"I'm not in the business of turning down jobs I haven't been offered."
- Paddy Ashdown
"I can put a guy out on a ridge with an AK-47 and have him take a couple of shots. The Americans will shoot back with their big guns and disrupt the whole valley...Being an insurgent would be so easy."
- Sgt. Jacob Stockdill
"All you have to do is not screw up, and, even if you do, you just blame it on the Americans."
- Capt. Chris Rowe
MORE
"If you're coming as our friends, don't. If you're coming as our enemies, we will fight you."
- Zmarai, Arghandab district police chief, in response to Taliban threats.
MORE...
“There is a question why the provincial officials were not with their parliamentarian guests. And it is a question why there was shooting after the explosion.”
- Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the United National Front.
“This time there should be consequences. We should stop delivery of any further F-16s to Pakistan and cut off all other U.S. assistance until the state of emergency is lifted.”
- Gary L. Ackerman (D-NY),
“It is dangerous to stand up to a military dictatorship, but more dangerous not to.”
- Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistan Prime Minister
“This is going to be a very short-lived emergency,”
- Tariq Azim Khan, Pakistani deputy information
minister
“That two weeks later they were in there on roofs dancing — and inside his house — is devastating psychologically…It’s like a psychological operation on the part of the Taliban, and I think it’s a very effective one.”
- Sarah Chayes, on the Taliban takeover of Arghandab after Mullah Naqibullah’s death.
“I am not satisfied that an alliance whose members have over 2 million soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen cannot find the modest additional resources that have been committed for Afghanistan,”
- U.S. Def. Sec. Robert Gates, in Kiev, Oct 22.
“It is very crowded up there in the north…Everyone wants to be up there handing out oranges and school books, but it is empty in the south.”
- Major-General Frankl van Kappen (Ret.), Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.
President Karzai made a primetime appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes this Sunday to call for a rollback of airstrikes in Afghanistan.
When 60 Minutes asked whether Karzai had directly requested that President George W. Bush end the airstrikes he said "Absolutely. Oh, yes, in clear words." He implied that his appearance on 60 Minutes was part of an attempt to go public now that direct conversations have failed to get results: "I want to repeat that, alternatives to the use of air force. And I will speak for it again through your media."
"You're demanding that?" - Pelley (in reference to a rollback of airstrikes)
"Absolutely," - Karzai.
The rest of the piece is worth watching, if only because it is the first time a camera team was permitted into the Combined Air Operations Center, America's high-tech command post situated in an undisclosed Persian Gulf country (Qatar?) It is a scene that is both surreal and yet somehow mundane: walls lined with massive monitors, people seated at rows of desks with computers. It is here that decisions are made on each airstrike in Afghanistan and Iraq -- decisions that will mean life or death for people hundreds or thousands of miles away. MORE
Continue reading "Karzai's primetime appeal: curtail the airstrikes" »
"Over the course of the last year, we have begun inflicting costs on Iran by targeting its assets and networks inside Iraq. At the same time, I would not exclude talking with Iran and trying to reach some sort of understanding with them, much as we engaged with them earlier on the issue of Afghanistan."
-Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad
From the AP:
Qari Yousef Ahmadi appeared to step back from a statement to The Associated Press on Monday that the Taliban would consider negotiations if the Afghan government made a formal offer. He also said other media outlets who reported that he said the Taliban was willing to hold talks now had misquoted him.
"The Taliban will not be ready for negotiations until the U.S. and its allies leave our country," Ahmadi told the AP by satellite phone from an undisclosed location. "We will pursue our jihad against America and its allies until they leave our country. After that ... then the Taliban will be ready for negotiations."
On Sunday, Karzai repeated his previous stance: the government is ready to hold talks with militants. Ahmadi replied the next day to the AP that the Taliban would consider talks if an offer were made. So much for that approach...But stay tuned.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in an interview with a Calgary radio show:
"I think Canadians are expecting that if we're in Afghanistan after 2009, it would be a new mission...Canadians have been fairly clear that if we were to be in after 2009, that they would expect our participation to evolve in some way."...
"The truth of the matter is NATO still is not putting in near the amount of forces that are necessary to really bring permanent stability to Afghanistan. Canadians have been clear they want to see a more equitable burden-sharing in Afghanistan."
"If today the foreigners desert Afghanistan... then it will be seen for
how many days the national army of Mr. Karzai will resist?...Nothing will remain stable even for a week."
- Mohammad Qasim Fahim, June 3 (Reuters)
''There have been indications over the past few months of weapons
coming in from Iran. We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran
is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling...But there clearly is evidence that some weapons are coming
into Afghanistan destined for the Taliban, but perhaps also for
criminal elements involved in the drug trafficking coming from
Iran."
-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates
"They don't want to be used by us for our purposes and then not be given any assistance with their challenges...There is a massive potential for us to have a good relationship with Pakistan, but there is a trust issue."
- U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.)
MORE QUOTES...
The US announced today that a shipment of Iranian-made arms (mortars and plastic explosives) were seized near Kandahar. It is unknown (or unstated) whether the shipment was officially authorized. A Guardian story notes that a senior Afghan general also claims his forces seized Iranian-made weapons. He says they were captured from insurgents last month in Farah province, and were channeled through drug smugglers in Iranian Baluchistan.
One note regarding the timing; the U.S. waited a year after its discover of Iranian weapons in Iraq and announcing them (see photo); this time it waited less than a month (the exact period was undisclosed). These announcements are typically timed strategically--but what's the strategy here? The language has been cautiously calibrated thus far, but the confrontation could reach an elevated pitch as each side toes the red line.
Some relevant quotes: MORE...
Some quotes from locals in Helmand, where allies are in the midst of Operation Achilles, the first major offensive of the season. The deputy governor of Helmand has announced plans to eradicate fully half of Helmand's poppy crop this year.
"No has destroyed my
poppy and no one will be able to destroy it...We are not paying
the Taleban, but they tell us, 'As long as we are here, no one can destroy your
poppy'."
- Hamidullah, a farmer in Musa Qala, Helmand
"I am a small-scale
smuggler...I just buy poppy from farmers
and sell it to bigger drug traffickers....We don't have a
problem with the Taleban...if we give them money, we give by
choice, like the zakat. People support the Taleban.
Why shouldn't they?"
- Rahmatullah, local smuggler in Helmand
Antonio Maria Costa, Director of UN Office of Drugs and Crime, on a new strategy to "Establish a stronghold of opium-free, or provinces with a
negligible amount, and then slowly regain control of the other
provinces.” Sort of the ink blot strategy, but for drugs. At first glance, seems a long shot, though the latest study suggests that 6 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces do not grow poppies:
“We may be able to create a corridor, or an area ranging from Pakistan in the southeast to Turkmenistan in the northwest.”
From Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Said T. Jawad, in a CFR interview today:
"From the entire financial assistance that's been given to Afghanistan, only 5 percent has been given to the Afghan government. Twelve percent of the funds have been given to the Afghan reconstruction trust fund established for Afghanistan. And we can withdraw money under certain conditions. The remaining 82 or 83 percent of the assistance has been spent outside the budget and control of the Afghan government. MORE
Photo: CFR
Continue reading "Jawad: Frustration that political participation has not led to results" »
“This is a major humanitarian, educational and business development breakthrough by Afghan women for Afghan women in the post-Taliban era of our country’s history.”
- Ms. Halima Kazem of The Afghan Women’s Business Federation, speaking on the inauguration of the AfghanMarkSM label, which certifies “fair trade” carpets.
For more details on the AfghanMark label, check out this news article, this website, and this press release.
Left: Afghan weavers at a certified studio. Below: An Afghan business woman with her child in a retail carpet market, Kabul.
"The Taliban and al Qaida
are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the
defense but to go on the offense. This spring there’s going to be a new
offensive in Afghanistan and it’s going to be a NATO offensive. And
that’s part of our strategy - relentless in our pressure. We will not
give in.”
-President Bush, Feb 15, from his speech at the American Enterprise Institute
Full transcript available here ...analysis to follow.
Continue reading "Bush transcript available: new offensive will be NATO offensive" »
"People are coming who have never seen a bank before. They are pulling their money from under the
floorboards and we are putting it into circulation through loans."
- Hayatullah Dayani, Azizi bank's chief of business development
"It's not like investing in Austria or the United Arab Emirates where things are pretty straightforward. Given that we are only just emerging from a postconflict situation, things are very complicated. But the possibilities are endless if you are able to adapt."
- Mohammad Rafi Fazil, economics officer for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Afghanistan.
"The economy is moving forward. Afghans are hungry. We are tired of war and we want to buy. We want to build."
- Karim Khan, one of 60,000 Afghans in four months to open a new account at Azizi Bank
See: Capitalism Comes to Afghanistan, Time Magazine, By ARYN BAKER.
When asked about the upcoming eradication program, John Waters, head of the White House's Office of
National Drug Control Policy, sounded anything but decisive:
To assuage those fears, Mr Walters ruled out the use of planes and said spraying would initially use ground-based techniques. President Hamid Karzai had approved herbicide use, he said. "I think the president has said yes, and I think some of the ministers have repeated yes."
But Mr Karzai's office was less sure. One official would not confirm the change. "We are thinking about the issue and looking to see how we might proceed," he said.
"The summit did not have the character of a major breakthrough...Not all countries showed the same level of determination."
-Polish President Lech Kaczynski,
who is sending 1,100 troops in January as a mobile reserve.
"There is not the slightest reason to voice gloom and doom over Afghanistan."
-NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
"These have been significant steps in the right direction. Have we got absolutely everything we wanted? Not yet."
-British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Photo: General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
Seth Jones of RAND says he has "clear indications from intelligence sources" that they are providing more direct support than is widely believed: "Information is being passed from the ISI to Taliban units about movements of US and NATO forces, in some cases very tactical information."
“We come to Afghanistan with a message of support for the Afghan people and their democratically elected government.”
-Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima head of a UN Security Council delegation.
The delegation includes representatives from Argentina, Denmark, France, Greece, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, the UK and the USA.
Christina Lamb of London's Sunday Times reports from Tora Bora that efforts are underway to transform bin Laden's former redoubt into a tourist destination. Nangahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai, rarely accused of being the sharpest knife in the pantry, had this sparkling insight:
“I don’t just want one Tora Bora hotel...I want three or four. Long before anyone had heard of Osama, Tora Bora was known as a picnic spot and now it can be both.”
Anyone remember that classic Saturday Night Live skit with Gilda Radner and Dan Akroyd?
"But, you know, the Taliban are active in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The situation in northern and western Afghanistan is not so different in terms of governance, poverty, insecurity. You know, if somebody—Russia or Tajikistan wanted to start an insurgency in Badakhshan, in northeastern Afghanistan, they could do it very easily for almost no money because people are so disaffected there. But there’s no insurgency there."
- Barnett Rubin, speaking at CFR, Oct 25
"It is nationalism fuelled by Islam. They draw considerable strength from painting themselves as the heirs of Afghanistan's warrior traditions. Even the most uneducated foot soldier will quote the dates of the battles in the nineteenth century when they beat the British. They do not see themselves as part of a wider world 'jihad', but an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem."
-David Loyn, of the BBC, on Taliban ideology
VIDEO: The BBC's David Loyn travels with the Taliban
"We could have carried on in 2002 in the same way we have gone about business now."
“We’ve lost five staff and our guards have killed thirty-four people in the last month and we’re just a construction company...This isn’t reconstruction, not construction, not even combat construction: this is war.”
-a Western contractor who manages transport for a construction company moving materials to foreign troops in the south, who said he was dramatically reducing operations.
President Karzai comparing Pakistan's cooperation with terrorists with "trying to train a snake against somebody else":
"You cannot train a snake. It will come and bite you."
and on Mullah Omar (AP):
[Omar] is "for sure" in Pakistan. Musharraf "knows it and I know it," Karzai said. "He's truly there."
President Musharraf, responding to President Bush's CNN comments that he would kill or capture Osama bin Laden if he had intelligence that he was in Pakistan:
"No. We wouldn't like to allow that at all...We would like to do it ourselves."
...and Musharraf's claim (to be aired on 60 Minutes this Sunday) that the US threatened to bomb Pakistan "to the Stone Age" if it did not receive cooperation in the War on Terror:
"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the stone age'," Musharraf said. "I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf says in the interview. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that's what I did."
