Category — AfPak policy

By Christi Parsons and Paul Richter
Washington: President Obama and his top advisors are moving toward a strategy on Afghanistan that defines Al Qaeda as a greater threat to U.S. security than the Taliban, a view that could help them avoid the major troop increase sought by military commanders.

The evolving strategy represents a subtle shift for the administration, which has considered Osama bin Laden’s network its top enemy while viewing the Taliban as a close ally of Al Qaeda that supports its ambitions. White House officials now are taking pains to make distinctions between the two groups, branding Al Qaeda a global terrorist group and the Taliban a local movement.

Such a strategy could let U.S.-led forces concentrate on their successful strategy of using unmanned aircraft and missile strikes against Al Qaeda operatives and outposts in the remote region along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A senior administration official indicated that in the fight against the Taliban, at a minimum the extremists would not be allowed to regain the strength to control Afghanistan or offer help to Al Qaeda, whose leadership is thought to be based in Pakistan.

“Are they violent adversaries? Yes,” the official wrote of the Taliban in an e-mail exchange. “And we would not tolerate their return to power as they were before 9/11.”

The new emphasis rekindled an 8-year-old debate about how closely Al Qaeda and the Taliban are aligned. Many experts agree they are distinct, but others see them as virtually interchangeable sets of militants.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration considered Al Qaeda a “global, transnational, jihadist movement” that has attacked the U.S. before and would again.

The Taliban, meanwhile, is an “indigenous” movement centered in Afghanistan and Pakistan that includes “homegrown political actors with localized ambitions and concerns,” the senior administration official said.

In comments this summer, Obama indicated that the administration saw a link between the two groups.

In an address Aug. 17 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Obama said:

“We must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who led the Obama administration’s overhaul of its Afghanistan and Pakistan policies this year, said it was “a fundamental misreading of the nature of these organizations to think that they are anything other than partners.”

“Al Qaeda is embedded in the Taliban insurgency, and it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to be able to separate them,” he said.

Obama meets today with national security advisors as part of his review of Afghanistan strategy, and officials said he is at least a week away from any decisions on a new U.S. policy or troop levels. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has recommended sending up to 40,000 American troops, in addition to the 68,000 already there.

Top administration officials are skeptical about sending so many troops without a close examination of U.S. aims. That view has been influenced by a series of dismal developments, including the extremist violence in Afghanistan, a fraud-tainted presidential election there, and plummeting support for the war among the U.S. public and lawmakers.

Influential Democrats on Capitol Hill have expressed unease about a strategy that requires a major increase in the number of troops. But it is far from clear that they would undercut Obama by refusing an administration request for funds to pay for the conflict.

“People are unsure what do to,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a critic of the war who gathered more than 50 signatures on a letter to Obama opposing a troop increase. “I think people want to give the president more space and wait for his decision. But I thought it was important to try to send something to him before a final decision is made to let him know there is a lot of concern.”

Daniel Markey, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the White House emphasis on Al Qaeda may be a sign that the administration is unlikely to send the full complement of troops sought by McChrystal. The views of Al Qaeda and the Taliban are “presumably an argument for why a heavy emphasis on Afghanistan and the Taliban is misplaced,” said Markey, a former State Department official.

The Taliban inserted itself into the debate this week by posting a statement in English on one of its websites asserting that the group poses no threat to the West.

“We did not have any agenda to harm other countries, including Europe, nor do we have such agenda today,” said the statement, according to a report in the British newspaper the Guardian. “Still, if you want to turn the country of the proud and pious Afghans into a colony, then know that we have an unwavering determination and have braced for a prolonged war.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in an appearance at George Washington University this week, said it was unclear whether Al Qaeda would move back into Afghanistan if given the opportunity.

But he added, “There’s no question in my mind that if the Taliban . . . took control of significant portions of Afghanistan, that would be added space for Al Qaeda to strengthen itself and [begin] more recruitment, more fundraising.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton views the Taliban as a foe as well.

“They’re not just a threat to the people of Afghanistan,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Thursday. “The Taliban hosted and encouraged Al Qaeda. And the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — the idea for them — was hatched in the Taliban-run Afghanistan. So I think that we do see the Taliban as a threat to U.S. security for that reason.”

A strategy centered on eliminating extremist enclaves in Pakistan carries additional risks. Though the U.S. and the Pakistani government have been successful in killing senior insurgents, U.S. officials acknowledge that they have limited influence in Pakistan. The U.S. strategy of using drone airstrikes there is deeply unpopular with Pakistanis.

This week, even U.S. aid sparked controversy. Pakistani political figures and military leaders were offended by the strings attached to a just- approved $1.5-billion-a-year aid package, and some have been pressing for revision of the U.S. legislation. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-afghan9-2009oct09,0,4418683,print.story

By Anna Husarska
( the author is senior policy advisor at the International Rescue Committee).
Writing From Mingora, Pakistan: The drawing shows three boys in traditional Pakistani long shirts, shalwar kameez, crying and holding banners that read “We want peace,” “Not the peaces [sic] of human bodies” and, in Arabic script, “Aman” — Pashto for “peace.” On the left of the group, two hooded men (members of the Taliban, one presumes) carry swords; on the right, two figures in uniform carry guns (Pakistani army, one guesses). In the foreground, a hooded figure holds down a person who is pleading, “Please let me go; I have small children.”

This was a drawing by a schoolgirl named Sheema for an end-of-Ramadan competition in Mingora, the main town of Pakistan’s Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province. The scene depicting her hometown this spring — civilians caught between the militants and the army — illustrates the huge human cost of the operation by the Pakistan army against the Taliban. And the suffering is far from over. After a week of talking to people living in the Swat Valley, displaced from Swat or working in Swat, I can attest that Sheema got it exactly right.

The tragedy of more than 2 million people being displaced in less than two months may have vanished from the headlines, but the civilian drama continues. If there is less attention to their needs, it’s partly because it’s still hard for anyone other than the armed forces or a native Swati to reach most of the district north of Mingora. The army can take foreign journalists on periodic tours of the “cleared” areas in the south but rarely in the north, where the situation remains uncertain. One thing is obvious: Beyond Mingora, the Swat Valley is still an insecure place.

The Pakistanis themselves have concerns for the collateral damage that the offensive has caused: A visit by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan resulted in a strongly worded report about mass graves and extrajudicial “revenge” killings. And last week, the Pakistani daily Dawn and others reported that a 10-minute video apparently showing Pakistani soldiers beating men detained in anti-militant operations had surfaced on the Internet. The army is investigating.

If the restrictions caused by emergency army administration — such as curfews and checkpoints — are a nuisance and add risks for civilians, anger against the militants is rising too. The displaced return to areas promised to be “cleared” of militants, only to find it may not be so. People fear that if they are seen during daytime (from the hills where the militants tend to hide) having contact with any army or government personnel, the Taliban will come down at night to exact a heavy price on them.

Close to Peshawar, in Mardan, I met with some of the displaced people who have found temporary shelter there — they number more than 1,000. Fourteen of the families are redisplaced — i.e. they tried to return home and found it impossible to live there. What 35-year-old Selma mentions is typical: Before the army’s action, her daughters could not go to school because of Taliban-imposed rules, and one brother’s shop was judged un-Islamic — for selling clothes catering to women — and destroyed. Now the daughters cannot go to school because of the army-imposed curfew, and the army told her brothers to dismantle the homes of suspected militants (which exposes them to revenge). So after one month spent back in Charbagh, a former Taliban stronghold, the family opted to flee yet again.

The situation in other parts of the North-West Frontier Province remains unstable. Reporting about a militant attack in a market last month in Kohat, a local Pakistani newspaper wrote that for several hours after the blast, “an enraged crowd did not allow the bomb-disposal squad to enter the market.” How huge must be the people’s grief, and animosity toward those responsible for the mayhem, for them to shoo away Samaritans coming to rescue their loved ones.

The message in Sheema’s drawing gets confirmed with every conversation I have with those who fled the Swat Valley. It resonates across the troubled province, where another major anti-Taliban assault by the army is brewing, this time on the militant stronghold of South Waziristan. Hundreds of thousands more civilians may be forced to flee, caught between the army and the Taliban.

However, in Mingora and the territory just south of it, ringed by army checkpoints and crawling with street patrols, many wish for a civilian administration — a sign that things could be genuinely stabilizing. The army is beginning to draw back in Mingora and hand over security to the police. There too I find a beaming principal of a private girls school, Ziauddin Yousafzai, whose enthusiasm over the “clearance” of Mingora is contagious. And his pupil, Sheema, has another, more hopeful drawing showing her high school reopened and boys and girls holding hands and smiling. Were it that the rest of the Swat Valley could hold hands and smile. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-husarska7-2009oct07,0,2648217,print.story

By Maqbool Malik
ISLAMABAD – Iranian Baloch human smugglers played a key role in ferrying many hardcore Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters to various Gulf Arab countries in 2002 when they fled Afghanistan to evade US-led military offensive, TheNation has reliably learnt.
Background interviews and discussions with senior security officials, diplomats and Taliban in FATA suggest these fleeing fighters along with some of their family members had paid handsome money to the smugglers to ferry them.
“Sea-route was the most feasible option they had used while fleeing from Pakistan and Iran”, a knowledgeable source said while speaking on condition of anonymity.
They hired the services of human smugglers using high speed boats owned and operated by Iranian Baloch, sources said, adding that most of the fugitives were Arabs and Afghans and used Jiwani, a Pakistani fishing town on Pak-Iran border.
Sources said some of them were living with different names in different Gulf Arab countries as well as Iran, Somalia, Iraq and southeast countries including Indonesia.
They were of the view that the fleeing Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Afghanistan managed to enter Pakistan and Iran, where some of them were arrested or killed while many still managed to slip away and reached different Gulf Arab countries.
These people, who fled to evade the US-led terror war in Afghanistan, launched in the backdrop of 9/11 terrorist attacks, had carried with them passports of various countries, mostly the Gulf Arab states.
“Some of them, particularly the Arab fighters of Al-Qaeda, later went to Iraq to join hands with the forces which were resisting the US-led invasion in early 2003”, another knowledgeable source said, adding “who knows how many of them had managed to enter even the European countries”.
They were of the view that those who fled Afghanistan in the first instance managed to reach Quetta and from there they sneaked into coastal areas with the help of their Pakistani supporters and sympathisers. While some of them, including a son of Al-Qaeda Chief Osama bin Ladin, tried to flee through Iran but were arrested. Later, sources said, Iran handed a few of them to Saudi Arabia.
Sources said this starling clue came to light when Pakistani authorities launched concerted efforts to check and verify presence of Taliban chief Mullah Omer and his key associates in Quetta on the request of US and Afghan authorities.
The US authorities later placed Pakistan on the list of those countries with a dismal record in curbing human trafficking and human smuggling.
They said Pakistan, after thorough investigation, had told the US and Afghan governments that there were no signs of Mullah Omar and his key commanders in Quetta city as alleged by their respective intelligence sleuths.
The Chief spokesman of Pakistan military, Major General Athar Abbas, refused to give details of the intelligence exchanges shared by security forces of Pakistan, USA and Afghanistan through their Tripartite Commission.
“These are intelligence exchanges and not made public”, he told TheNation in response to a query whether US military commanders in Afghanistan had ever requested Pakistan to check and verify their intelligence reports about the alleged presence of Mullah Omar and his key commanders in Quetta.
Meanwhile, a US Embassy spokesman insisted that Mullah Omar and some of his key commanders were in Quetta and they keep on moving from one place to another. “I have nothing more to offer than the statements already issued by our ambassador and the deputy head of mission”, Embassy spokesman Rick Snelsire told TheNation.
Taliban sources from FATA regarded the US threat to launch drone attacks on Quetta as a mere trick to pressurise Pakistan to launch its offensive against hideouts of terror networks of late Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in Waziristan.
Some Taliban sources also claimed that Osama bin Ladin was killed during the US bombers’ B-52 strikes over Tora Bora with daisycutter bombs which destroyed Al-Qaeda’s famous mountain hideout.
They quoted some Al-Qaeda and Taliban who offered special prayer for the departed soul of Osama when they gathered for pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia the very next year.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online//Politics/06-Oct-2009/Hardcore-QaedaTaliban-fighters-smuggled-out

Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram tell Indian Express
Excerpts from interaction with editors of the daily
•AMITABH SINHA: What were the specific results achieved during your recent US visit?
Much has been made of the Hafiz Saeed chapter but it was only one small part of the agenda. The main purpose of the visit was to work out an arrangement by which we can share intelligence on a real time basis and then to share analysis of intelligence. We also discussed access to technology. We need technology; we need to improve the skill sets of our people. Then there was the very important need to get to know the important people in the US on a personal basis. I believe the objectives were substantially achieved.

•RITU SARIN: Is there a qualitative difference in the nature of evidence we have against Hafiz Saeed and the evidence we have handed over to Pakistan on other 26/11 accused?
Yes, because Hafiz Saeed did not come to India. All his overt actions were done on Pakistan soil. So all I can give are leads as to what he did. The evidence is on Pakistan soil. If the Pakistan government throws up its hands and says it cannot or it is unwilling to investigate on Pakistan soil, that is a very sad commentary on the Pakistan police.

•AMITABH SINHA: You mean there is no evidence against him as of now and Pakistan will have to investigate further?
There are leads which amount to evidence. For example, when Kasab said Hafiz Saeed asked a man to set up 10 targets and asked each one of them to hit the targets and he was given target No 4 and he hit target No 4 and Hafiz Saeed personally complimented him on his accurate firing, that is a lead bordering on evidence which has to be substantiated by locating the place where the target practice took place, by talking to the people involved, by investigation. If these are confirmed, it is hard evidence.

•PRANAB DHAL SAMANTA: Is there any possibility of a joint investigation with Pakistan?
No more investigation needs to be done on Indian soil. We have filed the chargesheet, the trial is well on its way and is about to be concluded. All the investigation that has to be done now is on Pakistan soil. FBI asked for access, they (Pakistan) denied it. If they did not give access to FBI which is obliged to investigate the attacks since six American nationals were killed in 26/11, what chance do we have?

•AMITABH SINHA: So what is the way out?
I see the tunnel. I don’t see the end of the tunnel yet. We have a Letter Rogatory for Hafiz Saeed. We will follow the processes of law which are available to us. At some point of time, the Pakistan Government, I hope, will fall in line and investigate and help us gain access to the evidence of that investigation.

•RITU SARIN: At some stage, India will have to take a call on the nine bodies of the 26/11 perpetrators lying in cold storage in Mumbai.
What do we do? No Muslim organisation is willing to take those bodies and bury them. Pakistan has grudgingly accepted that some of them maybe Pakistani nationals. There must be some organisation which is willing to come forward to bury them and we are willing to work with them. They are dead and deserve a decent burial.

•MANU PUBBY: There has not been any major terrorist strike since the Mumbai attack. What has changed on the ground?
I don’t think there is any let-up in the plans of militant organisations in Pakistan, especially LeT and JeM. I think they continue to plan and plot. What has changed is that our intelligence sharing is now on a real-time basis and the level of alertness, vigilance of states is much better. We are proactively seeking out cells and modules to neutralise them. Let me say very candidly that while effort plays a big part, luck also pays a big part. We have to be ever vigilant and we have to raise our level of preparedness.

•VAIBHAV VATS: Is there any thought being given to repealing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)?
We are proposing amendments to the AFSPA. As far as the presence of security forces in Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, I have said on the border, the army will be present. The paramilitary will be deployed in the hinterland to aid and assist the state police. And the state police will take the frontline in maintaining law and order.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/521990

The Indian Express, Sept 26
NEW DELHI: One reason why Pakistan doesn’t appear to be sincere in its against t Lashkar-eToiba founder and Jamaatud-Dawa chief Hafiz Sayeed is slowly emerging.
It’s been learnt here that some of the LeT’s top commanders, spearheading its violent campaign in India, have now joined the Pak Army’s campaign against the Taliban.
Sources said they have been moved from Punjab in Pakistan to set up and lead Army-sponsored armed “vil- i lage defence committees” in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP).
Sources said LeT commanders Sad Baba, Asad Khan, Bilal, Gazi Sultan and Huzefa have moved to NWFP where the Pak Army is encouraging local tribesmen and their el- i ders to form armed groups to fight the Taliban. l Local tribesmen are said to have told the Pak Army not to deploy its forces because their presence helps build support for the Taliban. Hence, the committees.
This anti-Taliban resistance has a parallel with the “Sunni awakening” in Iraq, where tribesmen took on al-Qaeda militants in Anbar province and elsewhere.
The village defence groups rely on tribal customs and i widespread ownership of guns to raise traditional private armies — interestingly, these are also called Lashkars — each with hundreds of volunteers from local tribes.
These armies, launched last autumn, are not aimed at preventing individual acts of terrorism — suicide bombings etc — but to create a local defence system that prevents the Taliban from setting up an “extremist mini-state” in the lawless north-west.
Such Lashkars have already been established in Bajaur, Dir and Buner in NWFP .
The biggest anti-Taliban Lashkar had been set up by Sulthankeil tribe in Khall town with 10,000 local recruits who came along with their weapons.
Sources reveal that the LeT’s support for setting up and leading these tribal groups has two main reasons.
One, the LeT belongs to a different ideological sect, theologically opposed to the Taliban and an armed rebellion against the Pak army.
Two, LeT’s commanders are experienced in guerilla warfare and most of them have been operating in Kashmir or directing terror acts in various cities across India.
Security agencies monitoring Lashkar operations have found that the geographical location of many of these LeT commanders is being concealed via “spoofing” of their satphones.
“When a satellite phone is spoofed, it means its Lat (latitude)-Long (Longitude) is misrepresented by highly sophisticated sensors thus preventing surveillance,” a senior official told The Indian Express.
The official alleged that there were instances where the service provider was “giving inaccurate information.”
“We worked on two numbers, one belonging to an LeT commander and another used by a Hizbul man. Both were spoofed and in both cases we knew the actual location of the users. The service provider gave us the correct information about the Hizbul man while it misled us on information about the phone used by the LeT.” http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2009/09/26/ArticleHtmls/26_09_2009_001_007.shtml?Mode=1

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times, Sept 24
WASHINGTON — Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan, senior American military and intelligence officials say.
The Taliban’s expansion into parts of Afghanistan that it once had little influence over comes as the Obama administration is struggling to settle on a new military strategy for Afghanistan, and as the White House renews its efforts to get Pakistan’s government to be more aggressive about killing or capturing Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.
American military and intelligence officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the Taliban’s leadership council, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and operating around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, was directly responsible for a wave of violence in once relatively placid parts of northern and western Afghanistan. A recent string of attacks killed troops from Italy and Germany, pivotal American allies that are facing strong opposition to the Afghan war at home.
These assessments echo a recent report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, in portraying the Taliban as an increasingly sophisticated shadow government that sees itself on the cusp of victory in the war-ravaged nation.
General McChrystal’s report describes how Mullah Omar’s insurgency has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan, levies taxes, establishes Islamic courts there and conducts a formal review of its military campaign each winter.
American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.
The issue of the Taliban leadership council, or shura, in Quetta is now at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda in its meetings with Pakistani officials.
At the same time, American officials face a frustrating paradox: the more the administration wrestles publicly with how substantial and lasting a military commitment to make to Afghanistan, the more the ISI is likely to strengthen bonds to the Taliban as Pakistan hedges its bets.
American officials have long complained that senior Taliban leaders operating from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, provide money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, where most of the nearly 68,000 American forces are deployed.
But since NATO’s offensive into the Taliban-dominated south this spring, the insurgents have surprised American commanders by stepping up attacks against allied troops elsewhere in the country to throw NATO off balance and create the perception of spreading violence that neither the allied military nor the civilian Afghan government in Kabul can control.
“The Taliban is trying to create trouble elsewhere to alleviate pressure” in the south, said one senior American intelligence official. “They’ve outmaneuvered us time and time again.”
The issue has opened fresh rifts between the United States and Pakistan over how to combat the Taliban leadership council in Quetta. American officials have voiced new and unusually public criticism of Pakistan’s role in abetting the growing Afghan insurgency, reviving tensions that seemed to have eased after the two countries worked closely to track and kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas last month.
General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.
The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.
Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.
A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.
“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”
Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.
Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.
In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.
And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”
A half-dozen American military, intelligence and diplomatic officials said in interviews that the Taliban leadership in Baluchistan, which abuts the portion of southern Afghanistan where most of the fighting is taking place, is increasing its strategic direction over the insurgency.
“The Taliban inner shura in Baluchistan is certainly trying to exercise greater command and control over the Taliban in Afghanistan,” said one American official in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his assessment involved classified intelligence.
The official said that Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a former inmate at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is now a top Taliban lieutenant, was involved in replacing Taliban shadow governors and commanders, as well as reorganizing the Taliban throughout the country. “The Quetta shura — you can’t knock on their clubhouse door,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s much more of an amorphous group that as best we can tell moves around. They go to Karachi, they go to Quetta, they go across the border.”
American officials grudgingly acknowledge the Taliban’s skill at using guerrilla-style attacks to manipulate public impressions of the insurgency. “We assess that the primary focus of attacks in northern provinces such as Kunduz is to create a perception that the insurgency is spreading like wildfire,” the American official in Afghanistan said. “But I think it’s more of an ‘information operations’ success than a substantive one of holding any territory.”
Another American intelligence official who follows Pakistan closely said the insurgents had sought to exploit allied countries’ political vulnerabilities, like elections in Germany on Sunday. “The Taliban have proven themselves capable of strategic planning,” the official said.
General McChrystal said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been surprised by “the growth of the shadow government, the growth of its coercion and its growth into the north and west.”
Germany, which has suffered 33 combat deaths in Afghanistan, has remained committed to the Afghan mission, although it has placed strict limits on where its soldiers can serve, refusing to send them to the south.
But that commitment is now being hotly debated in the coming parliamentary elections, after an airstrike called in by a German commander this month. The NATO airstrike, directed at two tanker trucks carrying alliance fuel that had been hijacked by the Taliban, killed scores of people; the number of dead civilians remains unclear.
Other allies are also rethinking their presence in Afghanistan. A bomb that killed six Italian soldiers in Kabul last Thursday prompted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to declare that his nation had begun planning to “bring our young men home as soon as possible.” Italy has 3,100 troops in Afghanistan. www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24military.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print