US to lose war if USSR mistakes repeated

KABUL: The United States risks losing the war in Afghanistan if it continues to repeat the mistakes that once helped the Taliban's forerunners defeat the Soviet Union, Russia's outgoing ambassador in Kabul said.

Zamir Kabulov, a veteran diplomat who worked in the Soviet embassy in Kabul throughout the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, said the gloomy picture of present-day Afghanistan reminded him of his own diplomatic past.

"There are many similarities between the Soviet embassy of the 1980s and the American embassy of 2009," he told a group of reporters late on Wednesday ahead of his departure next week.

"There are a lot of similarities as well as differences. The outcome in both cases is quite poor. It makes me feel very sad that after having spent so much time in Afghanistan ... I am leaving a country that is still at war without any firm prospects of improvement," added Kabulov.

The remarks by the Russian ambassador, whose surname coincidentally means "from Kabul" in Russian, come at a time when NATO-led troops are engaged in the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, when the Taliban were forced from power.

Twenty years since Moscow's humiliating withdrawal following its own 10-year war, Kabulov's words resonate in Kabul's diplomatic circles.

"Neglect of the population. Failure in establishing firm cooperation with local communities. Leaving them at the behest of the enemy," Kabulov said, listing examples of Soviet mistakes he believed were now being repeated.

Speaking at the lavishly refurbished embassy compound, ransacked in the post-Soviet mayhem of the 1990s, he said the country was slipping back into chaos because efforts to rebuild the economy and win people's "hearts and minds" came too late.

"If you compare the situation with five or six years ago, it is of course much worse," he said. "Our partners have lost a lot of opportunities to really control the country, to help assist the Afghan government, ... provide law and order."

Kabulov said, however, that scaling down US forces in Afghanistan at this stage would be another mistake.

Insurgency growing: The head of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan said on Thursday that the insurgency in the country was growing and the success of the military campaign there could not be taken for granted. General Stanley McChrystal described the situation in Afghanistan as serious. "Neither success nor failure can be taken for granted," he said in a speech in London.

"It is complex, difficult terrain, both the land and the people. It is a tribal society with a culture vastly different from what most of us are familiar with," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"I discount immediately anyone who simplifies the problem or offers a solution ... or says 'this is what you have got to do' because they absolutely have no clue about the complexity of what we are dealing with.

"In Afghanistan, things are rarely as they seem and the outcomes of actions we take, however well intended, are often different from what we expect."

Also on Thursday, Britain's Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said any increase in soldiers was some way off and not guaranteed. "Before I agree to any increase in troop numbers, I must be sure that the balance of risks is acceptable by evaluating the capacity of the supply chain to properly equip an increased force," he told the Labour Party's annual conference.

Talks: Speaking at the same meeting, Foreign Secretary David Miliband repeated a call for talks with lesser elements of the Taliban if the poison was to be drawn from the insurgency. "The way to defeat this enemy is to divide it - separate the hardcore from the rest," Miliband said.

"Does that mean the Afghan government talking to the Taliban? Yes, with a simple message: Live within the constitution and you can come home to your communities and have a share of power, but stay outside, in hiding ... and you will face an unremitting military force." reuters

A Showdown In Waziristan

Tackling a Taliban Haven With Guns and Money

By David Ignatius

WANA, Pakistan - The zigzag trip to this garrison town deep in the tribal area of South Waziristan tells a story that's more than a century old: The fierce Mehsud tribe and its allies are a law unto themselves in these rugged mountains, and wise travelers steer clear of their strongholds.

The Mehsud warriors have defied the British Raj, the Pakistani army and lately the Americans and their high-tech Predator drones. Since 2001, they have offered a haven to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and, in the process, made Waziristan one of the most dangerous spots on Earth.

A new battle for control of Waziristan is coming, as the Pakistani military prepares a ground offensive in the Mehsud areas against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. The army has code-named the operation "Rahe Nijat," which the commander here translates loosely as "The Way to Get Rid of Them." The assault could start within the next month.

I traveled here from Peshawar in a single-engine Pakistani army Mashaq trainer. The route was not a straight line, which would have taken us over Mehsud territory. That's too risky, even at 8,500 feet. So the young pilot steered a dogleg course during the nearly two-hour flight, making a sharp right over the ancient princely city of Tank.

We could see in the distance the regions where al-Qaeda has taken refuge. It's an almost lunar landscape of dry, trackless peaks with a sparse stubble of trees along the ridges. If you were looking for a place to hide, so rugged and inhospitable that outsiders would tremble at entering, Waziristan would be it. In the days of the Raj, maps of Waziristan were mostly blank; even the intrepid British explorers usually stayed away.

We landed at Wana under a hot sun, in a valley surrounded by sawtooth mountains. To the west, about 20 miles distant, is Afghanistan. A hint of the violent life here is that family compounds are built as little forts, with steep walls and gun turrets at the corners. On Muslim feast days, it's said, the locals have shooting competitions.

The town has two military outposts: a Pakistani army camp and the local headquarters of the Frontier Corps, the tribal force that, in theory, keeps the peace in Waziristan and the six other districts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.

In recent decades, the government's authority here disappeared. The Pakistani army tried unsuccessfully to regain control in 2007 and 2008, and is said to have struck a secret peace deal with Baitullah Mehsud, then the toughest fighter of the clan and the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

Wana is relatively calm today because it's controlled not by the Mehsuds but by the rival Waziri tribe, which in the past year has made peace with the government. The Pakistani army worked with the Waziri "maliks," as the tribal leaders are known, to rebuild their power. The government's campaign got a boost in August when a U.S. Predator attack killed Baitullah Mehsud.

Maj. Gen. Khalid Rabbani, the army commander here, is waiting for the ground battle to begin. "Enough is enough," he says of the Mehsud chiefs and their allies. He's confident that his troops can clear the area, but he worries whether economic development will come fast enough to hold it.

The army has been squeezing South Waziristan for two months now, blocking all roads into the Mehsud area, and Rabbani says the insurgents are running out of food and fuel. About 80,000 noncombatants have left, leaving an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 hard-core fighters.

The Pakistani strategy for rebuilding control here might be termed "back to the future." Once the Taliban's hold is broken, the army will work with the maliks to restore the old tribal power structure. The maliks will get stipends for their "jirgas," or governing councils, and for a network of sentries, known as "khassadars." The maliks will also revive local militias that can defend against insurgents.

A beefed-up Frontier Corps will give the system some muscle. In Peshawar, I visited the Frontier Corps headquarters, housed in a fortress called the Bala Hissar that dates to the Raj. The tribal recruits still dress in their traditional tunics and baggy pants, but their officers are getting 21st-century counterinsurgency training from about 80 U.S. Special Forces troops at a base nearby.

The burly commander of the Frontier Corps, Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, sums up his philosophy of tribal politics this way: "If you want to be somebody, you must have a bigger caliber and a bigger wallet." Guns and money are on Pakistan's side in the coming showdown with the Mehsuds and their brutal friends, but this is one tough enemy.

Time for diplomacy to end the stand-off with Iran

By John Kerry

Today the Obama administration begins the most important American diplomatic engagement with Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The public revelation of the Qom enrichment facility and Iran's provocative ballistic missile test on Monday demonstrate what is at stake. Iran has increased its low-enriched uranium 20-fold since 2007, enough to produce, eventually, at least one nuclear weapon after further enrichment.

These are ominous developments. But after years of policy drift and transatlantic disagreement, the US and its allies will enter the talks in a position of relative strength and unity.

Consider the view from Tehran. It is on the defensive - caught red-handed in another nuclear deception. In contrast to the rancorous run-up to the war in Iraq, America and Europe are increasingly reading from the same script and Russia is signalling an openness to further sanctions.

The walkout of dozens of delegates during Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's anti-Semitic speech at the UN last week highlights Iran's diplomatic isolation. Deciding the reputational and political risks are too great, many international banks and oil-trading companies have withdrawn voluntarily from Iran, which must import a third of its refined petroleum.

Domestically, Iran's economy has been devastated by mismanagement, corruption, lower oil prices and fallout from the world financial crisis. Banks and foreign currency reserves are in rapid decline. Iran's oil trust fund, which should hold tens of billions of dollars, has run dry. The bloody repression in Iran's streets since June has compounded the damage. Iran's ruling elite is divided, and the regime's legitimacy is openly challenged - internally - as never before.

For years, the regime counted on bombastic language from Washington to distract its public from problems at home. No longer. Today there is no obscuring the fact that Iran is choosing repression over democracy.

For our diplomacy to have any success, two things are vital.

First, if Iran is not willing to negotiate in good faith, it must understand the consequences. Pressure is not an alternative to engagement; the two strategies complement each other.

UN Security Council sanctions are the most potent pressure, but there are also other levers. Insurance companies could be prohibited from insuring the Iranian tanker fleet. Export credit guarantees for Iran could be ended. Travel bans on human rights abusers could be enacted, Iranian assets seized, arms sales curtailed and investment bans enacted. Neighbours could cancel plans for natural gas pipelines linking Iran to the region's energy distribution architecture. Some have proposed unilateral sanctions against foreign companies. While the prospect of such sanctions may goad other countries to action, we need to ensure unilateral efforts do not undermine the prospects of tougher international action.

Second, we must be willing to take yes for an answer. An important lesson of Iraq is that intrusive inspections can work. Our ability to detect and monitor the Qom enrichment facility for years before publicly revealing it is encouraging. One objective should be a more expansive inspections and monitoring regime to prevent Iran from diverting nuclear material to a "break-out" military programme.

While diplomacy with Iran was never going to be easy, the summer's unrest has only increased the difficulty. In agreeing to talks, Iran has expressed an unexpected interest in discussing democracy and human rights. This is a conversation America should welcome, and an opportunity to demonstrate to the Iranian people that progress on the nuclear issue will not come at their expense.

Engagement may well fail. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's deep distrust of the US is no secret. The abuses of this summer may be the regime's curt answer to US president Barack Obama's outstretched hand. Given the turmoil, Iran may not even be capable of undertaking a sustained, strategic dialogue with the outside world.

And yet, it remains vital to seek a diplomatic solution to the stand-off. The international community is finally in a position to force Iran to choose either pariah status or a more constructive relationship with America and the world. Certainly the real possibility of either military conflict or a nuclear-armed Iran compels us to give diplomacy a chance.

The writer is chairman of the US Senate foreign relations committee

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

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Survey of prayer leaders ordered

* Rehman Malik says no decision yet on launching operation in Waziristan
* Calls on US to share information on presence of Al Qaeda leadership in Balochistan

By Tahir Niaz

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik directed the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to conduct a countrywide survey of prayer leaders.

The directive followed concerns expressed by senators over the nationality of prayer leaders, at a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Interior. The survey would help determine the nationality, qualification, background and sects of prayer leaders across the country.

Malik said he would meet the prime minister on Monday to finalise the name for an inter-madrassa board. He said every madrassa student would have to opt for at least three "modern subjects".

No decision: He said no decision had yet been made on the launch of an operation in Waziristan, but foreign militants were being targeted in the area.

US information: Addressing reporters later, Malik dispelled the impression that Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are present in Balochistan. He said Pakistan had asked the US several times to provide relevant information, if any, on the presence of Al Qaeda leadership in Quetta, and reiterate the demand.

Malik also said ended speculation over a US assault on Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership in Quetta, saying Quetta was not on the US hit list. He said no foreign agency was active in Pakistan.

He said intelligence agencies had told the government that terrorists may target sensitive installations and political personalities.

Malik said the Interior Ministry had so far found the record of about 90,000 passports issued to Afghan nationals. "I have ordered the authorities to cancel these passports immediately," he added,

He said nobody was extradited to Saudi Arabia in exchange for the release of Pakistanis involved in a drug-smuggling scandal.

Pinches of nuclear salt

Brian Cloughley

The trouble is that when you penalise pariahs and try to make fools of them, and then you strike at them with military force, they might get back at you in ways that you never thought of

America's justification for its war on Iraq, announced to the UN Security Council in February 2003, was that "The facts, and Iraq's behaviour, show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

Many of us who believed there was no Iraqi WMD programme of any sort were shocked and chastened. After all, the world's largest military and surveillance machine said it had "solid intelligence" concerning a massive arsenal of terrifying weaponry. All the information gathered by thousands of US spooks and amazingly sophisticated technical devices couldn't be wrong, could it? We couldn't take it with a pinch of salt.

The US spends countless billions on intelligence gathering. Given the exotic technical activity being devoted to discovering that Saddam's "efforts to reconstitute his nuclear programme have been focused on acquiring the third and last component - sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion," the world thought that all the pronouncements about cataclysmic weapons of mass destruction were factual.

But they weren't.

They were a farrago of baloney: they were tripe, twaddle, codswallop and claptrap from beginning to end. There were no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programmes of any sort. And there have been no apologies from the demented barbarians in Washington who lied to the world and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and wrecked their country.

And now we are being told that Iran's nuclear programme is as dangerous as the one Saddam was supposed to have had.

On September 25, The Times reported that "The West warned Iran that it will face fresh sanctions unless it can persuade the world of a 'profound change' in its nuclear stance after the existence of its secret underground uranium enrichment plant was uncovered."

But the plant was not "uncovered" by the West. An International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman announced that "on September 21 Iran informed the IAEA that a new pilot fuel-enrichment plant is under construction in the country. The letter stated that the enrichment level would be up to 5 per cent."

So The Times tried to save face by claiming that "Reports from Washington (from some of these energetic and always nameless 'senior officials') indicate that Iran had learnt of the West's move and declared [the plant] formally to the IAEA." Then the New York Times spread a leak that "officials said they developed a detailed picture about work on the facility from multiple human intelligence sources, as well as satellite imagery."

(And Western leaders later claimed they had known all about it "for months". Pinch of salt?)

So Iran knows so much about America's surveillance of its nuclear facilities that just before omniscient US intelligence agencies revealed Iran's secrets to the world, they could be pre-empted by the equally all-knowing Iranians. Amazing.

In one of his few lucid moments, the unhinged Iranian President Ahmadinejad announced that the nuclear facility would not begin operating for another 18 months and that "It's not a secret site. If it was, why would we have informed the IAEA about it a year ahead of time?" Then he said that the Agency was welcome to inspect the facility.

If inspections find that enrichment capability is in fact 5 per cent, then there are going to be many stupid-looking people in the West, as that is nowhere near the 80+ percent needed for nuclear weapons.

But be assured that if this majestically hyped affair collapses into nothing because the "multiple human intelligence sources" (if they exist) are found to be fantasising liars, and if the IAEA inspections find no evidence of weapon-grade enrichment, then those responsible for the dramatic stories will never apologise for their spinning.

President Obama emphasised nuclear disarmament at the UN Security Council, and declared he had "a comprehensive agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."

Most gratifying. Majestically desirable. But the elephant in the UN room - the critical mass, as it were - which is slavishly ignored by the West, is the country that pays no attention to anything that is said in the UN Security Council regarding any of its machinations.

Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. It has signed no treaty concerning their construction or control. Its uranium enrichment facilities have never been seen by any inspector, and never will be. It has no intention of moving towards nuclear disarmament, and Obama knows this perfectly well.

Iran is in the grip of a gang of foolish fanatics who are just as bigoted and blinkered as those of Israel. They are deliberately provocative and insulting to the western bloc, whose leaders, government figures and media pundits despise them as pariahs and lose no opportunity to reciprocate their vilification. It's juvenile tit-for-tat stuff.

But the trouble is that when you penalise pariahs and try to make fools of them, and then you strike at them with military force, they might get back at you in ways that you never thought of.

The Western move towards grossly punitive sanctions on Iran is strong, but if these do not come about, probably because Russia and China will not agree to them, then the military option will be even more attractive. That way lies utter disaster. The world will become an even more dangerous place if Israel and America attack Iran.

The leaked scare stories in the media about Iran's supposed nuclear posture were planted mainly by US and Israeli sources. Israel is intent on hyping the supposed threat because it draws attention away from its genocidal activities in Palestine and its continuing defiant construction of settlements on stolen Arab land.

There is no hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons' programme.

So remember what we were told last time about "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." And think, this time round, about "multiple human intelligence sources."

Pinch of nuclear salt, anyone?

Obama can't downsize to success in Afghanistan

By Max Boot

During last year's campaign, Barack Obama stressed that while he wanted to withdraw from Iraq, he was no pacifist. "As president," he said on July 15, 2008, "I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win."

He began to make good on his word on March 27 when he announced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" that included 21,000 additional troops. The goal, he said, was to "reverse the Taliban's gains" and "prevent Afghanistan from becoming the Al Qaeda safe haven that it was before 9/11."

On Aug. 30, the president's handpicked commander in Afghanistan delivered a plan to do just that. Implementing his counterinsurgency strategy, Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote, "requires more forces." If extra troops are not sent, and soon, the "likely result" would be "failure."

One would expect, based on his past statements, that Obama would rush to give McChrystal the forces needed to win what the president described in August as a "war of necessity." Yet that's not the case. The White House has been sitting on the general's report for a month, refusing to allow him to submit his resource request or testify to Congress and leaking to the news media that the president may decide to downsize the entire war effort.

Why this sudden hesitation after so many months of resolute rhetoric? Surely the president cannot be getting cold feet simply because of rising American casualties. Losses are tragic but expected in a tough fight.

Maybe he's panicking over falling public support for the war, especially among his liberal base. Yet this war remains far more popular than the one in Iraq was in 2006 when President George W. Bush approved the "surge." If Obama asks for more troops, Congress is unlikely to oppose him.

Perhaps the fraud-marred presidential election has caused Obama to doubt whether it's possible to build a legitimate government in Kabul. That's a real concern, but it is being addressed by the Afghan electoral authorities, who are reexamining ballots cast in hundreds of precincts where fraud was alleged. Even if President Hamid Karzai ultimately prevails, that's hardly the end of the world. He remains popular with many Afghans, especially the Pashtuns, who make up the base of the insurgency. He has at least as much credibility as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki did in 2007 at the start of the surge, and he can increase his support still further if he does a better job of delivering basic services and fighting corruption -- something coalition forces can push for if they receive more resources.

Admittedly, improving governance will be a tough task. The same may be said of the other "lines of operation" that McChrystal's strategy envisions, from growing the Afghan security forces to improving population security, strategic communications and detainee operations. But what's the alternative?

Vice President Joe Biden favors a smaller-scale strategy that would employ high-tech weapons and special forces to kill terrorists from afar. But such a strategy has rarely, if ever, succeeded. It has been employed by Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah. The result: Hamas controls Gaza, and Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon. It has been employed by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The result: The Taliban controls western Pakistan and large swaths of eastern and southern Afghanistan.

There is no reason to expect, given its long record of failure, that this strategy will work, and no one knows that better than McChrystal, who was in charge of special operations forces hunting terrorists in Iraq for years. Such operations are useful but not decisive, because terrorist leaders can always be replaced. Only by placing security forces among the population can a government prevent terrorists from creating havens.

In Afghanistan today, that must be a job primarily for NATO because the Afghan security forces are simply too small. Afghanistan is bigger in area and population than Iraq, yet its army and police are less than one-third the size of Iraq's (170,000 versus 600,000). Sending more U.S. troops today can push the insurgents back and create breathing room for the expansion of the Afghan forces.

Conversely, if we start downsizing, our NATO allies are sure to beat us to the exits. The result will be the further unraveling of security in Afghanistan. In such an environment, it is hard to know how we could generate the intelligence needed to successfully target terrorists or the stability needed to train Afghan forces. The presence of American trainers or special forces requires a substantial support base to keep supply lines open, safeguard bases and rescue Americans who are in danger of being overrun.

Gains for the Taliban would be not only a human rights disaster but a strategic disaster, because of the close links between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. As a little-noticed passage in McChrystal's leaked report notes: "Al Qaeda's links with HQN [the Haqqani network, one of the leading insurgent groups] have grown, suggesting that expanding HQN control could create a favorable environment for AQAM [Al Qaeda and associated movements] to reestablish safe havens in Afghanistan."

We do not have to create "Jeffersonian democracy" in Afghanistan. But we do have to keep it from becoming a terrorist haven. The only way to achieve that minimal objective is with a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy. If Obama blinks now, he will be doing grave damage not only to U.S. security but to his own credibility.

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of "War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History, 1500 to Today."

The Viper in the Bosom

by AHSAN WAHED

The US Ambassador in Pakistan has been uncharacteristically blunt in her talk with the Washington Post. Her remarks on the 'Quetta Shura' ( US perception of a grouping of Afghan Taliban supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan) come just when the Kerry-Lugar Bill is being called 'peanuts' and its conditionalities are being considered as 'unacceptable' for a sovereign country and the work of those who want to survive on US largesse. The Pakistan street is also concerned with the whole 'Blackwater' expose and in fact the US-Pakistan relationship is being viewed with a great deal of suspicion with the focus once again on the continuing Drone attacks. Pakistanis are now openly asking who the real viper is after the US ambassador spoke of 'those who keep vipers in their bosom get bitten'. She also confirmed a divergence of interests with Pakistan and admitted that while they do not have enough information on Baluchistan it is going to be the focus of their interest.

The Ambassadors remarks come after an obviously 'leaked' story in the Sunday Times that hinted at 'drone attacks in Quetta'. Quetta is the provincial capital of Baluchistan-- Pakistan's largest province that has long land borders with Iran and Southern Afghanistan the heart of the Taliban struggle against the US/NATO. The current US problem with Iran is also on the table unresolved. Is the Ambassador shifting focus away from 'Blackwater' and 'Kerry-Lugar' or is this the van guard of an attempt to bring the problems with Pakistan to a head right after US economic aid to Pakistan has been tripled? Or is this to suggest expansion of the conflict in Afghanistan to justify and support McChrystal's demand for more troops under threat of failure or is it to cover up the total failure in Afghanistan by blaming the mythical 'Quetta Shura'? Does this have anything to do with a military option against Iran that is being pushed by certain lobbies? Is it just a message to Pakistan to clean up its act in Baluchistan? Or is it ALL of the above?