US faces minimal casualties as our proxies take the hit for us. Afghan soldiers face terror on the job From leaflets to the murder of two border guards, officials say the Taliban are targeting Afghan forces. By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor KHOST, AFGHANISTAN – Just after midnight March 13, Janad Gul was awakened by a sound that every Afghan border security soldier dreads. It was the battle cry of Islamic fighters against non-Muslims. The 28 Afghan guards at the Spin Khaware checkpoint knew instantly who their enemy was - the Taliban - and that this would be a battle to the death. Three hours later, Mr. Gul and a fellow Afghan fighter named Alif Jan were kidnapped, the Afghan border checkpoint had burned to the ground, and two of the nearly 80 Taliban attackers were killed, say witnesses, including top Afghan military officials in Khost. But the tragedy for Gul and Mr. Jan's family - and the terror felt by Afghan forces in this border province - was just beginning. "During the attack, our men had killed their leader, Maulvi Karim Shafi, who was a top leader in Al Qaeda," says Gen. Almargul Mangal, commander of the Afghan Border Security Force for Khost Province, which includes this checkpoint. "Then after three days, we got the bodies of our two soldiers, [Gul and Jan]. They had been killed in a cruel way. The attackers sent us word that this was for revenge." In the ongoing war against terrorism, the death of two Afghan soldiers is a sad but normal occurrence. According to US military officials at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul, Afghans are the frontline soldiers fighting with US forces against Al Qaeda, and they are usually the first to be killed. While US deaths in this low-intensity conflict are rare, dozens of Afghan soldiers are killed each month. But it's the cruel manner in which Gul and Jan were killed - their noses and ears chopped off, their bones crushed, their throats ceremonially cut - that has taken Afghan military officials aback. Even Afghans who have become inured to brutality and death after two decades of fighting found these two deaths shocking. Top Afghan officials believe these killings are no aberration, but rather part of a campaign to intimidate Afghan soldiers and families - and to carry out promises in Taliban propaganda to torture and kill those who support the government of President Hamid Karzai. Across the southern portions of Afghanistan, handwritten leaflets have been appearing in local villages for months, urging Afghans to join the fight against US forces. A growing number of these "night letters" make direct threats against those who work with Americans or coalition forces, threatening murder by shooting, bombing, land mines, torture, and decapitation. Gul used to spend month after month at his checkpoint along the Pakistani border, much of it without any pay from the central government, according to his cousin, Haji Zera Gul. But despite the danger and the chance that Gul's two sons and two daughters would be left fatherless, he never gave a second thought to the threats in those letters. "He loved his country," says Haji Zera, a shopkeeper in the provincial capital of Khost. "His commander suggested that he take a job and work in the city, to make more money for his family. But [Gul] said, 'No, I want to go to the mountains and kill Al Qaeda.' " Two days after the attack, the Khost government told Gul's family that he was missing. Haji Zera says he cannot imagine what must have gone through his cousin's mind in his last hours. And when Gul's body was finally returned, with obvious signs of torture, his family had him buried quietly so as not to frighten other Afghan soldiers. "We didn't tell anybody that he had been killed by Al Qaeda, because we didn't want to show that our Afghan forces are weak, and we didn't want the other soldiers to be scared," says Haji Zera. "Whoever did this, they were not Afghans, because no Afghan could do this to another human. And they are not real Muslims either." To this day. locals are aware of the two murders - but remain uninformed about how brutal Gul and Jan's deaths were. Jan's father, Gulmar, remembers the pain he felt when he saw his son's body. "I was beating my chest, wondering what can I do," says Gulmar, a farmer from Khost. Then that pain turned to anger. "I am very poor, I am an illiterate person, I have no idea who is an Al Qaeda supporter and who is not," he says. "I just know that whoever fights me, I will fight with him, no matter how long it takes." In Pakistan's tribal areas, meanwhile, local Pashtuns and Islamic radicals have greeted the attack on the Spin Khaware checkpoint as yet another heroic victory in the jihad, or religious struggle against the Afghan government and its American supporters. Mir Dost, an Afghan national who lives in Miram Shah, Pakistan, says that the vast majority of local Pashtuns turned out for the funeral of the slain leader, Maulvi Karim Shafi, who led the attack on Janad Gul's checkpoint. "People say anyone who dies [fighting] against Afghan soldiers he will be a martyr, so they celebrated Maulvi Karim's death as martyrdom," says Mr. Dost, a businessman who has family on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. "Everyone says Afghans have become Americans, so it is the duty of Muslims to kill them."
The tribal areas in Pakistan need to be dealt with. There are no ifs, buts, ors, or ands about it. They are clearly a huge part of the ongoing problem with terrorism in that area. By their own admissions, they harbor, help, fund, and fight with Taliban and Al Qaeda. So, my question is how much longer are we going to ignore the tribal areas? Hell, their probably helping OBL directly. Their tribal areas of lawlessness and weapons proliferation. And, to think, those people have a place in Pakistan's government. It's great that Pakistan rounds up one or two Al Qaeda every month or two with our help. It's not enough, though, when we know about the tribal areas. Yet, we continue to ignore that even though that is where all the Taliban and Al Qaeda run when they flee across the border. Unreal. Surf
Those are good points Surfguy. I wish we were winning *better* here. It's hard to know if this stuff is scare tactics or hype of isolated incidents or if these collective stories shows we just don't have enough forces there ( or enough allies in Pakistan ). If we can't go into Pakistan, it's similar to Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam War, except they don't have jungle cover.
It only took a year, but we may be going back in again. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...3may13,1,6165281.story?coll=la-home-headlines Karzai, Warlords May Collide U.S. urges the Afghan president to reclaim hijacked revenue needed to run his government. By Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United States is urging Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rein in provincial warlords who are hijacking hundred of millions of dollars in revenue needed by his government, and has not ruled out U.S. military aid in the event of a showdown. The U.S. views Afghanistan's deepening financial hole with increasing alarm, a well-placed Western diplomat said Monday. High-level Afghan officials say the gathering financial crisis threatens both the legitimacy and the future of Karzai's administration. Up to now, the American military has refrained from becoming involved in warlord disputes, either with the central government or among the tribal chiefs. It's a measure of the gravity of the regime's predicament that this hands-off policy now seems open to change. Karzai has scheduled a meeting with several provincial governors and warlords this week, and there has even been the suggestion that he should dismiss some of them. "The U.S. government is very supportive of President Karzai and would like to see him take responsibility and take bold action," said the diplomat, who asked not to be further identified. Afghan officials also expressed their concerns Monday. "We need to take serious steps or this government is doomed to fail," Deputy Finance Minister Abdul Salam Rahimy said. . . . As a result, the government — which has been run on a shoestring since it took power in late 2001 — is flat broke and hasn't paid state workers for three months. Hundreds protested for back wages in Kabul last week. The international donors that pay the bulk of the government's costs, including salaries, are standing back and reevaluating their commitments, a top Afghan official said. "To stand on its own feet, a country should pay the salaries of its civil servants. It's very unhealthy for a country to rely on the international community for that. Why should taxpayers on the other side of the globe be responsible?" this official said. The consensus in government circles here is that Karzai needs to take action soon. Said Rahimy: "Afghans are on the side of reforms. I just hope we will not delay before they lose their hopes."
Hopefully we will do the right thing and stay in for the long haul. It would be ashame to lead a nation to believe that we would help it establish a new system of govt. and then leave it in ruins.
Opinion: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/o...00&en=5b9f557fd70fa6e9&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE A Job Half-Done in Afghanistan raqis worried about the future of their country cannot be encouraged by what they see in Afghanistan, America's first effort at nation-building in the Islamic world. Nearly 18 months after American-backed forces ousted the Taliban from power, Afghanistan languishes in a strange limbo between war and peace. Though Washington's efforts have brought a measure of freedom and democracy, many of America's promises about rebuilding Afghanistan have yet to be realized. Two big mistakes proved costly. The Bush administration did not adequately concern itself with issues of internal security. And it seriously underestimated the amount of aid it would take to pay for both relief and reconstruction needs. The combined effect of these errors has seriously weakened the power of President Hamid Karzai and slowed Afghanistan's economic regeneration. Understandably, the Pentagon's main concern in Afghanistan has been fighting what remains of the Taliban, a declared enemy of the United States, not bringing to heel local warlords, many of whom fought alongside American troops. That has left most of the country under the control of feuding warlords. Armed men are everywhere, including about 100,000 in various private armies. Their battles, banditry and financial exactions have impeded economic recovery and national cohesion. This problem might have been better contained if international peacekeepers had been stationed throughout the country, not just in Kabul. The longer-term answer to the warlords' power is the new national army Washington is training. While plans call for a force of 70,000, so far only about 4,500 members have been trained. Yet there is talk of withdrawing the remaining 8,500 American troops in Afghanistan next year, long before the new national army will be strong enough to take over. Roughly $1 billion a year in American aid, along with contributions from other donors, has not been enough to overcome the devastation inflicted by more than two decades of conflict on what was already one of the world's poorest and least developed economies. Continuing security problems have discouraged private investment and slowed the country's economic regeneration. That has kept tax revenues too low to pay the police and other government workers. And with much of the population unemployed, much of the aid has had to go into emergency relief programs. That has left far too little for projects needed to restart the economy, like repairing roads and dams, restoring electricity and telephones and repairing irrigation systems. Washington needs to augment its efforts to bring security and development to Afghanistan. And it must avoid making similar mistakes in Iraq. Not sure where they said we're pulling out - thought NATO was coming in. Hey, we don't do nation building...
Here's a question...and I'm not implying I have the answer... What if we can't do it? What if we simply can't pull off effective nation-building in either Afghanistan or Iraq? What if it's impossible? (i don't think it is, but what if??) In the case of Afghanistan, was it still not worth it? In the case of Iraq, was it still not worth it? I'm just wondering...wonder what you all think. I think, particularly with regard to Afghanistan, it was worth it. It put Al Qaeda on the run, and that was the real goal. A bigger argument could be made against Iraq, particularly since we talked about nation-building from the beginning. But with Afghanistan, that wasn't our real goal. Knocking off the Taliban was part of knocking off those who helped plan/facilitate 9/11.
Of course on Afghanistan (invading (edit))! But I'm not even sure why Afghanistan is a country, there's not much there to unite it. Just a land route from several states of the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and some great places to grow opium/heroin(?). We should have gone in Pakistan's "ungoverned" areas when they couldn't and told them to put up or shut up, IMHO. Being on Pakistan's side when India is a democracy just seems weird. Our credibility is on the line in Iraq, the way we've spun it, we have to rebuild it or lose face even more.
Clearly we had to take action in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and their Taliban supporters. But what's happening in Afghanistan now is a continuation of how the "country" has been for hundreds of years, except for brief periods of relative stability. What concerns me is that it doesn't take a great deal of money to motivate religious zealots or to buy off warlords to give them cover. Right now, those warlords are dancing in a shower of money, with much of what's coming from outside not reaching the central government. Karzai is on extremely shaky ground. I wonder that he's willing to take on the job, to tell you the truth. He has to know that his life isn't worth a nickel. If we pull out and/or try to do this on the cheap, the country will again become a haven for Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the like. Like I said, it won't take a great deal of money for the warlords to CONSIDER it a great deal of money. It's really a hell of a mess. The border regions of Pakistan are really more an extention of Afghanistan than an area ruled by the central government. Without true peace between Pakistan and India, based on a settlement of the Kashmir question, the Pakistani's will never have the troops to attempt a real "pacification" of the tribal/border regions. The needed troops are on another border... the border with India. And any government of Pakistan which gives us free reign to pacify the tribal areas can probably count it's existence in weeks, imo. Like I said, it's a hell of a mess with no easy solution. Thanks for the posts, Woofer.
What if we can't do it? What if we simply can't pull off effective nation-building in either Afghanistan or Iraq? What if it's impossible? (i don't think it is, but what if??) In the case of Afghanistan, was it still not worth it? In the case of Iraq, was it still not worth it? I'm just wondering...wonder what you all think. Good question. The biggest concern there is that if we leave the country in a big economic mess, that creates a new breeding ground for Al-Queda and other terrorist organizations. Now you have a whole new army of people who think America abandoned them and lied to them. To me, it's not too big of a concern in Afghanistan - there's not a lot of money or resources there for Al Queda to benefit. However, Iraq would serve basically as a whole new goldmine for them. You've potentially got hidden WMD. You've got lots of money, easy access to Syria, Iran, Middle East terrorist groups, etc. The argument was that if we could democratize Iraq, it could spread throughout the Middle East (a dubious argument, at best, in my opinion). The flipside is that if we leave Iraq a mess, that could also spread throughout the Middle East.
