Rubin: Hizb-i Islami Blames Northern Alliance for Attack on Indian Embassy in Kabul and Everything Else

Ahmadullah Archiwal, an Afghan student in New York, has translated the Hizb-i Islami (Hikmatyar) press release on the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul from Pashto to English. I also received an official English version issued by Hizb-i Islami from a colleague in Kabul, but it seems that the official English version de-emphasizes certain points, so I prefer to use Ahmadullah's version. As there has been some confusion in the past, I would like to emphasize that by publicizing a document I am not endorsing its content. I think the content indicates something about the strategy of HIkmatyar and his backers and is therefore worthy of study. Here is the text:

Press Release of Hizb-i-Islami on the explosion in the front of Indian Embassy

While strongly condemning all the criminal acts of targeting helpless and innocent Afghans we recommend to our Mujahideen to demonstrate practically to the nation that they are not involved in such acts, have paid their full attention towards the actual enemy, and do not want to fire a single bullet to other than their enemy.

Some Afghans might ask that, who are responsible, for the explosions that result in the death of innocent and helpless Afghans, for explosions in the mosques, for killing of the religious scholars (Mullahs), for burning the schools, for detonating clinics and madrasas. Why do they commit such crimes? Why any one does not claim responsibilities for such crimes? Are they Taliban and Mujahideen or some circles in the American government of Kabul?

Everyone knows that Northern Alliance wants to demonstrate to their foreign supporters that their long armed presence in the government of Kabul is imperative. They want to get more aid from India. America and their puppets want to intensify the rivalry between India and Pakistan and to turn our country a site for their rivalry. Those who will be benefited are Americans, who will sell their weapons to both the countries, and is the Northern Alliance who will get more aid from New Delhi for their enmity with Pakistan.

This is their reason for opposing Islamabad; otherwise, it is clear that Islamabad is a strong supporter of the USA in the on going war. Pakistan is also a strong supporter of the Afghan government. It is the country that with the pressure from the ISI imposed the leader of Northern Alliance twice on Afghans.

Those who detonate bombs in Iraqi mosques, Kills Iraqi scholars, scientists and make Sunnis kill shites and shittes to kill Sunnis….. They are the same circles who are also behind such acts in Afghanistan. We should not undermine the remarks of the United Nations representative who has said: The intelligence organizations of some countries are involved in acts in which ordinary people are killed!!

If they think that CIA, MOSAD, Sipah –i-Pasdaran are behind such acts in Iraq, then it is a fact that those and some other agencies are behind the same acts in Afghanistan as well. As a matter of fact such people do not believe in God, do not have any sacred goal, they are the ones who do not give any importance to the blood of Afghans, and those who killed more than fifty innocent people in only two provinces in a week in their blind bombardment, they also commit the same crimes .Sometimes, they do such acts directly by themselves and some times do them through the Afghan Intelligence Agency.

Members of the Northern Alliance who were serving the Russians and now serving Americans do such acts in Herat, Khost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Paktia, Nangrahar, Nuristan, Kunar, Laghman and other provinces. They are the people who are in the control of the Khad, they invited Russians and then Americans to attack Afghanistan, and they requested Iran to occupy Herat and pressed Americans to intensify their bombardment and to drop heavier bombs on Afghans. They are the ones who have made private prisons for Americans in Kabul and Panjsher where innocent Afghans are tortured. They are the people who spy for the imperialists and invite them to drop bombs on the villages, cities and mosques of Afghanistan. They are fighting under the command of imperialists against their own people in the East, South and South Western parts of the country and commit such crimes that even foreign military officers, who command their subordinate to keep such acts secret, feel shy to talk about them. Northern Alliance, internal enemy of Afghans and the collections of the foreign servants are responsible for all such crimes. They even dropped bombs and fired rockets on the innocent citizens of Kabul during their reign so to blame real Mujahideen!!

While strongly condemning all the crimes that targets helpless and innocent Afghans we recommend to our Mujahideen to demonstrate practically to the nation that they are not involved in such accidents, have paid their full attention towards the actual enemy, and do not want to fire a single bullet towards other than their enemy. Avoid conventional fighting, the harm of such fighting is greater than their gains, ordinary people are targeted and are forced to leave their houses in such fighting.

We also tell to the nation to pay attention to the conspiracies of the internal and external enemies and to be prepared for the days when the imperialists will withdraw from our country. That time is closer, American system is closer to collapse. The present situation of Afghanistan is just like those days when the Soviet troops were making preparations for their withdrawal. All those Afghans, who want the independence of their country, collapse of the reign of the foreign servants, the end of the conflict, opportunity for Afghan nation to determine their own future by themselves without the foreign intervention, and the establishment of an Islamic system, should come closer.

With a hope for those sacred goals.

Long live Mujahideen.

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Kuntar

The quality that distinguishes terrorism from violence in general is not merely that it is political, but that it is opprobrious because it targets innocent people by design. In my own work I have insisted that terrorism may be carried out by non-state actors as well as by governments, including our own. You can find this approach developed in my old essay in Ethics and International Affairs, in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, and in a variety of other publications. Unless we insist on preserving the term "terrorism" to refer to opprobrious violence, the term is, in a sense, cheapened and it becomes only a rhetorical bludgeon.

This brings me to the case of Samir Kuntar (Quntar), the Druze terrorist who has been in jail in Israel for almost three decades for the murder of a father and child. By my understanding, what this then young man did was unquestionably a truly despicable act of terrorism. I happen to know a bit about the victims who lived at 61 Jabotinsky Street in Nahariyya, Israel, and I find the account from the trial of Kuntar an accurate depiction.

One may argue that his pending release by Israel is something of a political victory for Hezbollah, as Amal Saad-Ghorayeb does, but it is simultaneously a moral defeat for Hezbollah. This man was not a victim, but a bona fide terrorist. He is not like those Lebanese seized, reprehensibly, by Israel in years past to be held for years as bargaining chips, or those Lebanese jailed by Israel for fighting to liberate their country. Whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim, there should be not doubt about the distinction being made here. The fact that Hezbollah has made his release a centerpiece of its policy, and that his release was a rationale for the infamous operation of July 12, 2006, undermines whatever moral claim the group might otherwise make.

The Israel-Hizbollah prisoner-deal | open Democracy News Analysis Read more on this article...

Rubin: Translation of Statement by Afghan Government on ISI

I received this text from the Office of President Karzai this morning. There may be an edited version available later. Note the careful distinction between the elected government of Pakistan and the military, including the ISI. If only all of our policy makers and journalists were equally careful.

Statement Issued by the Afghanistan Cabinet Meeting

Monday, July 14, 2008

In the Name of the Almighty Allah

Over the past six and half years, Afghanistan has done its utmost to remove any misunderstanding and ease tension between the two countries and focused all its efforts for further promoting a good neighborly relation with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. However, the rightful desire of the people of Afghanistan for an end to interference by Pakistan Intelligence (ISI) and its Army remained unfulfilled. Consequently, people of Afghanistan suffered countless sacrifices and destruction as a result of direct interference by the Pakistani intelligence outfits in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan.

Everyday in Afghanistan, children, women, clerics, elderly, teachers and our international partners who are here to help rebuild Afghanistan fall victims at the hands of the elements of the ISI. Education facilities, hospitals, and development projects continue to remain target of attacks.

The people of Afghanistan and the international community have come to the reality that Pakistan intelligence institutions and its army have become the largest center for breeding and exporting terrorism and extremism to the world and particularly to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan sincerely welcomed and supported the recent elections for a civilian rule in Pakistan. However, the expectation of the people of Afghanistan that an elected civilian government in Pakistan would have the control over its intelligence agencies hoping for an end to the on-going interference in Afghanistan not only didn't materialize, but the agency (ISI) continued and intensified its murderous activities against the civilians, international partners and foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The assassination attempt against the President of Afghanistan on April 27, masterminding the attack against the prison in Kandahar, beheading innocent Afghans in Bajur, Wazirestan and other areas on the other side of the Durand Line, attack in Dehrawood, attack against the Indian Embassy in Kabul that left more than 60 innocent people dead and more than 150 wounded , beheading of two innocent women in Ghazni, organizing suicide bombings and road side blasts and hundreds of other destructive acts are all indicative of the attempts by the ISI to once again occupy Afghanistan and to perish the true right of the people of Afghanistan for national sovereignty.

Pakistani authorities have recently refrained from attending the expected bilateral and trilateral meetings, thus deliberately harming the process of mutual discussions and the Regional Peace Jirgah.

While Afghanistan continues to maintain the people to people contact and its support of the elected government in Pakistan, it feels compelled in the face of the violent policies of Pakistani Army and Intelligence agencies, and for the sake of its national sovereignty to suspend its bilateral and multilateral meetings and sessions of the following until a positive spirit of dialogue and understanding for mutual trust is restored:

1. The Joint Border Cooperation Meeting, scheduled to be held in Dubai on July 23-24, 2008;
2. Meeting of the Joint Economic Cooperation Commission scheduled to be held on 26-27, July in Kabul;
3. Meeting of the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference scheduled to be held in Islamabad on 26-27 August.

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Naser Shahalemi: Firsthand Experience of Terrorism in the Serena Hotel

I received the account and photos below from Naser Shahalemi, an Afghan-American friend living and working in Afghanistan. He has agreed to their publication. I also received some other pictures that I am not publishing, because they show the two fingers of one of the bombers that Naser found in his car. I assure readers that the report is substantiated.

Barnett R. Rubin

Naser writes:

It was 5:30 PM [Monday January 14, Kabul time, 13:30 GMT] and I was wrapping up my day in the office. My cousin Arif, my office manager, and I decided to head off to the Serena Hotel for a classy 5- star dinner, a rare commodity in Kabul. My two drivers were out driving the employees home and so Arif decided to drive and we left without a driver which may have saved their lives.

We arrived at Serena Hotel, on the outside gate. The same friendly faces, all 4-6 guards posted outside, one a good friendly face Aghai Sultan always gives me a friendly wave and waves my car in after checking the vehicle.

Everything smooth, and everything is normal. We walk to the Restaurant section and they have not yet setup the final buffet, the friendly hostess tell me we need 15 minutes. I look at Arif and I say come on lets take a walk until things are setup. I head back walk into the lobby see a few friendly faces. I sat down in the lobby a few minutes, and Arif said hey lets wait here until time is ready. Then I remembered the nice teahouse on the left side of Serena called the Chai Khana. So we went for a quick cup of tea in the Chai Khana.

We sat down, tea in hand and then it began. All of sudden BOOM! A suicide bomber dressed as police had walked into the security X-ray booth with a vest of explosives attached on his chest and blew himself up killing half of the guards in the booth.The windows began shaking, I quickly think hey that was a bomb but the Serena Glass is thick so we don't know if its close or far. Usually a bomb like that I would estimate it was 5 blocks away then all of a sudden BOOM again and then rapid gunfire. The guards killed 1 attacker and but two more get inside the main lobby of the Serena.

Everyone gets up, and starts getting back into a slip door, that connects to a second lounge. I quickly move looking around thinking very quick anything could happen. I don't hear anything I walk back to the original spot I was in looking for some signal of what was happening. I look through the glass outside and see a Corolla turn and wrap to the front of the Serena Door and then the driver jumps outs and throws himself on the ground. The Corolla hits the wall of the front glass doors.Then I just hear hundreds of bullets shooting, I hit the ground because the bullets at this point sound extremely close to me. I start crawling through the Chai Khana on my knees and I get back to the second lounge in the slip door.

The Serena worker is quickly telling me to move and get to the basement as soon as possible. Grenades are being thrown and the lobby is covered in a thick smoke that no one can see. I hear more explosions, one Serena employees is being carried past me covered in blood by two other Serena employees. His hand is is covered in blood. His face is covered in blood. I am hearing gunshots in the lobby, the terrorists have infiltrated the lobby and are now shooting anyone.

I turn on the afterburners and start cutting up the hall following a trail of blood leading to the basement. Everyone is running as fast as possible. I lost my cousin Arif in this mess. I get down two flights of steps in the secure basement of the Serena where I see Arif. We greet each other, and I check to see he isn't injured. I asked him are you OK, he is fine, we quickly move to the deeper portion of the basement. Amongst us is the Norwegian Foreign Minister, and his security contingent. Also is the UN Human Rights activist Sima Samar [she is Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in the Sudan], also a former Women's Minister of the Karzai Administration [and Chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission]. We get in the cafeteria and more Afghan politicians are amongst us, with Europeans and foreigners. Karzai''s oldest brother is also trapped with us and he is pacing frantically as we are unaware of what is going on in the lobby. We can hear shots and we can hear booms, but the remaining security personnel is posted at the doors and is ready to shoot at will.

More people come to the basement, as the terrorists have infiltrated the gym and spa area. They have shot dead the spa manager, Zina a very pleasant Filipino Girl who was just doing her job working in Afghanistan to support herself and family abroad. The Terrorists move into the gym and shot an American dead in the face on the treadmill. The president of the Olympic Committee, Mr. Anwar Khan Jagdalak [a former mujahidin commander of Jamiat-i Islami] was in the locker room getting dressed when the Terrorist came face to face to with him. Mr. Jagdalak asked him in Persian "Khaireyaat Khob ast?" (Is everything OK?), and then he turned his gun and took a shot at the president of the Olympic Committee. Mr. Jagdalak made an Olympic dive and fled, and quickly found refuge in some space in the locker room where the Terrorist couldn't find him. He escaped to the basement through another pass.

The doorman, was carried down to the basement by Serena Staff. He had passed out from all of the events he saw, and they were opening up his vest to get him air and began sprinkling water on his face. Then all of sudden a bunch of Serena employees started running down the hall in the basement like they were being chased. This in turn caused two Russian girls to start screaming, and made everyone start to hide including President Karzai's oldest brother who was also trapped with us. What could you do, what would you do if you knew people were coming to shoot you? Turns out the terrorists had not infiltrated the basement, and the Russian girls had to be calmed down, and were given cigarettes to relax.

Hours pass, and we are all sitting and reminiscing about what the hell just happened in front of our eyes who and what we saw. Then all of a sudden two U.S. Marines come down to the basement armed to the teeth, asking everyone if they are all right. We were kind of relieved to see the Marines. The Marines then called out for all US Citizens and they took me, and about ten other people out including Arif whom I told the marine was with me. They said fine, but let's move. We started moving with the Marines out the basement, guns drawn, coming upstairs through the same hall I ran down. There was a pool a blood where I was standing before when everything began and now there was blood everywhere in the lobby, broken glass, black walls from the bomb blasts. Hundreds of Afghan Secret Service and NDS [National Directorate of Security, Amaniyyat-i Milli] guards were standing around. The US Marines got us out and put us in armored vehicles and took us to the embassy where they treated us, took reports and gave us medical checkups.

They later than released us, and my driver and guards came and picked us up in another car and we went home. Next day I came to get the land cruiser I left parked at the entrance of the door when the bomb went off. Amaniyyat (Afghan CIA) [NDS] asked us some questions then let us in. I looked at my car, I couldn't believe what I saw. Blood, guts, black marks from the bomb blast everywhere. The land cruiser from behind was filled with bullet holes throughout the vehicle. The second Suicide bomber had detonated himself five meters away from car once he got inside and his finger ended up in my back of my land cruiser, and his thumb was on my dashboard. I peered inside the back of the land cruiser through the broken glass and saw the finger, I am not at all accustomed to seeing those types of gruesome items up close it was pretty damn disgusting. The lack of respect for their lives was proven in this heinous crime.

This whole thing has me really spooked, now Taliban are vowing more attacks on Kabul restaurants where foreigners and expatriates are attending. I am unsure what to make of all these tragic events however the situation in Kabul is obviously deteriorating.

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More Thoughts on the Serena Bombing: Back to the Light Footprint; Democracy in Pakistan

Update: There are some good comments. They are a bit long, so I am not promoting them to the front any more, but I recommend taking a look if you have time.

I had a few conversations that led me to the following thoughts about the Serena bombing:

Whatever happens next, this is a major decision point for everyone concerned in Afghanistan. Such operations will continue. Even if the vast majority do not succeed, the result will be a mix of the following:

1. Many if not most of the civilian foreign expatriates currently involved in the delivery of aid or other activities in Afghanistan will leave.
   
2. Most of the rest will be concentrated into a Forbidden City like the Green Zone in Baghdad. The U.S. Embassy is already such a compound, and the area around it in Wazir Akbar Khan is already so fortified that it might not take much more to turn that and the adjacent areas of Shahr-i Naw (palace, main ministries, UN offices, embassies) into such a zone.

This is happening at the same time that it is necessary to increase development assistance, as the absorption capacity of the Afghan government and society is finally starting to increase. These alternatives are unacceptable. They would make aid even more wasteful and out of touch than it is now.

The alternative is to go back to the original much misunderstood idea of the "light footprint." People say that Lakhdar Brahimi's idea of the light footprint has failed. They even confuse the idea with Donald Rumsfeld's idea of "economy of force." But there has never been a light footprint in Afghanistan. Brahimi imagined in the fall of 2001 that most of the aid to Afghanistan would be delivered through UN agencies, as it was in East Timor. As Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN, he advocated a light footprint for those agencies, so as to channel most of the aid to building up the capacity and legitimacy of the Afghan government rather than into parallel structures that would suck all the talent and money away.

That never happened. The SRSG could not control the agencies. But even that hardly mattered. Most of the aid was not delivered by UN agencies. It was delivered by an army of foreign contractors, consultants, and NGOs working for bilateral donors (that's aid-speak for "countries," like the US). And all those foreigners need security that NATO, the Coalition, and the Afghan government cannot provide: hence the proliferation of foreign owned-private security contractors -- and the Afghan private security contractors that they have spawned as their subcontractors, many of which are composed of supposedly demobilized militias.

I'm not attacking all those aid workers. I'm one of them. The point is not about our individual merits -- there are saints and sinners among us. God knows, I am probably a more legitimate target for the Taliban than that Filippina woman they killed in the gym. But collectively we have generated an infrastructure serving only our needs that dwarfs the infrastructure provided for Afghans. This infrastructure -- of which the Serena Hotel is the flagship -- is the most visible part of the aid system to Afghans. Projects may mature in a few (or many) years, but right now Afghans see the guest houses, bars, restaurants, armored cars, checkpoints, hotels, hostile unaccountable gunmen, brothels, videos, CDs, cable television, Internet cafes with access to pornography, ethnic Russian waitresses from Kyrgyzstan in Italian restaurants owned by members of the former royal family and patronized by U.S. private security guards with their Chinese girlfriends and Afghan TV moguls, and skyrocketing prices for real estate, food, and fuel, traffic jams caused by the proliferation of vehicles and exacerbated by "security measures" every time a foreign or Afghan official leaves the office -- I could go on, but the Serena is a symbol of all that.

Is there a way to make this danger into an opportunity? The Afghan government from the beginning has asked for more aid to go through the Afghan government budget, more contracts to be given to Afghan firms. The international reply has always been "lack of capacity," though I am not sure which is a more serious problem: Afghans' lack of capacity to do what foreigners require of them to get aid, or foreigners' lack of capacity to build meaningful skills or deliver aid in a way that Afghans perceive as effective.

We don't have the luxury of waiting around for some mythical "capacity building" programs that the "international community" apparently lacks the capacity to conceive or run (my apologies in advance to the exceptions -- please don't flood me with emails about how your program works -- I know some of them do). Do we want to support the Afghanistan that actually exists, or are we waiting for a new Afghanistan of our imagination to appear out of the mists of the Hindu Kush and deserve our aid? (Of course Afghans are also waiting for the superpowers and aid donors of their imagination to materialize, but it turns out that in reality -- well, see above.)

As far as I know, all this aid is not there because of anybody's generosity, though Afghans are required to say so from time to time. Did the US and other donors suddenly develop a bad case of generosity after September 11? I tried that argument from time to time during 1992-2001, but it didn't work. The US and others are in Afghanistan for their national security interests. So we can't just pack up and walk away if the Afghans don't conform to our desires. Sometimes I wish the Afghan government would keep that more firmly in mind.

It is possible -- though not necessarily so -- that these interests will coincide with that of many Afghans for a while. That's the question Afghans are asking: are the foreigners here to help us as well as themselves, or to help only themselves, even at our expense? That's the political question at the heart of counter-narcotics policy. That is the political question at the heart of disputes over civilian casualties, status of forces agreements, detainees, and how aid is delivered.

In fact it's the dispute that started the whole thing. Remember, Bin Laden stated on October 7, 2001, that the international state system (symbolized by the Treaty of Lausanne, to which he referred as the start of 80 years of humiliation) was a source of oppression to Muslims. He cited lots of examples. Muslims don't want to believe him. Whatever they have suffered or think they have suffered in this system, most don't see Bin Laden (or the Taliban) offering an alternative to modern education, science, health care, development, legality, and so on.

But they have to ask themselves -- what is the alternative the international system is actually offering us? For citizens of the UAE -- not so bad! For Afghans? They don't want more bombings, killings, executions, torture, corruption, invasions, ignorance, poverty, disease.... When I visited Afghanistan under the Taliban in 1998 people quietly let me know how frustrated they were. In the Pashtun areas, at least, people felt a degree of personal security as long as they obeyed the Taliban, but they were bitter about their poverty and lack of development and freedom. The universal strength of that feeling was the most lasting impression of that visit. Everything I have seen since has confirmed and reconfirmed it. But it has also confirmed and reconfirmed that Afghans are losing faith that they are actually being offered a share of what they think the "international community" has to offer.

I don't have a blueprint on my hard drive on in a cache somewhere. But the Serena bombing is a sign that unless Afghans are really in charge of their country, it will not be rebuilt. I know that some plans are out there. It's time to take a new look at them. Are they unrealistic? Maybe. But what is definitely unrealistic is thinking we can succeed with the approach we have used so far.

Now for Pakistan: the Afghan NDS says that the attackers were trained and equipped by networks based in Pakistan. That's not much of a surprise. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the UN already published a report on suicide bombings in Afghanistan, showing that they were organized, funded, and planned in the Tribal Agencies of Pakistan. Pakistan's main response (always proactive) was that its UN representative called the UN Secretary General and demanded that the report be taken off the website.

But I don't want to "attack Pakistan" (more emails). Pakistanis are asking similar questions: is the War on Terror making us more or less secure? Is it a common interest we have with the Americans or something imposed on us against our interest? Right now, there is an unbridgeable gap in Pakistan between the population's perception of security threats and the military government's doctrine of security threats, conforming to Washington's.

According to poll data, most Pakistanis seem to see the Pakistani military as the most immediate threat to their security. Nawaz Sharif told a cheering crowd the other day that a government supinely following the Americans' War on Terror had "drowned the country in blood." He was referring to the military offensives in the tribal territories and the attack on the Red Mosque in Islamabad last summer. Does his audience want to be ruled by Taliban and Usama Bin Laden? I haven't interviewed them, but I will hazard a guess: no they don't. But right now that is a secondary threat to them. Telling them they have to be for us or against us will only convince them that they are against us.

Conclusion: until Pakistan develops a legitimate political elite with a reasonable consensus about the national interest and national security, Pakistan will not be a "reliable ally in the war on terror." Why are the supporters of Benazir Bhutto more hostile to the military government than to the militant groups that probably killed her? Because they know that the military government used US aid to nurture those same militant groups and their civilian political allies in order to impose its own dictatorship. Reversing that calculus is the single most important task for security in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Now people will ask me how to do it. I have some ideas ... I'd like to hear some others. One hint: missiles, Drones, commando raids, and more military rule in Pakistan are not the preferred options.

Response from Farid Maqsudi, promoted from Comments:

The key to success for Afghanistan and stakeholders such as USA and the international community, is the shift of burden from US and international community to Afghans.

The accountability for the success and failure needs to be with the Afghans and the Afghan government.

A common Afghan knows what he/she wants and needs for better life.

I agree in principle with the government's position that aid should flow through it. But as President Karzai acknowledges the increasing corrupt environment, he must first take serious action against the corrupt culture to gain the confidence of the donors, citizens and the private sector.

I am involved in the reconstruction economy of Afghanistan and from experience, I can tell it is better for Afghanistan and the world to stop with much of the technical studies and consultants to consultants in the reconstruction projects.

Afghans are hearing about billions and billions of aid money but they don't see it benefiting them. Let's talk smaller money and extend it directly to the people so they appreciate the challenges of reconstruction as well as the benefits.

The Afghan government should promise and deliver to its citizens a number of high impact projects that will boost the confidence of its citizens and stakeholders.

No doubt that various entities in Pakistan are taking detrimental actions against Afghanistan but Pakistan is not the entire cause of the problems in Afghanistan. The Afghans on both sides of the border should demonstrate their patriotism for Afghanistan by taking constructive and peaceful actions.

It is high time that we address the basics.

It is time for President Karzai to take the respectful robe off and pull up the shirt sleeves.

It is time for President Karzai to spend several continuous months in each regional capitals like Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat to bring attention to security and reconstruction.

It is time for the international community to support Afghans.

It is time for the country to come together. Read more on this article...

New York Times on ISI; Serena Hotel Attack (Plus Update Connecting the Two and Historical Background)

David Rohde and Carlotta Gall deserve huge credit for an outstanding investigative article today on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. This article makes sense out of all the contradictory indications about the ISI's links to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as well as other armed militant groups. It also covers the ISI's role in domestic politics, including election rigging. It is clear from the article that a military regime cannot (and some will not) control the militants it created and that the military will also not permit civilians to take control of the state. But at least President Bush is hard at work building the broadest possible global alliance against Iranian speedboats and Filipino radio pranksters. Bush reportedly does not believe his own intelligence agencies' report on Iran, as it failed to coincide with what he knows to be true. (More on this from Scott Horton....)

The attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul is a shock for all of us foreigners who have gone there for tea. conferences, or brunch, even if we never stayed there. Like most people who go in and out of the Kabul expatriate community, I imagine, I knew a couple of people who were there -- in my case including some Norwegian diplomats.

News reports mention that this was Afghanistan's only "five-star" hotel. They don't mention that nearly all Afghans live in "zero-star" conditions, including the thousands of people who pass that traffic circle every day and see inaccessible luxury behind thick walls. The rioters attacked the Serena in May 2006, apparently believing that alcohol is served there, though it is not.

I am sure that the people of Kabul don't want more violence in their city. They were badly frightened by the riots in 2006. But there is huge resentment and anger building up at the overbearing foreign presence. The May 2006 riots were sparked by an accident where US military vehicles killed a pedestrian. Afghans see and often do not distinguish among the "Chinese restaurant" brothels and the glittering restaurants (by Afghan standards, not ours) serving luxuries, including alcohol, to foreigners, some of whom are being highly paid to destroy Afghanistan's opium livelihood, which Afghan Islamic figures say is no worse than the alcohol they drink at night after destroying farmers' poppy crops.

Many Afghans think that money that is supposed to be used to help them is instead being used to pay for the good life for foreigners in the Serena hotel. Alas, it is true. When aid donors boast of how much technical assistance they are giving Afghanistan, they provide data on the size of the contracts they have given to consultants. I have spent some of the grant and contract money that pay for my salary and travel expenses on meals and tea at the Serena Hotel. These expenses are counted as someone's assistance to Afghanistan.

This is a new kind of target for the Taliban. Foreigners going to restaurants in Kabul (including some where, unlike the Serena, alcohol is in fact served), sometimes joke that they feel like targets. Up to now, however, they have not been. The Taliban have mostly attacked the international forces and Afghan army, police, and officials, as well as other "collaborators," such as employees on reconstruction projects or public figures who support the government. Sometimes they kill civilians indiscriminately when they attack government buildings (including cases when they killed students in schools). But as far as I know, this is the first attack targeted at the foreign assistance community and the "corrupt" lifestyle it has brought to Afghanistan. I imagine it will not be the last.

Update: AP quotes Amrullah Saleh, head of the National Security Directorate of Afghanistan, as saying that the attack was planned by the network headed by Siraj Haqqani, a native of Khost currently based in the North Waziristan Tribal Agency of Pakistan. So it seems the two posts above might be connected. In case this hypothesis proves true, here is some background.

Haqqani's father, Mawlawi Jalaluddin, was a highly praised mujahidin commander in the 1980s. He was called "Haqqani" because he attended the Deobandi madrasa Haqqaniyya in Akhora Khattak on the Grand Trunk Road between Peshawar and Islamabad, headed by Senator Sami-ul-Haq of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema. This madrasa trained many Taliban leaders.

Haqqani was one of the CIA's favorites because of his penchant for "killing Russians" and executing Afghan "communist" prisoners after trial for apostasy. He was one of ten commanders known as "unilaterals" who got aid directly from the CIA, not filtered through the ISI. His huge base (later occupied by al-Qaida) was built by a Pakistani construction company connected to the military and paid for by private Saudi donations (not sure whose, but it could easily have been Bin Laden).

Though not a member of the Taliban core group in southern Afghanistan (he is from the Zadran/Jadran tribe in Khost, in the east), he became an important minister and commander of the Taliban, leading offensives in the Shamali plain north of Kabul in cooperation with al-Qaida.

During the Coalition operation against the Taliban in the fall of 2001, the ISI brought Haqqani to Islamabad several times, offering him to the U.S. as a "moderate Taliban" replacement for Mullah Umar, but Haqqani did not cooperate or at least he didn't deliver. In December 2001 Mawlawi Jalaluddin announced that despite his opposition to the U.S. invasion, now was the time for peace in Afghanistan, and he sent a delegation from the Jadran tribe to attend the inauguration of Hamid Karzai. Someone (reportedly Mawlawi Jaluluddin's rival, Pacha Khan Zadran, though there are other suspects as well) warned the U.S. that Taliban were approaching Kabul, and a U.S. bombing raid killed over 60 elders of the tribe who were on their way to Kabul for reconciliation.

Since that time, Mawlawi Jalaluddin (who may have died -- reports are unclear) and his son Sirajuddin have built up a powerful front based in North Waziristan. The Jadrans remain factionalized and their loyalties have vacillated -- today many are serving in pro-government militias, and cross-border attacks from Waziristan are said to have decreased.

The Haqqanis are considered by the U.S. military to constitute almost a separate operation from (though nominally affiliated with) the Taliban under Mullah Umar. They are one of the pivotal points of cooperation between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, as the Haqqanis have close relations with Baitullah Mahsud, Amir of the Pakistani Taliban and commander in South Waziristan.

If anyone believes that the ISI does not know where the Haqqanis are, there is a bridge not far from my office in lower Manhattan I would like to show you.

Historical Note: In May 2002 in Kabul I attended a meeting at the home of the former king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, where he received a delegation from the Jaji tribe in Paktia, neighbors (and at times rivals) of the Jadrans. The Jaji elders reminded Zahir Shah that their fathers and grandfathers had helped his father, Nadir Shah, overthrow a usurper in Kabul, Amir Habibullah Kalakani, known as Bacha-i Saqaw (son of the water carrier) and Khadim-i Din-i Rasul Allah (servant of the religion of the Messenger of God). Habibullah came from the Tajik village of Kalakan north of Kabul, which briefly became a "Maoist" bastion in the early 1980s.

The elders offered to help Zahir Shah evict the Northern Alliance from Kabul, as they had helped his father before him. Zahir Shah said he wanted to work for peace and asked them to participate in the Emergency Loya Jirga scheduled for the following month.

By the way, when Nadir Shah (then Nadir Khan) mobilized the Jajis, Jadrans, Ahmadzais, and Tanis against Amir Habibullah, he was sitting in Waziristan, receiving aid from the British through the political agents in the Tribal Agencies. . . . Read more on this article...

Fareed Zakaria: Musharraf's Last Stand

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek has just returned from a trip to Pakistan, where he met with, among others, President Musharraf. The result is one of the best analyses to appear in the media: Musharraf's Last Stand. A few excerpts:

In the past year Pakistan has suffered its worst violence since the riots that followed its founding in 1947. And in the past six months it has careered from one political and constitutional crisis to another, none of which has been resolved, or is likely to be resolved by parliamentary elections scheduled for Feb. 18. . . . In fact, Pakistan is facing two crises—one political and the other security-related. . . .

There is a solution to Pakistan's political crisis, one that will allow Musharraf to leave on a high note. First, he must hold free and fair elections. . . . Musharraf should recognize that he has become far too controversial to be able to lead his nation and should instead recede from power.

That still leaves Pakistan's other, more dangerous, crisis—the new jihad. . . . The most troubling aspect of this wave of terror is that no one in Pakistan seems to understand why it's happening. . . . Theories abound. The Pakistani military was never fully committed to battling jihadists. Having spent decades training fighters for Kashmir and Afghanistan, the Army withdrew support but would not kill or arrest its former charges.

Washington itself bears a significant part of the blame. The Taliban were never really defeated after the fall of Kabul. They simply went into hiding and regrouped, and yet the American Army declared victory and left. . . . The American debate has been, as is often the case, largely removed from reality.

The real question we face in Pakistan is what to do about the upcoming elections to ensure that they are free and fair. We need to walk Musharraf back from a power struggle in which he is pitted against an independent judiciary and democratically elected politicians. And above all we must find a way to work with the Pakistani people and not a handful of generals. Otherwise the intense anti-Americanism in Pakistan—fast rising because of our support for Musharraf—will produce a new wave of jihadists, born in the mountains of the frontier, tested in battle against the Pakistani Army and thirsting to fight the ultimate enemy, thousands of miles away.

Read more on this article...

TPMTV Interview with Barnett R. Rubin Part II: Afghanistan and Pakistan

Today Talking Points Memo TV has posted the second part of my video interview with Josh Marshall. Part I dealt with the conflict between the US and Iran and Iran's relations with Afghanistan. Part II deals with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and where the main terrorist threat to the US is. Through much of the interview half of my face is shrouded ominously in shadow. This is due to poor lighting, not an attempt to convey a dramatic effect.



TPM introduces the segment as follows:

A Chat with Dr. Barnett Rubin, Part II

How are things going in Afghanistan? Have we botched things so badly that the Taliban are about to take over again? And since al Qaeda, the Taliban and nuclear weapons are all in Pakistan, what happens if Pervez Musharraf falls from power? We asked each of those questions to renowned Afghanistan expert Dr. Barnett Rubin in today's episode of TPMtv.

Read more on this article...

Spread of Terrorism

Another charge has been filed in the London/Glasgow failed attempts - Kafeel Ahmed, Sabeel Ahmed and Mohammad Haneef are the trio of Indian professionals now under arrest in UK and Australia.

At the moment, I just want to bring to your attention two news items:

NDTV:

So what turned these men or at least what turned Kafeel into a suicide bomber?

Sources in the UK police say that Kafeel could have been indoctrinated by the Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah, the only accused so far formally charged for the Glasgow attack.

The Hindu:

Material discovered in Ahmed’s computer shows that the United Kingdom-trained engineer followed campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine with great attention, and often discussed current events with others in Islamist chat rooms on the Internet. Ahmed’s computer has also provided insights into his political work during the months he spent in Bangalore before returning to the United Kingdom in May 2006.

There are concerns raised about the 175 million Muslims in India as well as the Tabligh-i Jama'at. Concerns that are invalid at least in my opinion but I will try and make that case in the future. Read more on this article...