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.
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" »
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. 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
Continue reading "Have PhD in Anthropology, will travel..." »
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Photos: Ash Sweeting, Monocle (c).
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-Qaida steps up propaganda with Afghanistan clip
(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.
Continue reading "Al Qaeda--new approach in Afghanistan clip" »
We see a lot more combat footage coming out of Iraq than Afghanistan, but this video is a reminder that coalition partners (especially Canadians & Brits) are engaged on a nearly-daily basis in close combat engagements.
According to the poster, it depicts"Troops from Alpha Company, 2nd Platoon,
"Red Devils" from Edmonton, Canada
are ambushed as they conducted battle damage assessment in the village on July
15, 2006 in Sangin, Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan." Copyright: Scott Kesterson
Watch the video here. It's intense footage, especially in the last frame: all drops quiet, the soldier lights a cigarette, and you can see his hands are still shaking.
"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
Is it me, or is paying men in Paktika to fill sand bags perhaps not an ideal model for alternative livelihoods? The CNN report is less skeptical, especially when it comes to the Paktika PRT: "115 soldiers and sailors covering an area slightly bigger than Maryland -- a little goes a long way here," reports correspondant Jennifer Eccleston.
Video: Afghanistan reconstruction 
Watch online: Frontline special on Afghanistan
FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith ("Hunting bin Laden"; "Truth, War and Consequences") returns to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and presents a rare look inside this secret sanctuary in "Return of the Taliban." In a region long suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden and strictly off-limits to U.S. troops, Smith explores the complex web of alliances among the Taliban, Al Qaeda fighters and the Pakistani military, and analyzes the consequences for U.S. policy.
You've got to give it to the General: he hired himself a bold publicist. Folks in the White House must sure wish that Musharraf would just head on home already--especially after he made some frank comments on Iraq and an appearance on The Daily Show (apparently he asked Stewart if he could come on...)
Check the video (it takes a second to load):
|
Pervez Musharraf Pt. 1 --
Jon pours some tea for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and asks him where Osama bin Laden is. |
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Pervez Musharraf Pt. 2 -- Unlike Jon, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf doesn't see the need to change his work itinerary. |
Afghan civilians yesterday suffered a devastating bombing (the country's third-most fatal) in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand. Only two incidents in the past have caused so many fatalities, and each were suicide bombings in Kandahar. A Minnesota TV station has posted a video clip of the aftermath here (skip the ad).
Helmand, unlike Kandahar (17 attacks since 2005) and Kabul (7), has rarely been struck by suicide bombs. A government spokesman, the UN, and NATO all described the bomb as a suicide attack, while a Taliban spokesman has claimed that it was a remote-controlled bomb instead.
Suicide bomb kills 17, hurts 47 at market
LASHKAR GAH, (AP) — A suicide bomber targeting a former police chief blew himself up in a busy town market Monday in southern Afghanistan, killing 17 people and wounding 47. The Taliban claimed responsibility but in a rare move expressed sadness over the deaths of civilians...Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said Monday's bombing was not a suicide attack but a remote-controlled bomb that had targeted a former Lashkar Gah police chief because he had served under the pro-communist government during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. The former chief, who runs the market where the blast occurred, and his son were killed.
In general, one should be skeptical of incident reports in Helmand, as attacks attributed to Taliban insurgents are sometimes the result of criminal violence instead (Helmand is a primary poppy producing region.) But this attack appears to be insurgency-elated, and Karzai today declared, without elaboration, that it had been carried out "at the instruction of foreigners."
An inside view of a coalition airstrike
VIDEO FEATURE: Click to play the footage: AC-130 over Afghanistan. (7 min 24 sec)
This video, apparently of a night strike against a Taliban camp, was posted anonymously on Google Video by a U.S. soldier who had access to the footage. The date portrayed is unclear, but it was originally posted on internet sites starting in 2002 or 2003. A thermal imagery spotting camera captures and records the images.
According to the comment by someone who re-posted it:
“This video appears to show an AC-130 doing its job very effectively, Its impresive accuracy and apparent ability to own every bad boy they see running about… I would love to have a chat with the guys that fly these things, it must be a strange world up there!”
There was a time in the heady days after the liberation of Kabul when air-power enthusiasts believed that Al Qaeda and the Taliban could be eliminated with few casualties by the use of precision munitions guided by small teams of special forces. Four years later, insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq and southern Lebanon have defied this approach, avoiding defeat in the face of overwhelming air power. Insurgents have suffered losses, but have managed to remain solvent and to win the PR war by turning airpower's greatest advantage--its ability to strike at a distance--into its greatest liability by widely publicizing (and often exagerating) civilian casualties.
The AC-130 is precise, but the video also hints at the fog of war in which airstrikes inevitably occur. It shows pilots making life-and-death decisions based upon indistinct shapes below them. And, as in every case, airpower is only as precise as the intelligence that directs it. Regardless of precautions, mistakes occur. Here’s a provocative clip from the audio, which I tried my best to transcribe:
Speaker 1: “You do see the rectangular building next to it Greg?”
Speaker 2: “Yes sir”
Speaker 1: “That’s affirmative...That’s the mosque, do not engage the mosque.”
Speaker 2; “Roger”
Speaker 3: “The square building is the mosque or is…”
Speaker 2: “The RECTANGLE! The Rectangle!”
Speaker 1: “The Rectangular building is the mosque.”
Speaker 3: “Roger that.”
