120 Taliban who were armed with mortars, recoil-less rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Judging from newly dug graves, Sturek estimated 35 to 40 Taliban had been killed.
Despite their numerous casualties, the Taliban are much more willing than Iraqi insurgents to engage in pitched battles, Sturek said. "These guys will mix it up," he said, "and they use a lot more direct fire." In the five months he had been in Afghanistan, he noted, none of the Taliban fighters his men had fought had ever surrendered.
Echoing all other U.S. officers I interviewed in Afghanistan, Sturek emphasized that the Taliban threat required a political solution, not a military one, and that expanding the U.S. presence and reconstruction efforts into remote areas would win the long-term conflict. "You can win every firefight you want, but the battle is in these villages," he said. "This is where you change the minds of the people -- or at least create a doubt that the Taliban are not preaching the right message."
A political solution is also the mantra of the U.S. commanding officer in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, an intense, intellectual soldier who speaks Mandarin and is on his second tour in the country. Over coffee in his Kabul office, he said that the situation in Afghanistan still looks reasonably optimistic. "I tell everyone don't look at the snapshot," he said. "Look at the movie called Afghanistan."
For Eikenberry, that movie features the democratically elected president and parliament, as well as millions of boys and girls who are newly in school. Indeed, in the most recent poll of Afghan public opinion, released by ABC News in December 2005, 77 percent of Afghans said their country is headed in the right direction.
Of course, a similar poll today might find fewer Afghans with this point of view, given rising dissatisfaction with the Karzai government and growing anti-American sentiment revealed in riots that shook Kabul in May. Eikenberry acknowledges that "the strength and coherence of the Taliban movement is greater than it was a year ago," citing tribal and land disputes and trafficking in narcotics as reasons for the resurgence. He also draws a clear link between reconstruction and violence: "Wherever the roads end, that's where the Taliban starts."
An amnesty program formally begun in 2005 by the Karzai government offers one promising approach to containing the Taliban threat. In Qalat, the provincial capital of Zabul, I witnessed U.S. forces release Mullah Abdul Ali Akundzada, who was accused of sheltering Taliban members and had been arrested near the site where a makeshift bomb had detonated. In a deal brokered by the Karzai government and the U.S. military, Akundzada was handed over to a group of about 30 religious and tribal leaders, who publicly pledged that the released mullah would support the government. In an honor-based society such as Afghanistan, this program is working well. According to Afghan and U.S. officials, only a handful of the more than 1,000 Taliban fighters taking advantage of the amnesty have gone back to fighting the government and coalition forces.
Yet even as the amnesty program shows promise, Afghanistan's ballooning drug trade has succeeded in expanding the Taliban ranks. It is no coincidence that opium and heroin production, which now makes up about half of the Afghan economy, spiked at the same time that the Taliban staged a comeback. A U.S. military official told me that charities and individual donations from the Middle East are also boosting the Taliban's coffers. These twin revenue streams -- drug money and contributions -- allow the Taliban to pay their fighters as much as $100 a month, which compares favorably to the $70 salary of an Afghan police officer. Whatever the source, the Taliban can draw upon significant resources, at least by Afghan standards. One U.S. military raid on a Taliban safe house this year recovered $900,000 in cash.
The Taliban's growing presence in central Afghanistan's Ghazni province -- outside the group's traditional strongholds in the south and east -- is another benchmark of its strength. Nearly half the districts in Ghazni are now under significant Taliban influence, a U.S. military official said. The Taliban units operating there aim to control access to Kabul 100 miles to the north, just one more sign that Taliban forces increasingly move across the country with ease.
But the key to the resurgent Taliban can be summarized in one word: Pakistan. The Pakistani government has proved unwilling or incapable (or both) of clamping down on the religious militia, even though the headquarters of the Taliban and its key allies are in Pakistan. According to a U.S. military official, not one senior Taliban leader has been arrested or killed in Pakistan since 2001 -- nor have any of the top leaders of the militias headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, who are fighting U.S. forces alongside the Taliban.
Amir Haqqani, the leader of the Taliban in Zabul province, "never comes across the border" from Pakistan into Afghanistan, Sturek told me. The Taliban's most important leadership council, the Quetta Shura, is based in the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province; the Peshawar Shura is headquartered in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. In addition, Hekmatyar operates in the tribal areas of Dir and Bajur; Haqqani is based in Waziristan; and al-Qaeda has a presence in Waziristan and Chitral -- all Pakistani regions that border Afghanistan.
Finally, the peace deal announced this month between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban militants along the Afghan border raises more concerns that such groups will operate more freely on and across the border. A U.S. military official in Afghanistan told me he is "extremely worried" about the pact, through which Pakistan agrees to withdraw army units from the region and will turn over checkpoints to local tribes that are effectively Taliban. And with military force against the Taliban highly unpopular among residents in the border region, the upcoming Pakistani presidential election in 2007 means that even less action will be taken in the months ahead.
Mullah Dadullah, a key Taliban commander, gave two interviews to al-Jazeera in the past year in which he made several illuminating observations about the scale and nature of the insurgency. Dadullah put Taliban forces at about 12,000 fighters -- considerably greater than a U.S. military source's estimate of 7,000 to 10,000, but a number that could have some validity given the numerous part-time Taliban farmer/fighters. Dadullah also stressed the Taliban's "close links" to al-Qaeda. "Our cooperation is ideal," he said, adding that Osama bin Laden is issuing orders to the Taliban. Indeed, a senior U.S. military intelligence official told me that "trying to separate Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan serves no purpose. It's like picking gray hairs out of your head."
Dadullah also noted that "we have 'give and take' with the mujaheddin in Iraq." Considering the rising number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan and the increased use of makeshift bombs, Taliban forces appear to have learned from the Iraqi insurgents. A videotape posted on the Internet by al-Qaeda in May shows how critical Iraqi techniques have become to the Afghan insurgency: The tape shows an Arab suicide bomber in Afghanistan prepping a car bomb, and driving it into an American convoy.
Just as suicide bombings in Iraq had an enormous strategic impact -- from pushing the United Nations out of the country to helping spark a civil war -- such attacks may also plunge Afghanistan into chaos. Already, suicide attacks have made much of southern Afghanistan a no-go area for foreigners and for any reconstruction efforts. According to Hekmat Karzai, head of an independent terrorism research center in Kabul, these attacks "have really instilled fear in the heart of the population." Luckily, for the moment, the suicide attackers in Afghanistan have not been nearly as deadly as those in Iraq. As one U.S. military official explained to me, almost all of the Taliban's suicide bombers are "Pashtun country guys from Pakistan," with little effective training.
The Afghan population remains generally pro-American, and its appetite for more conflict is low after more than two decades of war. However, the risks of a slide into Iraq-style chaos remain. Averting it would require Washington to end the Afghan drug trade and compel Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban warriors' havens. These are both tall orders, but Washington could gain real leverage in the area of reconstruction. So far, it has appropriated only $9 billion for Afghan reconstruction, as compared with $34 billion for Iraq, even though Afghanistan is larger, more populous and has greater infrastructure needs. And of the appropriated amount, only $2.5 billion, a State Department official told me, has been spent.
In the absence of greater U.S. investments in roads, power and water resources, the Taliban will surely prosper and continue to gain adherents. Unless they take decisive action now, U.S. policymakers may be looking back in a few years, asking themselves why they lost Afghanistan despite the promise the country showed after the fall of the Taliban regime.
bergenpeter@aol.com
Peter Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know" (Free Press).
Here is what the BBC had to say about the “Peace Deal” :
"The government policy has swung from one extreme to another, from the use of brute military force to what appears to be total capitulation to militants," wrote Ismail Khan of the Dawn newspaper.
"The government was desperate [for a solution]. It has bought temporary peace," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a close follower of Taleban affairs. "I think this accord will give legitimacy to the militants. They will behave as people who fought the army to a standstill."
Similar deals in neighbouring South Waziristan did stop attacks on Pakistani soldiers, although it strengthened the hand of locals who shared the ideology and views of the Taleban.
The accord highlights what many analysts here see as the contradiction at the heart of Gen Musharraf's leadership.
As a key US ally in the "war on terror", he is under pressure to crack down on Islamic extremism. But politically that is difficult in a country where sympathy with the Taleban and opposition to American policy run deep, including within his own armed forces.
_______________________________________________There is serious speculation that the region affected by the “Peace Deal” is exactly where OBL is hiding.
And for more on who Musharraf was dealing with check this out.
Musharraf lets Taliban attack Canadian troops: security expert
In another article, Ahmad Rashid a respected journalist on the Taliban had this to say
"We should remember that the [Pakistan] military regime before 9/11 was absolutely adamant on supporting the Taliban.
There was already a lot of pressure in the Clinton era against Pakistan support for the Taliban and getting Pakistan to help in getting Bin Ladin.
At the same time lots of support for Kashmiri jihadi groups and [the Pakistan] military did come in making this distinction, saying that terrorism is one thing and jihad another and quite legitimate."
The Asian Tribune’s article (full text below) is also a direct contrast to Constable’s analysis.
Musharraf surrenders before TalibanCreated 2006-09-11 03:11
By Allabaksh - Syndicate Features
Many might see it as a near impossible feat. Pakistan president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, has 'reaffirmed' his ‘'ommitment'to fight terrorism---by signing a 'peace' agreement with the Taliban! Along with Al Qaeda, the joint US-ISI creation, called the Taliban, is one of the two forces synonymous with acts of terrorism in the world. Actually, the Musharraf feat is even more bizarre: under the 'peace' agreement with pro-Taliban tribal leaders, Islamabad will not arrest or pursue 'peaceful foreigners' staying illegally in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan, widely believed to be one of the safest sanctuaries for terrorists and the base for launching attacks in Afghanistan.
There must be rejoicing among the terrorists. Men like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, leaders of Al Qaeda and Taliban respectively, can look for immunity from capture, never mind the huge bounty the US is offering for their arrest. The accord was signed ostensibly to end violence in North Waziristan that has followed a year-long military operation there. The pro-Taliban militants have promised not to attack Pakistan army or civilian officers or cross the border for forays into Afghanistan. In return, Islamabad has given an assurance that it would immediately stop ground and air operations, free prisoners, send the army back to barracks, compensate the militants for losses and allow the tribal population to carry ‘small arms’.
The government has also asked ‘foreigners’ in North Waziristan to leave. But that is only a half-hearted measure as the past demand for their compulsory registration has been given up. Also, the ‘foreigners’ will be allowed to stay on if they ‘respect’ the terms of the peace deal.
Now all that the Pakistan leader, mindful of the tidal wave of anti-Americanism and pro-Al Qaeda / Taliban sentiments of his countrymen and under ever increasing pressure from his fundamentalist allies, has to do to ensure that men like bin Laden and Mullah Omar remain free from the fear of arrest is to certify that these eminent foreign guests of Pakistan have not participated in any violent activity. That job is, after all, carried out by the foot soldiers. If the Americans are pleased with this they are not admitting it openly, lest it offends their good 'uniformed' friend in Islamabad.
Soon after Pakistan government and the pro-Taliban tribal elders signed the peace deal the spokesman of Gen Pervez Musharraf, Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan told the American TV network, ABC News, that if Osama bin Laden behaved like ‘a good citizen’ and as long as he stayed like ‘a peaceful citizen’ he would not be taken into custody. When this TV interview embarrassed Islamabad, the Pakistanis, as could be expected, blamed it all on the media twisting the words of the Maj Gen and said that ‘if found’, Osama bin Laden would be brought to justice.
Whether Osama bin Laden would be ‘found’ in Pakistan, despite a firm belief that he is in fact hiding there, must be a $64 million question. As for the ‘twist’ to the Maj. Gen.’s statement, the ABC News has released the transcript of the interview to nail the Pak lie. The Americans must be amused; again they are not talking about it.
The so-called peace deal with the Taliban in North Waziristan scoffs at the US-led ‘war on terror’ in which Pakistan has been declared a front rank ally of the US, constantly being showered with cash, arms and ammunition to fight the ‘war on terror’. The deal gives legitimacy to the militants. It is a clear capitulation to the militants and a sure sign that the Pakistani army has failed, deliberately or otherwise, to tame the dehumanised marauders from the medieval times.
But for the clever Pakistani dictator the deal signed in Miranshah provides an opportunity to concentrate on quelling the rebellion in the equally troubled Balochistan province with US-gifted powerful military arms that had only recently taken the life of the charismatic Baloch tribal chief, Nawab Ahmed Khan Bugti. It is a different matter that Musharraf’s recipe of solving his country’s troubles with guns have been criticised across the Pakistani political spectrum. Many are talking about the days preceding the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971.
The North Waziristan peace agreement is believed to be similar to those signed in South Waziristan previously. That deal did not stop the pro-Taliban militants from launching attacks on soldiers and crossing the border. Locally, the effect of the deal was that it added to the number of Taliban supporters.
A repeat performance in North Waziristan is not ruled out where the Pakistan army has implicitly admitted its failure to drive out the fugitive Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives. It provided, as many commentators have noted, a face- saving device to the Pakistani army, headed by Musharraf, to retreat from a war it was always incapable of winning.
Maybe, for some time in the beginning the North Waziristan deal would be made to look like working well. Musharraf would not like his patrons in the West to believe that he has yielded before the rabidly anti-American forces in his country that include many bearded Generals and so-called 'liberal' politicians.
Early violations of the peace deal have the danger of inviting strong protests from the US and NATO forces hunting for terrorists on the Afghan side of the border. Given the porous borders and the affinity between people on either side the border how can the entry of the North Waziristan-based Taliban be prevented from entering Afghan territory?
The North Waziristan peace agreement comes at a time when Afghanistan has reported an all-time high production of 16,000 tons of opium amidst reports that opium has become the new engine for human trafficking in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also follows a US claim of some success in degrading Al Qaeda.
The Pakistan ISI has a stake in the high cultivation of opium. It provides assistance to the opium flow from Afghanistan to the outside world. The ISI is known to use drug money for financing terrorist plots in Afghanistan and Kashmir. And, of course, the Taliban will be only too pleased to see opium trade flourish without any fear of military intervention.
William Maley writing in the Australian characterized the “peace deal" as direct threat to the fledgeling democracy in Afghanistan
“LAST week, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf struck a remarkable deal with religious extremists in the tribal areas of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, involving a truce in their stand-off with the army in exchange for their ending armed attacks in the country.
In Afghanistan, the reaction was less than enthusiastic, with the Governor of Paktia Province, Hakim Taniwal, warning that "if they are not being bothered, they will have more time to infiltrate here and do what they want".
Pamela’s “peace deal” is already producing results.
Blast in Kabul the worst since the Taliban
“The same enemies that blew up themselves in London, the same enemies that blew up the train in Madrid or the train in Bombay or the twin towers in America are still around,” Karzai said. “Before September 11 they were the government in Afghanistan. Today they are on the run and hiding and they come out from their hiding and try to hurt us when they can manage it.”
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Pharmacist Nawid Paidar, 31, said the killing of children, men and women in terrorist attacks was inhumane and he blamed militants crossing from Pakistan for the latest bombing.
“The Americans should execute those who organize terrorist attacks as a lesson to others,” Paidar said as he removed pieces of wood and other debris from his damaged storefront.
------ full text of article ----
Blast in Kabul the worst since the Taliban
By Paul Garwood, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - The tree-lined street near the fortress-like U.S. Embassy was quiet. Residents were strolling and grandmother Bibi Omayra was in her garden, taking in the air during the calm of the Muslim sabbath.
Suddenly a heavyset man at the wheel of a bomb-rigged Toyota sedan rammed into an American Humvee, killing 16 people - two U.S. soldiers and 14 civilians including Omayra. It was the Afghan capital's deadliest suicide attack since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban.
“My mother just went to the park for some fresh air with my daughter when the explosion happened,” said Omayra's son, Farid Wahidi, 40. “Shrapnel hit her in the chest and killed her.”
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the privately run Pajhwok Afghan News Agency. Ahmadi's exact ties to the Taliban leadership are unclear.
The Friday morning blast, which spewed body parts and pieces of U.S. military uniforms across a major road and into trees that were set ablaze by the explosion - part of the worst spate of violence in Afghanistan since the collapse of the hard-line Islamic regime.
The attack shattered what had been a typically peaceful Muslim sabbath in the war-ravaged capital and revealed the lingering vulnerability of foreign troops, local forces and Afghan civilians to terrorist attacks almost five years after a pro-American government was installed. Attacks in central Kabul have been rare in comparison to areas on the edge of the city and in the country's south.
Some 20,000 NATO soldiers and a similar number of U.S. forces are trying to crush the emboldened Taliban insurgency, mainly in southern Afghanistan. Taliban holdouts have been turning to Iraqi-style tactics - including increasing numbers of suicide bombings - to try derail the government of President Hamid Karzai.
In a statement, the Afghan president said “today's heinous act of terrorism is against the values of Islam and humanity.”
The attack in Kabul took place as many Afghans were commemorating the assassination of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massood, who was killed in an al-Qaida suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Friday's explosion went off at 10:20 a.m., just 150 feet from the landmark Massood Square, which leads to the main gate of the heavily fortified American Embassy compound. It tore a 6-foot-wide crater into the road and left body parts, Muslim prayer caps, floppy khaki-colored military hats and shoes scattered over a wide area.
Najibullah Faizi, 25, saw a blue Toyota Corolla driven by a young, heavyset man speed past another car on the inside lane before slamming into one of two U.S. Humvees in a convoy.
“I fell to the ground after the blast. American soldiers started shooting at another car nearby. There was smoke and flames everywhere,” Faizi said.
The blast sent a plume of brown smoke spiraling hundreds of feet into the sky and tore apart one of the Humvees, blowing it onto what had been its roof and turning it into twisted, flaming hulk of metal.
All that remained of the bomb-packed car was its front end, which was covered in flames some 60 feet away. A foot and ankle - apparently the attacker's - was thrown 100 feet farther.
Angry residents condemned the bombing and demanded militants end attacks in heavily populated areas.
“This is a cowardly action that terrorists always take. They don't care if it is a residential area, government area or military area,” said resident Mohammed Hayder Nangahari.
Pharmacist Nawid Paidar, 31, said the killing of children, men and women in terrorist attacks was inhumane and he blamed militants crossing from Pakistan for the latest bombing.
“The Americans should execute those who organize terrorist attacks as a lesson to others,” Paidar said as he removed pieces of wood and other debris from his damaged storefront.
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf visited Kabul this week for talks with Karzai. The leaders, both key allies of U.S. forces hunting Osama bin Laden along their vast, tribal-dominated frontier, vowed to improve cooperation to defeat the “common enemy” of terrorism.
The blast's force shattered every window in a five-story, Soviet-era apartment block facing the bomb scene, spraying shards of glass over children eating their breakfasts and women cleaning their cramped homes. Restaurants and businesses on the other side of the road also had windows and doors blown in.
An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two American soldiers lying near their burning vehicle. U.S. troops stood guard around the bodies, one of which was slumped in the gutter, the other covered by a plastic sheet. The U.S. military initially said two other soldiers were also wounded, but later revised it down to one.
Sixteen people in all were killed and 29 wounded, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, criminal director of the Kabul police. The bomber also died.
Top U.S. operational commander Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley condemned the latest killings of American troops “by these Taliban extremists who care nothing about human decency or life.”
Karzai, in an interview with Time magazine, acknowledged his government has enemies.
“The same enemies that blew up themselves in London, the same enemies that blew up the train in Madrid or the train in Bombay or the twin towers in America are still around,” he said. “Before September 11 they were the government in Afghanistan. Today they are on the run and hiding and they come out from their hiding and try to hurt us when they can manage it.”
American and NATO troops are fighting the Taliban primarily across vast desert plains in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, also center of the country's massive opium trade.
“The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis,” Brig. Ed Butler, the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told British ITV news.
He echoed NATO commander Gen. James L. Jones' call Thursday for at least 2,000 more troops. Jones, who said the next few weeks would be decisive in the fight against militants, is in Poland pressing officials from the 26 NATO member states for more soldiers and air support.
NATO troops killed 20 to 30 Taliban in airstrikes and artillery barrages in Kandahar province's Panjwayi district Friday during an anti-Taliban operation called Operation Medusa, said alliance spokesman Lt. Col. Nick Grant-Thorold.
The latest deaths raise the insurgents' death toll to at least 290 since the operation began Sept. 2, according to NATO.
Associated Press writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
Ms. Constable has a prominent story in the world section of the Washington Post about the “Peace Deal” between Musharraf’s regime and the Taliban. As the subheading states this alarms the Afghans but apparently not Ms. Constable. You will recall that the Afghans have been the reluctant guinea pigs for Taliban version of an Islamic state.
Others however don’t have quite such as rosy view as Ms. Constable. Pakistani officials have suggested that as part of the deal Osama bin Laden was granted amnesty :If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News. (Story below after the Constable article).
Bill Roggio goes further and calls the "truce with the Taliban .. abject surrender" and states that now "al-Qaeda has an untouchable base of operations in Western Pakistan which will only expand if not checked."__________
Pakistan Reaches Peace Accord With Pro-Taliban Militias
Deal Arouses Alarm in Afghanistan
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 6, 2006; A09
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 5 -- The government of Pakistan signed a peace accord Tuesday with pro-Taliban forces in the volatile tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, agreeing to withdraw its troops from the region in return for the fighters' pledge to stop attacks inside Pakistan and across the border.
Under the pact, foreign fighters would have to leave North Waziristan or live peaceable lives if they remained. The militias would not set up a "parallel" government administration.
Reached as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, prepared to visit the Afghan capital Wednesday, the accord aroused alarm among some analysts in Afghanistan. They expressed concern that, whatever the militias promise, a Pakistani army withdrawal might backfire, emboldening the groups to operate more freely in Pakistan and to infiltrate more aggressively into Afghanistan to fight U.S. and allied forces there.
"This could be a very dangerous development," said one official at an international agency, speaking anonymously because the issue is sensitive in both countries. "Until recently there has been relative stability in eastern Afghanistan, but now that could start to deteriorate."
The agreement could add a new element of tension to Musharraf's visit, aimed at smoothing over his relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two Muslim leaders, both allies in the U.S.-led war against Islamic extremists, have clashed heatedly over allegations that Taliban forces in Afghanistan are receiving support and shelter from inside Pakistan.
Pakistan's move also appeared to complicate the U.S. role in the region. U.S. officials have praised Musharraf for his help in capturing al-Qaeda members and refrained from pressing him hard on cross-border violence. A withdrawal of Pakistani forces could reduce pressure on al-Qaeda figures believed to be hiding in the region, including Osama bin Laden, allowing them more freedom of action.
NATO forces are currently in a fierce conflict with Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, where the militia has attacked in rural districts with increasing boldness in recent months. In the past four days, officials said, a NATO military operation in Kandahar province has killed more than 200 insurgents.
The conflict spread during the summer across the south, where about 10,000 NATO troops recently replaced a smaller number of U.S.-led forces. This week, Britain's top army officer said his forces were barely able to cope with the conflict, and the senior NATO commander here appealed for more support from member countries.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in combat and terrorist attacks this year as violence in Afghanistan swelled to its highest level since 2001, when U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power. Suicide bombings, once unheard of, are now almost daily occurrences. Schools have been burned across the region and dozens of community leaders have been assassinated.
U.S. forces continue operating in eastern Afghanistan, where attacks have been far less frequent. But in recent weeks, attacks have stepped up dramatically in Ghazni province, situated between the two regions.
Many Afghans, including President Karzai, have blamed Pakistan for the violence. They charge that the Musharraf government has either failed to control Islamic militants at home or actively supported the Taliban militia, which it officially backed until 2001, in order to destabilize and gain sway over Afghanistan.
Musharraf has denied such claims and vowed to curb armed Islamic extremism in the border areas. In the past several years, he has sent more than 80,000 army troops into the semiautonomous tribal region, where Islamic militants including Afghans, Pakistanis and some Arabs were defying government rule, killing opponents and preaching holy war against the West.
The army units have met with fierce opposition, however, and critics say their presence undermined the tribal political system needed to counter rising Islamic militancy. On Tuesday, the peace pact was greeted with relief and jubilation by army and tribal representatives who gathered in the border town of Miran Shah in the North Waziristan tribal area, according to news service reports.
But some analysts said that the agreement exposed the military government's weakness and that by withdrawing troops, Musharraf is buying a dubious local peace at the risk of giving pro-Taliban groups more power both at home and across the border.
Taliban leaders in North Waziristan announced a unilateral cease-fire during the summer as peace talks got underway. But they have reportedly continued their brutal tactics, such as executing people they view as traitors. Less than a week ago, Pakistani officials found the headless bodies of two men near Miran Shah with notes saying they had been spies for the Kabul government.
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Pakistan Gives Bin Laden Free Pass
