FBI: New tape by American al-Qaida member is proof of life

Adam Gadahn, the American-born Al-Qaida member, made a new videotape message that offers proof of life, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said. In a joint bulletin issued Saturday night to U.S. law-enforcement officials, the FBI and DHS said the videotape was likely made weeks ago, NBC News has learned. "The video probably was created in mid September," the FBI bulletin said.

UN: Afghan war cannot be won militarily

Afghan National Army soldiers raise their rifles as they train in Kabul September 21, 2008. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

The war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily and success is only possible through political means including dialogue between all relevant parties, the United Nations' top official in the country said Monday.

First, the British, now the United Nations admit what many of us knew all along - Afghanistan cannot be taken militarily. So, what does the US, the main culprit in this entire sorted affair intend to do? Why, send in more troops of course... Go figure...

War on Taliban cannot be won, says army chief

Britain's most senior military commander in Afghanistan has warned that the war against the Taliban cannot be won. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said the British public should not expect a “decisive military victory” but should be prepared for a possible deal with the Taliban.

"NATO" is starting to sound like the man who wanted to let go of the tiger's tail - but, was afraid too. That's got to be a bad situation to be in - NATO can't hold on much longer but if it lets go, it'll be eaten...

Karzai seeks Saudi help in Taliban peace talks

"For the last two years, I've sent letters to the king of Saudi Arabia, and I've sent messages, and I requested from him as the leader of the Islamic world, for the security and prosperity of Afghanistan and for reconciliation in Afghanistan ... he should help us," Karzai said.

Why the West thinks it is time to talk to the Taliban

Negotiations have begun in secret with the enemy in Afghanistan. Jason Burke reveals the back channels of diplomacy that led to the controversial talks.

Revealed: secret Taliban peace bid

The destroyed entrance gate of the Kandahar prison that was attacked by Taliban militants in June this year. Photograph: Allauddiin Khan/AP

The Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain, The Observer can reveal.

Taliban learning how to win key propaganda battles

The Taliban, once dismissed as too stupid to know they would lose if they dared to fight well-trained Canadian and allied troops, have proved themselves resilient, if still ill-equipped, warriors, learning from their early defeats and adapting to stage sophisticated attacks, inflicting serious casualties and winning key propaganda battles. "They are showing greater political savvy, too," said a military analyst, who asked not to be further identified. "They understand they don't have to defeat us, they just have to defeat the will of the people back home."

U.S. drones hit Taliban commander's Pakistan house

Missiles fired by U.S. drones killed at least six people on Monday in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border where a religious school founded by an old friend of Osama bin Laden is located, witnesses said. 'There were two drones and they fired three missiles,' said a resident of Dandi Darpakheil, a village near Miranshah, main town of the North Waziristan tribal region. (Graphics/Reuters)

"The doctors said 15 to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, had been taken to Miranshah's main hospital."

Murdering innocent women and children - America's way of winning hearts and minds. The Americans seem to be "winning hearts and minds" on a daily basis these days.

Killing fields

by Eric Walberg - June 18, 2008

The Taliban’s Tet has begun. Interpret Laura Bushs’s clarion call “to stand by Afghanistan” as you will, says Eric Walberg

Two landmarks in Afghanistan last week -- British troop deaths surpassed 100, and monthly official coalition deaths now outnumber official coalition deaths in Iraq. Pentagon officials said that in May, 16 coalition troops were killed in Iraq, 14 of them American, while 18 coalition troops were killed in Afghanistan, 13 of them American.

Two more events made the news last week, noteworthy only in their predictability. Afghan President Hamid Karzai attended a donors conference in Paris, where he sought $50 billion. The US and friends offered $17 billion, though more than half of the pledge total came from a previous US commitment of $10.2 billion, i.e., Karzai’s net is $6.8 billion, which given past practice, he shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for. US First Lady Laura Bush showed slides from her trip to Kabul to visit Karzai and support Afghan women. Leaders echoed her call “to stand by Afghanistan”. Sarkozy, as usual, confused everyone by saying, “We cannot give in to torturers.” Laura announced that Washington will spend $80 million to support the American University in Kabul and the National Literacy Centre, to capture the hearts and minds of the people.

A note of realism was heard when officials complained that Karzai seemed to be unable to crack down on corruption and drug trafficking, even in Kabul, where he is virtually imprisoned in his heavily barricaded presidential palace. Karzai assured them that his government would take strides to root out corruption. Perhaps he could start by replacing his brother Wali Karzai, the president of Kandahar’s provincial council, who along with Hamid is widely believed to be involved in the very drug trafficking he so passionately denounced to his donors. Afghan officials recreated an air of surrealism by complaining that donors have been too skittish about letting Afghanistan take control of its own destiny and controlling how the money is spent. Yes, give tens of billions to corrupt cronies of Karzai. That would be sure to turn things around.

The other meeting, even more tedious and fruitless, lacking Laura’s slides, was a two-day session of NATO defence ministers following a now-familiar script in the debate over Afghanistan: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates unsuccessfully harangued unwilling allies to pledge more troops for the slaughter. Britain volunteered 230, with Des Browne, the British defense secretary, hailing the Afghan campaign as “the noble cause of the 21st century”.

The big complaint these days is the dastardly Pakistanis, providing “safe haven” for the even more dastardly Taliban. The answer from NATO came this week with a deadly air strike on a Pakistani Frontier Corps border checkpoint, which, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, killed 11 Pakistani soldiers — Pakistan Muslim League MP Amir Muqam said as many as 70. This act of “self defence” is yet another in NATO’s long history of “friendly fire” deaths, surely the oxymoron of all times. NATO forces have launched several air strikes inside Pakistan over the past year but this is the first time it has killed Pakistani soldiers. Without so much as batting an eye, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, proceeded to demand of the helpless Pakistani government not only the expulsion of all Al-Qaeda but also an immediate halt to the flow of insurgents across the border. Lapdog Karzai even threatened to send Afghan troops in: “They come and kill Afghanis and coalition troops; it precisely gives us the right to do the same.”

But I’ve left out the really spectacular news, the attack by Taliban militants on the main prison in southern Afghanistan late Friday, exploding a car bomb at the main gate in a multi-pronged assault that freed over 1000 prisoners, including 400 suspected Taliban. The complex attack included a car bomb, suicide bombers who entered the prison, and rockets fired from outside it. “All the prisoners escaped. There is no one left,” said Kandahar President Wali Karzai. Many of the prisoners were on a hunger strike only a few weeks ago during which 47 stitched their mouths shut. Some had been held without trial for more than two years and others were given lengthy prison sentences after short trials. The Taliban went on to liberate 18 nearby villages in an area that Canadian troops supposedly hold and plan to showcase with development aid over the next four years. Good luck, Canucks.

This blow to the occupation can only be compared to the Vietcong’s Tet offensive against the US occupation of South Vietnam in 1968. When will the occupation wake up and realise these brave and fearless men are dying defending their homeland? “I ask the Canadian people to ask their government to stop their destructive and inhumane mission and withdraw your troops. Our war will continue as long as your occupation forces are in our land,” Taleban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi appealed.

Perhaps the freed jail space in Kandahar will obviate the need for a $60 million upgrade of the jail at the infamous Bagram base, dubbed Afghanistan’s very own Guantanamo. “There will be a great deal of improvement in the quality of life,” US Army spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green said. “There will be a lot more floor space and much more room for communal activities, which is part of their culture.” Plans for the new prison apparently came as a complete surprise to Afghan officials in the Afghan Ministry of Justice.

In the current jail, two detainees were killed after being repeatedly struck by their American guards. There have been numerous allegations of abuse at the facility, with prisoners claiming to have been sexually humiliated, beaten, stripped naked and thrown down stairs during their interrogations. Nielson-Green, however, denies that detainees at Bagram have been ill-treated. I shudder to think what Nielson-Green considers to be “ill treatment”.

Until September 2004, Bagram served largely as a way station for prisoners on the way to the real Guantanamo. US officials deny allegations that children as young as nine have been imprisoned at the facility. Speaking of sexual abuse, Canadian troops have recently been under fire for their “don’t look, don’t tell” policy with regards widespread sexual abuse of civilians by Afghan government troops the Canadians are training.

But enough of this. The pre- and post-9/11 smoke and mirrors about Afghanistan are finally dispersing and shattering. NATO is in Afghanistan, as US President George Bush said in Bucharest in April, as “an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces across the world to help secure a future of freedom and peace for millions.” In other words to invade countries the US disapproves of and murder anyone who resists. A total withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, a negotiated settlement between Afghan forces, and massive reparations by NATO countries is what the world must urgently demand.

Putting the blame on Pakistan is the same story we hear about Iran in Iraq and heard during the US war against Vietnam, when Nixon began bombing Cambodia. It did not help the US defeat the Vietnamese but did result in the Khmer Rouge taking over Cambodia. Only by killing virtually the entire population will the US plan for Afghanistan succeed. Is this the objective?

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002/

This will appear in the next issue of Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/index.htm

Taliban Seizes Seven Afghan Villages

"Hundreds of Taliban fighters took control of seven villages in southern Afghanistan on Monday in what appeared to be a major offensive near the country's second-largest city, according to Afghan officials."

Ah, President Karzai sir - you might want to put attacking Pakistan on hold for a while...

4 Marines die in Afghanistan; 870 inmates escape

"KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, Afghan officials said Saturday. And in western Afghanistan on Saturday, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle, killing four Americans in the deadliest attack against U.S. troops in the country this year, officials said."

US wants Pakistan to bite the bullet

"There are recurrent calls in Washington that Pakistan's multi-billion dollar military aid package be reviewed or even stopped if its performance is not found satisfactory."

The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11

"Immediately after 9-11 the U.S. government began barking orders to the world, especially to the Muslim world. Perhaps echoing unconsciously the Christian scripture passages Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23, it proclaimed, "Either you are with us, or with the terrorists." Remember those terrifying days, of omnipresent institutionalized ritualistic grief, anger and mandated unity, when any questioning was met with official indignation, threats, or punishment? When everything was supposed to be so clear? When above all, the national need to attack somebody---some Muslims---was supposed to be obvious, and the attack on Afghanistan in particular framed as common sense?"

Arab-American paratrooper faces deportation after Afghan service

"Sgt Hicham Benkabbou has been served with an order to stand trial for deportation as soon as he arrives home, despite the fact that he has been on active service in Afghanistan for almost two years with the 508th parachute infantry regiment, known as the Red Devils."

US to arm Pak tribes to fight al-Qaeda

"The US is planning to enlist tribal leaders in Pakistan's border regions to allegedly fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants."

An unwinnable war

"Six years on and there is a real danger that the Taliban could retake Kabul, and large parts of Afghanistan caught in all-out civil war, with reach well beyond the country's fragile borders to the Asian republics to the north, Pakistan to the south, and Iran to the west."

NATO Insists Their Killings of Civilians 'Not Equivalent' to Taliban's Killings of Civilians

"Gen Scheffer appealed for understanding on this issue and said there was no moral equivalent between the civilians killed by the Taleban and those killed by Nato."

I'm not sure the subtle difference being discussed here matters a helluva lot to those civilians who have been killed. Or, to their family members who have now joined the Taliban to get some pay-back.

Taliban controls 54% of Afghanistan

"The Taliban has a stable presence in 54% of Afghanistan which puts it in grave danger of falling into Taliban hands, says a report."

Coalition of the unwilling

Nato's whole mission is in doubt if its members won't provide necessary support in Afghanistan

by Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian - November 7, 2007

Yesterday's suicide bomb in northern Afghanistan, the country's deadliest attack since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, is a huge blow to Nato, as well as President Hamid Karzai's rickety government. The credibility of Nato, established to deter the mass battalions of the Soviet Union and its satellites at the start of the cold war, is in danger of crumbling in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.

In its first ground combat mission since the US-dominated alliance was set up in 1949, its members have not deployed enough troops and equipment to defeat an enemy driving around in pick-up trucks, armed with rockets and small arms. Motivated as much by western temerity as Islamist ideology, Taliban leaders are now importing al-Qaida-inspired foreign fighters and terrorist tactics, notably suicide bombers, that have killed so many in Iraq.

There are some 50,000 European and North American troops in Afghanistan, most of them American but including 7,700 British backed up mainly by Canadian and Dutch soldiers. France has committed no troops for combat. Nor has Germany, whose soldiers are in the hitherto more stable and peaceful north.

Timo Noetzel, visiting fellow at Chatham House, describes his country's attitude in the latest issue of the thinktank's magazine the World Today. "The political debate," he writes, "focuses on two issues: the potential German involvement in combat, and criticism of the American conduct of operations. The complaint is that actions of the US forces are fuelling the insurgency, with collateral damage and mounting civilian casualties eroding community support."

Afghanistan, according to Gordon Brown, is the front line in the fight against international terrorism. Des Browne, the defence secretary, describes the fight against the Taliban as a "noble cause". Yet six years after US bombs drove the Taliban out, all the evidence is that, with support from across the border in Pakistan, it is regrouping and the insurgency is intensifying.

Insurgent and terrorist attacks are 20% higher this year than in the whole of 2006, according to the UN. There were more than 100 suicide attacks in the first eight months of this year compared to 123 last year and just 17 in 2005. More and more of the country is classified as being too risky for UN agencies and NGOs such as Oxfam to operate in.

Deprived of reinforcements on the ground, army commanders call for help from the air. Aerial bombing leads inevitably to more civilian casualties and provokes more hostility. While shiny new helicopters stand idly in the hangars of Europe, Nato soldiers in Afghanistan are having to hire civilian machines from Russia and Ukraine to carry supplies.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that "a vicious cycle of drug-trafficking proceeds [are] sustaining the insurgency and 'shadow governments' in Kandahar and Helmand provinces". Corruption and tribal loyalties are sabotaging ambitious plans to build up an Afghan army and police force.

Brigadier John Lorimer, who returned last month after commanding British forces in southern Afghanistan, said his troops had made a "huge difference" there. The question is, for how long? And it is certainly not thanks to Nato.

The following day, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, addressed the Conference of European Armies in Heidelberg. "If an alliance of the world's greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security," he warned, "then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old transatlantic security project itself." They already are.

Taliban stage a coup of their own

by Syed Saleem Shahzad - Nov 7, 2007

While the world's attention focused on the troubles of President General Pervez Musharraf following his declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan at the weekend, the Taliban have launched a coup of their own in Afghanistan and the Pashtun areas of Pakistan.

Pakistani troops had prevented the Taliban from launching their planned post-Ramadan (Muslim holy month) offensive into Afghanistan by invading the Pakistani North Waziristan and SouthWaziristan tribal areas on October 7.

The Taliban managed to set up a counter engagement by stirring their network in the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province, which took the pressure off the Waziristans. The November 4 declaration of an emergency and the preparations before it was enforced distracted the military. As a result, several villages and towns in the Swat Valley, only a drive of four hours from Islamabad, have fallen to the Taliban without a single bullet being fired - fearful Pakistani security forces simply surrendered their weapons.

The Taliban have secured similar successes in the northwestern Afghan province of Farah and the southwestern provinces of Uruzgan and Kandahar, where districts have fallen without much resistance.

A new wave of attacks is expanding the Taliban's grip in the southeastern provinces of Khost and Kunar. And on Tuesday, the Taliban are suspected to have been responsible for the massive suicide attack in northern Baghlan province in which scores of people died, including a number of parliamentarians, most notably Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, the Hazara Shi'ite leader.

Such unexpected offensives have become a hallmark of the Taliban. They surprised many with their successful spring offensive in 2006, when the West had already anticipated their demise.

The Taliban occupied several key districts in the southwest and then as the winter snows closed in - normally a time for the guns to fall silent - they struck ceasefire deals with coalition troops. The aim was that once the weather improved, they would launch a mass uprising and force the surrender of major cities.

However, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition sprung a surprise of its own by breaking the ceasefire agreements and conducting military operations one after the other from December 2006 onwards against the unprepared Taliban.

This forced the Taliban's abrupt retreat from important arteries and effectively ended the dream of a mass uprising this spring. Instead, the Taliban turned more to the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks to irritate the enemy rather than cause serious damage.

NATO was relaxed during the month of Ramadan as Afghans generally don't fight in this period, and with the winter setting in, it was believed that the next Taliban action would only take place next spring.

But the Taliban have taken advantage of Pakistan's political troubles - the Pakistani army is busy saving its political interests in Islamabad - to keep on fighting in what is probably their first real winter offensive.

The fate of the Taliban's offensives in Afghanistan and Pakistan are closely linked with the fate of Musharraf's second coup. He will have to restore the country to normalcy very quickly. If not, the Taliban will go from strength to strength and a vital US-led "war on terror" theater will be closed.

Political shambles

"It is the duty of every citizen, and especially lawyers, to struggle for the supremacy of law, independence of the judiciary and real democracy," lawyer Shaukat Rauf cited Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry as saying in a telephone address to the bar in Islamabad on Tuesday.

Chaudhry is one of thousands of lawyers and opposition members to have been arrested or placed under house arrest since Saturday.

Chaudhry's defiant call illustrates that rolling back the emergency is only a part of the problem - what is wanted is the reinstatement of deposed judges and the full restoration of an independent judiciary.

The imposition of the emergency came as the Supreme Court was about to deliver its verdict on whether Musharraf could run for president while still serving as army chief. Last month, he was reelected by an overwhelming majority in national and provincial assemblies.

The opposition boycotted the polls and asked the Supreme Court to intervene and the judges ordered that official results be withheld until a verdict was reached. It is thought the court planned to rule against Musharraf, hence emergency rule.

Chaudhry has had run-ins with Musharraf before. He was suspended in March for alleged malfeasance (the real reason was the judiciary's opposition to Musharraf's role as army chief). Widespread protests and violence followed, and eventually when the Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry, the Musharraf regime had little choice but to accept the decision.

Chaudhry might be detained for now, but he has emerged as a formidable foe for Musharraf, and his following is growing by the day.