The New York Times reports on an escalation of the secret war in Afghanistan.
As an October chill fell on the mountain passes that separate the militant havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a small team of Afghan intelligence commandos and American Special Operations forces descended on a village where they believed a leader of Al Qaeda was hiding.
That night the Afghans and Americans got their man, Abu Bara al-Kuwaiti. They also came away with what officials from both countries say was an even bigger prize: a laptop computer and files detailing Qaeda operations on both sides of the border.
American military officials said the intelligence seized in the raid was possibly as significant as the information found in the computer and documents of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after members of the Navy SEALs killed him in 2011.
The spike in raids is at odds with policy declarations in Washington, where the Obama administration has deemed the American role in the war essentially over. But the increase reflects the reality in Afghanistan, where fierce fighting in the past year killed record numbers of Afghan soldiers, police officers and civilians.
U.S. Is Escalating a Secretive War in Afghanistan, New York Times
The United States is considering a slowdown in its withdraw from the overt war.
President Barack Obama is considering a request from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to slow the pace of the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.
"President Ghani has requested some flexibility in the troop drawdown timeline and base closure sequencing over the next two years, and we are actively considering that request," the official said, speaking on background.
Obama administration weighs Afghan request to slow withdrawal of U.S. troops, Reuters
The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan says President Ashraf Ghani has requested greater flexibility in the final drawdown of America’s military presence in the country, expected to be completed by 2017. General John Campbell appeared to confirm recent media reports that the Obama administration is looking at options to adjust the pace of withdrawal this year - while remaining firm that the military mission in Afghanistan will end on time.
The longest war in U.S. history continues to wind down, but this year’s target of reducing U.S. troop levels to less than 6,000 could be in flux, according to General John Campbell, who appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Afghanistan Asking for US Troop Withdrawal Adjustment, Voice of America
The U.S. Embassy Kabul congratulates Afghanistan on their victory in a World Cup cricket match.
Which celebration of victory was premature.
Bangladesh won by 105 runs.
Bangladesh v Afghanistan as it happened, BBC
The New York Times reports that the photo of Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, as seen in the New York Times, was not actually a photo of Abdul Rauf Khadim.
After an airstrike killed a prominent recruiter for the Islamic State in Afghanistan last week, the Afghan spy agency issued a triumphant news release announcing his death and providing a picture of a man it identified as the wanted militant, Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim.
Unfortunately, the spy agency sent news organizations a photograph of the wrong man. And not just any wrong man, but one who was struggling to lie low as he readjusted to life at home after 12 years of detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: a Kandahar resident named Shawali Khan.
The Afghan Militant in the Photo? The Wrong Man, and He’s Not Happy, New York Times
Carter Malkasian, interviewed by Small Wars Journal, says that COIN worked in Afghanistan.
To say that counterinsurgency didn’t work is not a fair assessment. If you look at a variety of places in Iraq and Afghanistan you can see that counterinsurgency tactics—particularly the ones related to the use of military force, patrolling, advising, and small projects—worked in pushing insurgents out of a specific area.
So long as your view of the war is very small.
From a tactical perspective, counterinsurgency worked.
The argument that counterinsurgency didn’t work has more weight from a strategic perspective.
Thoughts from Garmser and Kabul, Small Wars Journal
James Clark, who was in public affairs for the Marines during the Helmand surge, says that the idea of the United States delivering a government in a box sounded great.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the head of U.S. forces and the ISAF coalition in Afghanistan, went so far as to call it a “government in a box” — the idea being that after the Marines cleared the Taliban from the city, and the local residents who had dispersed ahead of the attack returned, representatives from the Afghan government would stroll in with a pre-packaged government structure and take over. This “government in a box” included a new regional governor and a ready-to-go cabinet.
So long as you do not think about it any.
It may have sounded great on paper, but if you let that sink in for a minute — yeah, it was never going to work.
For Those Who Fought In Marjah, It Was More Than Just A Battle, Task & Purpose
General Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan, more or less admits to having backed the Afghan Taliban against Hamid Karzai.
Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistani military ruler accused of sheltering and supporting the Taliban after 2001, has called for an end to the backing of militant “proxies” in Afghanistan.
In an interview with the Guardian, Musharraf admitted that when he was in power, Pakistan sought to undermine the government of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai because Karzai had “helped India stab Pakistan in the back”. But now the time had come to “totally cooperate” with Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president since September, who Musharraf believes is “the last hope for peace in the region”.
“In President Karzai’s times, yes, indeed, he was damaging Pakistan and therefore we were working against his interest. Obviously we had to protect our own interest,” Musharraf said. “But now President Ashraf Ghani has come and he is trying to restore balance in Afghanistan. We must totally cooperate with him.”
Musharraf: Pakistan and India's backing for 'proxies' in Afghanistan must stop, Guardian
I hear you muttering, ‘ok, tell us something that we didn’t know.’ Considering Musharraf’s continuing strong ties to the Pakistani army, however, it is interesting that he is choosing to admit this publicly now.
Musharref Admits that Pakistani Proxies Fought in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy
Pakistan says that the Afghan Taliban is willing to start a new round of peace talks.
Pakistani, Afghan and Western officials said Thursday that Afghanistan’s Taliban movement is ready to engage in peace talks with the Afghan government, which could open the door to a diplomatic solution to end the Islamist insurgency that has gripped the nation for more than 13 years.
The talks could start as early as next month, although it was unclear where they would be held, the officials said. But diplomats stressed that discussions on the terms of the talks were in their initial stages and that many obstacles lie in the way of achieving any significant results.
Pakistan says the Taliban is willing to enter Afghanistan peace talks, Washington Post
The United States and the Taliban deny this, though perhaps in a hedged way.
The Taliban, however, denied reports that a meeting meant to help broker talks would take place as early as Thursday between U.S. officials and Taliban representatives in the Gulf state of Qatar. A U.S. official also denied such a meeting would take place.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the U.S. isn’t in direct talks with the Taliban, and that there haven’t been any direct talks between the U.S. and the Taliban since January 2012, when the Taliban broke them off. “The U.S. is committed to enabling progress on an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation process which can lead to a stable and secure Afghanistan,” she said.
Taliban, Afghan Officials to Meet for Peace Talks, Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post reports that the insurgency is complex.
The Taliban in this northern province allows girls to attend school. It doesn’t execute soldiers or police. Its fighters are not Pashtun, the main ethnic group that bred and fueled the insurgency. Some members are even former mujahideen, or freedom fighters, who once despised the Taliban and fought against its uprising.
“The Taliban here are against the ideology of the Taliban in the south,” explained Maizuddin Ahmedi, 20, a former Taliban member who reflects the local faction’s atypical nature: He has a Facebook page, tweets regularly and wears a beanie emblazoned with “NY.”
As the U.S. mission winds down, Afghan insurgency grows more complex, Washington Post
Rula Ghani, on a visit to the United States, dares the U.S. media to stop portraying Afghanistan as a hopeless backwater.
She dared Islamic fundamentalists to reach back in their own history to recall the role of strong, influential women. And she made those remarks even though, as a Lebanese-born Christian, she suffered vicious media attacks from Afghan conservatives during her husband’s presidential campaign.
She dared Afghan students who have studied abroad on scholarship to pay their dues by coming home to help the country rebuild.
She dared foreign aid agencies to stop creating a culture of dependency, and instead focus on teaching Afghans how to build their own society.
She dared the Western press to stop portraying Afghanistan as a hopeless backwater.
And she dared the world to see Afghan woman in war-torn provinces operating as peacemakers, subtly negotiating with the Taliban to better their day to day lives.
Afghanistan's first lady dares the world to view her country differently, Fortune
Danielle Moylan, at Foreign Policy, has a detailed portrayal of women struggling to survive in the crossfire of the war.
Also, though, where Afghanistan is portrayed as a hopeless
Golpari said: “We wish for the day we can return, but we cannot have hope. It is impossible.” She could not see a time where the government and the Taliban would call a truce.
“People fight because there is a lack of education in this country,” Golpari explained. “The Taliban want a seat in the government, maybe if they were given one…”
“No,” Dolkhaneh interjected. “They completely want power and it will not be given to them. We can never have peace.”
backwater.
When I met Golpari, a sun-baked, craggy woman from Helmand, she strode confidently into the one-room mud brick house, dragging her ten-year-old daughter Nazdana by the wrist. She unapologetically pushed other women, toddlers, and babies aside to sit directly across from me on the filthy carpet, brushing loose dirt from the plastic bags wrapped around her feet, fashioned as the most rudimentary of shoes.
Struggling to Survive in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy
The United Nations Assistance Mission Afghanistan reports that civilian casualties are at the highest level, since they started recording statistics in 2009.
Evidence – if more was needed – of the intensification of the Afghan war has come in the United Nations’ annual report on civilian casualties. 25 per cent more civilians were killed in the conflict in 2014 than in 2013, almost all Afghans by Afghans. Most civilians are now being killed in ground engagements, an indication of a shift in the way the war is being fought. However, IEDs laid by the Taleban and other rebel groups remain the second biggest killer. Afghan national security forces come out reasonably well; unlike most other parties to the conflict, they do not appear to deliberately target civilians, but the report shows the impunity with which pro-government armed groups abuse local populations. And as Kate Clark reports, the UN has also charted the desperate situation of war widows.
The Human Cost of the Afghan War: UN reports sharp rise in the killed and injured, Afghanistan Analysts Network
The report underlined the dire social and economic consequences of civilian losses on Afghan society.
The deaths or injuries of men often leave their wives as the sole breadwinner, forcing them to marry off daughters or take children out of school to work.
"For Afghan women and children, the anguish of losing a husband and father in the conflict is often only the beginning of their suffering and hardship," said UNAMA Director of Human Rights Georgette Gagnon. "Rising civilian deaths and injuries in 2014 attests to a failure to fulfil commitments to protect Afghan civilians from harm," added UNAMA head Nicholas Haysom. "Parties to the conflict should understand the impact of their actions and take responsibility for them, uphold the values they claim to defend, and make protecting civilians their first priority."
Sharp rise in Afghan civilian casualties: UN, The Nation (Pakistan)