On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> Think about this sentence a second: Most of the attacks were carried
>> out on the basis of human intelligence, reportedly provided by the
>> Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen, who are spying for the US-led allied
>> forces in Afghanistan.
>>
>> I.e. these people were killed by Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen using
>> the US as a weapon.
>
> Oh yes, the U.S., innocent dupe of the natives.
There is nothing innocent about the US. But the disinformation problem Chris points to might be more serious that even he suggests. Juan Cole speculates that US opponents might be using drone strikes to (a) to consolidate power, and (b) to kill civilians -- i.e., the huge increase in civilian casualities may be no accident since this is their best recruiting tool and they may be playing us.
It's a speculative point, but it's plausible. It's part of today's survey post that basically reads a dozen news items for the last week as one big picture of things in Afghanistan turning sour fast:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/01/serial-catastrophes-in-afghanistan.html
Monday, January 04, 2010 Informed Comment
Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy
You probably won't see it in most US news outlets, but on Monday
morning in Kabul and Jalalabad, hundreds of university students
demonstrated against US strikes this weekend that allegedly killed a
number of civilians. I want to underline the irony that the students in
Tehran University are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while students in
these two Afghan cities are calling for Yankees to go home. Nangarhar
University in Jalalabad only has a student body of about 3200, so
'hundreds' of students protesting there would be a significant
proportion of the student body.
The demonstrations could be a harbinger of things to come, but there
was worse news. CIA field officers blown up, four US troops killed
Sunday, and the rejection of most of the cabinet nominees by
parliament, all signal rocky times ahead.
The past two weeks have seen the situation in Afghanistan deteriorate
palpably, raising significant questions about the viability of the
Obama-McChrysstal plan for the country. The chain of catastrophes has
been reported in piecemeal fashion, but taken together these events are
far more ominous than they might appear on the surface.
First, the US military launched a raid in Kunar Province two days after
Christmas on a village a night, in which President Hamid Karzai alleged
that 10 civilians, some 8 of them schoolchildren, had been killed (some
say dragged out of their beds and executed). The NYT reported the head
of a Kabul delegation to the village saying,"They gathered eight school
students from two compounds and put them in one room and shot them with
small arms." (The spokesman is a former governor of Kunar and now a
close adviser to President Hamid Karzai-- i.e. not exactly a
pro-Taliban source). The charitable theory is that in a nighttime raid,
US troops got disoriented and hit the wrong group of young men.
The outraged Afghan public saw this raid as an atrocity, and on
Wednesday December 30, they mounted street protests against the US in
Jalalabad, an eastern Pashtun city, and Kabul. In Jalalabad, hundreds
of university students blocked the main roads, and then marched in the
streets, chanting "Death to Obama" and "Death to America," and burning
Obama in effigy. (If they go on like that, the anti-imperialist Pashtun
college students of Jalalabad may attract the support of Fox Cable
News. . . .)
Even while the protests were taking place in Jalalabad and Kabul, a
NATO missile strike on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province
was alleged to have killed as many as 7 more civilians, some of them
children. Now the Afghan public was really angry.
Then on Thursday, all hell broke loose when a high-level Pashtun asset
who had been informing to the CIA on the location of important al-Qaeda
and Taliban operatives detonated a vest bomb at FOB Chapman in Khost
province, a CIA forward base. The attacker killed 7 field officers and
one Jordanian intelligence operative detailed to the base. Those
experience field officers were on the front lines in the fight against
al-Qaeda and their loss is a big blow to counter-terrorism. It is true
that they had been drawn in to a campaign of assassination, but it is
the president who gave them that task--unwisely, in my view.
The use of a double agent not only to misinform but actually to kill
the most experienced counter-terrorism officers in the region showed
the sophistication of tactical thinking in the Afghan insurgency.
The CIA's dependence on a double agent who finally openly betrayed them
raises troubling questions about US strategy and tactics in the region.
Such informants essentially direct CIA drone missile strikes.
You could imagine Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani Network in Khost
and over the border in Pakistan's North Waziristan, inserting such a
double agent into FOB Chapman and then using the CIA. For instance,
what if a middling member of the Haqqani network launched a challenge
to Siraj's leadership and that of his ailing father, Jalaluddin (an
old-time ally of Reagan who was warmly greeted in the White House in
the 1980s)? Wouldn't it be easy enough just to have the double agent
tell the CIA that the challenger is a really bad guy in cahoots with
al-Qaeda? Boom. Drone strike kills Taliban leaders in North Waziristan.
In this way, Siraj could have used the US to eliminate rivals and
become more and more powerful. And how many double agents have given up
a few Arab jihadis who had fallen out with the Haqqanis, but then
deliberately followed this up with bad intel on some innocent village,
making the name of the US mud among the Pashtuns.
The drone strikes shouldn't be run by the CIA, and probably shouldn't
be run at all. It could well be that savvy old-time Mujahidin trained
in CIA tradecraft in the 1980s are having our young wet behind the ears
field officers for lunch.
In short, is the bombing at FOB Chapman the tip of an iceberg of
misinformation, on which the Titanic of Obama's AfPak policy could well
founder?
Aljazeera English has video of these dramatic events leading up to the
New Year, including the anti-US demonstrations, which looked big and
significant to me on satellite television.
[EMBED]
A soldier of the Afghan army shot an American soldier, further raising
suspicions between the two supposed partners. Then a Canadian unit and
embedded journalist were blown up.
There were more errant US strikes over the weekend, producing the
demonstrations in Kabul and Jalalabad on Monday morning.
Then there were two other pieces of information coming out in the past
few days that suggest all is not well.
First, a report on the Afghanistan Army threw cold water all over the
idea that it could be enlarged and trained to provide security in the
country any time soon. High desertion rates, illiteracy, working half
days, refusal to stand and fight against the enemy, and other factors
just made that prospect remote. But such training, and the substitution
of the Afghan National Army for NATO and US forces is the centerpiece
of the Obama-McChrystal plan.
Finally, the Afghan parliament rejected 17 of the 24 nominees to the
cabinet offered by President Karzai. The speaker of the House, Yunus
Qanuni, supported Karzai's rival, Abdullah Abdullah, in August's
presidential elections-- which many Afghans believe Karzai stole. This
rejection was the Abdullah faction's chance to humiliate Karzai in
revenge.
Aljazeera English has video on the rejection of 70 percent of the
cabinet, including the old time warlord of Herat, Ismail Khan, and a
key women's affairs minister.
[EMBED]
But the step means that we go into the winter with 17 ministries
headless. Having an increasingly competent Afghan government to partner
with was another key element of the Obama plan. There is not one.
So, the US is killing schoolchildren far too often, enraging the Afghan
public. It has provoked a studnet protest movement against it in
Jalalabad and Kabul. Its informants are double agents. Its supposed
partner, the Afghan army, mostly doesn't actually exist and couldn't be
depended on to show up to anything important; and that is when they
aren't taking potshots at US troops; and there is no Afghan government
as we go into 2010.
President Obama may have a lot on his plate, but Afghanistan could make
or break his presidency. If he doesn't view what has happened there
while he was in Hawaii with alarm and begin thinking of alternative
strategies, he could be in big trouble.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/04/2010 01:26:00 AM