Rubin: Afghan Government Charges Pakistan Is World's Main Source of Terrorism

Update: Looks like India is getting in on the act -- a leak to the Hindu (Chennai) reveals that India is considering covert retaliation against Pakistan. The article has a useful review of RAW-ISI covert wars. It would not be surprising if the Afghan NDS and RAW were coordinating. Note that the recently retired former head of RAW, Vikram Sood, is the brother of the former Indian ambassador to Kabul, Rakesh Sood.

At today's weekly cabinet meeting, the government of Afghanistan, chaired by President Hamid Karzai, formally endorsed a statement charging Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate with responsibility for most of the terrorism carried out in Afghanistan. I have received the text in Dari and Pashto and will post it as soon as it is translated.

Excerpts from AP's coverage:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday directly accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of being behind a recent series of attacks by extremist Islamic militants that have killed scores of people.

"Dishonouring and insecurity in Afghanistan is carried out by the intelligence administration of Pakistan, its military intelligence institutions," Karzai said in a statement.

"We know who kills innocent people," the president said. "We have told the government of Pakistan and the world and from now on it will be pronounced by every member of the Afghan nation."

The cabinet announced meanwhile that Afghanistan would boycott a series of upcoming meetings with Pakistan unless "bilateral trust" was restored.

Pakistan's "intelligence agency and military have turned that country (in) to the biggest exporter of terrorism and extremism to the world, particularly Afghanistan," a statement from the cabinet said.

Karzai also referred to a suicide attack that targeted police in southern Uruzgan province on Sunday that killed 24 Afghans, most of them civilians in a bazaar, police said.

He also condemned the Taliban's killing in Ghazni province the same day of two women whom the militants alleged were prostitutes and worked for the police.

"These ladies were martyred by terrorists who have been trained in terrorist nests and intelligence offices outside Afghanistan where respect of (women's) honour doesn't mean anything," he said.

The decision by the Afghan government to boycott bilateral meetings are presumably intended to put pressure on the U.S. and on Pakistan's elected government to take measures to curb the ISI's activities. Thus far neither has publicly agreed with Afghanistan's direct attribution of responsibility, but their denials have been rather mild in tone.

Note that by calling Pakistan the "biggest exporter of terrorism and extremism to the world," the government of Afghanistan is implicitly challenging the U.S. claim that Iran is the greatest source of terrorism. Read more on this article...

Rubin: Afghan Government Charges on Killing Afghans -- U.S. 47, Terrorists 41

Here and elsewhere this week media covered the terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. (Above, a picture sent by Hamid Alakozai.)

The Afghan government charged that Pakistan's intelligence service had organized it. After a couple days of silence from the U.S. government, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates answered a question about it:

"I haven't seen any evidence or proof that foreign agents were involved,'' Gates told reporters yesterday in Washington when asked about the July 7 car bombing that killed more than 50 people in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

The delay in making a statement and the rather mild language used seems to me (without any direct evidence) to indicate internal dispute over how to respond.

Since I posted on the bombing, I learned that several of my friends were in the area. All the windows were blown out of the house of Pir Sayyid Ahmad Gailani, one of the leaders of the official parties of resistance to the Soviets and head of the Qadiriyya Sufi order; his daughter, Fatima Gailani, head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, narrowly escaped the bomb.

The offices of Afghanistan's Center for Research & Policy Studies, a think tank founded by Idrees Rahmani and Harun Amin that was due to have its official opening that afternoon, was pretty much destroyed. Idrees writes:

We were badly hit by this incident. The whole office was destroyed and one of our staff was wounded by the shattered glasses. The rest of our staff have all escaped this blast narrowly with God's miracles. We still can not believe that no one is killed while the whole area was smashed. We had one American student from Stanford University working with us as an intern. He was really lucky because he left his chair in front of the window just a second before the blast smashed every thing.

That was on Monday July 7. There has been less coverage of an incident that occurred on July 6 in Shinwar district of Nangarhar province, which borders on Khyber Agency of Pakistan, where the government has been trying to regain control from militants. Original reports said that a U.S. bombing killed about 20 people. The U.S. originally stated that those killed were "militants," while local people reported they were civilians, including a bride on the way to a wedding.

A none-man Afghan government commission headed by the deputy speaker of the Afghan National Assembly upper house, Burhanullah Shinwari, has reported back to Kabul:

[Shinwari] told the BBC: ''Our investigation found out that 47 civilians (were killed) by the American bombing and nine others injured.>Reports at the time said that 20 people were killed in the airstrike in Nangarhar province. The US military said they were militants.

But local people said the dead were wedding party guests.

Correspondents say the issue of civilian casualties is hugely sensitive in Afghanistan.

The commission provided this video of victims:

A friend in the Afghan government who is dealing with the fallout hurriedly wrote:

The problem is that coalition is causing most of the casualties and then NATO/ISAF is left to answer to media. In turn, NATO plainly deny actual incidents like the one which took place a couple of days ago in Shinwar district of Nangarhar. Video and eye wintess accounts were all over the media and yet NATO point blank denied having killed anyone. This puts their credibility and ours seriously questioned.

President Karzai has long taken the position that these casualties result from excessive use of air power and, more fundamentally, from trying to combat an insurgency based in Pakistan by military action in Afghanistan. Within the past year NATO tightened up its rules on the use of air power to prevent such incidents, but it is not clear if the new restrictive rules apply to the Coalition, the "counter-terrorism" component of which is under CENTCOM as well as NATO command. This is what my correspondent was referring to. These killings of civilians probably do more than anything else to undermine the legitimacy of the government and international presence, and, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Vietnam in the 1960s, and many other cases are one of the main accelerators of insurgent recruitment. Read more on this article...

Rubin: SAVING AFGHANISTAN – THREE REPORTS CALLING FOR RETHINKING STRATEGY

Several groups of the U.S. foreign policy establishment have released reports calling for major changes in strategy on Afghanistan (I am a member of the Afghanistan Study Group, the first mentioned). From a media advisory (links added):

Three independent reports have concluded this month that a major new effort is needed to succeed in Afghanistan. These reports – by the Afghanistan Study Group, established by the Center for the Study of the Presidency following the Iraq Study Group; the Strategic Advisors Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States; and the National Defense University – concur that without prompt actions by the U.S. and its allies, the mission in Afghanistan may fail – causing severe consequences to U.S. strategic interests worldwide, including the war on terrorism and the future of NATO. The U.S. cannot afford to let Afghanistan continue to be the neglected, or forgotten, war.

(Only the ASG report seems to be available on the web -- I would be grateful for pointers to the other reports.)

This morning (Thursday January 31, 2008) the co-chairs of the ASG, General James Jones and Ambassador Thomas Pickering, will be testifying at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They will be preceded by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher and joined by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

Readers of this blog will not find anything new or surprising in the ASG report. They will just find many of the same judgments echoed in a more considered establishmentarian tone of voice.

On the Ashdown smash down: a more considered view will follow. Just a note from Kabul (where I am currently defrosting slightly after a cold snap): Zalmay Khalilzad did not plot to undermine Ashdown to clear the way for a presidential bid. According to quite good reports (not from Khalilzad), he did his best to convince President Karzai to accept the proposal.

(As Khalilzad is the only member of the entire Bush/Cheney foreign policy and security team who still has a chance of escaping the sinking ship with his reputation afloat, some nuts in the White House are now attacking him for sitting next to the Foreign Minister of Iran on a panel at Davos, where Khalilzad faithfully reiterated the administration's position and never spoke to or greeted Minister Manouchehr Motakki.)

The super-envoy position may not have been defined as needed to be effective; Ashdown may or may not have been the right person for the job, and he may or may not have focused too much on pressuring the Afghan government rather than disciplining the internationals; but the way in which President Karzai handled this decision has damaged his relations with the US, UN, and UK at a time when he needs to conserve his political capital to resist pressures for some major unwise policy decisions.

Besides the well-known dispute over aerial poppy eradication and eradication in areas where farmers have no alternative livelihoods (but are said to be "greedy and corrupt"), the US is now pressing the Afghan government to use the Afghan National Army to provide security for eradication operations. Sources in the Afghan government who do not wish to be named state that this will make the ANA fight the people and destroy its morale. Morale is already falling, since mullahs who conduct funeral services for fallen ANA soldiers risk assassination. But the Bush administration is apparently determined to wreck its one partial success story in Afghanistan before leaving office. Read more on this article...

Afghanistan and the Region: The View from Herat

This week (October 17-20) Afghanistan hosted the 17th meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization in Herat. This marked the first time that Afghanistan had assumed the chairmanship of the organization or that ECO, which is based in Tehran, had met in Afghanistan.

The meeting's official proceedings dealt with regional economic cooperation, but this meeting in western Afghanistan, which depends economically on Iran, provided an opportunity for staking out positions on regional tensions. During the meeting an as-yet unidentified suicide bomber attacked the homecoming motorcade of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi, killing 139 people and threatening the political transition negotiated between Bhutto and military ruler Pervez Musharraf with the support (or at the urging) of the U.S. The meeting also coincided with the resignation of Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. Larijani's replacement by a junior ally of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad just before a key meeting with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana made a negotiated settlement of Iran's nuclear issue even less likely. As the meeting was ending, U.S. Vice President Cheney told a conference of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a think-tank closely associated with the "pro-Israel" lobby): "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences." Calling Iran "the world's most active state sponsor of terror," Cheney said, "Our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions."

President Karzai played a balancing act. Hosting this conference in Herat pleased Iran, which had consistently urged that ECO, based in Tehran, should play a central role in regional economic cooperation for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, over objections of the U.S. In his speech opening the conference, Karzai gave a nod to US concerns, which Kabul shares:

We, the Muslims, must show the true image of Islam to the world and this will be impossible unless we eliminate terrorists where ever they are and fight them collectively.

In a bilateral meeting with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki, however, Karzai emphasized the friendly ties between the two nations in a seeming rebuff to the U.S. position. Karzai had done so in the U.S. in August. Interviewed on CNN, Karzai characterized Iran as a "helper" of Afghanistan, a characterization with which President Bush took issue at a press availability after the two leaders' August 7 meeting in Camp David.

In Herat Mottaki appeared self confident. He announced an additional $600,000 in aid for Afghanistan. In answer to a journalist's question, he stated:

The people of Afghanistan will never allow America to use Afghanistan against any other country. This our belief, this is our trust.

Referring to the "people" implied that Iran might rely not solely on the Afghan government, but on its direct relations with the "people." Mottaki appeared to gloat over the U.S.'s situation:

Mottaki added that the United States had exhausted itself with the war in Iraq and "is not in a position to create another conflict in our region."

"Americans, not based on our statements ... but based on statements by American politicians have been defeated in Iraq," the foreign minister said.

Simultaneously, Tehran announced how it would respond to a U.S. attack:

"In the first minute of an invasion by the enemy, 11,000 rockets and cannons will be fired at enemy bases," said Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, a brigadier general in the elite Revolutionary Guards.

"This volume and speed of firing would continue," added Chaharbaghi, who is commander of artillery and missiles of the Guards' ground forces.

These "bases" are those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kabul has also received information that the Iranian government had informed its ambassadors that though Afghanistan is a "friend," one must sacrifice even friends when survival is at stake. This is a reference to Tehran's belief that the goal of U.S. policy is the overthrow of the Iranian regime, not simply the termination of uranium enrichment.

Karzai also met Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, who announced that Pakistan would host another meeting of the joint Afghan-Pakistani "Peace Jirga" after Pakistan's general elections next year. The attack on the Bhutto convoy, however, raised doubts as to whether those elections could be held. Writing in Asia Times Online, the consistently interesting (though inconsistently accurate) Syed Saleem Shahzad called the attack "The first shot . . . fired in the battle that Islamists have vowed to wage against the Washington-inspired and brokered attempt at regime change in Pakistan." According to Shahzad:

The attack was hardly a surprise. Militants see Bhutto's return to Pakistani politics as a Western-backed coup against Islamists in Pakistan, akin to the arrival in the Afghan capital, Kabul, of the US-backed Northern Alliance in 2001. Militant leader Baitullah Mehsud had instructed pro-al-Qaeda cells in Karachi to kill her for three major offenses against the Islamists, which he listed as:

- She is the only opposition politician who supported the military attack earlier this year on Islamabad's Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), a hotbed of Islamist radicalism, and she coninues to condemn the Lal Masjid ideologues; - She has stated that she would allow incursions by US forces into Pakistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden; - She has stated that she would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to question Dr A Q Khan, the former leading nuclear scientist accused of passing Pakistani nuclear technology to anti-Western countries.

Baitullah Mehsud, however, states he "had nothing to do with it," and many of Bhutto's supporters suspect that elements of the Pakistan military and intelligence apparatus were involved. Bhutto had previously told the Sunday Telegraph:

We need a security service that is professional in its approach, which rises above ties of religious or political sentiment. I have strong reservations about some of the people still operating within the intelligence services, and we need reforms to get rid of them.

Bhutto was referring to those in the ISI who support the Taliban and even al-Qaida. Her dismissal in 1990 of General Hamid Gul as Director of the ISI was key to the army's decision to oust her that year and defeat her in rigged elections. Military appointments and policy toward India and Afghanistan are considered by the Pakistan army to be off limits to civilian officials. Now, as in 1989-1990, it is likely that Bhutto's negotiations with the army (carried out though the current ISI director) also focus on this issue. Maintaining "reserve areas" of military control is a frequent demand of military institutions trying to negotiate their extrication from direct rule. By announcing her intention to clean up the ISI, Bhutto promised Kabul and Washington that she would carry out the policies they have been asking for, while threatening the most sensitive prerogatives of the Pakistani military.

Such is the region in which Vice-President Cheney aims to impose "serious consequences" on Iran if it moves toward acquiring the capability to manufacture the nuclear weapons that Pakistan already has. Pakistan, of course, is likely to have been a source of the technology used by Iran for uranium enrichment. But Pakistan is the U.S.'s most important non-NATO ally, while Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. The views from Washington and Herat could not be more different. Read more on this article...

Afghanistan, Iraq and the Bush Administration’s Incoherent Iran Policy

Two events in the past couple of days have once again highlighted the incoherence that characterizes the Bush Administration’s policy vis-à-vis Iran: Hamid Karzai’s visit to the US and his CNN comment regarding Iran’s helpful role in Afghanistan and the third US-Iran round of talks about Iraq’s security.

Let me begin with Karzai’s comments and Bush’s response. Here are excerpts of Bush’s exchange with a reporter:

Q: President Karzai said yesterday that he believed Iran was playing a helpful role in Afghanistan. Was he able to convince you, in your meetings that that was the case, or do you still have concerns about Iran's role?

BUSH: … it's up to Iran to prove to the world that they're a stabilizing force as opposed to destabilizing force.

After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon. This is a government that's in defiance of international accord, a government that seems to be willing to thumb its nose at the international community, and at the same time a government that denies its people a rightful place in the world and denies its people the ability to realize their full potential.

So I believe that it's in the interests of all of us that we have an Iran that tries to stabilize, not destabilize; an Iran that gives up its weapons ambitions. And therefore we're working to that end.

The president knows best about what's taking place in his country. And, of course, I'm willing to listen.

But from my perspective, the burden of proof is on the Iranian government to show us that they're a positive force.

And I must tell you that this current leadership there is a -- is a big disappointment to the people of Iran.

I mean, the people of Iran could be doing a lot better than they are today. But because of the actions of this government, this country is isolated.

And we will continue to work to isolate it. Because they're not a force for good, as far as we can see. They are a destabilizing influence, wherever they are now.

The president will talk to you about Afghanistan. But I would be very cautious about whether or not the Iranian influence there in Afghanistan is a positive force. And, therefore, it's going to be up to them to prove to us and prove to the government that they are.

Now I understand that George Bush’s spoken words cannot be considered a good marker for either coherence or eloquence. Nevertheless, his response is an astounding statement about how convoluted his thinking about Iran continues to be.

First of all, true to form, he begins with an outright misstatement (more accurately, a lie). The statement, “after all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon,” is an obvious untruth that like so many other untruths will probably not be challenged by the mainstream media, but through which George Bush hopes to etch in the American mind (or his own mind?!) the proven or “proclaimed” aspirations of the Iranian leadership for acquiring the bomb.

This is while the Iranian government has never articulated such a desire and in fact has repeatedly claimed, genuinely or disingenuously, the opposite. The Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons (as distinct from the pursuit of the capability to build nuclear weapons), as of today, remains a charge and assertion. The issue at hand, repeatedly described through intense European negotiations with Iran, concerns Iran’s enrichment-related programs and the fact that those programs will eventually give Iran the technological “capability” to build nuclear weapons even if Iran denies the desire to build the bomb. The point has always been that “they” cannot be trusted with the technology and not the proclaimed desire to build the bomb.

That Bush conveniently leaves out this fact, and proclaims Iran’s intention to build nuclear weapons, is not particularly surprising or revealing. Similar leaps in assertion were at work in connecting 9/11 to Saddam Hussein and in endowing Iraq with WMD. What is revealing is how the presumed Iranian aspirations for nuclear weapons are then mixed up with Iran’s other sins, including the denial of the people of Iran “to their rightful place in the world.”

In a mechanical and highly ideological fashion all of Iran’s sins are laid out to explain why Bush does not accept Karzai’s assertion that Iran is playing a helpful role in Afghanistan. Casting doubts on the words of “our man in Kabul” (and note that Karzai is no Nuri al-Maliki and no ambiguities surround the fact that he is America’s best man to run Afghanistan; no Shi’i connections can be made and he has no history of exile in Iran), Bush says, “it's up to Iran to prove to the world that they're a stabilizing force as opposed to destabilizing force,” disingenuously giving the impression that such a proof is possible for a government that is assumed to be “not a force for good.”

In the most revealing part of his answer, Bush immediately follows the sentence that blames the Iranian government for the isolation of Iran with the contradictory statement that the US “will continue to work to isolate it. Because they're not a force for good, as far as we can see. They are a destabilizing influence, wherever they are now.”

If this is not one of the clearest statements about the inability of the Bush administration to see things as they are perceived on the ground (by American allies such as Karzai), and substituting preconceived notions of good versus evil for coherent policy, I don’t know what is.

The United States and Iran have many common interests in the Middle East and adjacent areas that include some sort of stability and order in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the maintenance of Iraq's territorial integrity (an interest Iran shares with Turkey and Syria and not necessarily with other countries in the region). It is true that Tehran does not see itself obliged to help the United States in getting a handle over the mess the latter has created in Iraq and increasingly so in Afghanistan. But this is not out of the desire to bring about instability in either of the two neighboring countries, with which it shares long and conceivably insecure borders. Iran’s approach to Iraq is more due to the sheer rationality of not rushing to help (or even causing a little bit of trouble for) a superpower that identifies Iran as “not a force for good.”

This situation can be altered with a change in American foreign policy, away from reliance on pressure (and connected economic bribes if Iran gives in to political and strategic pressures) and towards an acceptance of Iran as a worthy regional player with which one can engage in serious and meaningful negotiations on a whole host of issues. But, clearly, the language used by George Bush does not reflect a desire or willingness to bring about that kind of a change. In Bush’s world, Iran ought to help improve the security situation in Iraq or Afghanistan because the US demands it; even then it is the US that will decide whether Iran has met the expectations and not on the ground realities or what the governments of Iraq or Afghanistan think or say. Furthermore, all this should be done without the US feeling any need to change or even temporarily suspend its overall hostile frame of its policies towards Iran.

Realities on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, are slowly revealing the incoherence (or impracticality) of Bush’s policies. Karzai talks about Iran’s helpful role in Afghanistan and acts accordingly while al-Maliki’s government in Iraq pleas for the continuation of US-Iran security talks before al-Maliki himself (along with his foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari) takes off for Iran in a few days for the government of Iraq’s own security talks with Iran.

It is within this context that Iran’s moves to agree with the talks with the US over Iraq must be understood. Iran is not naïve enough to think that the Bush Administration has changed its overall strategy regarding Iran. In fact, the Iranian leadership is acutely aware of the American strategy of initiating talks in the arena in which it is in most trouble (i.e., Iraq), while at the same time maintaining the language and policies of imposing as much political and economic pressure as it can muster on Iran in other areas.

Still the belief on the part of most significant players inside Iran about a unified and stable Iraq being the key to regional stability has led to a decision to engage in talks with the United States over Iraq’s security. These talks, the third of which occurred on August 6th (including ambassadorial and expert levels talks as part of a security subcommittee), are not negotiations but attempts to create an understanding about the nature of the Iran-US conflict as it is being played out in Iraq. This time around both sides considered the talks as useful, serious, and to be continued, with Iran calling for “a change in the broad policies and approach of the US in Iraq.”

From Iran's point of view, rightly or wrongly, the United States has no other choice but to eventually engage in negotiations with Iran due to historical, geographic, strategic exigencies as well as mutual interests in the region. Banking on this confidence, the Iranian leadership no longer considers talks with the US as taboo and in fact is ready to participate in multiple venues for discussions with the US even if the overall frame of hostile US policies continues. This is a significant and often neglected change in Iranian foreign policy, sanctioned by Ayatollah Khamenei. It is based on the argument that these venues of engagement will ultimately reveal the incoherence of a policy based on the notion of Iran being “not a force for good” as well allow Iran to pursue its interests in the region.

Approached in this manner, Iranian and American interests in Iraq and Afghanistan are not perceived to be necessarily in opposition and if the US can solve its problems in these two countries in ways that would allow an “honorable” exit, this is seen to be to Iran’s interest. In the words of Sadeq Kharrazi, Iran’s former ambassador to France, Iran understands that “in leaving Iraq the Americans need to save face because their humiliation may not be constructive, making the situation in the Middle East even worse than already is and forcing them to react angrily.”

There was a time in Iran, during the reformist era of Mohammad Khatami, when the Iranian leadership thought that Iran’s cooperation in Afghanistan and the negotiations over the nuclear issue would eventually open the path for a broader framework within which matters of contention between the two countries could be resolved. The Bush Administration's rejection of reformist overtures and the fiasco in Iraq set the stage for the rise of a hard-line foreign policy in Iran.

In time, however, the on the ground realities of Iraq and Afghanistan will force the US to sit down with Iran and acknowledge it as a regional player that shares many of US concerns in the region. Too bad that the beginnings of such an acknowledgment has come in a round about, almost underhanded, fashion and at a time when Iran’s foreign policy establishment is run by hardliners. One could say that hardliners in Iran could have asked for no more: an on the ground US foreign policy that is beginning to acknowledge Iran’s importance in the region, combined with an overall foreign policy frame of economic and political pressures that allow hardliners in Iran to attack domestic opponents with impunity using the pretext of American hostility. Read more on this article...