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Engaging the Muslim World

(posted with the permission of Professor Juan Cole)

from Informed Comment

Monday January 4, 2010

Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy

Professor Juan Cole

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.

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.

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.

A point well made and appreciated

A year ago tonight I was looking forward with great anticipation to the presidency of Barack Obama. I thought that this may very well be the “new age” that I have been looking forward to for most of my life. What a difference a year makes. Thus far, as you might imagine, I have been let down by this president. That is why it is so funny to see him labeled by the Right a “radical socialist”. If Obama were half as radical as the Conservative media is trying to portray him, people like me wouldn’t be one tenth as disappointed in him as we are.

Don’t misunderstand, I am still grateful that he was elected last year. I thank God every day that John McCain will not be sleeping in the Executive Mansion tonight and that Fascist Barbi will not be a heartbeat away from the presidency. While it is true that he has not yet given us the “change we can believe in”, it is still too early in his term to make any final assessment. There is some time for optimism – although that time is dwindling rapidly. Still, the alternative to Obama’s election last year is just too weird to even contemplate. We should be grateful for that – I guess.

One thing that puzzles me is the most recent talking point being used against the man – that he does not express emotion or anger. That he is too cerebral. Isn’t that what we want in a president? In this way he is much like Jack Kennedy. The angriest statement JFK ever made while president was when he lashed out at “the utter contempt” of the executives at U.S. Steel toward the American people. But even in this instance, Kennedy’s tone was measured and restrained. He was not a man given to freaking out. Seriously, would we like a repeat of the shoot-from-the-hip, cowboy idiocy of the Bush years? Look at all the good that did us. Obama’s seeming, contemplative demeanor is one of the things about the man that reassures me. Call it a silly quirk in my psychological make up, but I like my presidents to think things through. What can I tell you, I’m kind of funny that way.

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan
Goshen NY

Dear Tom:

I agree with you. I’m stuck on that ‘betrayal’ motif. America has been betrayed by the Obama. It would appear that the Obama is indeed being circumspect. However, in his actions as ‘commander-in-chief’, that “thinking” seems rather same old as same old.

The Obama would throw ‘al-Qaeda’ at us again? BULLSHIT. Same old bullshit. Tired, rehashed to death, over and over, ridiculous, and galling to think that a “circumspect” President would even play that card.

Of course Muslims are being “radicalized” and extremist. IF their situation were our situation, our reaction would be far more lethal than theirs. I’m talking about mom and pop America and how they’d react to the U.S. military tearing up our countryside and killing our children. Hmmm, seems that Muslims are killing our children. In their own backyard. Can’t blame them for that. Occupation brings out the hostile in just about anyone.

Tom? That you took the time to author up an excellent response, humbles me more than you can know. I am honored that you even took the time. I get any number of irrational ‘fuck you’ responses and that’s just boring.

Now, how do we get the Obama to pay ANY attention to souls like us and LISTEN? I voted for the Obama and so I feel that gives me every right to criticize the fool harshly. I am betrayed by President Chumpy and I’m a little pissed off that the Obama would just so cavalierly piss away my vote. Oh dang, I digress. Sorry about that.

Once again, thank you Tom.

with deep respect,

skulz

A Public Message for Barack Obama

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