Surging Towards Disaster in the "Afpak Theatre"

[semper occultus]

In Afghanistan, signs of crony capitalism

By Andrew Higgins
Monday, February 22, 2010

www.washingtonpost.com

KABUL -- Afghanistan's biggest private bank -- founded by the Islamic nation's only world-class poker player -- celebrated its fifth year in business last summer with a lottery for depositors at Paris Palace, a Kabul wedding hall.

Prizes awarded by Kabul Bank included nine apartments in the Afghan capital and cash gifts totaling more than $1 million. The bank trumpeted the event as the biggest prize drawing of its kind in Central Asia.

Less publicly, Kabul Bank's boss has been handing out far bigger prizes to his country's U.S.-backed ruling elite: multimillion-dollar loans for the purchase of luxury villas in Dubai by members of President Hamid Karzai's family, his government and his supporters.

The close ties between Kabul Bank and Karzai's circle reflect a defining feature of the shaky post-Taliban order in which Washington has invested more than $40 billion and the lives of more than 900 U.S. service members: a crony capitalism that enriches politically connected insiders and dismays the Afghan populace.

"What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan," Kabul Bank's founder and chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, said in an interview when asked about the Dubai purchases and why, according to data from the Persian Gulf emirate's Land Department, many of the villas have been registered in his name. "These people don't want to reveal their names."



Afghan laws prohibit hidden overseas lending and require strict accounting of all transactions. But those involved in the Dubai loans, including Kabul Bank's owners, said the cozy flow of cash is not unusual or illegal in a deeply traditional system underpinned more by relationships than laws.

The curious role played by the bank and its unorthodox owners has not previously been reported and was documented by land registration data; public records; and interviews in Kabul, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Moscow.

Many of those involved appear to have gone to considerable lengths to conceal the benefits they have received from Kabul Bank or its owners. Karzai's older brother and his former vice president, for example, both have Dubai villas registered under Farnood's name. Kabul Bank's executives said their books record no loans for these or other Dubai deals financed at least in part by Farnood, including home purchases by Karzai's cousin and the brother of Mohammed Qasim Fahim, his current first vice president and a much-feared warlord who worked closely with U.S. forces to topple the Taliban in 2001.

At a time when Washington is ramping up military pressure on the Taliban, the off-balance-sheet activities of Afghan bankers raise the risk of financial instability that could offset progress on the battlefield. Fewer than 5 percent of Afghans have bank accounts, but among those who do are many soldiers and policemen whose salaries are paid through Kabul Bank.

A U.S. official who monitors Afghan finances, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said banks appear to have plenty of money but noted that in a crisis, Afghan depositors "won't wait in line holding cups of latte" but would be "waving AK-47s."

Kabul Bank executives, in separate interviews, gave different accounts of what the bank is up to with Dubai home buyers. "They are borrowers. They have an account at Kabul Bank," said the bank's chairman, Farnood, a boisterous 46-year-old with a gift for math and money -- and the winner of $120,000 at the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe, held in a London casino.

The bank's chief audit officer, Raja Gopalakrishnan, however, insisted that the loan money didn't come directly from Kabul Bank. He said it was from affiliated but separate entities, notably a money-transfer agency called Shaheen Exchange, which is owned by Farnood, is run by one of Kabul Bank's 16 shareholders and operates in Kabul out of the bank's headquarters.

The audit officer said Farnood "thinks it is one big pot," but the entities are "legally definitely separate."

A new economy

In some ways, Kabul Bank is a symbol of how much has changed in Afghanistan since 2001, when the country had no private banks and no economy to speak of. Kabul Bank has opened more than 60 branches and recently announced that it will open 250 more, and it claims to have more than $1 billion in deposits from more than a million Afghan customers.

Many of those involved appear to have gone to considerable lengths to conceal the benefits they have received from Kabul Bank or its owners. Karzai's older brother and his former vice president, for example, both have Dubai villas registered under Farnood's name. Kabul Bank's executives said their books record no loans for these or other Dubai deals financed at least in part by Farnood, including home purchases by Karzai's cousin and the brother of Mohammed Qasim Fahim, his current first vice president...

The Washington Post, Feb.22, 2010Kabul Bank prospers because Afghanistan, though extremely poor, is in places awash with cash, a result of huge infusions of foreign aid, opium revenue and a legal economy that, against the odds, is growing at about 15 percent a year. The vast majority of this money flows into the hands of a tiny minority -- some of it through legitimate profits, some of it through kickbacks and insider deals that bind the country's political, security and business elites.

The result is that, while anchoring a free-market order as Washington had hoped, financial institutions here sometimes serve as piggy banks for their owners and their political friends. Kabul Bank, for example, helps bankroll a money-losing airline owned by Farnood and fellow bank shareholders that flies three times a day between Kabul and Dubai.

Kabul Bank's executives helped finance President Hamid Karzai's fraud-blighted reelection campaign last year, and the bank is partly owned by Mahmoud Karzai, the Afghan president's older brother, and by Haseen Fahim, the brother of Karzai's vice presidential running mate.

Farnood, who now spends most of his time in Dubai, said he wants to do business in a "normal way" and does not receive favors as a result of his official contacts. He said that putting properties in his name means his bank's money is safe despite a slump in the Dubai property market: He can easily repossess if borrowers run short on cash.

A review of Dubai property data and interviews with current and former executives of Kabul Bank indicate that Farnood and his bank partners have at least $150 million invested in Dubai real estate. Most of their property is on Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island in the shape of a palm tree where the cheapest house costs more than $2 million.

Mirwais Azizi, an estranged business associate of Farnood and the founder of the rival Azizi Bank in Kabul, has also poured money into Dubai real estate, with even more uncertain results. A Dubai company he heads, Azizi Investments, has invested heavily in plots of land on Palm Jebel Ali, a stalled property development. Azizi did not respond to interview requests. His son, Farhad, said Mirwais was busy.

Responsibility for bank supervision in Afghanistan lies with the Afghan central bank, whose duties include preventing foreign property speculation. The United States has spent millions of dollars trying to shore up the central bank. But Afghan and U.S. officials say the bank, though increasingly professional, lacks political clout.

The central bank's governor, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, said his staff had "vigorously investigated" what he called "rumors" of Dubai property deals, but "unfortunately, up until now they have not found anything." Fitrat, who used to live in Washington, last month sent a team of inspectors to Kabul Bank as part of a regular review of the bank's accounts. He acknowledged that Afghan loans are "very difficult to verify" because "we don't know who owns what."

Kabul Bank's dealings with Mahmoud Karzai, the president's brother, help explain why this is so. In interviews, Karzai, who has an Afghan restaurant in Baltimore, initially said he rented a $5.5 million Palm Jumeirah mansion, where he now lives with his family. But later he said he had an informal home-loan agreement with Kabul Bank and pays $7,000 a month in interest.

"It is a very peculiar situation. It is hard to comprehend because this is not the usual way of doing business," said Karzai, whose home is in Farnood's name.

Karzai also said he bought a 7.4 percent stake in the bank with $5 million he borrowed from the bank. But Gopalakrishnan, the chief audit officer, said Kabul Bank's books include no loans to the president's brother.

Also in a Palm Jumeirah villa registered in Farnood's name is the family of Ahmad Zia Massoud, Afghanistan's first vice president from 2004 until last November. The house, bought in December 2007 for $2.3 million, was first put in the name of Massoud's wife but was later re-registered to give Farnood formal ownership, property records indicate.

Massoud, brother of the legendary anti-Soviet guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, said that Farnood had always been the owner but let his family use it rent-free for the past two years because he is "my close friend." Massoud added: "We have played football together. We have played chess together." Farnood, however, said that though the "villa is in my name," it belongs to Massoud "in reality."

Haseen Fahim, the brother of Afghanistan's current first vice president, has been another beneficiary of Kabul Bank's largesse. He got money from Farnood to help buy a $6 million villa in Dubai, which, unusually, is under his own name. He borrowed millions more from the bank, which he partly owns, to fund companies he owns in Afghanistan.

In an interview at Kabul Bank's headquarters, Khalilullah Fruzi, who as chief executive heads the bank's day-to-day operations, said he didn't know how much bank money has ended up in Dubai. If Karzai's relatives and others buy homes "in Dubai, or Germany or America . . . that is their own affair," Fruzi said, adding that the bank "doesn't give loans directly for Dubai."

Fruzi, a former gem trader, said Kabul Bank is in robust health, makes a profit and has about $400 million in liquid assets deposited with the Afghan central bank and other institutions. Kabul Bank is so flush, he added, that it is building a $30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass.

The bank is also spending millions to hire gunmen from a company called Khurasan Security Services, which, according to registration documents, used to be controlled by Fruzi and is now run by his brother.

The roots of Kabul Bank stretch back to the Soviet Union. Both Fruzi and Farnood got their education and their start in business there after Moscow invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

While in Moscow, Farnood set up a successful hawala money-transfer outfit to move funds between Russia and Kabul. Russian court documents show that 10 of Farnood's employees were arrested in 1998 and later convicted of illegal banking activity. Fearful of arrest in Russia and also in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Farnood shifted his focus to Dubai.

In 2004, three years after the fall of the Taliban regime, he got a license to open Kabul Bank. His Dubai-registered hawala, Shaheen Exchange, moved in upstairs and started moving cash for bank clients. It last year shifted $250 million to $300 million to Dubai, said the chief audit officer.

The bank began to take in new, politically connected shareholders, among them the president's brother, Mahmoud, and Fahim, brother of the vice president, who registered his stake in the name of his teenage son.

Fahim said two of his companies have borrowed $70 million from Kabul Bank. Insider borrowing, he said, is unavoidable and even desirable in Afghanistan because, in the absence of a solid legal system, business revolves around trust, not formal contracts. "Afghanistan is not America or Europe. Afghanistan is starting from zero," he said.

Also in London for the conference were Farnood, who now has an Afghan diplomatic passport, and Fruzi, who served as a financial adviser to Karzai's reelection campaign and also owns a house in Dubai. "If there is no Kabul Bank, there will be no Karzai, no government," Fruzi said.

The Washington Post, Feb.22, 2010Fahim's business has boomed, thanks largely to subcontracting work on foreign-funded projects, including a new U.S. Embassy annex and various buildings at CIA sites across the country, among them a remote base in Khost where seven Americans were killed in a December suicide attack by a Jordanian jihadiist. "I have good opportunities to get profit," Fahim said.

'Like wild horses'

Kabul Bank also plunged into the airline business, providing loans to Pamir Airways, an Afghan carrier now owned by Farnood, Fruzi and Fahim. Pamir spent $46 million on four used Boeing 737-400s and hired Hashim Karzai, the president's cousin, formerly of Silver Spring, as a "senior adviser."

Farnood said he also provided a "little bit" of money to help Hashim Karzai buy a house on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. Karzai, in brief telephone interviews, said that the property was an investment and that he had borrowed some money from Farnood. He said he couldn't recall details and would "have to check with my accountant."

Noor Delawari, governor of the central bank during Kabul Bank's rise, said Farnood and his lieutenants "were like wild horses" and "never paid attention to the rules and regulations." Delawari said he didn't know about any property deals by Kabul Bank in Dubai. He said that he, too, bought a home in the emirate, for about $200,000.

Fitrat, the current central bank governor, has tried to take a tougher line against Kabul Bank and its rivals, with little luck. Before last year's presidential election, the central bank sent a stern letter to bankers, complaining that they squander too much money on "security guards and bulletproof vehicles" and "expend large-scale monetary assistance to politicians." The letter ordered them to remain "politically neutral."

Kabul Bank did the opposite: Fruzi, its chief executive, joined Karzai's campaign in Kabul while Farnood, its poker-playing chairman, organized fundraising events for Karzai in Dubai. One of these was held at the Palm Jumeirah house of Karzai's brother.

The government has returned the favor. The ministries of defense, interior and education now pay many soldiers, police and teachers through Kabul Bank. This means that tens of millions of dollars' worth of public money sloshes through the bank, an unusual arrangement, as governments generally don't pump so much through a single private bank.

Soon after his November inauguration for a second term, President Karzai spoke at an anti-corruption conference in Kabul, criticizing officials who "after one or two years work for the government get rich and buy houses in Dubai." Last month, he flew to London for a conference on Afghanistan, attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other leaders, and again promised an end to the murky deals that have so tarnished his rule.

Also in London for the conference were Farnood, who now has an Afghan diplomatic passport, and Fruzi, who served as a financial adviser to Karzai's reelection campaign and also owns a house in Dubai. "If there is no Kabul Bank, there will be no Karzai, no government," Fruzi said.

Correspondent Joshua Partlow in Kabul and special correspondent Anna Masterova in Moscow contributed to this report.

Dubai real estate deals for Afghans connected to Karzai

Companies owned by the founder of Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest private bank and employer, have financed several properties in Dubai for people connected to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

[seemslikeadream]

Where in the World Is Mullah Omar?
Rumors of Death, Disappearance Fuel Speculation
by Jason Ditz, May 23, 2011

Former Afghan ruler Mullah Omar, a man so reclusive that no one even knows if the handful of putative photographs of him are even authentic, appears to have gone missing over the past several days, according to Afghanistan’s spy agency.

“We can confirm that he has been disappeared from his hideout in Quetta,” the officials insisted. Afghan officials have repeatedly claimed that Omar and other Taliban leadership have been operating with impunity in the Pakistani city as the “Quetta Shura.”

This and a handful of other reports have fueled speculation that Omar may in fact have died or been killed at some point recently. The Taliban has denied those reports, saying that the mullah is alive and well in Afghanistan.

Pakistani intelligence officials likewise disputed the claims of their Afghan counterparts, calling them “nonsense.” Pakistani officials have long insisted that there is no evidence Omar is in their country at all, and that the claims are an invention of the Afghan government to cover up for their failure to track him down domestically.

[JackRiddler]

.

Fitzgerald and Gould have a new book out. This teaser is kind of breathless.

http://counterpunch.org/fitzgerald05242011.html

May 24, 2011

Quagmire in the Hindu Kush
Crossing Bones at Zero Line

By PAUL FITZGERALD and ELIZABETH GOULD


The stakes are perhaps as high as they have ever been for the post-Cold War United States as Senator John Kerry wades through the Central Asian quagmire in Islamabad. Ironies abound. A war begun ten years ago by Skull and Bonesman George W. Bush requires another Skull and Bonesman to end it. It all seems so personal, not to mention private. Two members of the same secret society flanking the (war on terror) like a set of parentheses. But then, that's why secret societies are secret.

An article in the London Times on Thursday September 20, 2001 titled Secret plans for 10-year war, by Michael Evans laid out the plan. "AMERICA and Britain are producing secret plans to launch a ten-year 'war on terrorism' - Operation Noble Eagle - involving a completely new military and diplomatic strategy to eliminate terrorist networks and cells around the world."

The article goes on to report that the whole "long-term American approach," was being driven by Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State General Colin Powell in the mold of the war on drugs or poverty with special attention paid to "hearts and minds" and the sensitivities of Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan.

Most Americans don't know what goes on inside the secrets halls of Skull and Bones anymore than what kind of secret dealings led to their country being embroiled in the war on terror. But it's safe to assume that after ten years the only thing the war on terror shares with the war on drugs or poverty, hearts or minds or the sensitivities of Islamic fundamentalists, is failure.

John Kerry has a big job ahead of him as he meets to discuss U.S. predator drone attacks, accusations that Pakistan harbors Islamist militants, the failure of Pakistan's military to engage the Taliban and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

But the biggest job of all may be coming to grips withthe growing list of conflicting interests that are hobbling American policy while rewriting the American narrative to reflect the unpleasant reality that the war on terror was only a stage in an evolving process leading to anendless escalation of war.

To the shock and awe of many both inside and outside the United States, instead of breaking with the national security policies of George W. Bush, the Obama administration has, in many cases only furthered programs and practices implemented by his predecessor. In fact it appears that President Obama has embraced the largely discredited 1992 program for America's global dominance known as the Defense Planning Guidance crafted under another Bonesman, President George Herbert Walker Bush. It was assumed that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States would rethink the need for war. Instead, the '92 Defense Planning Guidance set the stage for a whole new era of confrontation stating that "Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival."

The administration faces a rising coalition of regional rivals due to convene in Astana, Kazakhstan on June 15 under the banner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It also faces a self-imposed deadline for a troop withdrawal beginning this July, and the intensifying fear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons will fall into terrorist hands.

Hints of a shockingly perverse response to a nuclear threat from political fanaticism or religious fundamentalism have been surfacing sporadically over the last few years. In January, 2008 the Guardian's Ian Traynor reported on a "radical manifesto" for a pre-emptive nuclear attack put forward by NATO's most senior military officers to "halt the 'imminent' spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction." The manifesto called for the "first use" of nuclear weapons by NATO to prevent their potential use by terrorists or a rogue state.

California State Associate Professor of Political Science Cora Sol Goldstein's August 2010 suggestion in Small Wars Journal that "the use of nuclear weapons is not yet justified," hinted strongly that the time would soon come when they were. And Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel's comment in a February 2011 posting that if the U.S. had to fight a war with Pakistan to occupy it, it would be a "nuclear war," suggested the option was already on the table.

The Hindu Kush has proved to be the ultimate crossroads for empires down through the millennia. Its graveyards and mountain passes overflow with the skulls and bones of invaders. Bonesmen have played an inordinate role in getting the United States to that crossroads. Let's hope a Bonesman can get us through without triggering the end of the world.


Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, both published in the Open Media Series by City Lights Books, www.citylights.com.

[seemslikeadream]

^^^

"the use of nuclear weapons is not yet justified," hinted strongly that the time would soon come when they were. And Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel's comment in a February 2011 posting that if the U.S. had to fight a war with Pakistan to occupy it, it would be a "nuclear war," suggested the option was already on the table.

[Pele'sDaughter]

I'm wondering if, in their twisted minds, it's now okay to loose the nukes since the planet is already being irradiated by Fukishima.

[JackRiddler]

I'm wondering if, in their twisted minds, it's now okay to loose the nukes since the planet is already being irradiated by Fukishima.

Did they already use the start of the Afghan war as an opportunity to test out the new generation of mini-nukes Rumsfeld wanted to justify?

.

[Pele'sDaughter]

I wouldn't be surprised.

[JackRiddler]

.

Some headlines posted by seemslikeadream on

It’s All About Pakistan - America’s latest villain (Raimondo, push to blame Pakistan, perhaps even attack Pakistan)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32034

(Full article texts there.)

Court rules Pakistan's president can't lead party

(May 12, 2011)

(AP) – LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A top Pakistani court has ruled that President Asif Ali Zardari must relinquish his position as chief of the country's ruling party. The Lahore High Court ruled on Thursday on a petition filed by a lawyer who had argued that Pakistan's constitution prohibits the president to also head a political party.

SNIP

Three U.S. Citizens Among Six Charged With Supporting Taliban in Pakistan
By Richard Rubin and Dan Hart -

A U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, four family members and another man were charged by federal prosecutors with providing “material support” to the Pakistani Taliban. Three of those indicted, including two South Florida imams, have been arrested, according to a statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice. Three others are at large in Pakistan. All are charged with conspiring to support a conspiracy to murder, maim and kidnap persons overseas as well as supporting the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan Playing the China Card
By Dilip Hiro and Tom Engelhardt, May 25, 2011

SNIP

By Dilip Hiro

Washington often acts as if Pakistan were its client state, with no other possible patron but the United States.... SNIP

A recurring feature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy has been its failure to properly measure the strengths (as well as weaknesses) of its challengers, major or minor, as well as its friends, steadfast or fickle. To earlier examples of this phenomenon, one may now add Pakistan.

That country has an active partnership with another major power, potentially a viable substitute for the U.S. should relations with the Obama administration continue to deteriorate. The Islamabad-Washington relationship has swung from close alliance in the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad years of the 1980s to unmistakable alienation in the early 1990s, when Pakistan was on the U.S. watch list as a state supporting international terrorism. Relations between Islamabad and Beijing, on the other hand, have been consistently cordial for almost three decades. Pakistan’s Chinese alliance, noted fitfully by the U.S., is one of its most potent weapons in any future showdown with the Obama administration.

Another factor, also poorly assessed, affects an ongoing war. While, in the 1980s, Pakistan acted as the crucial conduit for U.S. aid and weapons to jihadists in Afghanistan, today it could be an obstacle to the delivery of supplies to America’s military in Afghanistan. It potentially wields a powerful instrument when it comes to the efficiency with which the U.S. and its NATO allies fight the Taliban. It controls the supply lines to the combat forces in that landlocked country.

Taken together, these two factors make Pakistan a far more formidable and independent force than U.S. policymakers concede publicly or even privately.

SNIP
Referring to the "economic losses" Pakistan had suffered in its ongoing counter-terrorism campaigns, the Chinese government called upon the international community to support the Pakistani regime in its attempts to "restore national stability and development in its economy."

The Chinese response to bin Laden’s killing and its immediate aftermath in Pakistan should be a reminder to the Obama administration: in its dealings with Pakistan in pursuit of its Afghan goals, it has a weaker hand than it imagines. Someday, Pakistan may block those supply lines and play the China card to Washington’s dismay.

from the Washington Times
via AntiWar

Leaked cable says Pakistanis sabotaged own air missions
U.S. urged to provide ‘continuous’ drones

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Pakistani airmen sabotaged their fighter jets to prevent them from participating in operations against militants along the border with Afghanistan, according to a leaked U.S. Embassy cable.

Another cable reveals that Pakistan's army chief asked U.S. military officials for “continuous” coverage by Predator drones along that border despite criticism of the strikes by Pakistani officials in public.

The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks has provided a batch of U.S. diplomatic cables to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper and India’s New Delhi Television and the Hindu newspaper.

A March 2006 cable cites the Pakistani deputy chief of air staff for operations, Air Vice Marshal Khalid Chaudhry, as telling a visiting U.S. delegation that he was receiving monthly reports of acts of “petty sabotage” of jets by airmen.

Vice Marshal Chaudhry interpreted these acts as an effort by “Islamists amongst the enlisted ranks to prevent [Pakistani air force] aircraft from being deployed in support of security operations in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas along the Afghan border,” the cable says.

The U.S. delegation was led by John Hillen, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.

Another cable, sent in February 2008, revealed that Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, sought “continuous Predator coverage of the conflict area” in an area along the Afghanistan border where the Pakistani army was fighting militants.

In a meeting on Jan. 22, 2008, Gen. Kayani asked Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, who was chief of U.S. Central Command, for drone presence over South Waziristan.

“Fallon regretted that he did not have the assets to support this request, but offered Joint Tactical Aircraft Controller (JTAC) support for Pakistani aircraft. Kayani demurred, saying that having U.S. JTACs on the ground would not be politically acceptable,” according to the cable.

Vice Marshal Chaudhry, speaking “off the record,” told Mr. Hillen that Pakistani aircraft are called regularly to provide air support to military and security forces when they get into tight spots in the tribal areas near the Afghanistan border, “dryly adding that army brass and the ground forces commanders would deny it,” the cable said.

In a rare public statement this year, Gen. Kayani condemned a March 17 U.S. drone strike that Pakistan said killed up to 40 people in North Waziristan.

Most Pakistanis oppose drone strikes, which they see as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

U.S. and Pakistani officials have not publicly acknowledged the covert program.

However, a Pakistani official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter, told The Washington Times that these operations have been carried out after robust intelligence sharing between Pakistan and the U.S.

The Predator drones are operated from bases inside Pakistan the Shamsi air base and Jacobabad.

U.S. officials and analysts say elements within Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, are reluctant to sever ties with militants operating in Afghanistan and India.

“Pakistani military operations against insurgent groups have always been primarily focused on threats to Pakistani security,” said Jeffrey Dressler, a research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Sen. Christopher A. Coons, Delaware Democrat, raised questions about Pakistan’s commitment to acting against terrorists.

“I’m deeply disturbed by what seems to be a state that plays a double game, that accepts significant multibillion-dollar aid from us, combat groups that target its own domestic concerns, but then clearly hedges against the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is an uneven partner at best,” he said.

Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden early May 2 in Abbottabad, a garrison town about 30 miles from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. The al Qaeda leader’s hide-out was barely a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul.

In his meetings with the U.S. officials, Vice Marshal Chaudhry said Pakistan’s military leadership has a tough time maintaining positive attitudes toward the U.S. among enlisted personnel.

The cable says he cited the susceptibility of the enlisted ranks - most of whom come from rural areas - to the influence of Islamist clerics. “You can’t imagine what a hard time we have trying to get to trim their beards,” Vice Marshal Chaudhry is quoted as saying in a cable.

Conservative Muslims grow full beards as a sign of piety.

While in Pakistan, Mr. Hillen heard criticism of President George W. Bush’s decision not to give Pakistan a civil nuclear deal similar to the one he struck with India.

A Pakistani official expressed dismay at Mr. Bush’s reference to rogue nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, as the reason why the U.S. would not offer this deal to Islamabad.

Nazir Hussain, who at the time was chief of protocol at Pakistan’s foreign ministry, told Mr. Hillen: “Your man cut Musharraf off at the knees” with that public comment, according to the cable. Gen. Pervez Musharraf was the Pakistani president.

Pakistan was negotiating the sale of F-16 fighter jets with the U.S. at the time, and Vice Marshal Chaudhry asked Mr. Hillen to ensure that the deal “has enough sweeteners to appeal to the public - a complete squadron of new F-16s, with JDAM and night-vision capability - but not to offer the PAF things that it cannot afford,” according to the cable.

Discussing the Chinese JF-17 Thunder jet, a key component of Pakistan’s fighter fleet, Vice Marshal Chaudhry acknowledged that the jet was not comparable to the U.S. F-16 in terms of quality, particularly its avionics and weapons systems.

On a trip to Beijing last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani secured a deal in which China will provide Pakistan with 50 more JF-17s.

Pakistani Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said Pakistan was seeking delivery of the jets within six months.

[crikkett]

I'm wondering if, in their twisted minds, it's now okay to loose the nukes since the planet is already being irradiated by Fukishima.

Did they already use the start of the Afghan war as an opportunity to test out the new generation of mini-nukes Rumsfeld wanted to justify?

.

They did that in Iraq, didn't they?
All those mysterious brilliant blue lights in the sky?

[JackRiddler]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... s-pakistan

US cuts troop numbers in Pakistan

Pakistan asks US to reduce military footprint in a sign of its annoyance over how raid that killed Bin Laden was carried out

James Meikle and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 May 2011 10.26 BST


Former Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf said that neither he nor senior officials had colluded in providing refuge for Osama bin Laden. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

The US is reducing its military force in Pakistan at the request of Islamabad after US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, the Pentagon has said.

More than 200 American troops are in the country helping to train the army in counter-insurgency, but there are also said to be intelligence and special forces there.

No details have been given on the size of the reduction, the type of troops involved, nor whether Pakistan has set a new limit on US numbers.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said: "We were recently (within the past two weeks) notified in writing the government of Pakistan wished for the US to reduce its footprint in Pakistan. Accordingly we have begun those reductions."

The request will be taken as a sign of Islamabad's annoyance that the raid on Bin Laden's compound at Abbottabad was carried out without its knowledge. There have been suspicions in Washington that some in Pakistan knew the al-Qaida leader's hideout.

But Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan, denied that the country's ISI intelligence service knew, at any level, of the presence of the world's most wanted man in the garrison city. However, in an interview with BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday, he admitted that it was "very difficult to prove non-complicity".

Musharraf said he had been surprised and shocked to discover where Bin Laden had been hiding. He added that neither he nor senior government officials had colluded in providing refuge for the fugitive while he was in power between 1999 and 2007. "I can't imagine in my wildest dreams that the intelligence agency was doing something without telling me, so therefore there was no complicity at the strategic level."

However, the intelligence service had demonstrated "negligence, ineptitude and failure" in its failure to detect Bin Laden, he said.

[JackRiddler]

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top? ... 13f4f426c7

Afghan official: NATO airstrike kills 14

MIRWAIS KHAN
From Associated Press
May 29, 2011 3:56 AM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A NATO airstrike targeting insurgents inadvertently hit two civilian homes in the volatile southwestern Helmand province, killing 14 women and children, an Afghan government official said Sunday.

Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial government, said the alliance launched the airstrike late on Saturday in retaliation for an attack earlier in the day on a U.S. Marine base in Helmand's northwest district of Nawzad. He said NATO hit two civilian houses, killing five girls, seven boys, and two women.

NATO spokesman Maj. Tim James said a joint coalition and Afghan delegation was traveling Sunday to the site to investigate. He didn't confirm the aistrike and provided no details about it or the attack on the Marines.

Civilian deaths are an ongoing source of tension between NATO and Afghan officials.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called on coalition forces to minimize night raids and airstrikes in order to avoid accidental deaths.

Helmand borders Pakistan and is an insurgent bastion. The province's vast poppy fields, especially in the north, are the Taliban's prime profit center.

Afghan insurgents have stepped up a spring offensive across Afghanistan.

On Saturday, a Taliban suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up inside a heavily guarded compound in northern Afghanistan as top Afghan and international officials were leaving a meeting.

The blast killed two senior Afghan police commanders and wounded a German general in command of coalition troops in the region. Two German soldiers and two other Afghans were also killed in the blast that came just weeks before a planned drawdown of U.S. troops begins this summer.

The bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest inside the governor's complex in Takhar province, where high-ranking Afghan officials were meeting with members of the international coalition, according to Faiz Mohammad Tawhedi, a spokesman for the governor.

Among the dead was Gen. Daud Daud, regional police commander in northern Afghanistan. Daud was a former deputy interior minister for counternarcotics and a former bodyguard of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Tajik leader who commanded the Northern Alliance and died in an al-Qaida suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that provoked the U.S. invasion.

Also killed were provincial police chief Gen. Shah Jahan Noori, a secretary to the governor and one of Daud's bodyguards, the health director said.

Gen. Markus Kneip, the NATO force's commander for nine northern provinces, was among the wounded, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in Berlin.

Fifty-one German troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of the war.

Also Saturday, Karzai ordered that only Afghan troops — not NATO forces — should carry out special operations and night raids and that the international coalition should not conduct any raids that have not been coordinated beforehand with Afghan authorities.

The move was aimed at quelling popular anger over what the raids, which many Afghans say cause civilian casualties, capture the wrong people or mistreat civilians during searches of private homes and compounds. It wasn't immediately clear what impact, if any, Karzai's orders would have on NATO's actions.

The coalition has defended the raids as a necessity to flush out insurgents from their hideouts.

___

Khan reported from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. A

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/29/a ... civilians/

Afghanistan’s Karzai gives U.S. final warning: stop killing civilians


By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, May 29th, 2011 -- 4:18 pm


KABUL (AFP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the US military on Sunday to avoid operations that kill civilians, saying it was his "last warning" to Washington after 14 people allegedly died in an air strike.

Reacting to the alleged deaths of 10 children, two women and two men in an air strike on Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, Karzai said such incidents were "murdering of Afghanistan's children and women."

"The president called this incident a great mistake and the murdering of Afghanistan's children and women, and on behalf of the Afghan people gives his last warning to the US troops and US officials in this regard," his office said, adding that he "strongly condemned" the killings.

Citing initial "reports and heartrending pictures published on media" Karzai's office said 10 children, two women and two men were killed in the raid.

Adopting an unusually angry tone, Karzai said the US-led operations were "arbitrary" and unnecessary".

"The president said that US and NATO troops have been repeatedly told that their arbitrary and unnecessary operations cause the deaths of innocent Afghans and such operations violate human and moral values but it appears that (we) are not listened to," the statement said.

Local authorities in Helmand said that US Marines called in air support after their base in Nawzad district came under attack from small arms fire.

"During the air strike, two civilian houses were targeted which killed 14 civilians and six others were wounded," the provincial administration said in a statement.

The statement said the dead included five girls, seven boys and two women.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said it was investigating the allegations.

"ISAF are aware of the reports that civilians were allegedly killed in an ISAF air strike," spokesman Major Tim James told AFP.

"(The) Regional Command South West has sent a joint assessment team to the area to look into the allegation and they will issue their findings to the press."

Footage and pictures from the troubled region showed turbaned men carrying the bodies of children and showing them to unseen journalists.

Aslam, a local elder of Nawzad district, told AFP he "lost 12 relatives while 10 others including children were injured" in the air strike.

He said some shots were fired at ISAF helicopters which flew into the area, adding that the choppers returned after 10 to 20 minutes and fired rockets, killing the "innocent civilians".

Separately the governor of Nuristan on Sunday told AFP that 18 civilians and 20 police were killed by "friendly fire" during US-led air strikes against insurgents in his troubled northeastern province.

Nuristan was the scene of heavy battles last week between the Taliban and Afghan security forces. The police and civilians were targeted Wednesday after they were mistaken for militants, Jamaluddin Badr said.

"The policemen were killed due to friendly fire," Badr said, adding the air strike in the troubled district of Do Ab targeted a location that the officers "had just" taken from the insurgents during fighting.

"Civilians were killed because the Taliban... (who) ran out of ammunition fled into the civilians' houses and then the civilians were mistaken with the Taliban and fired upon," the governor said.

Major James said those allegations were also being investigated.

"ISAF has sent a fact-finding team to investigate the allegations about civilian and police casualties in Nuristan," he said.

"Our initial reporting does not indicate civilian casualties in that air strike," he added.

The issue of civilian casualties is highly sensitive in Afghanistan as Karzai struggles to win the hearts and minds of his people against the Taliban.

The United Nations says Afghan civilian deaths in the war increased 15 percent to a record high of 2,777 last year. More than three-quarters of the dead were killed in violence blamed on insurgents.

[JackRiddler]

.

Karzai again, now makes top headline in today's print NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world ... nted=print

May 31, 2011
Karzai Warns NATO Against Air Attacks on Afghan Homes
By RAY RIVERA

KABUL, Afghanistan — In one of his sternest warnings yet concerning civilian casualties, President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that NATO must stop air attacks on Afghan homes immediately, or face “unilateral action” from the Afghan government.

Speaking at a news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai declined to say what actions the government would or could take, saying only that Afghanistan “has a lot of ways of stopping it.”

In an admonishment that carried an air of threat, he said NATO forces were on the verge of being considered occupiers rather than allies.

“If they continue their attacks on our houses, then their presence will change from a force that is fighting against terrorism to a force that is fighting against the people of Afghanistan,” he said. “And in that case, history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”

Mr. Karzai has used similar language before, but taken with other recent statements, his comments could further threaten a relationship with his Western backers that has been strained over issues like night raids, corruption and the continuing scandal surrounding questionable loans and huge losses at Kabul Bank.

The timing also represents a political gamble for Mr. Karzai, appealing to popular anger at home while testing the will of the American and international community to continue supporting a war that has become increasingly unpopular, especially since the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2.

NATO officials responded diplomatically, noting that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, understood the need to work closely with the Afghan government to reduce civilian casualties.

“General Petraeus has repeatedly noted that every liberation force has to be very conscious that it can, over time, become seen as an occupation force,” Rear Adm. Vic Beck of the Navy, a spokesman for the NATO-led military coalition, said in a statement. He added, “We are in agreement with President Karzai on the importance of constantly examining our actions in light of that reality — and we are doing just that.”

The American Embassy in Kabul referred comment to NATO.

Civilian casualties, as well as the night raids and airstrikes that often lead to them, have been a bitter source of contention between NATO forces and the Afghan president for years. But Mr. Karzai’s latest statements, coming both before and after an airstrike on Saturday that killed several civilians, most of them women and children, have been laced with more definitive terms.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai ordered his Defense Ministry to take charge of the nighttime raids from the coalition forces in his most aggressive attempt yet to stem the use of such operations, which have angered Afghans for years for their intrusiveness and the civilian casualties they frequently cause.

Then after an airstrike on Saturday night in the Now Zad district of Helmand Province, the president issued a “last” warning to NATO forces that airstrikes that end in civilian casualties must stop.

NATO, in an apologetic statement after the attack, acknowledged that nine civilians had been killed. The strike was aimed at a group of five insurgents who had ambushed a Marine foot patrol, killing one of them, and then continued to fire on the patrol from inside a compound.

Local officials said 14 civilians died in the strike, and on Tuesday Mr. Karzai said 11 were children, ages 2 to 7.

Images of grieving friends and relatives carrying the bruised and bloodied bodies of dead children were broadcast on television the morning after the attack, inflaming passions.

Mr. Karzai called the deaths “shocking” and said in a statement that “NATO and American forces have been warned repeatedly that their arbitrary and improper operations are the causes of killing of innocent people.”

He added that he was warning “NATO, American forces and American officials for the last time on behalf of Afghanistan’s people.”

Talking to reporters Tuesday, he said the Afghan people were suffering from both the “terrorists and in the war against terrorism.”

NATO has increasingly turned to the use of night raids in recent months, calling them one of the most effective weapons they have in capturing and killing insurgent leaders. But coalition forces in recent years have also taken steps to protect civilians. A United Nations report said that 2,777 civilians died last year, the worst since the war began, but that the number of those killed by NATO forces had fallen to 16 percent. Insurgents accounted for 75 percent of the deaths, while the parties responsible for the remaining deaths could not be identified.

Reacting to a recent spate of high-profile NATO attacks that resulted in civilian casualties, General Petraeus issued a reminder to his troops this month about “the need to balance tactical aggressiveness with tactical patience.”

Mr. Karzai also condemned on Tuesday the insurgents who have stepped up their campaign this spring, including a bombing in Takhar Province on Saturday that killed the senior police commander for the northern region, Gen. Daoud Daoud, and five others. But the president added that “when NATO forces kill and wound Afghan people, the Afghan people will not accept this, because NATO came to protect this country.”

The president has over the years been known to use erratic, sometimes hyperbolic language in reference to his Western allies. In a closed-door session of Parliament last month, he reportedly threatened to join the Taliban over international pressure to stem corruption inside his government.

In an emotional speech in March, Mr. Karzai angered Western officials after he appeared to call for an end to NATO combat operations in the country during a memorial service for civilian casualties in Kunar Province. He later issued a clarification saying he was referring only to operations that cause civilian casualties.

The Afghan president said he intended to meet with top NATO leaders soon, possibly next Sunday, to spell out what actions the government intended to take if the airstrikes do not end. Not heeding his warnings, he said, is a threat to the country’s sovereignty, saying Afghanistan must be treated as an ally, not an occupied country.

“If it turns out to be the other,” he said, “to the behavior of an occupation, then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that.”

[semper occultus]

Afghanistan withdrawal: no significant pull out, says senior British general
No more Western troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan for at least another year, Britain's senior commander in the country has told David Cameron.

www.telegraph.co.uk

oh dear - from a situation where the occupation by the military was to create a breathing-space to allow some ill-defined political solution to emerge now the politicians are being asked to create a breathing-space for some ill-defined military solution to emerge.....

[JackRiddler]

Hope and Change: Bush mob and CIA satrap Gates, overseer of the Iraq "surge" under W, has led the Pentagon for more than half of the Obama administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/world ... nted=print

June 5, 2011
Steeper Pullout Is Raised as Option for Afghanistan

By DAVID E. SANGER, ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER


WASHINGTON — President Obama’s national security team is contemplating troop reductions in Afghanistan that would be steeper than those discussed even a few weeks ago, with some officials arguing that such a change is justified by the rising cost of the war and the death of Osama bin Laden, which they called new “strategic considerations.”

These new considerations, along with a desire to find new ways to press the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to get more of his forces to take the lead, are combining to create a counterweight to an approach favored by the departing secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, and top military commanders in the field. They want gradual cuts that would keep American forces at a much higher combat strength well into next year, senior administration officials said.

The cost of the war and Mr. Karzai’s uneven progress in getting his forces prepared have been latent issues since Mr. Obama took office. But in recent weeks they have gained greater political potency as Mr. Obama’s newly refashioned national security team takes up the crucial decision of the size and the pace of American troop cuts, administration and military officials said. Mr. Obama is expected to address these decisions in a speech to the nation this month, they said.

A sharp drawdown of troops is one of many options Mr. Obama is considering. The National Security Council is convening its monthly meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan on Monday, and although the debate over troop levels is operating on a separate track, the assessments from that meeting are likely to inform the decisions about the size of the force.

In a range of interviews in the past few days, several senior Pentagon, military and administration officials said that many of these pivotal questions were still in flux and would be debated intensely over the next two weeks. They would not be quoted by name about an issue that Mr. Obama had yet to decide on.

Before the new thinking, American officials were anticipating an initial drawdown of 3,000 to 5,000 troops. Those advocating steeper troop reductions did not propose a withdrawal schedule.

Mr. Gates, on his 12th and final visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary, argued repeatedly on Sunday that pulling out too fast would threaten the gains the American-led coalition had made in the 18 months since Mr. Obama agreed to a “surge” of 30,000 troops.

“I would try to maximize my combat capability as long as this process goes on — I think that’s a no-brainer,” Mr. Gates told troops at Forward Operating Base Dwyer. “I’d opt to keep the shooters and take the support out first.”

But the latest strategy review is about far more than how many troops to take out in July, Mr. Gates and other senior officials said over the weekend. It is also about setting a final date by which all of the 30,000 surge troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

A separate timetable would dictate the departure of all foreign troops by 2014, including about 70,000 troops who were there before the surge, as agreed to by NATO and the Afghan government.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, sounded a cautious note about the state of the war in a telephone interview on Sunday. Although General Petraeus said there was “no question” that the Americans and the Afghans had made military progress in the crucial provinces of Helmand and Kandahar in the south, he said the Taliban were moving to reconstitute after the beating they took this past fall and winter.

“We’ve always said they would be compelled to try to come back,” General Petraeus said, adding that the Taliban would be trying to “regain the momentum they had a year ago.”

General Petraeus declined to discuss the withdrawal of American forces in July or the number he might recommend to the president. Late last week Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that General Petraeus had not yet submitted his recommended withdrawal number.

The decisions on force levels in Afghanistan could mirror how Mr. Obama handled the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Senior Pentagon officials noted that after Mr. Obama set a firm deadline for dropping to 50,000 troops in Iraq, he then let his commanders in Baghdad manage the specifics of which units to order home and when. The argument over where to set those “bookends” promises to be one of the most consequential and contentious of Mr. Obama’s presidency. It also has major implications for his re-election bid.

At one end of the debate is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and, presumably, a range of Mr. Obama’s political advisers, who opposed the surge in 2009 and want a rapid exit, keeping in place a force focused on counterterrorism and training.

At the other end is Mr. Gates, who leaves office at the end of the month and who won the 2009 debate over the troop surge along with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and senior commanders on the ground.

It is not clear what Mrs. Clinton’s position is now as the internal debate is rejoined, and Mr. Obama’s team has changed considerably in the past 18 months. Thomas E. Donilon, appointed national security adviser last fall, was leery of the surge and is likely to lean toward a speedier withdrawal, colleagues say.

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, supports greater use of unmanned drone technology and will have a voice as Mr. Gates’s nominated successor. General Petraeus is leaving his post in Afghanistan shortly to head the C.I.A., assuming he is confirmed by the Senate this summer.

In the past, when administration officials were asked about the pace of withdrawal, they often said it would depend on “conditions on the ground” — in other words, assessments of the strength of the Taliban, the pace at which Afghan troops and police are prepared to take over and the progress of the economic and political rebuilding of the country. “Most of those would weigh in favor of staying longer,” one senior official said.

But the growing list of so-called strategic considerations amounts to countervailing factors, senior officials said. Mr. Obama has said his goal is to dismantle Al Qaeda so that it can never use Afghanistan again to initiate a Sept. 11-style attack.

It can never be underlined enough that this is an old lie, even by the Official Conspiracy Theory, which holds that the Sept. 11 operation was conceived and overseen by a mastermind in Karachi and organized in meetings at apartments and hotel rooms in Kuala Lumpur, Hamburg, San Diego, Las Vegas and Florida, with the pilots trained at flight schools in Venice and the "muscle" hijackers recruited from Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan was supposedly where the spiritual inspiration was hiding, when he wasn't having his kidneys done in Dubai or Rawalpindi. By any measure, the Official Conspiracy Theory is the story of a mobile, well-connected network with cash and covert ops expertise, independent of the Afghanistan haven.

With the killing of Bin Laden, and with other members of the terrorist group on the run as American officials pick up clues from data seized at the Bin Laden compound, Mr. Obama can argue that Al Qaeda is much diminished.

The pressure to show Democrats that the cost of the war is declining is intense — so intense that Mr. Gates, during his travels, warned against undercutting a decade-long investment by cutting budgets too rapidly.

The Penatagon says the war in Afghanistan costs about $2 billion a week.


David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Thom Shanker from Forward Operating Base Dwyer, Afghanistan. Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Washington.

Two billion a week! And this at a time when the NY Times can no longer afford a copy editor!

.

[semper occultus]

Some interesting material on the afghan strategic political failure & the massive ramping up of “Kill / Capture” Phoenix MkII assassination programme & CIA use of local proxy forces such as the KPF ( Khost Protection Force ) :

from author Lucy Morgan Edwards author of new book the Afghan Solution interviewed with ex-British ambassador to Afg. on how the post-9/11 Blitzkrieg destroyed the chances of effective political reform & re-instated the worst of the narco-warlords.

In 2001, in the weeks around the World Trade Centre attacks, a group of Afghan tribal leaders, commanders and senior Taliban regime figures met in Rome and Peshawar and agreed to work together under the banner of the ex King of Afghanistan with the objective of toppling the Taliban regime. They would be led by the famed Resistance leader of the anti-Soviet war period, Abdul Haq.

The plan would be financed by two American Republican brothers who had made their fortune on the Chicago options exchange. On the other side of the Atlantic, a private British contingent including a former head of the UK’s Special Boat Service, an ex marine turned tv cameraman and a British Baronet also recognized the potential of Abdul Haq’s plan and lobbied for it in Whitehall. The story of all these men, but most of all Abdul Haq, and the reasons he went into Afghanistan on a seemingly impetuous mission, only to be assassinated by the Taliban in October 2001.
Afghan Solution

….possibly with ISI & or CIA complicity :

The forgotten story about Abdul Haq




CIA / KPF – excerpt from recent film on Channel 4 by Stephen Grey



UK episode

I presume this is the US version of same ( not watched it )

www.pbs.org

America's Secret Killers: Reporter Feature
www.channel4.com

Monday 06 June 2011
Reporter - Stephen Grey

This feature is from award-winning journalist Stephen Grey on his Dispatches programme America's Secret Killers

It involves an ultra-secret force described by one Pentagon adviser as an 'industrial scale counter-terrorism killing machine', and it's transforming the war in Afghanistan.

In America's Secret Killers, we investigate America's Kill-Capture campaign – an incredible blitz of raids and airstrikes that has killed over 3000 Taliban fighters in the last year and captured at least 8000.

Working with British special forces such as the SAS and SBS, the mission is being led by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) - the elite force whose soldiers killed Osama bin Laden.

In Afghanistan, while the public image of the war is often of a 'hearts and minds' campaign led by regular troops to win over the Afghan population, we found that in reality the military, under pressure for rapid results, is increasingly pinning hopes on its more secret and controversial operations.

The film is the result of six months of top-level access to NATO commanders and soldiers and to those involved with Special Forces. Filming and reporting took place on both sides of the front line, with soldiers and with the Taliban.

In our exploration of the war's secret heart, we came across some surprises, such as a special CIA armed force – dubbed a 'private army' by one US diplomat – that now patrols the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Or the discovery that Taliban prisoners are now being trained and used to study satellite photos and help pick targets for drone attacks.

But there are many who question the overall direction of the strategy. Afghan politicians told us the Kill-Capture campaign results in the death of too many innocent civilians and they criticise the invasion of Afghan homes by 'night raids' as a violation of Afghan culture. But, despite the public criticism, we found JSOC was conducting some 200 such night raids a month – six-times the number of two years ago.
Last week, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, gave the NATO coalition a 'final warning' to end attacks on Afghan homes with airstrikes and raids. And he threatened that if he was ignored, the Afghans would 'deal with occupying forces' as they have in the past.

General David Petraeus, the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, told me these targeted raids were an essential part of a mix of tactics. 'When you're faced with a serious, deteriorating situation, you have to do something about it. And the best way is to use every tool available to you,' he said.

According to Petraeus and his advisers, the medicine is starting to work. The Taliban is on the run and getting desperate.

But is the Kill Capture campaign hitting the right targets? And with British and American troops now approaching almost 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, how much does it really help in winning the war?

When Dispatches examined the case of one killing – a military assassination by airstrike of an alleged senior Taliban leader – we found disturbing evidence that JSOC may have killed completely the wrong man.

Whether on target or not, some critics also question if killing the Taliban's top leaders may simply cede power to new generation of extremists who will kill more innocents – and will have no interest in finally agreeing to make peace and end this long-running war.

Filming in northern Afghanistan, where US special forces have wiped out a succession of top Taliban leaders, our team set out to meet some of their replacements. We found the Taliban there under extreme pressure, but also confident in their own resilience. 'This war has become like delicious food for us,' one leader tells us. 'When a day passes without fighting, we get restless.'

You can follow Stephen Grey on Twitter: @StephenGrey