Afghan President Has ‘Lost Faith in US Ability to Defeat Taliban’

Posted on June 13, 2010 by abby

GUARDIAN– President Hamid Karzai has lost faith in the US strategy in Afghanistan and is increasingly looking to Pakistan to end the insurgency, according to those close to Afghanistan’s former head of intelligence services. Amrullah Saleh, who resigned last weekend, believes the president lost confidence some time ago in the ability of Nato forces to defeat the Taliban.

As head of the National Directorate of Security, Saleh was highly regarded in western circles. He has said little about why he quit, other than that the Taliban attack on last week’s peace jirga or assembly in Kabul was for him the “tipping point”; the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, also quit, and their resignations were accepted by Karzai.

Privately Saleh has told aides he believes Karzai’s approach is dangerously out of step with the strategy of his western backers. “There came a time when [Karzai] lost his confidence in the capability of the coalition or even his own government [to protect] this country,” a key aide told the Guardian.

Saleh believes Karzai has long thought this, but his views were crystallised in the aftermath of last year’s election when millions of votes were found to be fraudulent; Karzai blamed the US, UK and United Nations for the fraud. According to the source, Saleh is deeply concerned by Karzai’s noticeably softer attitude towards Pakistan. The president has long dropped his past habit of excoriating Pakistan for aiding the Taliban.

Saleh also echoes complaints of US commanders that Karzai refuses to behave like a commander-in-chief, and is not publicly leading the counterinsurgency campaign devised by Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato forces.

In London today, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, warned that progress needed to be made. “In all coalition countries the public expects to see us move in the right direction [but] will not tolerate the perception of a stalemate, where we are losing our young men.”

Gates also warned of “a high level of violence, especially this summer”, as US forces push deeper into southern provinces where the Taliban are strongest. Today in the south, insurgents shot down a Nato helicopter, killing four US troops, while a British soldier died in a separate attack. In Islamabad in Pakistan, an assault on a depot by insurgents destroyed 50 lorries belonging to the Nato military supply chain.

Continue reading about the Afghan President Losing Faith.

Photo by US Army Flickr

Pentagon Hunts Wikileaks Founder in Bid to Gag Website

Posted on June 12, 2010 by abby

GUARDIAN– American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders.

The Daily Beast, a US news reporting and opinion website, reported that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange – an Australian citizen who moves frequently between countries – after the arrest of a US soldier last week who is alleged to have given the whistleblower website a classified video of American troops killing civilians in Baghdad.

The soldier, Bradley Manning, also claimed to have given WikiLeaks 260,000 pages of confidential diplomatic cables and intelligence assessments.

The US authorities fear their release could “do serious damage to national security”, said the Daily Beast, which is published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and New Yorker magazines.

Read full article at GUARDIAN.

Photo by flickr user Espenmoe

White Fungus #11- Editorial on the Obama Culture

Posted on June 8, 2010 by abby

May, 2010

WHITE FUNGUS– Welcome to White Fungus Issue #11 – some falling debris from Taichung City, Taiwan.

Well it’s been a pathetic year for hope, peace and change.

Despite the mood for self-congratulation among liberals and progressives following the election of Obama, the ones with real cause to celebrate were the marketing gurus who ushered in the new feeling of ‘Yes We Can.’

Pipping corporate luminaries such as Apple Computers and Dell, “Brand Obama” was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008. The Age’s executives put it succinctly “as we have been marketing candidates like commodities ever since Ronald Reagan, I think this was the best we ever did.”

It was the triumph of feeling and spectacle over achievement of specific policy pronouncements. And despite escalating wars, the capitulation to Wall Street and pseudo posturing on the environment, for many the rallying cry is still ‘patience’, ‘give it time’ and ‘it’s not easy.’

In the face of massive global catastrophes the call is for measured incrementalism towards meager and unsubstantiated goals.

There’s been a tendency to view Obama – the kind of guy liberals would like to have a beer with – as some kind of friend, sweetheart or long lost family member, rather than as the one thing he ascertainably is, a politician.

And while liberals and progressives are now getting antsy, as their positions become increasingly untenable, and their fantasy turns into a nightmare. When it comes to criticizing Obama, the gloves are very much still on.

Talking to Larry King before the recent Afghanistan surge, Michael Moore, one of Bush’s most prominent critics, rallied against escalation but had nothing but praise for the new Decider in Chief.

“I think it’s impressive that he’s a thoughtful man. It’s great to have a smart person in the White House who really thinks about the cost of human life before making a big decision like this… I am so glad we have that man in the White House, even though I may have, whatever disagreements… I know this is weighing on him and I’m going to trust in all my heart that he’s going to make the right decisions….”

Even before the election, Naomi Klein warned Obama supporters that “if you’ve proven you’re a doormat, you can pretty much expect to get stomped on.”

And that has clearly been the pattern for this administration to date: dangle a carrot, such as the ‘public option’ to employ progressives as foot soldiers, then pull the rug out towards the end of the process, tout victory and enact corporate-friendly ‘reform.’

In his prescient article Are Liberals Pathetic?, Chris Hedges quotes Ralph Nadar who asks “What is the breaking point? The escalation of war in Afghanistan? The criminal war in Iraq? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put workers in their place? There is no breaking point.”

Hedge concludes: “So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are.”

Obama to Use National Guard to Beef up Border Security

Posted on May 30, 2010 by abby

LA TIMES– With its immigration overhaul effort bogged down in Congress, the Obama administration will deploy up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the violence-plagued Mexican border, officials said Tuesday.

News of the expected deployment came just hours after Obama met with GOP senators over lunch and discussed immigration and other issues on his agenda. Republicans last month wrote to the president asking for a larger National Guard deployment along the border to deal with drug-running and the smuggling of people.

The administration will seek $500 million to pay for the Guard and other border-protection measures. The Guard is expected to focus on efforts against drug trafficking, which has made the border region a murder zone. The troops are not expected to do law enforcement.

The last time the Guard was sent to the border was in 2006, when President George W. Bush sent thousands of troops to handle support issues and to free up U.S. Border Patrol agents.

In an afternoon appearance on the Senate floor, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for a renewed effort to bring the border region under control. In televised remarks, McCain, who had been a leading proponent of immigration overhaul, argued that troops were needed to prevent the human rights violations carried out by smugglers bringing undocumented workers into the U.S.

The dispatch of federal troops comes as the national spotlight has again turned to immigration issues after Arizona passed a law that gives police the power to stop people they suspect of being undocumented workers.

Liberals have vowed to overturn the law, arguing it is unconstitutional. Conservatives, however, have backed the law as needed to secure the borders.

Obama has pushed immigration issues, but his efforts have been rebuffed in this midterm election year. On Tuesday, he told the Republican lawmakers that he needed their help in getting a sweeping overhaul through the Senate.

Obama has repeatedly argued for better border security, a position backed by Mexico President Felipe Calderon, who recently visited the White House.

But Obama has also called for a program targeting employers of undocumented workers and a plan to give those immigrants a path to citizenship after paying penalties.

Written by Michael Muskal, twitter.com/LATimesmuskal

Afghans Believe United States is Funding Taliban

Posted on May 29, 2010 by abby

MR: This article is more of an acknowlegment from the Afghani people of what we already know to be true. In late ’09, Obama signed a supplemental war bill that included a provision allowing Taliban members to be “paid off” by the US in the hope that the money will make them “switch sides” and become loyal to the US. Learn more about this bill HERE.

GUARDIAN– It’s near-impossible to find anyone in Afghanistan who doesn’t believe the US are funding the Taliban: and it’s the highly educated Afghan professionals, those employed by ISAF, USAID, international media organisations – and even advising US diplomats – who seem the most convinced.

One Afghan friend, who speaks flawless English and likes to quote Charles Dickens, Bertolt Brecht and Anton Chekhov, says the reason is clear. “The US has an interest in prolonging the conflict so as to stay in Afghanistan for the long term.”

The continuing violence between coalition forces and the Taliban is simple proof in itself.

“We say in this country, you need two hands to clap,” he says, slapping his hands together in demonstration. “One side can’t do it on its own.”

It’s not just the natural assets of Afghanistan but its strategic position, the logic goes. Commanding this country would give the US power over India, Russia, Pakistan and China, not to mention all the central Asian states.

“The US uses Israel to threaten the Arab states, and they want to make Afghanistan into the same thing,” he says. “Whoever controls Asia in the future, controls the world.”

“Even a child of five knows this,” one Kabuli radio journalist tells me, holding his hand a couple of feet from the ground in illustration. Look at Helmand, he says; how could 15,000 international and Afghan troops fail to crush a couple of thousand of badly equipped Taliban?

And as for the British, apparently they want to stay in Afghanistan even more than the Americans. The reason they want to talk to the Taliban is to bring them into the government, thus consolidating UK influence.

This isn’t just some vague prejudice or the wildly conspiratorial theories so prevalent in the Middle East. There is a highly structured if convoluted analysis behind this. If the US really wanted to defeat the Taliban, person after person asks me, why don’t they tackle them in Pakistan? The reason is simple, one friend tells me. “As long as you don’t get rid of the nest, the problem will continue. If they eliminate the Taliban, the US will have no reason to stay here.”

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Photo by repSos.de flickr user

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