CSIS new Afghanistan site, plus Hoagland and Tarzi

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has been running an excellent Post-Conflict Reconstruction project for some time. They have a new Afghanistan news digest that looks promising. This week it highlights several articles from the past couple weeks that are not to be missed:

• Jim Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post, on the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq in U.S. policy:

Being "forgotten" in that sense is better than being at the center of the kind of urgent and partisan debate that Iraq has sparked. Whether the White House is willing to admit it or not, Iraq's particularities have eclipsed or altered the Bush administration's strategies of pushing democracy forward in the Middle East and of fighting the war on terrorism abroad rather than on American soil. More

• Amin Tarzi, for Radio Free Europe, on the rifts within the Taliban (evinced through their competing websites):

The most recent contradiction between statements of the spokesmen of the Taliban and the website of the "Islamic Emirate" followed the suicide attack that killed Paktiya Governor Hakim Taniwal on September 10...A rift arose under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan between many traditional Taliban and elements who identified themselves with Arab Islamists...the same ideological split could be resurfacing, if indications are correct of increasing contacts between some neo-Taliban and self-proclaimed "jihadists" operating in Iraq. More

Jim Hoagland, Sept 24 (Washington Post):

The Key to Afghanistan: More Time:  ...The biggest challenge that U.S. and NATO forces face is not on the battlefield. It lies in building confidence in the country's rural tribes and sparse urban population that Western governments will stay deeply involved in Afghanistan for a decade or longer. If Afghans do not believe that, they are unlikely to take the risks of vast social and political change being demanded of them today.

In government-speak, this is called "pushing out the timelines." It means that Washington and other NATO capitals should accept the idea that they are providing a long-term military presence and significant development funding to Afghanistan as a matter of routine and strategy, rather than as a temporary military emergency.

Being "forgotten" in that sense is better than being at the center of the kind of urgent and partisan debate that Iraq has sparked. Whether the White House is willing to admit it or not, Iraq's particularities have eclipsed or altered the Bush administration's strategies of pushing democracy forward in the Middle East and of fighting the war on terrorism abroad rather than on American soil. The conflict there has become a war with Iraqi characteristics rather than an abstract struggle about greater goals and principles.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, still illustrates in fairly clear form the consequences and dynamics of fighting jihadist terrorist networks and their supporters in a failed Islamic state. Making a long-term commitment to Afghanistan as a matter of routine would require Congress to overhaul obsolete budgeting priorities that starve U.S. reconstruction and development projects. Europeans would have to fund expeditionary forces that are today ill equipped and ill trained for distant counterinsurgency operations. Both changes are desperately needed.

Amin Tarzi, Sept 18:

Contradictions hint at Dividion Within Neo-Taliban: WASHINGTON, September 15, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Media efforts have intensified by the various elements that oppose the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan. The stepped-up public campaign of the so-called neo-Taliban has accompanied increased insurgency and terrorism efforts by those same guerrillas.But while they have managed to convey their messages with greater frequency, their pronouncements have sometimes been marked by glaring contradictions. While inconsistencies are not new to the neo-Taliban, their recent frequency suggests strains could reemerge between Afghan opponents of the central government and their foreign allies...

The most recent contradiction between statements of the spokesmen of the Taliban and the website of the "Islamic Emirate" followed the suicide attack that killed Paktiya Governor Hakim Taniwal on September 10. Soon after that attack, Mohammad Hanif told a Peshawar-based news agency Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) that the killing was carried out by a Paktiya resident. He added that he had "no further details" beyond the attacker's name. Similarly, on the day of the Taniwal assassination, the "Islamic Emirate" website posted a report that identified the attacker as a heroic "seeker of knowledge" (mujahed talib al-'ilm) of the Islamic Emirate -- using the term "talib" in its traditional linguistic, not political, meaning.

On September 11, another suicide bomber targeted a number of Afghan security officials attending Taniwal's funeral in neighboring Khost Province, killing six people. The website indicated that a "heroic mujahed of the Islamic Emirate" carried out a "martyrdom-seeking" attack against high-level officers at the funeral.

But speaker Mohammad Hanif, speaking to AIP, expressed "strong condemnation," and said his movement had not committed the attack on the funeral.

The stark contrast could be related to conflicting ideologies within the ranks of the neo-Taliban. But it might also indicate a lack of any centralized command and control of the activities or policies of the far-flung movement.

A majority of neo-Taliban militants and sympathizers might well have viewed the assassination of Governor Taniwal as legitimate. He was a close confidant of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, after all. But an attack on the attendees of any funeral service is generally disdain as running counter to Pashtun tribal norms.

A rift arose under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan between many traditional Taliban and elements who identified themselves with Arab Islamists -- namely Al-Qaeda. Allies of the Arab elements eventually gained the upper hand.

But the same ideological split could be resurfacing, if indications are correct of increasing contacts between some neo-Taliban and self-proclaimed "jihadists" operating in Iraq.

The "Islamic Emirate" website refers to the insurgents as "mujahedin" -- the same term being applied to insurgents and terrorists in Iraq. That -- and the existence of an Arabic version of the same website -- could indicate a link between the people behind the website and more radical global Islamists who are not sensitive to Pashtun traditions.

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