Afghanistan: Your Guide on How to Be An Expert

"Kabul Expat" Writes for Registan.net:

How to Write About Afghanistan

Always use the word ‘war-torn’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘tribal,’ ‘Taliban,’ ‘corrupt,’ and ‘Sharia.’ Also useful are words such as ‘shuras,’ ‘fighters,’ ‘refugees’ and ‘insurgency.’ Do not distinguish between different ethnic groups with different languages, religions and histories, or regions with different landscapes and livelihoods. If people in Kandahar tell you something, assume people in Kabul feel the same way, and vice versa. Whenever possible, mention Pashtunwali. (Note: you do not need to understand what Pashtunwali is. You get points for mentioning it anyway.)

Afghanistan Opinion: It’s Victory Day But Afghans Are Still Voiceless Decades Later (Mull)

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted Afghan accompanying your article. (Make an exception for Afghans you want to be president.) A stoned cop, a woman in a burka begging, a scowling man holding a Kalashnikov: use these. If you must include an Afghan who is not miserable or threatening, make sure you get an elderly farmer with very few teeth, or a little girl holding a baby goat.



In your text, treat Afghanistan as if it were one indistinct mass. It is hot and dry all year, and full of angry, heavily-armed religious fanatics who spend all their time torching girls’ schools and kidnapping Western journalists. Or if it’s winter it’s cold and remote, with everyone dying of starvation or in childbirth, as, your bleak description should imply, they always have and always will.

Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Afghanistan is big: thirty-four provinces, 30-somehting million people who are too busy embezzling and warring and plotting your death to read your article. The country is full of booming cities, small market towns, lush farmlands, fishing villages and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions stark and sinister and imprecise. Never, under any circumstances, mention peaceful areas like Bamiyan, except on those rare occasions you need a line or two about Buddha statues.

Make sure you show how Afghans have violence and xenophobia deep in their souls, and reject absolutely anything introduced from the outside. Do not mention Afghanistan’s long periods of peace or experiments with democratization; constant war is the Afghan way, along with tribalism, misogyny, and illiteracy. Make sure you show that you are able to withstand such harshness and live amongst such difficult people —because you care.

Taboo subjects: middle class Afghans, secular Afghans, happy marriages between Afghans (unless a death is involved), references to Afghan intellectuals, honest politicians or entrepreneurs (unless you want them to be president), or successful advocacy campaigns by Afghan feminists.

Your Afghan characters may include bearded Talibs, tribal elders, comical cab drivers, and former warlords living in opulent palaces. Or corrupt politicians, inept fixers, and heroin addicts.

The Modern Afghan is a man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Afghanistan. He wears a shiny suit and pointy shoes, and owns five mobile phones with Bollywood ringtones. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs to report on how awful Afghanistan is. Or he is an ex-Taliban ambassador who now owns an iPhone. Mention the iPhone several times. (Note: the Modern Afghan is never, ever a woman.)

Bad Western characters may include aid workers who drink, sleep around or do drugs, USAID contractors, Italians, and employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the military –but do not specify which one. If you can’t make Afghans’ innate backwardness work in your narrative, just blame the greedy West for Afghanistan’s situation. But do not be too specific.

You’ll need to mention a nightclub called Martini, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Afghans, spies and aid workers listen to horrible music and do illegal things. (Note: leave out the evil nouveau riche Afghans if you mentioned earlier in your text that foreigners and Afghans never mix.)

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the Afghan characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Afghanistan. Afghan characters should be hardened, stubborn, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Always end your book with an obscure Soviet or British general saying something about how Afghanistan is a land of ferocious, fanatical, crafty people capable of fighting forever.

Remember: you’re an expert.

Afghanistan Opinion: It's Victory Day But Afghans Are Still Voiceless Decades Later (Mull)

Josh Mull, the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. also writes for Rethink Afghanistan:

Happy Mujahideen Victory Day! This is the national holiday when Afghans celebrate their victory over the communists in the 1980's. We remember the Mujahideen of course, they're the folks to whom we gave all that CIA training and Stinger missiles so they could kill Soviets. We all at least saw the film version of Charlie Wilson's War, right?

Afghanistan: How Many Soldiers Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb? (Mull)

The basic historical narrative is that the Soviet superpower bad guys  (who incidentally invaded in the name of democracy and development) are defeated by the heroic good-guyAmericans, who saved the hapless, incoherent hillbillies, the Afghans, by giving them lots of weapons. Yay for freedom fighters!


The danger, our story warns, is that we abandoned Afghanistan after Mujahideen Victory Day, causing America to become the victims. Blowback! Poor, foolish America should have interfered more with Afghanistan I suppose. But we're ignoring the Afghan version of history and completely missing the point of Mujahideen Victory Day.


Let's take a look at their celebration, via Pajhwok Afghan News [subscription]:

[Deputy President Qasim Fahim] urged Afghan citizens to join together to find a solution to the problems faced by the country.

He said there were some people, both inside and outside the country, who were trying to destabilise Afghanistan.

A strong army, a vigilant fight against corruption and smuggling and respect for good government and the rule of law were some ways in which Afghanistan could retain its strength. Corruption, he said, was the fifth pillar of terrorism.

Fahim delivered a warning to unnamed countries who he said were meddling in Afghanistan's affairs, saying they would find themselves mired in similar problems if they did not leave.

Oh yeah, he's got our number all right. We are definitely "meddling," which is a nice way of saying occupation. And boy are we ever having similar problems! Indeed our meddling mires us in corruption, what with the billions lost to waste, fraud, and abuse by war profiteers. And rule of law is sure out the window since the President can now lock you up forever because he calls you a terrorist or just assassinate you. But notice that the Afghans don't think of the holiday as a time to pine for American intervention: Mujahideen Victory Day is about throwing off any foreign occupation, be it Soviet or American.

And the dirty secret here is that nobody abandoned Afghanistan. We like to take Afghanistan's decades of war and blame it on the Afghans being xenophobic, or "tribal," or some other backhanded way of saying they're all backwards idiots. If only they would just let us manipulate them, they'd have peace. But the history of Afghanistan's "war-torn" decades is a history of nothing but foreign meddling. Take a look at these snippets from the Washington Post:

Already, efforts to jockey for future control of Afghanistan have been seen among Pakistan, India, Iran and even Russia. [...]

Karzai and most Afghans fear that if Washington waits too long to decide about talking to the Taliban, control will fall to the ISI as happened in the 1980s and 1990s -- when Washington abandoned Afghanistan to Russia and Pakistan but the ISI played favorites and was unable to end the civil war among Afghan factions.[...]

Pakistan's maneuvers have prompted India to try reactivating its 1990s alliance with Iran, Russia and Central Asia, which supported the former Northern Alliance in a civil war against the Pakistan-backed Taliban regime.

See all the meddling? Iran, India, Pakistan, Russia, all of "Central Asia" apparently, plus all of our meddling. Everybody had a hand in it. And check out that bias: "ISI played favorites and was unable to end the civil war". Gee whiz, I wonder why they were "unable" to end it when, a few sentences later, we see that a lot of other folks seemed to have been around as well.

Afghans don't need more of us, they need more of themselves. Everyone but Afghans has a say in their affairs. Remember the outrage over President Hamid Karzai appointing Afghans (scandalous!) instead of foreigners to the election commission? Guess how many foreigners regulate the elections in Montana? Zero.

Now, don't misconstrue this as a defense of Karzai's fraud, it's simply illustrative of our rejection of Afghans at every step of the process. We whine about abandoning the women of Afghanistan, instead of letting them do it themselves. We complain that Afghan electricity isn't sufficiently dependent on our puppet in Kabul, instead of helping them develop their own energy capacity. And rather than allow Afghans to develop their own security, we support child molesters and drug addicts who ravage the population.

Just take a look at this movie showing in Afghanistan, keeping in mind that this is only one anecdote, from an American no less:

Last weekend, at the university where I teach, the new documentary film Addicted in Afghanistan by director Jawed Taiman, a British-Afghan, was shown. At point, one of the young boys in the family of opium and heroin addicts the film follows shouts to the camera that his addiction was produced by the U.S.-led occupation. The overwhelmingly student audience erupted into applause. I later heard that some shocked faculty members walked out in disgust with students. One, an American, reportedly said the incident has her reconsidering whether she will return after this semester.

I was stunned that my colleagues were surprised. Our students are not going to speak up in a well-lit classroom in an “American university” and tell their instructor what they honestly think about the United States. Some of the older students lived under Taliban rule. All of the students were directly impacted by the chaos of civil war and the latest bloody foreign occupation. Every Afghan understands that what you say in public can earn your execution.

But in the anonymity of a darkened gymnasium, with abundant peer support, they can exercise their frustration, disappointment, anger or disgust in a collective manner that affords both plausible deniability and little likelihood of reprisals. Popular resistance always finds, or creates, opportunities to express itself.

That's how battered and beat down by foreign interference they are. They can only express themselves anonymously in the dark. They're completely voiceless in the fate of their own country. Then there's that Pajhwok article I noted. They have to hide their exclusively Afghan voices behind loads of ads and a paywall just to keep the lights on.

But there's good news here. You are not behind a paywall, your voice is not confined to the darkness. Listen to what Representative James McGovern said on a recent conference call about Afghanistan:

I have to tell you as a former staffer and as a member of Congress-- pressure works, grassroots pressure works. It really makes a difference here," he said. "And when many people do it it's a movement. And what we need to create here in a very short period of time is a movement to try to change course on Afghanistan.

I was on that call, and I can tell you he very strongly emphasized that point over and over again. Pressure works. Calling your member of congress works. Writing your member of Congress works. Hell, even shutting down their office works. They have to listen to you, they desperately need you to tell them what to do. Unlike the Afghans, your voice still counts for a lot, and you can demand that the US stop interfering in Afghanistan, primarily by ending our bloody and expensive military occupation. Tell them the Afghans need to solve their own problems, they don't need us there manipulating them.

It's super easy, too. Take Peace Action West, for example. They've got a form all ready for you to tell congress to end the war, you just have to fill out your personal details. Click "send" and, poof, it goes straight to your specific members of congress. There are dozens more organizations out there just like that one, too. And of course it's always effective to just straight up call them at their office and speak your mind. And you won't be alone in doing this. Contact your representative, then join us on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page and collaborate with the tens of thousands of others around the country working to bring this war to an end.

Afghanistan: How Many Soldiers Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?

Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. He also writes for Rethink Afghanistan:

As the US gears up for its inevitably bloody assault on Kandahar, the plans have hit a bit of a snag. There's a dispute raging between the military and civilian sides of our war effort over, believe it or not, development aid. The Washington Post reports:

Convinced that expanding the electricity supply will build popular support for the Afghan government and sap the Taliban's influence, some officers want to spend $200 million over the next few months to buy more generators and millions of gallons of diesel fuel. Although they acknowledge that the project will be costly and inefficient, they say President Obama's pledge to begin withdrawing troops by July 2011 has increased pressure to demonstrate rapid results in their counterinsurgency efforts, even if it means embracing less-than-ideal solutions to provide basic public services....

Afghanistan: Turning a Blind Eye to Corruption? (Sengupta)

U.S. diplomats and reconstruction specialists, who do not face the same looming drawdown, have opposed the military's plan because of concerns that the Afghan government will not be able to afford the fuel to sustain the generators. Mindful of several troubled development programs over the past eight years, they want the United States to focus on initiatives that Afghans can maintain over the long term.

The dispute is easy to understand. The military wants an immediate impact, while the State Department wants a long-term solution. Because the army has to leave, they need quick solutions or, though it is left unsaid, "we will fail in Afghanistan".

We know that this is not true. Even after July 2011 there will still be combat troops in Afghanistan, just the "special" ones that do the most killing. But framing the aid dispute around the military's needs completely misses the point that the military should n0t even be involved in Afghanistan. The State Department is right: if we care at all about our objectives in Afghanistan, governance, development, human rights, then we need sustainable solutions. And who knows more about that, the civilians or the military?

In the Post article, an anonymous military source crystallizes the debate:

"This is not about development -- it's about counterinsurgency," said a U.S military official at the NATO headquarters in Kandahar, advocating rapid action to help Afghan officials boost the power supply. "If we don't give them more fuel, we'll lose a very narrow window of opportunity."

It's not about development, it's about counterinsurgency (COIN if you're a cool kid).  This is supposedly a fancy new military doctrine for winning the hearts and minds of civilians, including things like $200 million worth of generators.

But COIN isn't new, it's a buzzword for occupation. It even accounts for installing and coercing a puppet government (host nation) and undermining domestic and foreign discourse with propaganda (strategic communication). In other words, it is the exact same cycle of overthrowing foreign governments we've been doing for decades. That's the best thing our military has to offer when it comes to succeeding in Afghanistan: an insidious and illegal foreign occupation.

Why? Because they're the military. They've got aptly-named Predator drones and Hellfire missiles and other tools explicitly designed for hunting down and obliterating human beings. Despite the commercials you see of them rescuing disaster victims and handing out food, they're really what Ted Koppel said during the Iraq invasion, "an awesome, synchronized killing machine". Now, you want something "awesome" like that when Russia's Putin comes knocking on Sarah Palin's door, or whatever military threats might fall upon us.

But in Afghanistan, that's not what we need. At least, those aren't the objectives laid out by the President:

Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al Qaeda a safe-haven. We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's Security Forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future.

OK, so the big target is denial of an Afghanistan for al-Qa'eda. That's been done for like a year now. We don't want the Taliban to overthrow the government? Done, the Taliban are negotiating with the government.

But finally, "strengthening the capacity" of the government to "lead responsibility," that one we haven't done. The government is corrupt and broken. That's where all that talk about development, governance, and human rights comes in, which brings us back to the aid dispute above. The civilian side of our efforts wants to continue repairing a dam that could provide a stable power source indefinitely, instead of handing out expensive generators that require fuel local Afghans couldn't possibly afford without welfare from President Tony Montana in Kabul (who can't afford it either by the way). And our diplomats and development agencies actually know what they're talking about.

Let's look at Bangladesh. Like Afghanistan, they have similar energy problems, as my friend Bob Morris writes:

Imagine a city of 13 million with continual blackouts

That’s Dhaka, Bangladesh now. Uncontrolled growth is a primary reason that blackouts now occur every few hours, something which usually shuts down the water supply too. And here I get cranky when the Internet goes down for ten minutes. If you’re reading this on a laptop in a developed country, you are in the global elite.

So, what do we do about it? Send in 100,000 troops to shoot and bomb the hell out of them? Nope, just stuff like this:

USAID aims to:

• 
  
  Strengthen energy institutions, particularly the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission, the Rural Electrification Board and the rural electric cooperatives known as the Palli Biddut Samities or PBSs;


• 
  
  Help develop appropriate market structure and associated rules to ensure a competitive market for efficient market operations and increased consumer benefits


• 
  
  Promote balanced public discussion on reform of Bangladesh's energy sector; and


• 
  
  Improve the legal, regulatory, and investment environment to promote private investment and development of the energy sector.[...]

Complementing these activities is USAID's South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy (SARI/Energy) program. The program promotes energy security in South Asia by facilitating more efficient regional energy resource utilization, increasing transparent and profitable energy practices, mitigating the environmental impacts of energy production, and increasing regional access to clean energy. SARI/Energy focuses on:

1. 
   
   Cross border energy trade


2. 
   
   Energy market formation


3. 
   
   Regional clean energy development

That's a lot of jargon, but essentially it's the same sort of solution that we need in Afghanistan. In fact, it's exactly what the State Department is asking for in the aid dispute with the military:

Instead of buying fuel, Eikenberry and other embassy personnel want the electric utility in Kandahar to do a better job of collecting fees and to use the money to buy fuel for the generators it already has, which would increase supply but not eliminate the shortage. USAID is offering help through its Afghanistan Clean Energy Program, a $100 million effort to promote "green" power in the war zone. The agency plans to install solar-powered streetlights in the city this year.

Rather than unsustainable bribes, help the local population solve their own energy crisis.

Now I know what you're thinking, Bangladesh is not Afghanistan. If we pulled out the military and just left the civilians and aid workers, they'd all get killed by the Taliban, right? Wrong. Bangladesh has many of the same problems: corrupt government officials, extremist infiltration in the military, even jihadi terrorist groups with lots of scary dashes and apostrophes:

Meanwhile, intelligence agencies in Bangladesh have sent a report to the Prime Minister on the existing militant groups in the country. According to the report, at least 12 militant outfits are active in Bangladesh, which have foreign funding links and relations with local political parties. The 12 militant outfits are, Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh [JMB], Harkatul Jihad al Islami [Huji], Hizb Ut Towhid, Ulama Anjuman al Bainat, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Islamic Democratic Party [IDP], Islami Samaj, Touhid Trust, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh [JMJB], Shahadat-E-Al Hikma Party Bangladesh, Tamira Ad-Din Bangladesh [Hizb-E-Abu Omar] and Allah'r Dal [Hezbollah]. The report however did not mention names of other militant outfits such as Zadid Al-Qaeda, Khatmey Nabuat Movement and Khatmey Nabuat Andolan.

It may be mentioned here that, members of Khatmey Nabuat Movement and Khatmey Nabuat Andolan have been staging massive repression on Ahmedia religious minority group in Bangladesh. Moreover, Mufti Noor Hussain Noonari, leader of Khatmey Nabuat Andolan led dozens of Islamists in destroying a sculpture, which was erected by the City Corporation in front of the Zia International Airport. Members of law enforcing agencies were helplessly witnessing the destructions of State properties by the unruly Islamists in broad day light. Later another group of Islamists attempted to destroy the sculpture in front of the National Flag Carrier's head office. They also threatened to destroy the National Monument, which was erected in memory of the martyrs of the independence war of Bangladesh as well as another monument erected in the memory of Bangla Language Movement. It is learnt that, Mufti Noorani is continuing to give instigations behind such illegal activities.

Yep, that place sounds crazy dangerous, yet our civilians have been able to provide electricity to some 40 million people at a rate of 2,000 new connections per day. That's just one piece of the program; there's still all the other stuff about "market formation" and improving the regulatory environment. And ta da! No Special Forces or Hellfire missiles. Our civilian aid workers and diplomats are highly skilled at operating safely and effectively in failed states, war zones, all kinds of unsafe places, and they don't need military firepower to do it.

It's the military presence that makes it unsafe for aid agencies. The civilians become co-conspirators in foreign domination, and with the military pretending to be interested in construction and development, they become completely indistinguishable from the occupying army. That's why they become targets. We have to completely remove the military from the equation in order for our civilian efforts to work, and thus achieve our objectives in Afghanistan.

And we have to remove the military quickly, because unlike our civilian workers, the military is not only making the situation unsafe in Afghanistan, but they're even unsafe at home. Are you sitting down? Check this out:

Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department.

Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months.

Holy shit! Excuse my language but that is a staggering statistic. Almost a thousand soldiers try to kill themselves every single month, and that's just the price of doing business. If they manage not to get blown up by an IED, shot by friendly fire, or electrocuted in the shower, then they still have deadly severe post-traumatic stress disorder to deal with. Even if they're over there COINing it up, the environment our occupation creates is so hellish, the atrocities so outrageous, that afterward it completely shatters our soldiers' will to live.

I can't seem to find the same statistics for IREX or USAID. I guess there's not a lot of diplomats commiting suicide because of all the schools and clinics they built.

How many soldiers do we need working in Afghanistan? Zero! We've got to get every last one out of there, or not only will the sickening death toll continue to rise, but we'll never get anywhere near completing our objectives in Afghanistan.

Of course, not everyone agrees with the President's ideas about creating a stable Afghanistan. Intervention in any shape or form is controversial, and we're welcome to have a philosophical debate about Neoliberal Globalization and "Soft Imperialism" and all that fun stuff, but we're nowhere near that point yet. Right now the debate is over this:

Afghan protesters torched NATO supply vehicles in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, hours after allegations emerged that U.S. and Afghan troops had killed three civilians, including two brothers, in their home.

The demonstration occurred in Logar province after a nighttime joint patrol of U.S. Special Operations forces and Afghan soldiers fatally shot three people and arrested two others. NATO officials said the men were insurgents who had displayed "hostile intent." One of those captured was a low-level Taliban commander who planned suicide bombings, they said.

But after daybreak, more than 100 people gathered on a main road in Logar to protest the killings and the death in a separate incident of an Islamic scholar, according to Afghan officials. Military operations at night are deeply unpopular, and Afghan officials have called for them to stop. The furious crowd blocked traffic and set fire to at least 10 fuel tankers using hand grenades, said the provincial police chief, Ghulam Mustafa Moisini.

"If they were insurgents, why are the people so angry?" asked provincial government spokesman Din Mohammad Darwish.

They're angry for the same reason we are. We've got to get the military out of Afghanistan, for our sake, for the Afghans' sake, and for the sake of our national objectives in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: Turning a Blind Eye to Corruption? (Sengupta)

Kim Sengupta writes in The Independent of London:

NATO has agreed on its long-awaited road map for the future of Afghanistan amid warnings that the process risks tolerating corruption and the power of the warlords for the sake of security.

The Alliance's summit in the Estonian capital ended [Friday] night without the details of the framework for a handover of security to President Hamid Karzai's forces being made public. The Independent has learned, however, that an area will be deemed ready for transfer if serious violence has been in abeyance for a period of time, if there is access to power by different ethnic and tribal elements and if the conditions are present for development projects taking place in relative safety.

Afghanistan: US Overruling Afghan “Allies” for Kandahar Offensive? (Porter)

According to senior diplomatic sources, clusters of provinces, rather than individual ones, will be transferred to "provide critical mass" able to withstand the Taliban. The decisions on the locations for handover and the timeframe involved will be made at a Nato conference later this year after talks between Western and Afghan government officials.


The start of the handover will not, however, mean that troops can start to withdraw, NATO officials stressed. British troops in particular will have to wait before pulling out as the areas in the south where they are based – the main battleground with the Taliban --– will be among the last to be transferred to Afghan control. [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown had stated that the handover process will start this year, allowing UK forces to begin returning home.

The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, warned: "The future of this mission is clear and visible: more Afghan capability and more Afghan leadership... But it will not be a pullout. It will not be a run for the exit....Our soldiers will move into a more supportive role. So it will be a gradual process. This is conditions-based and not calendar-driven.''

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "We believe that with sufficient training and mentoring, the Afghans themselves are perfectly capable of defending themselves against insurgents. Does this mean it will be smooth sailing? I don't think so, just look at Iraq. A lot of progress has been made there but there are still problems with terrorism."

Mrs Clinton said she appreciated that there was a shortfall of staff to train the Afghan security forces. However, she added: "We have a gap that we're still working to fill. I'm convinced we'll get that filled. For me, the glass is way more than half full."

Although Afghan forces will take the lead, Western troops will be available to provide firepower and back-up if the insurgents appear to be making a comeback. If an area which has been handed back shows signs of suffering from endemic corruption or depredations of warlords the local people could protest through shuras – public meetings – said Nato officials. Mr Rasmusson, however, has said the handover process would be "irreversible" and a senior Western diplomat acknolwedged that a degree of corruption will necessarily have to be tolerated as long as it does not threaten the security of Nato forces. "It is not for us to detemine whether a particular district's governance is working or not, it is whether there is a threat to the area to a point that the insurgency threatens to take over," he said.

The diplomat pointed out that the policy of transfers remained uncertain. "Unless we are saying that we will stay and colonise the country we can't say everything is irreversible for ever and we will probably need to remain in support for several decades."

NATO officials also said that the Afghan side in the talks to decide which provinces or districts were suitable for transfer would be represented by officials of the Karzai government at national and local levels and there would be no input from independent groups on the matter.

Some Afghan observers pointed out that NATO's seemingly relaxed attitude about corruption was in marked contrast to the public condemnation by the US and British governments of the corruption in President Karzai's government and his link to warlords such General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim.

Syed Ali Laghmani, a political analyst based in Kabul, said: "There is a big danger that areas will be given over to strongmen because they can deliver security for the right side and keep out the Taliban. If the West does not make sure that people do not suffer from corruption in these districts then there will be a lot of trouble in the future.''

Afghanistan: US Overruling Afghan "Allies" for Kandahar Offensive? (Porter)

Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service:

The U.S. military has now officially backtracked from its earlier suggestion that it would seek the consent of local shuras, or consultative conferences with those elders, to carry out the coming military occupation of Kandahar city and nearby districts --- contradicting a pledge by Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to carry out the operation without such consent.

Afghanistan: Misunderstanding the Society, Killing the Civilians

Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, told IPS Tuesday that local tribal elders in Kandahar could "shape the conditions" under which the influx of foreign troops operate during the operation, but would not determine whether or where NATO troops would be deployed in and around the city.



Asked whether the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is committed to getting local approval before introducing more troops into Kandahar and surrounding districts, the McChrystal spokesman said, "We're not talking about something as simple as a referendum."

At a Mar. 29 briefing in Kabul on plans for the Kandahar operation, however, an unnamed senior U.S. military official told reporters that one of the elements of the strategy for gaining control over the Taliban stronghold is to "shura our way to success" - referring to the Islamic concept of consultative bodies. In those conferences with local tribal elders, the officials said, "The people have to ask for the operation... We're going to have to have a situation where they invite us in."

Those statements clearly suggested the intention to get the support of local tribal elders before going ahead with the large-scale military operation scheduled to begin in June.

That is what President Karzai said to a shura of between 1,000 and 2,000 Kandahar province tribal elders Apr. 4. Karzai said NATO's Kandahar operation would not be carried out until the elders themselves were ready to support it, according to a number of press reports.

According to the report by RTA, Afghanistan's state television service, Karzai actually said, "I know you are worried about this operation," before asking their opinion. He also said that the shuras to be organised at the district level were for the purpose of "getting approval and deciding" on the operation, according to the RTA report.

And the assembled elders made it known that they didn't want the operation.

That was clearly not what McChrystal, who was sitting behind Karzai at the shura, wanted to hear.

McChrystal's Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. William Mayville, and spokesman Sholtis both sought to minimise the damage from the incident. Mayville asserted that Karzai is "on board" on the Kandahar offensive, adding, "We would not have had this shura if he wasn't convinced this is the right stuff."

Sholtis suggested that Karzai had only "made it clear that he would involve local leaders in the decision-making process".

Sholtis acknowledged that "nobody wants a counterinsurgency fought in their backyard", but claimed that the elders who spoke at the Kandahar shura had "made it clear that Kandahar also suffers from an unwanted Taliban presence."

Sholtis also said the three elders who had expressed concerns about the operation had been supported by "probably about a third of the more than 1,000 who attended".

But published accounts of the meeting show that the elders were not calling for expelling the Taliban from the city and its environs. When Karzai asked the assembled elders whether they were "happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out", they shouted loudly, "We are not happy," the Sunday Times of London reported.

As reported by AFP, when Karzai asked, "Are you worried?" the elders shouted back, "Yes we are!"

According to the RTA account, one elder interrupted Karzai to say, "Who are the Taliban, but my son and another's nephew? The problem is actually these people who are in power, in particular the tribal elders and those who have power in Kandahar city."

And in a revealing response, Karzai said, "Absolutely, you are right..."

Some of the elders told CNN's Atia Abawi they preferred to negotiate with the Taliban rather than confront them in a military offensive.

Read rest of article....