Obama's troop withdrawl plan

Last week I returned from Afghanistan after spending five weeks with the U.S. Marines in Helmand Province. It was my sixth visit since April 2007; I embed with and write on Marine-Army-National Guard operations. And unlike most journalists (and 99% of America) my son serves; he's a U.S. Marine, and last year I was able to spend a few days with him in Afghanistan when he was out on his most recent deployment. So, I look at President Barack Obama's troop-withdrawal decision from both a personal and professional basis.

Let me begin with the caveat that my comments cover Marine Corps operations and efforts in RC Southwest (Helmand and Nimroz provinces), in which they've been in charge since last year. The Marines took over from the British forces, who now fight (as Task Force Helmand) under Marine control.

In short, it's going very well, so well that Marine Col. Norman Cooling (2nd Marine Expeditionary Force (Fwd) Operations Officer) told me last week, "We're winning."

By every metric, he's correct. Firefights are few, job creation is up, and schools that had two students in March now have 50. Farmers are growing wheat instead of poppy, and in the few areas where there is still fighting (Musa Qala and Sangin), the Taliban is using IEDs instead of trying to combat the Marines in firefights.

In the Garmsir area, the locals contacted the local Afghan army and helped them seize 350 pounds of explosives and IED-making equipment when I was there. Further, as opposed to the several-a-day firefights we had last year in Marja, in my recent five weeks, I only heard three (just three!) rounds fired. In short, the locals like the security, jobs, and governance we bring, and co-operate by turning in Taliban at every opportunity. I've been there. I've seen it.

So why do I feel President Obama is making a mistake?

It's because the Marines are spread too thin, and to pull any of them out now will disrupt their training the Afghan Army. It will also embolden the Taliban to attack again.

A major part of U.S. policy is training the Afghan army and Afghan police to fight, and while Afghan army training and recruiting is going well, they need another year or two of intensive training before they can operate independently. They can fight (and fight well), but we're teaching literacy, leadership, logistics, and other important concepts as they fight, and that takes time. If we pull out and leave an un-prepared Afghan National Army, then the people lose heart as the Taliban surges (as they did in 2002 when Bush pulled the troops out for his war in Iraq), and then we need to return -- again -- and do the job correctly.

Taking 33,000 troops out in the next year is purely a domestic political decision; I was on little patrol bases where seven Marines and four Afghan soldiers were responsible for a several-mile area; for the U.S. to withdraw fully 35 percent of current forces in Afghanistan will lead to yet another Taliban resurgence, and subsequent Pakistani-ISI meddling.

And on a personal level, I've proudly watched my son leave for war five times since 2003 -- but a major part of my ability to not worry (much) is because of the intensive training and preparation all Marine receive before they deploy, as well as the thorough thought and planning the Marine generals, colonels, and senior leaders give each mission. For once, I'd like to see the same preparation, effort and attention to detail from our Congress and president in planning a war -- as much as our young men and women give in fighting it. Clearly Pres Obama made a political decision, and not a military one, and I can only hope he's correct.

"The Karachi Project" ISI and AQ look to control Karachi

"The Karachi Project"

By Ali K. Chisti
Foreignpolicy.com

In a dramatic series of raids in February, Pakistani authorities captured more than two dozen top al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban, and Pakistani Taliban leaders, mostly in Pashtun areas on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. The list included Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar's top deputy, Mullah Baradar, whose capture raised hopes that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan was finally gaining momentum.

The arrests also sparked a debate in Kabul and Washington over the seeming policy shift on the part of Pakistan, which for years had resisted cracking down on top insurgent leaders despite repeated entreaties from the United States. Some accounts suggested that Pakistan had nabbed Baradar to prevent him from cutting a separate peace deal with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was reportedly angered by his arrest.

In fact, NATO sources say, most of the Afghan Taliban frontier leadership -- known as the Quetta Shura -- had for at least three years been sheltered in Karachi under an ultra-secret program run by the Pakistani security establishment and known as the "Karachi Project." The idea that most of the leadership of Taliban's was stationed in Quetta was a "smoke screen," a top NATO source told me. "In reality, it's Karachi Shura," confirmed a top NATO commander.

The origins of the Karachi Project reportedly date back to 2003, when, under intense U.S. pressure, then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf closed "Forward Section 23," a combo of safe houses and camps in Indian-occupied Kashmir that had provided cover and refuge to top militants. The Karachi branch of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate then became the hub for anti-India activities, the Asia Times has reported, led by a coalition of militant groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harukat ul-Jihad al-Islami, as well as elements of the Karachi criminal underworld. According to a recent account in the Guardian, citing "classified Indian government documents," at least two serving ISI officers played a role in the Nov. 26, 2008, attacks in Mumbai, which were launched from Karachi.

While analysts have for years accused Pakistan's security establishment of playing a double game with militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba -- disavowing responsibility for their actions while retaining them as "strategic assets" to be deployed against India -- recent revelations emerging from the interrogation of David Headley, a Pakistani-American accused of complicity in the Mumbai attacks, threaten to blow the game wide open.

In Headley's telling, Pakistan is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between "good" jihadi groups -- those that launch attacks in India or Afghanistan -- and "bad" ones that wage against the Pakistani state. Indeed, that may have been the motive for the Mumbai assault.

According to the Guardian, Headley "told the investigators that the ISI hoped the Mumbai attack would slow or stop growing ‘integration' between groups active in Kashmir, with whom the agency had maintained a long relationship, and ‘Taliban-based outfits' in Pakistan and Afghanistan which were a threat to the Pakistani state."
The Karachi Project works under the direct supervision of the ISI, according to accounts in the Indian press confirmed by multiple sources, and also shelters Daud Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, infamous Indian gangsters accused of orchestrating in the 1993 attacks in Mumbai, as well as the Bhaktbal brothers, cofounders of the Indian Mujahideen, the largest Indian jihadi group.

Whether or not one believes such accounts, it is worth noting that Mullah Baradar was reportedly caught at Khudamul Qurun, a hard-line religious seminary located in an area of Karachi that is under the sway of a major Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, whose leaders were previously accused of sheltering high-profile al Qaeda leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, and other top al Qaeda leaders. Safe houses like this particular seminary are placed and well protected by the Pakistan security establishment.

A former intelligence chief who is actively monitoring the situation noted, "Over the years, it's Karachi which has seen more al Qaeda and Taliban activity than anywhere else."