Demonization of the US in Pakistan

Demonization of the US in Pakistan
by Ali K Chishti

“When hatred of foreign policies turns into hatred for an entire people and their civilisation, then enlightenment is dead, giving way to demonology – something similar has happened to the US in Pakistan…”

In a recent Gallup survey conducted in Pakistan, 35 percent of the people hold the US responsible for terrorism in Pakistan, 39 percent say it is America’s war that Pakistanis are fighting and 52 percent think that WikiLeaks has been published by the Americans themselves. At one of the country’s biggest universities, the Karachi University, the flag of the US, Israel and India are embossed on a road by an Islamist party for students to walk over as a sign of hate. Recently, Altaf Hussain, the leader of one of the most secular political parties – the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) – lashed out at the US over the Aafia Siddiqui issue.

So why is it that the US, which has given Pakistan billions in aid and whom the Pakistani security establishment holds regular “strategic talks” with, has become a punching bag for all segments of society in Pakistan?

Historically speaking, it was the 1965 war that initiated a burst of anti-Americanism in Pakistan, as it was alleged that the weapons that were to be given to Pakistan were instead given to India. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war fuelled anti-Israel sentiments with images of Abraham tanks on the newly-launched PTV and later in 1971, the futile wait for American fleet to rescue West Pakistan further fuelled anti-Americanism in Pakistan.

While the Americans directly supported the religious lobby throughout the 1980s in countering the Soviet threat, the real dent was the Pressler sanctions stopping the delivery of F-16s and the opposition to the country’s nuclear programme.

It was due to a rise in anti-American sentiment that two right-wing governments were formed in at least two provinces in 2002. The US has not become suddenly more powerful since the end of the Clinton administration, but anti-American sentiments have certainly risen significantly since Bill Clinton left the Oval Office – the proof of it is that the much-ignored phrase of ‘anti-Americanism’ was widely circulated only after the tragic 9/11 incident, motivated not by the actions of the US, but by its reaction, which most Pakistanis think of as against Muslims and not against any group of people or a nation.

Another factor often ignored is the institutional hatred present, especially in the army, and other sensitive security services created by over a decade of sanctions, which created a gap between the US and Pakistani military throughout the 90s. The intelligence community in Pakistan, much like the security establishment, is ‘India centric’, but also confused about the role that the US plays and often sees an American hand in whatever happens in Pakistan. A former intelligence chief, Alam, commenting on the Raymond Davis issue, described the role of Americans in pin-pointing certain targets in Pakistan and using jihadis to launch attacks. When asked about an example, the spy master did not come up with an answer. Another example is of former ISI operative, Commander (retd) Nasir, who also served in the Pakistan High Commission, New Delhi, in the late 80s. He told TFT , “It is the US that is behind the destabilisation of Pakistan. The Americans wants to disintegrate our country.”

Though anti-Americanism has spread into our institutions, it is important to understand that while there is some sort of understanding and alliance between the top brass of the US and Pakistani army and intelligence agencies, the same has not trickled down to the mid and lower cadre of the country’s security establishment. They blame the US for sending out ‘Blackwater’ and even financing Baloch nationalists. A recent example of this is the treatment dished out to Raymond Davis, who is an American diplomat, but is considered and portrayed by the right-wing media as a ‘Blackwater operative’ who went on a rampage to kill Pakistanis.

Let us take the Dr Aafia Siddiqui case, which had over the years been used and initially abused by Islamists and the right-wing to spread anti-Americanism, but has over the years been hijacked and compelled even the most secular parties in Pakistan to issue statements in favour of Aafia and curse the US. “This has happened because anti-Americanism sells in Pakistan,” confirmed a leading politician who wished not to be named. “We are a conspiracy-ridden society and it is politically convenient to issue anti-American statements, as it keeps the people happy and most importantly keeps us away from suicide bombers,” he said.

A classic example of how the US is blamed in Pakistan is how the leader of the Sunni Tehreek, Sarwat Ejaz Qadri, candidly told TFT , “The US helps the Wahabi/Deobandi movement in Pakistan and is using liberals in the country to amend the blasphemy law.”

Another Wahabi/Deobandi cleric, who had been the leader of the National Jihad Council, told TFT , “It is the US that is actually helping Barelvis and promoting Sufism in Pakistan to counter the Deobandi movement.”

While the media contributes to such sentiments with planted and manufactured stories like last year’s fake WikiLeaks story filed by a leading local news agency, or the conspiracy culture manufactured by certain proxies of the state to take the blame off of them, it is the dismissal of American pluralism that has allowed a renewed anti-Americanism to take hold. While no one would defend the controversial US foreign policy in Iraq, the rise of anti-American sentiments is unfortunate and likely to be counter-productive. It is important to criticise the US, but any criticism of a nation needs to be based on detailed evidence rather than sweeping generalisations and prejudices. Given the power and influence of the US, close scrutiny is a necessity, but narrowcast or a priori view of its motives and behaviour will inevitably lead to distortions and foreclose sensible conversation and debates. We need to let go of this blame game and paranoia of foreign powers disintegrating Pakistan. Instead we need to introspect and reform ourselves.

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Ali Chishti is a writer based in Karachi. He can be reached at akchishti@hotmail.com

Biden calls on Pakistan to step up

Biden calls on Pakistani's to step up

By Patricia Zengerle and Chris Allbritton
Reuters, 1/12/2010

ISLAMABAD — Vice President Joe Biden attempted on Wednesday to dispel what he called common anti-American misperceptions in Pakistan while urging the government to fight growing religious extremism.

Biden's comments at a news conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani come as the United States seeks to put further pressure on Pakistan to take on Islamist militants who have taken refuge in Pakistani border sanctuaries from where they attack Western forces in Afghanistan.

Commenting on the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer last week at the hands of his own bodyguard for supporting changes in a controversial blasphemy law, Biden said the United States was "saddened by cold-blooded murder of a decent, brave man."

"The governor was killed simply because he was a voice of tolerance and understanding," he said.

"As you know all too well ... societies that tolerate such actions end up being consumed by those actions."

Earlier, Biden called Amna Taseer, the widow of the slain governor, to express his condolences on behalf of the president and the American people.

In addition to economic, political and security crises, Pakistan is beset by a growing religious extremism among the poor and middle class, which often translates into suspicion toward the United States and the West in general.

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Militant groups have exploited grievances, exacerbated by U.S. drone attacks in the west of the country, to build support.

"We know that there are those -- I am not talking about leadership, I am talking about the public discourse -- that in America's fight against al Qaeda, we've imposed a war upon Pakistan," Biden said.

"They (al Qaeda) continue to plot attacks against the United States and our interests to this very day," he said. "They have found refuge in the most remote portions of your country."

Pakistan often denies the presence of al Qaeda leadership on its soil.

SELF-INTEREST OF BOTH

But Biden also expressed American support for Pakistan in the form of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Law, which provides $7.5 billion in civilian aid over five years. Biden was an early sponsor of the bill when he was a senator.

"A close partnership with Pakistan and its people is in the vital self-interest of the United States of America," he said. "And ... in the vital self-interest of Pakistan as well."

The vice president arrived in Islamabad after two days in Kabul, where he said Pakistan needed to do more to help the United States in its battle against Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan as it prepares to withdraw its troops from there.

Pakistan is one of the largest non-NATO recipients of U.S. military aid -- it is expected to receive about $3 billion this year -- but ties are constantly on edge because of conflicting interests in the region.

Pakistan most pressing worry is the tentative 2011 timeline for the beginning of a U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan. It wants assurances that its interests in Kabul will be protected -- and Indian influence checked -- while at the same time the United States won't leave chaos for Pakistan to clean up, as happened in the early 1990s after the Soviet pull-out.

Washington's concern is that it won't be able to begin its drawdown if Pakistan continues to refuse to crack down on militant safe havens in its ethnic Pashtun border areas.

Washington has been pressing Islamabad to move against militants in the North Waziristan region as it has in other parts of the country. Pakistan's military has launched several offensives in the northwest but has said it does not have the capacity to do more.

Funding Pakistan's Jihad Against the West

Funding Pakistan’s Jihad

By Ali K Chishti

Karachi. While it may be true that over the years the militants have developed a vast and effective network for raising funds by taking as much as a rupee from a poor man to millions from the rich, donations are pouring in for jihad from every segment of society

All the commitment and fanaticism notwithstanding, terrorist operations cannot be run without funds. Funds for jihad are required for procuring weapons, financing training camps, providing logistical support, compensating the families of jihadis, paying instructors and also the wide networks of agents and running recruitment offices.

During the Afghan war, western governments were a major source of funding and weapons for the groups engaged in taking on the Soviet occupation army in Afghanistan. Much of these funds came from covert accounts of the states funding the Afghans. Islamic countries also poured in billions of dollars into the coffers of the jihadi groups. While the role of Saudi Arabia has been limited to the provision of funds to the Islamist and jihadi organisations, the Kingdom, to this day, is the biggest source of official and private funding to Islamist and jihadist organisations in Pakistan, and it is to their credit that certain Deobandi and Ahle-Hadith extremist organisations became so powerful with the growth in their size.

One also has to see the Saudi financial support to Deobandi organisations in the context of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran post the Iranian revolution where both these countries had supported militant sectarian organisations to organise attacks and counter-attacks on each other’s sects and fought a proxy war inside Pakistan.

So open was Saudi support to Sipah-e-Sahaba (now the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jundullah) that the Saudi government, in 2000, gave out Rs 17 million to fund hardcore militant madrassas in Jhang alone. Another Saudi charity, called the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), is an affiliate of the Saudi welfare organisation, Rabita Alam-e-Islami, which in turn helped to set up the Rabita Trust in Pakistan that was banned after 9/11 because of a strong bin Laden connection. The most interesting aspect of the Trust was that its chairman was none other than General Pervez Musharraf, the chief of army staff. To save embarrassment to a close ally, a state department official said, “We do not think the prominent people who have their names on it were aware of the infiltration.”

In fact, so murky is the source of funds coming from Saudi Arabia that the leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil said, “The US had instructed, through Rabita Alam-e-Islami that we should initiate jihad in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, to which I replied that we have grown up now. We do not do jihad at your bidding.”

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s (LeT’s) parent organisation, the Dawat wal Irshad, initially also attracted the sympathy of certain Arab donors interested in purifying Islam in the subcontinent, which is considered to have been tainted by the influence of Hinduism. In fact, one such Saudi donor, Abu Abdul Aziz, who invested millions of dollars on LeT, LeJ and various jihadi organisations, even donated Rs 10 million to make a mosque at Markaz-e-Dawa’s headquarters.

And while it may be true that over the years the militants have developed a vast and effective network for raising funds by taking as much as a rupee from a poor man to millions from the rich, donations are pouring in for jihad from every segment of society. And while many jihadi organisations collect sacrificial hides to raise funds, many have started raising their capital from publishing magazines to even the property business, and now, as a jihadi told me sheepishly, “the national disaster business”. In a report published by the Aga Khan Development Network in 1998, approximately 50 percent of Pakistanis gave an estimated amount of Rs 770 billion in money, goods and time, of which 90 percent of the surveyed donors cited religious faith as the motivation for giving.

If all this foreign and local funding were not enough, the Pakistani government gives out an estimated Rs 20-35 billion in grants to madrassas and jihadi movements indirectly from government resources like zakat or iqra funds. Another funding source after the crackdown on Saudi sources and tighter monetary controls is the Afghan Transit Trade, which is a cash cow for jihadis and certain rogue establishment actors who exploit the trade for procuring weapons and narcotics smuggling, earning millions of dollars to be funnelled into proxy wars from Afghanistan to Pakistan. There was a reason why the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) offered $ 10 million to replace American aid. The hundi trade is another source that is ‘welcomed’ by the State Bank of Pakistan, as it has, over the years, been buying billions of dollars to shore up its balance of payment positions. The hundi trade helps launder money for jihadis but in the land of the pure, jihad is used as a weapon to further our so-called strategic plans.

Even after 9/11, much of what is happening inside the tribal belt is a bit of a charade. In fact, what earlier used to be taking place openly has now been pushed behind the curtain, otherwise it is business as usual. Every time the Americans start getting impatient, the Pakistanis make a show of launching an operation in the tribal belt. There are arrests of Afghan and Arab jihadis or the killings of certain individuals until everything returns to normal. One big reason why our own Pakistani government will never really close the funding source and cut the roots of jihadis is because doing so would have a direct impact on the various jihads it is involved with to suit certain foreign policy goals. Moreover, by shutting down these rackets, the Pakistani state will lose an important leverage over deciding affairs inside Afghanistan. Often, the Pakistani state has used smuggling as a carrot for the various Afghan warlords and agents, and in return has managed to get them to do Pakistan’s bidding inside Afghanistan. This currency of power will be lost if Pakistan were to curb the illegal rackets. But, in the process of taking action on this trade, what will happen is that the Pakistani state will try to regain total and complete control over this trade, something it was gradually losing out on with the increasing privatisation of jihad.

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The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at akchishti@hotmail.com

"Brigade 313" prepares plan to attack Commonwealth Games

"Brigade 313" prepares plan to attack Commonwealth Games

By Ali K Chishti

Daily Times: http://tinyurl.com/32yd4se
Karachi, Sept 30, 2010

It can be confirmed that al Qaeda and a group based in North Waziristan calling itself “Brigade 313”, which is made up of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and allied extremist group members, including Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Karachi-based Jandullah, has prepared a plan to attack the 19th Commonwealth Games, which are due to be held in News Delhi from October 3 to October 14, Daily Times has learnt.

Previously, those who have been described as “stateless actors” by the government, attacked various targets in India’s financial hub, Mumbai, which strained the relations between India and Pakistan and brought them on the brink of war.

The intelligence has originated from Kabul where a western military source confirmed that, “We intercepted certain conversations that gave us the impression that the attack on an important sporting event is due in India.”

It has also been confirmed that some of the information originated from a German national named, Ahmed Siddiqui, 36, who has been caught in Kabul under suspicion of carrying out a terrorist plot in the West. The intelligence about such an attack had also been passed on to the Indians.

Daily Times has been told that Ilyas Kashmiri, who heads al Qaeda’s Brigade 313 and who is a former rogue SSG commando, will be heading the whole operation to carry out this terrorist plot in New Delhi. Kashmiri had been linked to have actually orchestrated the Mumbai attacks and to have links with the Dylands-Posten plot to carry out the assassination of General Alvi, who commanded the Pakistan Army’s elite Special Services Group (SSG). Kashmiri is now based in North Waziristan and heads what is now called the Punjabi Taliban.

The Interior Ministry, along with various security establishments in Pakistan, after the news that there could have been another terrorist plot originating from Pakistan are in a ‘state of panic’, where according to one senior ministry member, “We are seriously investigating and taking all precautions that we could and have been extra-vigilant. Surely another 26/11 or a high-profile terrorist incident now in India would definitely be a major blow, something that none of us wants.”

A New Delhi based security analyst, Bharat Swami, told Daily Times, “Another attack from Pakistan would leave India no other option but to target militant camps inside Pakistan and could end all diplomatic relations with Pakistan.”

The Pakistani Foreign Office’s spokesman declined to comment on the story, but termed it ‘baseless’. Western diplomat in close contact with security officials told Daily Times that, “This is what we fear the most… we all have our fingers crossed on this one, but if such an incident does take place, we will be packing our bags.”

India only recently raised the level of security for the 19th Commonwealth Games and deputed more than 100,000 security officials, including elite commandoes, for providing security to the participants.

Obama: "The Cancer is in Pakistan"

From the Bob Woodward book "Obama's War"

President Obama dispatched his national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, and CIA Director Leon Panetta to Pakistan for a series of urgent, secret meetings on May 19, 2010.

Less than three weeks earlier, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen born in Pakistan had tried to blow up an SUV in New York City's Times Square. The crude bomb - which a Pakistan-based terrorist group had taught him to make - smoked but did not explode. Only luck had prevented a catastrophe.

"We're living on borrowed time," Jones told Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at their meeting in Islamabad. "We consider the Times Square attempt a successful plot because neither the American nor the Pakistani intelligence agencies could intercept or stop it."

Jones thought that Pakistan - a U.S. ally with an a la carte approach of going after some terrorist groups and supporting others - was playing Russian roulette. The chamber had turned out to be empty the past several times, but Jones thought it was only a matter of time before there was a round in it.

Fears about Pakistan had been driving President Obama's national security team for more than a year. Obama had said toward the start of his fall 2009 Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review that the more pressing U.S. interests were really in Pakistan, a nuclear power with a fragile civilian government, a dominant military and an intelligence service that sponsored terrorist groups.

Not only did al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban operate from safe havens within Pakistan, but - as U.S. intelligence officials had repeatedly warned Obama - terrorist groups were recruiting Westerners whose passports would allow them to move freely in Europe and North America.

Safe havens would no longer be tolerated, Obama had decided. "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," he declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was "so the cancer doesn't spread there."

Jones and Panetta had gone to Pakistan to tell Zardari that Obama wanted four things to help prevent a terrorist attack on U.S. soil: full intelligence sharing, more reliable cooperation on counterterrorism, faster approval of visas for U.S. personnel traveling to Pakistan and, despite past refusals, access to airline passenger data.

If, God forbid, the SUV had blown up in Times Square, Jones told Zardari, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Should a future attempt be successful, Obama would be forced to do things that Pakistan would not like. "No one will be able to stop the response and consequences," the security adviser said. "This is not a threat, just a statement of political fact."

Jones did not give specifics about what he meant. The Obama administration had a "retribution" plan, one of the most sensitive and secretive of all military contingencies. The plan called for bombing about 150 identified terrorist camps in a brutal, punishing attack inside Pakistan.

US-PK-Talib peace talks? "Special" from Karachi's Daily Times

Diplomatic Efforts for Afghanistan
By Ali K Chishti
DAILY TIMES, Karachi
18 Sept 2010

Daily Times has learned of a massive diplomatic effort by the United States, Pakistan and certain Arab Governments to ‘find a solution for Afghanistan’. A western diplomat who has been at the forefront as a fixer told Daily Times that, “that, the idea is to have broad based government that includes Talibans in Afghanistan.”

Hamid Karzai the president of Afghanistan who is dubbed as ‘the mayor of Kabul’ and is criticized as enormously corrupt and incompetent by the Americans is on board to talk to the Talibans too.

Earlier as part of the diplomatic flurry, United States special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke visited Pakistan, followed by Karzai and Gen.Petraeus and met, Gen.Keyani and DG, ISI Gen.Pasha who according to a top foreign ministry’s source described, ‘came to sought Pakistan’s help to broke a deal with the Talibans and give some sort of legitimacy and power to Hamid Karzai to deal with the them (Talibans). The Americans practically accepts Pakistan’s stance that the Talibans are a reality in Afghanistan.”

Daily Times could confirm that Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz who has the confidence of both the Americans and Hamid Karzai is next in line to visit Pakistan where he will meet high-level Taliban leadership at various safe-houses.

The sources confirmed Daily Times that the Saudi intelligence chief will try to convince the Talibans to break a deal with Hamid Karzai. The UAE’s special envoy to Pakistan Ali Mohammad al-Shamsi who had previously led the negotiations will also be present in talks and would offer major concessions to the Talibans.

A Taliban spokesman while talking to Daily Times denied that negotiations are actually taking place and said, ‘that Ameer Ul Momineen Mulla Omer and Talibans will only negotiate when the US and coalition forces leave Afghanistan."

Profiling Pakistani Jihadists

ANALYSIS: Profiling Pakistani Jihadists

By Ali K Chishti

Karaci: One major draw for jihadis in Pakistan is the clout a religious militant enjoys with the law-enforcement agencies. The militant organisation gives otherwise powerless men a strong sense of identity in an increasingly fragmented social structure

What kind of people are rushing to join jihadi organisations? Where are they coming from? What is their family and educational background? And most importantly, what motivates them to put their lives on the line for missions that really have nothing material to do with them? What really prompts a Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch or Pashtun to become a member of a suicide squad? Or, for that matter, what makes these people participate in far off conflicts that have no bearing on their lives, except maybe emotional attachment? What is behind their fanaticism and their commitment? How are they recruited?

All such profiling conducted by various think-tanks gives us a small hint of the demonic mindset that we are dealing with in the fight against radical Islamic terror groups. Another frightening reality that emerges from a close study of jihadis is that they do not come from any one particular education stream, family background, region or even economic background. The spirit of jihad transcends these boundaries and stereotypes. In other words, jihadis are now coming from every social, economic and cultural strata of Pakistani society. This means that our country itself has become one big Jihad Inc. The role of mullahs in motivating and recruiting young men for jihad clearly comes out when profiling jihadis but equally important is the fact that economic factors and a breakdown in traditional social structures too are motivating many people to take to jihad.

Jihad in this part of the world is seen as lending a sense of purpose to the lives of many people who otherwise would be pushovers in society. One major draw for jihadis in Pakistan is the clout a religious militant enjoys with the law enforcement agencies. A black tinted four-by-four and a suspicious number plate with occupants sporting militia-style clothing, long hair and beards is bound to arouse suspicion and get the vehicle pulled over at any check post. If you are a religious militant, however, you are simply waved through with a level of ‘respect’ unthinkable for most Pakistanis. Obviously, being above the law holds great appeal for the jobless. The militant organisation gives otherwise powerless men a strong sense of identity in an increasingly fragmented social structure.

Only recently a research paper published on the very subject reveals that a vast number of recruits come from formal schools and lack any real religious knowledge or motivation. The primary cause behind militancy, it is argued, is unemployment and poverty. There are the middle class jihadis like Shehzad Tanvir or Sheikh Omar, who has been convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl. There is a popular misconception that young Pakistani men who volunteer for jihad invariably do so out of a lack of viable economic options. This is particularly untrue in Karachi where most budding jihadis hail from middle, upper middle or even upper class families. A similar trend prevails in other large cities that, in turn, explodes another myth that Pakistan’s ‘non-state actors’ are largely confined to the country’s tribal and northern areas.

“I am proud of my son although the only regret I have is that I do not have another son to send for this noble cause,” says a middle-aged man whose only son is believed dead somewhere in Afghanistan. Another jihadi now turned tableeghi, Mehmood, who in his late 20s managed to come back to Karachi in one piece, maintains that misconceptions abound concerning the current reality in Afghanistan. He says, “Some people accuse the Taliban of retreating without informing the Pakistani and Arab mujaheedin, a move that allegedly resulted in their slaughter by the Northern Alliance. That is totally incorrect.” While pulling back, the Taliban asked all their foreign allies to withdraw with them. The Pakistani and Arab mujahideen, however, decided to keep on fighting even though they knew that they would get killed. Most of them preferred to die as they had already burnt their bridges.

One would imagine that most of those planning to take part in the holy war would be from the militant cadres of jihadi organisations. However, it has become patently obvious that this modern version of the David and Goliath fable has an emotive appeal across the spectrum of Pakistani society too. Many, even those who do not agree with the Taliban’s obscurantist version of Islam, have found inspiration in the obdurate refusal of one of the world’s poorest Muslim countries to give in to the demands of the only global superpower.

Finally, there is the myth and misconception that jihadis are only Pashtuns and Punjabis. The records provided by different jihadi organisations and research material available show that the number of martyrs from Sindh has already touched 500 in the FATA region alone. In the early 2000s, when our proxies were primarily targeted towards the east, 85 of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, 175 of Hizbul Mujahideen and 51 of Lashkar-e-Islam were Sindhi-speaking jihadis. In the case of Balochistan, the list of casualties published by various jihadi organisations shows that from 1999 to March 2002, there were 112 so-called martyrs from Balochistan, most of whom died in Afghanistan, indicating that the jihad phenomenon in Pakistan has gone viral in almost every segment of our society.

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The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at akchishti@hotmail.com

TAPS Program - Support for families of fallen soldiers

Mentors support families of fallen soldiersBy Renee Chou
WRAL.com
August 21, 2010

Coping with a soldier's death can be a lonesome and difficult journey. But survivors of fallen soldiers don't have to go through it alone.

The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) offers peer mentor training to help survivors grieving a military loss.

Randy and Betsy Beard learned about TAPS after their 22-year-old son was killed in 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq.“He took shrapnel in the head and died about three hours later,” Randy Beard said.

Brad Beard was an Army mechanic who worked on howitzers. He was stationed in Korea for two years and volunteered to go to Iraq when he heard the Army needed mechanics.
“When someone really close to you dies, it just shatters your whole world,” Betsy Beard said.

“My heart was ripped apart,” Randy Beard said. “You are helpless. You can't help your wife. You can't help your family. There is nothing you can do to make it better.”

Overwhelmed with grief, the Beards contacted TAPS for help. A program mentor reached out to Betsy Beard by telephone.“She was a mom like me who lost a son in the military. She lived in Vermont,” Betsy Beard said. “I knew if she could survive, I could survive as well.”

The Beards are taking part this weekend in a TAPS camp in Pinehurst where about 150 people are learning how to survive military loss.“We are here to reach out our hand to those walking behind us,” Randy Beard said. “What that does for grief is that it helps us feel not so isolated,” Betsy Beard said.

The support is crucial because the Beards say they have learned that time does not heal the pain.“Time just moves on. What we do with our time can help or hinder us I think,” Randy Beard said.

The Beards, who live in Louisburg, travel to Fort Hood, Fort Campbell and Fort Lewis to provide peer mentoring. They also run a monthly support group for military families dealing with loss in Raleigh.

USS Somerset keel laid

Pascagoula, Miss.: A ceremony steeped in shipbuilding tradition kicked off major construction Friday on a U.S. Navy assault vessel named in honor of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

At the Northrop Grumman Corp. shipyard, the keel of the Somerset - named for the Pennsylvania county where Flight 93 went down, killing all 40 passengers and crew members - was authenticated by the ship's sponsor, Mary Joe Myers, the wife of retired Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."Out of tragedy, we can now turn our focus to a tribute to those brave men and women of Flight 93," Myers said. The ship will "take the power and courage of the United States to the four corners of the world."

Myers initialed a plaque stating the keel-the ship's basic foundation- has been "truly and fairly laid." Afterwards, Northrop Grumman welder Lanford Bridges cut the initials into the plaque with a torch.The $1.2 billion vessel is expected to be delivered to the Navy in 2012.

The Somerset is 684 feet long, is serviced by a crew of 350 sailors and can carry up to 800 Marines into assault operations. It has a flight deck that can handle helicopters and the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Flight 93 had left Newark, N.J., for San Francisco when four terrorists commandeered the cockpit. "We continue to inspired by the selfless courage of those on Flight 93," said Gordon Felt, who has worked at the Avondale yard for 19 years and lost a brother, Edward, in the crash. Felt is president of Families of Flight 93.The ship is a San Antonio-class amphibious dock vessel.

Obama: I'll Finish the Job

Obama Promises to 'Finish the Job' in Afghanistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tues, 12:58 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Signaling an imminent decision on Afghanistan troop levels, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he intends to ''finish the job'' and destroy terrorist networks in the region.

The president said he would announce his decision on how many additional soldiers to deploy to Afghanistan after Thanksgiving.

''I feel confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive,'' he said.

Obama held his 10th and final war council meeting Monday night to assess his Afghanistan strategy in advance of his troop decision. He commented Tuesday during a brief news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was at the White House for a state visit.

''It is in our strategic interests, in our national security interest to make sure that al-Qaida and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively in those areas,'' Obama said. ''We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and de stroy their networks.''

''It is my intention to finish the job,'' he said of the war in Afghanistan that has been going on for eight years -- since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Afghans Also Divided on Western Troops

Afghans Divided Over Foreign Forces


By Matthew Green in Bamiyan and Fazel Reshad in Kabul
Financial Times
September 28, 2009

A bullet-shaped niche hewn from the mountainside is all that remains of the colossal stone Buddha that watched over the Bamiyan valley for 1,500 years before the Taliban demolished it with dynamite.

Fragments of the fallen giant and its smaller twin joined the debris left by armies past: from the carcasses of Soviet tanks to the hilltop ruins of the City of Screams, site of a 13th century massacre by Genghis Khan.

The Hazara community that lives along the valley has fared far better since US troops arrived in Afghanistan in 2001, seven months after the Taliban destroyed their statues, than they have under past invaders.

Even as the insurgency blazes in the south and smoulders in the north, their central Bamiyan province remains a rare Afghan haven, patrolled by New Zealanders who pride themselves on friendly relations with locals.

Traders in the bazaar in Bamiyan town, once a thriving stop on the Silk Route from Europe to Asia, have a simple solution to the dilemma faced by Barack Obama, the US president, over whether to deploy more troops.

“I would advise him to send more soldiers to kick out the Taliban,” said Azizullah, a shopkeeper who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. “We want freedom and we want progress.”

If such views represented a consensus, then it would be easier for Mr Obama to heed the recommendations of Stanley McChrystal, the top US general in Afghanistan, who says more troops and a new strategy are needed to stop the west losing the war.

But in the southern and eastern provinces, where the insurgency is fiercest, people are far more likely to see foreign soldiers as oppressors. “For 1,000 years we have never had such a Ramadan, where blood was flowing everywhere because of explosions,” said Haji Dawood Khan, a shopkeeper from Helmand province, referring to the Muslim holy month that ended earlier this month. “I don?t want any foreigners building roads or big buildings for me when I am cleaning blood from my home.”

Recognising the resentment that foreign forces have caused, Gen McChrystal argues that protecting civilians must be the focus for a new approach based on persuading Afghans to side with the western-backed government instead of the Taliban.

Evidence of systematic rigging in last month?s presidential elections has, however, deepened doubts over whether President Hamid Karzai is capable of transforming an administration often seen as absent, predatory or corrupt into an entity worthy of loyalty.

The bitter legacy left by NATO forces who have found themselves enmeshed in local feuds has widened mistrust. “The more foreign troops there are, the more people will hate them,” said Mohammad Karigar, a businessman from Kandahar province, another flashpoint of the insurgency.

Haji Kamrdin, a tribal leader from Khost province in the east, was equally dismissive of the big development programmes needed to underpin classic counterinsurgency doctrine. “It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state,” he said. “Such a thing can come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners.”

There are dissenting voices, even in the south, who see sense in Gen McChrystal?s strategy. Haji Ghafoor, a tribal elder from Wardak province, said: “You need the flexibility that more troops give you to maintain momentum.”

However, the only unambiguous point of agreement between Afghans and the general is on the need to accelerate training of the army and police to allow foreign forces to leave. “They must take the money that they would spend on sending more troops and use the money for the Afghan police and army,” said Shah Mahmood, a clerk from Kandahar.

In a country that has experienced centuries of invasion, the narrative surrounding foreign forces tends to blur into a story of oppression, regardless of whether the outsiders are Russians, Pakistani intelligence agents supporting the Taliban in the 1990s, or Nato troops.

Of 17 Afghans interviewed in recent days, three said they believed Washington was bankrolling the insurgency to justify a long-term presence in Afghanistan. “If the US wants to remove the Taliban, they could do it easily,” said Mohammed Akram, an elder who lives at the foot of the mountains where the Buddhas once stood. “The US is supporting both sides.”

Additional reporting by Ahmad Wali Sarhadi.

Finally - Gates Supports More Troops

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Afghanistan conflict has proven more difficult than anticipated, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in echoing President Barack Obama’s deliberative approach on whether to send more troops.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Gates said the focus on Iraq by the previous administration of President George W. Bush meant the operation in Afghanistan has been limited.

“The reality is, we were fighting a holding action,” Gates said of situation under Bush, whom he also served as defense secretary.

“We were very deeply engaged in Iraq,” Gates said, later adding: “We were too stretched to do more. And I think we did not have the kind of comprehensive strategy that … we have now.”
Setting an exit strategy for Afghanistan would be a mistake, but the United States also will closely monitor developments to ensure its strategy is achieving desired results, Gates said.

Obama is under increasing pressure from congressional Republicans who favor sending more troops, as desired by commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal, while many of the president’s fellow Democrats are expressing resistance.

Gates said McChrystal “found a situation in Afghanistan that is more serious than … we had thought and that he had thought before going out there.”

Asked why the Obama administration has yet to decide on McChrystal’s assessment that more troops will be necessary to defeat insurgents and protect the local population, Gates said it would take more time to properly analyze the situation.

"I think we are in the middle of a review," Gates told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, adding : “Once we're confident we have the strategy right, then — then we'll address the question of additional resources.”

Gates also noted that any additional combat troops for Afghanistan "really probably could not begin to flow" until January 2010.

He disagreed with setting a clear exit strategy for Afghanistan.

"The notion of timelines and exit strategies and so on, frankly, I think would all be a strategic mistake," Gates said. "The reality is — failure in Afghanistan would be a huge setback for the United States.

“[The] Taliban and Al Qaeda, as far as they're concerned, defeated one superpower, [the Soviet Union],” he continued. “For them to be seen to defeat a second, I think, would have catastrophic consequences in terms of energizing the extremist movement, Al Qaeda recruitment, operations, fundraising, and so on. I think it would be a huge setback for the United States.”

Gates said the process should be defining a strategy “that we think can be successful, and then to pursue it and pursue it with confidence and resolution." At the same time, Gates suggested that the administration was not moving toward an open-ended, indefinite commitment to having a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

"I think that we are being very careful to look at this as we go along," Gates said. "We've put out metrics so that we can measure whether or not we're making progress. And if we're not making progress, then we're prepared to adjust our strategy, just as we're looking at whether adjustments are needed right now."

Insurgents know what they want

McChrystal Says Insurgents Are Winning Communications Battle

By Walter Pincus, Washington Post
September 27, 2009

The United States and its allies in Afghanistan must "wrest the information initiative" from the Taliban and other insurgent groups that have undermined the credibility of the Kabul government and its international backers, according to the top U.S. and NATO commander in the country.

"The information domain is a battlespace," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal wrote in an assessment made public on Monday, adding that the allies need to "take aggressive actions to win the important battle of perception."

((It's simple: the Taliban focuses on Islam vs. the West; we focus on logistics of meals served and kilowatt hours. We don't have a message as to why we're in A'stan - they do. AJL ))
As an initial step, McChrystal wants to change the goal of public relations efforts in Afghanistan from a "struggle for the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan population to one of giving them 'trust and confidence' " in themselves and their government. At the same time, he said, more effort should be made to "discredit and diminish insurgents and their extremist allies' capability to influence attitudes and behavior in Afghanistan."

One way to accomplish that, McChrystal wrote, is to target insurgent networks "to disrupt and degrade" their effectiveness. Another is to expose what he calls the insurgents' "flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran," including indiscriminate use of violence and terrorism, and! attacks on schools and development projects.

McChrystal's appro ach mirrors one that U.S. intelligence operatives are taking covertly, with some success, in the Middle East, where direct and indirect support is being given to Islamic leaders who speak out against terrorists. Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said last year that the goal is to show "that it is al-Qaeda, not the West, that is truly at war with Islam."

Echoing that idea, McChrystal recognized in his report that Afghans traditionally communicate by word of mouth. He called for better exploitation of those "more orthodox methods" -- getting "authoritative figures" such as religious leaders and tribal elders to deliver the messages "so that they are credible."

One of the main changes from the current approach should be creating "opportunities for Afghans to communicate as opposed to attempting to always control the message," McChrystal wrote.

Another element he wants changed is the military's public responsiveness to incidents involving U.S. or allied forces that result in Afghan civilian deaths. Overreliance on firepower that kills civilians and destroys homes "severely damaged" the coalition's legitimacy in the eyes of Afghans, he noted, saying the Taliban publicized such incidents.

New procedures must be developed for sharing information about such events, he wrote, so that when they happen, "we are first with the truth."

McChrystal's recommended expansion of the Afghan strategic communications program followed public calls for such a step by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and by Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the region. Holbrooke has repeatedly complained that the Taliban has communicated more effectively than the United States, and he told a House subcommittee in June that there was a need to refine the coalition's message and use new ways to reach Afghans, suggesting cellphones, radio and other means.

Mullen, in a recent issue of Joint Force Quarterly, emphasized that the problem with commun icating with people rested on "policy and execution." He added, "To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate."

McChrystal wants new emphasis put on improving the Afghan government's capacity in the information field, including better partnerships with the spokesmen of the Defense and Interior ministries. A proposed contract for 275 contractors to work in the Defense Ministry says two are to be assigned to the public affairs office to develop an "effective" media relations program.

McChrystal also called in his assessment for the coalition to develop its own print, radio and television systems, and to take steps to "partner more effectively with the Afghan commercial sector."

In addition, McChrystal lists as a goal making public relations efforts beyond Afghanistan more effective. There has already been a step-up in press material sent to U.S. journalists. On Friday, seven releases were sent to The Washington Post, including one with four photos. The caption of one photo reads: "An Afghan commando team advances toward practice targets at a Kandahar training facility Sept. 24. Afghan National Army and police training is overseen by ISAF military mentors, with a goal that the Afghans will one day independently foster peace and stability in Afghanistan."

Congress, however, has expressed concern about the rapid growth of the military's involvement in an area once under the purview of the State Department. In July, the House Appropriations Committee, in approving the fiscal 2010 defense funding bill, said it had identified 10 strategic communications programs that boosted costs from $9 million in fiscal 2005 to a "staggering $988 million request for fiscal 2010." The committee said many of the costlier programs appear as "alarmingly non-military propaganda, public relations, and behavioral modification messaging."

In Iraq, the U.S. m! ilitary spent more than $500 million over six years developing a publi c relations campaign run mainly by American contractors. Starting with nearly $100 million for a U.S. contractor to run the newspaper, radio and television networks owned by one of Saddam Hussein's sons, the strategic communications program was expanded to include billboards, pamphlets, radio and TV spots, and programs to place articles in Iraqi newspapers and magazines.

In June, The Post's Ernesto Londono reported from Baghdad that the multimillion-dollar campaign ultimately did not help burnish the U.S. military's image, marginalize extremists, promote democracy or foster reconciliation.

By way of example, Londono quoted Ziyad al-Aajeely, director of Iraq's nonprofit Journalistic Freedom Observatory, as saying while he flipped through an issue of the U.S.-subsidized newspaper Baghdad Now: "The millions spent on this is wasted money. Nobody reads this."

Re-Supply Problems in Afghanistan

Military Supply Line Threatened By Taliban

By Associated Press
September 26, 2009

POL-I-KUMRI, Afghanistan — Growing Taliban influence in northern Afghanistan is threatening a new military supply line painstakingly negotiated by the U.S., as rising violence takes hold on the one-time Silk Road route.

The north has deteriorated over just a few months, showing how quickly Taliban influence is spreading in a once peaceful area. Local officials say the Taliban are establishing a shadow government along the dilapidated road that ultimately could prevent vital supplies carried in hundreds of trucks every week from reaching the military. It also raises the danger that the supplies could end up in militant hands as fodder for suicide attacks.

People in Baghlan and Kunduz provinces complain that international forces, the government in Kabul and aid have passed them by in favor of more troublesome regions. Militants are taking advantage of that resentment, and control by either Afghan or international forces is slipping.

"For the past two to three years, it's deteriorated day by day," said Ahmad Jawid, 43, a car dealer who sat in the shade with a half-dozen friends watching the highway in Baghlan's provincial capital, Pol-i-Kumri. "The people are demoralized."

A young man in the group had an easy smile but spoke bitterly on Wednesday when asked about the Taliban.

"I'm engaged and I can't go to the village of my fiancee," said 23-year-old Farshad, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. The village fell to the Taliban before the wedding could be planned. "I'm going to wait for the situation to get worse or get better. Otherwise I'll have to become a Talib."

Just to the north, Kunduz province is home to the first leg of the highway. The full northern route, which starts in Europe and snakes through Central Asia to Afghanistan, was cobbled together by the U.S. earlier this year after Taliban violence repeatedly disrupted the two main Pakistani routes.

Local officials and analysts say the militants want to show they can control the north and take over the supplies. Taliban militants hijacked two fuel trucks on the highway on Sept. 4, and German forces in Kunduz called in an airstrike by U.S. fighter pilots, saying they feared the trucks could be used in suicide bombings. Thirty civilians and 69 armed Taliban died in the strike, according to a probe by an Afghan presidential commission.

"The mere fact that the trucks were hijacked, the mere fact that we had this level of challenge to the government's control and sovereignty to me shows we need an effort here," U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in a recent news conference.

Kunduz was among the last Taliban strongholds during the 2001 U.S. invasion that drove the Islamic government from power, and — until this year — had been relatively peaceful, despite a largely Pashtun population sympathetic to the militants. That began to change after the Taliban solidified control in the south as U.S. supply lines from Pakistan came under increasing attack.

Afghan Policy: The 5 Votes That Matter

What Next In Afghanistan? The Five People Obama Is Asking.

President Obama has said he is reviewing US strategy in Afghanistan. Here are five of the most important people he is listening to – and what they might be telling him.

By Mark Sappenfield
Christian Science Monitor (csmonitor.com)
September 24, 2009

When he announced his administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan this spring, President Obama added an important asterisk.

“Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course,” he said March 27. “We will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.”

Now, he is making good on that promise.

Mr. Obama has already held one meeting of his top foreign policy and military advisers to discuss the Afghan war, according to news reports. Several more are expected, beginning next week.

What comes out of this high-level review could determine whether tens of thousands more American troops head to Afghanistan or whether America essentially pulls back and focuses on targeted counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda.

Here is what is known about where the members of the National Security Council might stand.

President Obama
Back in March, Obama said his goal was “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”

He has consistently repeated that goal. But his strategic calculus about how to do that appears to be changing.

Media reports suggest that Obama has been shaken by the allegations of widespread fraud in Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 presidential elections. The results have sowed doubt about whether President Hamid Karzai is a reliable partner.

Also a factor is the dire battlefield assessment by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is expected to request as many as 40,000 more troops. At a time when Obama is strained to his political limit by the healthcare debate, the prospect of having to sell an Afghan troop surge is decidedly unpalatable.

The shift in Obama’s outlook was evident Sunday, when Obama told “Meet the Press”: “I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face.”

The comment contrasted strikingly to the tone of an Aug. 17 speech – three days before the Afghan election – when he said that the war in Afghanistan “is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

Vice President Joe Biden
So far, Vice President Biden has been the most outspoken critic of expanding the Afghan war.

In different venues, he has proposed different courses of action.

In an interview with CNN, he advocated a wait-and-see approach. He noted that Obama approved 21,000 more troops for Afghanistan in March, and not all of them have even arrived.

“They’re now only getting in place; they’re not all fully in place and deployed,” he said, calling discussion of adding troops “premature.”

More controversial, however, is his advocacy of a plan to scale back US forces and move toward a narrower counterterrorism strategy. In short, the US military would use missiles fired from drones and special forces operations to attack Al Qaeda in Pakistan and prevent their return to Afghanistan.

Such a strategy would return to the central goal – targeting Al Qaeda – without having to rebuild a corrupt and impoverished nation.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Like Obama, Secretary Clinton has said she is open to any options going forward, so long as they keep Al Qaeda at bay.

“If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can’t tell you how fast Al Qaeda would be back in Afghanistan,” she said in an interview with PBS’s “NewsHour” Monday.

But Clinton was not necessarily swayed by McChrystal’s assertion that the US must add more troops to accomplish this.

“I can only tell you there are other assessments from, you know, very expert military analysts who have worked in counterinsurgencies that are the exact opposite [of McChrystal’s],” she said. “So what our goal is, is to take all of this incoming data and sort it out.”

National Security Adviser James Jones
While General Jones has not given a recent indication of where he stands on Afghan strategy, past statements provide some potential insight.

On a trip to Afghanistan in June, Jones told commanders not to expect any more troops this year. Clearly, much has changed since then. McChrystal had just been confirmed as the new US commander in Afghanistan, for instance.

Yet Jones seemed to think the time for troop requests ended when Obama announced his new strategy in March.

“Everybody had their day in court, so to speak, before the president made his decision,” he told McClatchy news service in an article published July 1. “We signed off on the strategy, and now we’re in the implementation phase.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike MullenMullen’s position in the debate is virtually certain.

He has endorsed McChrystal’s report and told Congress Sept. 15 that “a properly resourced counterinsurgency probably means more forces.”

Mullen’s viewpoints likely reflect those of the Pentagon brass, which means the full weight of military support is behind McChrystal and his assertion that the situation in Afghanistan “demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Gates appears to be the biggest wild card.

As secretary of Defense and a Republican whose opinion is widely respected both in the administration and in Congress, his opinion would be influential. Yet of all Obama’s main advisers, he has been perhaps the most obviously conflicted.

Gates is a strong supporter of McChrystal, having engineered the retirement of McChrystal’s predecessor in order to get his man into Afghanistan.

On Sept. 3, Gates said: “I’m very open to the recommendations and certainly the perspective of General McChrystal.” Yet in general, Gates has been wary of adding more troops, fearing that it would make the US look like occupiers.

If Marines Ran GTMO....

Marine Officer Who Set Up Guantanamo Prison Dismayed By What It Has Become

When Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert established the facility, humane treatment of prisoners was a top priority. He discusses how that principle fell out of favor in the seven-plus years since he left.

By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times
September 25, 2009

Reporting from Camp Pendleton--In late 2001, when the Pentagon decided to put detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the task of setting up a camp and establishing its rules went to Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert.

Lehnert planned to rely on what he learned while running a camp at Guantanamo in the mid-1990s for nearly 19,000 Cubans and Haitians trying to flee to the United States.

And he was determined to follow the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Convention, providing decent food, banning extreme interrogation and allowing religious services. He brought in a Muslim chaplain and permitted visits by the Red Cross.

When detainees went on a hunger strike, he spoke to them, even allowing one to get a phone message from his wife in Afghanistan.

But in the bureaucratic jostling that followed, Lehnert's approach was supplanted by that of a hard-nosed Army general.

Initially assigned to the project for 60 days, Lehnert stayed for 90 and then returned to the U.S. In the intervening seven-plus years, he has held several key jobs, been promoted to major general and kept a public silence about the controversy that has enveloped Guantanamo.

On Thursday, as the 58-year-old officer prepared to retire after 36 years in the Marine Corps, he expressed his deep disappointment about what happened at Guantanamo after he left.

"I think we lost the moral high ground," Lehnert said. "For those who do not think much of the moral high ground, that is not that significant.

"But for those who think our standing in the international community is important, we need to stand for American values. You have to walk the walk, talk the talk."

In her recent book, "The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days," Karen Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University's School of Law, suggests that history would have been much different if Lehnert's approach had prevailed.

"Certainly the reputation of the United States would not have been damaged as it has been by the unabashed pushing aside of law," she wrote.

As outlined by Greenberg, one of the biggest differences between Lehnert and his successors at Guantanamo was over the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

"I think you need to step back and say, 'As a country, is this something we want to do?" Lehnert said.

When tapped for the Guantanamo job, he said he had few direct orders on how to handle prisoners who were not members of a foreign military force but nevertheless suspected of crimes against the U.S.

"Once they were out of the fight, I felt we had a moral responsibility to care for them in a humane fashion," Lehnert said. "I think it's extremely important how we treat prisoners."

Lehnert recalled talking to young Marines who thought the detainees were being treated too well.

"They said, 'They wouldn't treat us this way,' " Lehnert said. "I said 'You're correct, and that is entirely irrelevant. If we treat them that way [as they might treat U.S. prisoners], then we become them."

Shortly after leaving Guantanamo, Lehnert said he concluded that the detention center should be shut down as soon as possible, a position that he holds more strongly now.

"I think we should close it down," he said. "I think the information we're getting is not worth the international beating we're taking."

During the assault on Baghdad in 2003, Lehnert led the logistics movement, making sure front-line troops had the gear needed to keep advancing.

For the last four years he's been the commanding general of Marine Corps Installations West, overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars of construction on seven West Coast bases and handling delicate issues about preservation of endangered species. His successor is set to arrive next week.

Lehnert and his wife plan to retire in their native Michigan, not that far from the prison at Standish, Mich., which is in the running to take some of the Guantanamo detainees once the detention facility is closed, which is planned to occur in the coming months.

"I think they're following me," Lehnert said with a smile.

Civilian Political Weasels Stymie Afghan Policy

General's Review Creates Rupture

As Military Backs Call for More Troops In Afghanistan, Civilian Advisers Balk
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's grim assessment of the Afghanistan war has opened a divide between the military, which is pushing for an early decision to send more troops, and civilian policymakers who are increasingly doubtful of an escalating nation-building effort.

Senior military officials emphasized Monday that McChrystal's conclusion that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan "will likely result in failure" without an urgent infusion of troops has been endorsed by the uniformed leadership. That includes Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and architect of the troop "surge" strategy widely seen as helping U.S. forces turn the corner in Iraq.

But before any decision is made, some of President Obama's civilian advisers have proposed looking at other, less costly options to address his primary goal of preventing al-Qaeda from reestablishing itself in Afghanistan. Those options include a redirection of U.S. efforts -- away from protecting the Afghan population and building the Afghan state and toward persuading the Taliban to stop fighting -- as well as an escalation of targeted attacks against al-Qaeda itself in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Obama's public remarks on Afghanistan indicate that he has begun to rethink the counterinsurgency strategy he set in motion six months ago, even as his generals have embraced it. The equation on the ground has changed markedly since his March announcement, with attacks by Taliban fighters showing greater sophistication, U.S. casualties rising, and the chances increasing that Afghanistan will be left with an illegitimate government after widespread fraud in recent presidential elections.

In television interviews Sunday, Obama said he would take his time in weighing McChrystal's recommendations and an anticipated formal request for more troops. "The first question is: Are we doing the right thing?" Obama said on CNN. "Are we pursuing the right strategy?"

The commander's report, administration officials said, is only one of many "inputs" the president is considering. Others include assessments from the State Department, the intelligence community and his White House advisers.

Obama's decision is complicated by a deepening domestic political divide and no guarantee of success whichever option he chooses. One observer, characterizing the president's dilemma at its most extreme, said: "He can send more troops and it will be a disaster and he will destroy the Democratic Party. Or he can send no more troops and it will be a disaster and the Republicans will say he lost the war."

Few lawmakers had seen McChrystal's closely held report before an unclassified version was published by The Washington Post on its Web site Sunday night. Their reactions were sharply divided along party lines, with many Republicans advocating full support for the military commander.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement that he was "deeply troubled . . . by reports that the White House is delaying action on the General's request for more troops" and was questioning the "integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency" Obama himself set in motion. "It's time for the President to clarify where he stands on the strategy he has articulated," Boehner said, "because the longer we wait the more we put our troops at risk."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that "any failure to act decisively in response to General McChrystal's request could serve to undermine the other good decisions the president has made" on Afghanistan.

But Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Navy veteran of Vietnam who once led opposition to that war, praised Obama's deliberative pace.

"All the president is saying is that he wants to take the time to make sure this decision is not done like the Gulf of Tonkin" resolution, where "underlying assumptions aren't questioned," Kerry said. The 1964 joint congressional resolution, based on false information about North Vietnamese actions and adopted amid an anti-communist frenzy, authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force in Southeast Asia.

"You've got to figure out . . . what is the counterinsurgency mission," Kerry said. "The president has all the right in the world to properly vet that mission and define it. It may well be we'll all decide [McChrystal] is absolutely correct, and the mission he's defined is correct."

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has positioned himself between the urgency expressed by military commanders and those calling for a reconsideration of the strategy, last week suggested that all involved take a "deep breath." He has told McChrystal to delay sending his formal request for additional resources until the policy discussion is further along.

But senior military officials have expressed growing frustration, while warning that delay could be costly. "Time does matter," said one military official. "The longer the situation deteriorates, the tougher to reclaim" the initiative against Taliban forces. Military and civilian officials agreed to discuss White House decision-making and McChrystal's report on the condition of anonymity.

This military official and others cautioned that any strategy revision that resulted in a pullback by U.S. and NATO forces would leave Taliban forces in uncontested control of territory and could lead to a return of civil war in Afghanistan, opening the door to reestablishment of al-Qaeda sanctuaries there.

But some civilian officials believe that such a scenario is based on possibly faulty assumptions about who the Taliban insurgents are, what their aims may be, and whether some can be co-opted. If Obama's core objective is to prevent al-Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, this reasoning goes, it may not depend on defeating the Taliban. An equally viable policy, they argue, could include stepped-up, targeted attacks on al-Qaeda's sanctuaries in Pakistan and convincing amenable Taliban fighters that it is in their best interests to keep al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan.

Why The Confusion On Afghan Policy?

Wavering On Afghanistan?
President Obama seems to have forgotten his own arguments for a counterinsurgency campaign.

Washington Post
September 22, 2009

IT WAS ONLY last March 27 that President Obama outlined in a major speech what he called "a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan" that, he added, "marks the conclusion of a careful policy review." That strategy unambiguously stated that the United States would prevent the return of a Taliban government and "enhance the military, governance and economic capacity" of the country. We strongly supported the president's conclusion that those goals were essential to preventing another attack on the United States by al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.

So it was a little startling to hear Mr. Obama suggest in several televised interviews on Sunday that he had second thoughts. "We are in the process of working through that strategy," said on CNN." The first question is . . . are we pursuing the right strategy?" On NBC he said, "if supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy" of defeating al-Qaeda, "then we'll move forward. But if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan."

The president's doubts come at a crucial moment. He has just received a report from the commander he appointed, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, saying the United States and its allies are in danger of losing the war if they do not work more effectively to shore up the Afghan government and army and protect the population from insurgents. Gen. McChrystal, along with his seniors in Washington, believe that this counterinsurgency strategy is the only route to success, and that it will require a commitment of substantial additional resources, including thousands more U.S. troops next year.

The generals believed they had Mr. Obama's commitment to their approach after the policy review last spring. Now the president appears to be distancing himself from his commanders -- including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who testified before Congress last week that more forces would be needed.

What has changed since March? As Mr. Obama noted, Afghanistan's presidential election has been plagued by allegations of fraud, sharpening questions about whether the government can be a reliable partner. Taliban attacks are spreading despite the deployment of 21,000 additional troops approved by the president earlier this year. Some in and outside the administration have argued for a more limited strategy centered on striking al-Qaeda's leaders, giving up the more ambitious political and economic tasks built into the counterinsurgency doctrine.

It's hard to see, however, how Mr. Obama can refute the analysis he offered last March. "If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged," he said then, "that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." Afghanistan, he continued, "is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan," where al-Qaeda and the Taliban now aim at seizing control of a state that possesses nuclear weapons. Moreover, Mr. Obama said, "a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people- especially women and girls."

"To succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban's gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government," Mr. Obama concluded. As Gen. McChrystal's report makes very clear, keeping faith with that goal will require more troops, more resources and years of patience. Yet to break with it would both dishonor and endanger this country. As the president put it, "the world cannot afford the price that will come due if Afghanistan slides back into chaos."

Needed: Bi-Partisan Support on Afghanistan

Obama's Befuddling Afghan Policy
Why is the president hesitating on more troops to fight his 'war of necessity'?

By Leslie H. Gelb
Wall Street Journal
September 22, 2009

I'm lost on President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy—along with most of Congress and the U.S. military. Not quite eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 U.S. forces for starters. He proclaimed Afghanistan's strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan—an even more vital nation because of its nuclear weapons. And a mere three weeks ago, he punctuated his commitments by proclaiming that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity," not one of choice. White House spokesmen reinforced this by promising that the president would "fully resource" the war.

Yet less than one week ago, Mr. Obama said the following about troop increases: "I'm going to take a very deliberate process in making those decisions. There is no immediate decision pending on resources, because one of the things that I'm absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources." He repeated that on Sunday's talk shows.

Are we now to understand that he made all those previous declarations and decisions without a strategy he was committed to? Prior to his recent statements, it seemed clear that the president and his advisers had adopted a strategy already—the counterinsurgency one—and that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was tapped precisely because he would implement that plan. The idea, to repeat, was to deploy forces sufficient to clear territory of Taliban threats, hold that territory, and build up the sinews of the country behind that.

Nothing significant has changed to account for the shift from Mr. Obama's confident policy proclamations to his temporizing statements of recent days. The president certainly understood before last week that the situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating. And he knew when he was inaugurated and when he first uttered his colorful "war of necessity" phrase that his party, and the public generally, were increasingly opposed to the war.

Americans are now confused and caught somewhere between remembering the president's insistence on Afghanistan's importance to U.S. security and rapidly rising pressure from his party to bring the troops home.

What is to be done? Even though I strongly believe that the United States does not have vital interests in Afghanistan, I also believe that Mr. Obama can't simply walk away from the war. A lot of Democrats don't seem to fathom this. At a minimum, the president has got to give Afghan allies a fighting chance to hold their own and prepare the ground to blunt the Taliban and al Qaeda. That will take time.

For their part, Republicans and others who advocate an open-ended U.S. commitment can't simply ignore the fact that political time is running out at home. It would be utterly irresponsible of them to simply shake their fingers at the Democrats and wait for them to fail in Afghanistan. Despite President George W. Bush's rhetoric on Iraq, he saw the writing on the wall and agreed to an American withdrawal. And if the hard-headed realists among conservatives aren't just playing political games, they also have to honor the time problem.
Democrats have to realize that more time is needed, and Republicans must acknowledge that America's combat commitment cannot be indefinite. If political leaders accept these underlying political realities, the Obama administration can craft a strategy along the following lines:

*Surge two additional combat brigades, or roughly 10,000 troops, to lift the U.S. total to about 78,000 from 68,000.

*Deploy an additional 5,000 to 10,000 troops strictly for the purpose of training and supporting Afghan police and armed forces, and embed U.S. advisers with heavy intelligence backup. As important as increasing troop numbers is changing the American attitude toward the war. Our armed forces can't continue to treat most problems as American problems, and they must begin to turn over real authority to the Afghans.

*Provide support to leaders in Kabul and tribal leaders around the country who will oppose the Taliban and fight for their independence.

*Put money on the table to divide Taliban from Taliban, and Taliban from al Qaeda. We know many of them respond to financial—as well as security—inducements.

*Build alliances to contain the Taliban and other regional extremists. Focus on India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, and yes, even Iran, which cooperated with Washington at the outset of the Afghan war. These states share common interests with America in combating al Qaeda-like terrorism and the drug trade.

*Set up tough and credible deterrence capabilities. It's particularly critical to retain special operations forces in Afghanistan with the ability to fire from drones and perform other operations. Capabilities for missile and air attacks launched from beyond Afghanistan need to be honed as well. Token attacks won't be enough.

Putting this strategy and the attendant capabilities in place would take two to three years. But doing so would make this war Afghanistan's responsibility. It must be this way in order to avoid defeat. If the war remains essentially America's, it will guarantee failure. As almost always in such situations, the Afghans will tire of their American saviors. Even more certainly, Americans will eventually lose all patience and demand immediate pullouts, leaving Afghans unprepared to defend themselves.

The U.S. now faces many very serious troubles abroad. These were all born before the Obama presidency. The president's failure in Afghanistan would be America's failure, and we cannot allow this to happen. Defeat for America in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be avoided only if Democrats acknowledge that the Afghans need major help for two to three more years, and Republicans admit that the political clock at home won't give them much more time than that.

McChrystal - More Troops or We Fail....

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'

Washington Post
12:00 AM EDT Monday, September 21, 2009

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.