Why Are We Here Again? (part 6,2334)

Today's NYT has a story on how the Afghan leadership is trying to integrate the Taliban in the government:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government will soon unveil a major new plan offering jobs, security, education and other social benefits to Taliban followers who defect, according to the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

Ok. So these Taliban aren't evil? What exactly are we doing there trying to kill all of them? 

Even if such a plan wins international support, serious questions remain about Afghanistan’s ability to carry it out, especially without a functioning national government, a prospect that remained distant on Sunday.

So you have a non-functioning government (supported by the US) which is now trying to populate itself with Taliban members (who the US is trying to kill.) Makes perfect sense. Maybe they think that the Taliban are extremely evil and should be shot on sight, but that can all be forgotten if they'll just promise to support the corrupt Karzai administration. 

Richard Holbrooke, the American special envoy to Afghanistan, said he had discussed the plan with Mr. Karzai and said it was better than previous efforts, adding, “Can’t be worse.

Finally, someone from the US government admits the obvious.

Chief among the new measures, Mr. Omer said, were strong security guarantees to defecting Taliban that they would be protected from arrest or retaliation. He did not detail what those measures would be, but many defecting Taliban in the past have asked to be integrated into local police forces.

So, in an exchange for a promise that they will be good boys and laying down their guns, the evil Taliban will be given more guns and put in positions of power. Genius.


But maybe the idea is that these guys are just foot soldiers, and it's the Taliban leaders who are evil.

Mr. Omer also indirectly confirmed that the Afghan government might ask that (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar be removed from the United Nation’s terrorist blacklist, which freezes the bank accounts of those listed and bans them from international travel.

Maybe not.

(Top adviser to President Karzai, Mohammed Masoom) Stanekzai did not rule out the possibility of talking with Mr. Omar. “What we need is a top-down and bottom-up approach,” he said. 

We also need to think outside the box, he continued, because the current state of play is such that we're really pushing the envelope. We have to partner with these people, even if we need to outsource the source of our citizenry. It really could be a game changer.


Meaningless drivel. These guys are all probably standing around laughing at at the clueless Americans, who die fighting Taliban one day, and then nod sagely while their Afghan partners hand them guns the next.

The NATO force’s s top spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, did not lay out the details of a separate plan but said Saturday that “We are working closely with the government of Afghanistan as they develop their program.”

“We see this as one of the means to resolve the ongoing insurgency,” he added.

Here's what I think is happening. I think the US is realizing how stupid, impossible, and pointless a war against the Taliban is. But these generals can't admit how badly the've fucked up, and just need to find some way to declare victory.

If we just leave, we lose. So instead, they reason, if we can just get these Taliban to promise us they'll be good, we can just give them the government and claim victory. Who will ever know? It's not like the wingnuts who will accept nothing less than unconditional Taliban surrender even know where Afghanistan is, right?

Great idea. What does the Taliban think of it? The must be scared of all these new US troops and ready to make a deal, right?

A spokesman for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, ruled out any possibility of negotiations with Mr. Karzai’s government. “We are united and we will remain united against them,” Mr. Ahmadi said in a telephone interview. “There is no differentiation between Taliban moderates and extremists. We are fighting under one name, Taliban, under one leadership.”

Oh. 
What the fuck are we doing there again?

Must-Read Afghan Analysis

Robert Dreyfuss has a great article up, with an excerpt from his recent interview with AfPak expert Christine Fair. Here's a taste:

Q. (Dreyfuss) If there's a way out of this, do we need to start with the Pakistanis, get them to bring the Taliban to the table? And maybe that means giving the Pakistanis and the Saudis some stuff that they want, because we need their cooperation?

FAIR: "That's one formulation of the problem. I have a somewhat different take. If you believe that the Taliban is our key national security concern, then what you say is right. I don't think they are our preeminent national security concern. The Taliban are a bunch of hillbillies. They are a parochial, territorial insurgency. Despite all of the hullaballoo, they don't really have an international agenda. These guys are focused on Afghanistan, period. Our concerns are Al Qaeda. And there are more Al Qaeda operating in Pakistan than in Afghanistan, and there are more international terrorist groups operating in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. A vast majority of these international terrorist conspiracies that have been busted in Europe and the U.K., their footprints are in Pakistan. Obviously, Jaish-e Muhammad, Lashkar-e Taiba, the list goes on and on and on. These guys are all in Pakistan. And Pakistan has been using militant groups for six decades as part of their policy. …

"So I would argue that we've got this so completely bass-ackwards that it's almost comical! We've got these troops in Afghanistan, so we've got to placate Pakistan, cajole it, make it feel important, throw money at it, because we need Pakistan to support the logistics. So we have this narrative that says, to stabilize Afghanistan we need to get Pakistan's support. Stabilizing Afghanistan's not the goal. Quite the contrary. We need to be in a different place in Afghanistan so we can play hardball with the Pakistanis. So the idea is, we have to stabilize Afghanistan, so we need to get Pakistan and all these other clowns on board? That's not our objective. Our objective is to wrap up international terrorism, limit our exposure to it, and to preclude a nuclear exchange on the Indian subcontinent, and to preclude nuclear proliferation. And all of the return addresses for those problems are right there in Pakistan. And because of our position in Afghanistan, we are so adversely positioned to deal with Pakistan."

I saw a Dreyfuss speech recently. He made a pretty good case for an Afghan withdrawal, but had no idea whether this would happen.

The thing to remember here is that we really shouldn't care what the Taliban does. They are not international terrorists.

If you are concerned about the terrorist bogeyman, then remember this. It is our invasion and occupation of Muslim countries, and the killings of hundreds of thousands of Muslim people (most of whom are completely innocent), which is fueling the recruitment of terrorist groups.

The next time a 9-11 type event occurs, we will find that the reasons for the attack are because of our policies of invading Muslim countries and killing their citizens. And we will have it coming to us.

Is there any difference, really, between 9-11 and the shock and awe campaign unleashed in Baghdad in 2003? Both events were repugnant, heinous acts of violence against an innocent civilian population. According to the Oxford Research Group, 6,616 civilians were killed just in the initial shock and awe aerial invasion of Baghdad. 2995 people, mostly civilians were killed in the 9-11 attacks.

Please don't tell me that what we did was justified because it was done in the context of war. War is just a label that's used to justify killing civilians. There is no fundamental difference between war and acts of terrorism; they are just different methods of using violence to get an outcome. Neither is acceptable.

And if we want the other side to see that violence is not the answer, then we will need to to reject its use as well, except in true self-defense. The place to start this is Afghanistan. The time to do it is now.