Video: Interview with Gen. McNeill, Rashid, MacDonald

Yesterday, the NewsHour with Jim Leherer ran a good segment on Afghanistan featuring commentary by Gen. Dan McNeill, Ahmed Rashid, and Norine MacDonald (from Senlis Council). The transcript, along with streaming video, is available here.

Karzai's primetime appeal: curtail the airstrikes

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.

• Watch the video

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

Have PhD in Anthropology, will travel...

I was surprised to find this piece had climbed to the second most emailed article in the New York Times today, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. Interesting, well-reported, and counterintuitive.

• Video

It's odd to find that a field so synonymous with The Academy has become a coveted commodity (much to the chagrin of certain professors, cited in the article, who seem philosophically averse to using their discipline for anything pragmatic...)

Can you imagine all the Anthropology majors emailing their parents to say "I told you so?" And can you imagine what better shape we'd be today if we entered Afghanistan with a modicum of understanding of its cultural context? The Army seems to now appreciate the importance of these skills, but it's a steep learning curve. (One could also question whether the Army is the right institution to be delivering governance and services...)

Anthropologists help U.S. Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, By David Rohde, Oct 4 (NYT):  SHABAK VALLEY, Afghanistan: In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a demure civilian anthropologist named Tracy.

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first-ever Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they act as cultural advisers and suggest ways to win local support without using military force.

Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with anthropologists here, said the unit's combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the anthropologists arrived this spring. He said the focus had shifted from combat to improving security, health care and education for the population.

"We're looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist's perspective," he said. "We're not focused on the enemy. We're focused on bringing governance down to the people."

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, military officials are scrambling to find more scholars willing to deploy to the front lines to interpret tribal structures and explain cultural differences. MORE

Reporting the Forgotten War

This new documentary, on reporters in Afghanistan, could be interesting. 

Veteran reporter and filmmaker Bill Gentile profiles noted journalists from The New York Times, the BBC, Time, and The Washington Post as well as others to reveal the daily personal and professional pressures they face. The film also follows the events behind the capture of former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell whose recent book made the New York Times bestseller list.

Part II of the Rubin/Marshall talk

TPMtv with Barnett Rubin

Barnett Rubin, in a video interview with Joshua Micah Marshall

A Chat with Barnett Rubin, Part I: A few weeks ago Dr. Barnett Rubin, one of the world's premier Afghanistan experts at NYU, created a stir with a series of blog posts about signs the Bush administration might be gearing up for a military campaign against Iran. Last week I interviewed Rubin about the Bush administration's war talk against Iran and I asked him, Is there really any evidence that Iran is helping arm the Taliban, as the Bush administration keeps claiming?

Taxi to the Dark Side

With the recent swirl of controversies over civilian detentions and wrongful deaths, one film sure to get a closer look is Taxi to the Dark Side, which won Best Documentary Film at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and last week claimed first prize at the Newport Film Festival as well. Not sure if it has a distributor yet, but keep an eye out...

Taxi to the Dark Side. Directed by Alex Gibney, Produced by Sidney Blumenthal.

• Watch Trailer here.

On December 1, 2002, a Kabul taxi driver named Dilawar took three passengers for a ride, and never returned to his home. Four days later, he arrived at the U.S. military detention center at Bagram Air Base. Five days after that, he was dead. This riveting documentary murder mystery explores how and why this Afghan civilian died while in U.S. custody. MORE

Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous

Check out “Narcotecture in Herat,” Monocle’s excellent narrated slideshow of the gaudy mansions blooming in Herat. Journalist Rachel Morarjee (better known for her work at the Financial Times) accompanies photographer Ash Sweeting inside some of these lavish shrines built on opium. It’s not pretty...

A premise of the piece is that “Herat’s past glories are slowly being erased by new fortunes,” and they speak with groups like Agha Khan who are “waging a losing battle to prevent the city’s heritage being bulldozed to make way for acres of glass and candy colored mansions.” Unfortunately, the piece doesn’t offer many details about what specifically is being destroyed, and my sense was that these mansions--objectionable as they might be--don’t necessarily threaten Herat’s cultural heritage.

The conclusions asks “whether the rest of the city’s heritage survives the outbreak of peace and prosperity the way that it outlasted three decades of war remains to be seen”…clever, but more than a bit cynical. Whatever aesthetic or moral objections it might provoke, the construction boom comprises roughly half of Afghanistan’s economic growth and has a multiplier effect which helps a lot of ordinary Afghans. Even with many of the funds are leaving the country, as Sweeting keenly observes with a shot of a “Made in China” tag on a bouquet of plastic flowers, and even with impunity and growing inequity, I imagine few Heratis would wish to end their recent peace and prosperity.

Nevertheless, these words and images are striking, and give us a glimpse at an under told story of the new Afghanistan.

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Photos: Ash Sweeting, Monocle (c).

Suicide bomber strikes Bagram during Cheney's visit

Cheney was symbolically targeted today as a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside the first of three checkpoints at Bagram air base. While the the VP was in no danger, it is among the most lethal suicide attacks recorded in Afghanistan, leaving up to 23 dead and 11 injured:

Watch the scene at base where bomb went off

Al Qaeda--new approach in Afghanistan clip

Al-Qaida steps up propaganda with Afghanistan clip

Feb. 17 (AP) Al-Qaida posted a video showing what it claimed to be an attack by its fighters seizing a US-Afghan post in southern Afghanistan, in what experts said was a step up in the terror group's increasingly sophisticated propaganda. MORE

Video: For reference, a similar propaganda film is available through google video.