Barnett Rubin Interview with Pepe Escobar of Real News

Pepe Excobar of Real News and Asia Times interviewed me on the U.S., NATO, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The transcript and the first of four videos are on Real News.

Excerpt:

ESCOBAR: How come nobody saw it coming, the resurgence of the Taliban and the neo-Taliban's base in the Pakistani tribal areas?

BARNET: I don't know that it's accurate to say that nobody saw it coming.

ESCOBAR: They're running rings around NATO this spring and summer.

BARNET: Of course NATO did not see it coming. The US government did not see it coming.

ESCOBAR: Exactly. [inaudible] I'm referring to.

BARNET: That's true. And I think that is because they essentially didn't understand the regional situation, and they seemed—. I'll just talk about the United States, you know, the Bush administration. They were just focused on al-Qaeda and the terrorist threat. They had a very superficial analysis of Pakistan—not everybody in the government, of course. There are many professional people in the government who understand the situation. But as far as the top leadership was concerned, they had a relationship with President Musharraf, and President Musharraf was willing to use his security forces to arrest Arabs from al-Qaeda who came into Pakistan from time to time. And they really put all of their analytical resources into dealing with Iraq, and put Afghanistan kind of on autopilot, and didn't recognize, first of all, that just having an election in Afghanistan was far from sufficient to stabilize the country, you know, just defeating the previous government and having an election. There were all kinds of governance issues, which prevented the government from really controlling the territory. And second, that Pakistan still really did not consider the Taliban to be an enemy the way that the United States did. In fact, the Pakistan military considered the Taliban to be a resource for the security of Pakistan.

Ok, this part is not too shocking. Other parts might be interesting. Read more on this article...

Rubin: The Tao of Afghanistan (UPDATED with Variant)

I just received an email from the Academy of Sciences in Afghanistan. Apparently archaeologists have discovered an ancient Buddhist inscription in a bunker on Bagram air base in Kapisa Province, center of the ancient Kushan Kingdom. It is the first inscription to show the influence in Afghanistan not only of Buddhism, but also of Tao thought, particularly a variant that flourished in the tribal areas of Southwestern China, near the borders of today's Vietnam. Scholars are still uncertain as to its meaning, but they sent me a preliminary translation:

The Disciple asked: Master, What is the Way to Emptiness: not implementing a good strategy, or implementing a bad strategy?

The Master answered: The Way to Emptiness requires a Strategy for Implementation.

The Disciple asked: Master, is increasing troops a strategy for implementation?

The Master answered: Those who cannot move in large numbers mount offensives. Those who prevail increase their troops.

The Disciple asked: Master, if a province falls where there are no troops, is the cup of victory half-full of emptiness or half-empty of plenitude?

The Master answered:

When troops increase, the East rises;
When the East rises, the Center is disturbed;
When the Center is disturbed, the South falls;
When the South falls, North and Center lose their harmony;
When North and Center lose their harmony, the West turns away.
When the East rises, the Center is disturbed, the South falls, North and Center lose their harmony, and West turns away, the Center is filled with Emptiness.

This is the Way to Emptiness.

Scholars are still trying to understand the highly allegorical language. I will post more as I hear it.

UPDATE: Apparently this was a well-known sutra that was passed on in different versions but was then lost. The archaeologists have found another tablet on the same site with a slightly variant text:

The Disciple asked: Master, What is the Way to Emptiness: the way of not implementing a strategy, or the way of implementing no strategy?

The Master answered: The Way to Emptiness lacks a Strategy for Implementation.

The Disciple asked: Master, can increasing troops implement the way of no strategy?

The Master answered: Those who cannot move in large numbers mount offensives. Those who prevail increase their troops. [NOTE: This phrase is the same in all variants.]

The Disciple asked: Master, if a province falls where there are no troops, is the cup of victory half-full of emptiness or half-empty of plenitude?

The Master answered:

This is the way of implementing no strategy.

When troops increase, the East rises;
When the East rises, the North and Center lose their harmony;
When the North and Center lose their harmony, the South and Center become as one;
When South and Center become as one, the West turns away.
When the West turns away, the Center is filled with Emptiness.

This is the Way to Emptiness.

Publication of a full compendium of all variants is envisioned within a 16-month time table or "horizon." Read more on this article...

Rubin: War on Terror Madness

OK, I know this is the kind of thing that gives bloggers a bad name, but I just have to share. So I'm in LaGuardia Airport in New York waiting for my flight to Virginia for a two-day high-level conference on Afghanistan, which, in case you hadn't noticed is not doing too well. Hundreds of insurgents attacking the Kandahar jail, hundreds attacking a U.S. base on the Kunar-Nuristan frontier (there has to be something wrong with any policy that requires a U.S. army captain to understand the differences among Nuristani tribes), huge suicide bomb at the Indian Embassy, the U.S. supported Afghanistan government has cut off talks with the U.S.'s main non-NATO ally, Pakistan, on the grounds that the intelligence agency of the latter is trying to destroy the former, and I could mention a few other things too.

Anyway, how many times and how many ways have I been saying that this was going to happen for the past seven years? I cannot count the ways. I attended Karzai's inauguration in Kabul in December 2004. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld flew in for the occasion. Afterwards we all went over to the Foreign Ministry for lunch. Rumsfeld was sitting at the head table with Karzai, Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General, and so on, but Cheney was eating elsewhere in an undisclosed location by himself. Poor Karzai had to eat two lunches, one with Rumsfeld, and another with Cheney.

Anyway, on the way out after the Secret Service had done its thing, I caught up with Brahimi, who was looking annoyed. He told me that Rumsfeld had only said four words the whole time: "What an amazing success!" Brahimi and I walked past all the tanks and barricades blocking the street, which was completely empty of traffic on what would otherwise have been a normal working day in Kabul. Brahimi suggested that when I got back to the U.S. I should write something indicating that holding a presidential inauguration in a shut-down city surrounded by tanks was not exactly a success.

Well I did my best. Or at least I made an effort. Anyway, we are where we are, and I am where I am, in LaGuardia going to a conference to see whether there is a way to keep Afghanistan from going where it looks like it's going. And what happened?

THEY CONFISCATED MY TOOTHPASTE!

Yes, I had a tube of toothpaste (Sensodyne) in a regulation one-quart clear plastic bag which I dutifully took out of my bag and placed in the grey plastic bin along with my jacket (required at the conference) and my loafers (special flying shoes). My computer was in another bin. When I got to the other side the TSA employee was eyeing my toothpaste suspiciously. He turned it over and peered through the sealed clear plastic bag.

"You can't take this on. This is 4 ounces, and the limit is 3.5 ounces."

I didn't say anything. Probably they will have toothpaste at the conference center. But it's good to know that at least one part of the War on Terror is being implemented flawlessly. Read more on this article...

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: Interview with me by Globe and Mail

Graeme Smith, the Kandahar correspondent for the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, has published a print, audio and video interview with me. The print version is focused on "Afghanization," but the whole interview is much broader. I can't figure out how to embed the video, but you can play it here. 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.

Read more on this article...

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: Notes from Kabul and Kandahar on Recent Bombings

In response to my previous post on the killing of civilians in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul and in a bombing by the U.S. in Eastern Afghanistan, BBC correspondent Alistair Leithead wrote, "We went up to the bomb site in Nangarhar yesterday...here's the report...":

On a hillside high in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan there are three charred clearings where the American bombs struck.

Scattered around are chunks of twisted metal, blood stains and small fragments of sequined and brightly decorated clothes - the material Afghan brides wear on their wedding day.

After hours of driving to the village deep in the bandit country of Nangarhar's mountains we heard time and again the terrible account of that awful day.

What began as celebration ended with maybe 52 people dead, most of them women and children, and others badly injured.

The US forces said they targeted insurgents in a strike. But from what I saw with my own eyes and heard from the many mourners, no militants were among the dead. A big double wedding was taking place between two families, with each exchanging a bride and a groom. So Lal Zareen's son and daughter were both getting married on the same day.

He gave the account with his son, a 13-year-old groom, sitting at his feet.

"This is all the family I now have left," he said in a disturbingly matter of fact sort of way.

Apparently the wedding party was crossing a narrow pass of the type that Taliban might use for infiltration when it was bombed by U.S. planes. It reminds of of an incident from 1984: Christian Science Monitor reporter Ed Girardet was traveling to the Panjshir Valley with a weapons convoy. At a narrow pass in Upper Panjshir Soviet fighters decimated a caravan of nomads, killing dozens of them, possibly trying to block the infiltration route.

Leithead concludes:

Mirwais Yasini, a local MP and the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's lower house, made the point that civilian casualties widen the gap between the people and the government, and the international forces.

As another memorial service took place in the mountains, Lal Zareen told me: "I want President Karzai to make sure the people responsible for this face justice."

That will depend on the US findings and how the Afghan government acts.

These mistakes are incredibly costly in a counter-insurgency campaign which relies on winning people over, not forcing them against the authorities.

I wonder how many enemies have been created in Nangarhar as a result of the latest bloodshed?

I also got a note from an Afghan in Kandahar who summarized the situation:

I am writing from Kandahar. It is hell hot here--both literally and figuratively. The temperature is around 40 degrees on centigrade. The heat is especially unbearable during mid days when the sun is strong. And there is almost no electricity in this city. During the Taliban time Kandahar had at least 12 hours of electricity in 24 hours, now days pass here without a blink of electricity. Normally though we have 4 hours of electricity in 2 days. And the political situation has never been as bad here in the last seven years as it is now. There is a general discontent among the people. While a few corrupt government officials are embezzling lots of money, the rest of the population is even deprived of the facilities that it had seven years ago like--electricity, drinking water, and security. The Taliban are using this pathetic situation to their benefit. With the help of local population the Taliban now manage to carry out attacks within the city like the spectacular attack on Kandahar prison last month--and they will not stop there. In Kandahar, time is definitely on Taliban's side.

Finally, further information on the attack on the Indian embassy from Tom Stauffer, President of the American University of Afghanistan, in Kabul:

Indian Embassy Blast. One result of the suicide bomb attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul last week (7/7) was a flurry of inquiries from my emailing friends. The attack was a VBIED (vehicle borne improvised explosive device), actually a Toyota Corolla, with 80-100 kilos (over 200 pounds) of top quality RDX plastic bonded high explosive mixed with land mines and tank shells designed to inflict maximum hurt. The nature of the blast suggests that some professional intelligence service was involved. RDX (or cyclonite) is not found at street vendors.

The Indian Embassy was described as situated on a “leafy suburban street” in several press dispatches, which I figure must have been filed from London, Delhi or some other safe haven. (The actual location is in central Kabul.) Many journalists are afraid to come to Kabul, and, as a result, report from afar. I do not much blame them. . . .

Embassies and military compounds in Kabul are surrounded by wire mesh containers, about three yards on each side, filled with dirt, maybe also fronted by heavy concrete blast barriers. The mesh units each weigh many tons. This is what the bomb hit, albeit it at a weaker embassy entry point, and damage to embassy buildings could have been much worse. The blast was well absorbed, except for those unfortunates lined up to get travel visas to India.

At last count, about 60 died and 130 were wounded. More will succumb.Press dispatches always fail to convey the agony and human cost. Flesh and severed limbs were scattered about. Paris or Dubai based journalists reported the numbers but overlooked those real human beings who perished. Four included a mother and her three children who wanted to go to Delhi to catch a flight for London so that they would visit their student husband/father. A girl and a family, seeking a visa to study in India and passports respectively, were also wiped out. Most victims were just walking in the vicinity. Four Indian diplomats and six police officers were murdered and seven at the nearby Indonesian Embassy were wounded. Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry is also located on that same street and many visitors come on routine missions. I have been there twice. The mangled body of one Indian diplomat was found on the roof of his embassy’s main building hours following the blast. Today, the Indian Consulate started issuing visas again.

Anent who did it, everybody denies knowing anything as if the bombing was unplanned. Speculation on the streets and in the press run the gamut of possibilities, but talk concentrates on long deadly clashes among elements in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The story takes too long to tell in my blog, but suffice to say there is poison in the well of regional peace. The Indian Embassy bombing is for the world’s intelligence services to resolve, but trust me, they are working on it. Pakistan and the Taliban deny involvement.

A friend and very prominent Afghan-American missed the explosion by ten minutes because he forgot a small item back at his residence. The human dimension cannot be lost among a pile of geo-political analyses and poorly informed speculation that inevitably follows this and other terrifying VBIED detonations.

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: Afghanistan Accuses Pakistan of Responsibility for Attack on Indian Embassy

In a press conference yesterday, Humayun Hamidzada, the official spokesman of President Karzai (and a former colleague at the Center on International Cooperation at NYU) virtually accused Pakistan of responsibility for the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul yesterday:

Afghan officials have evidence that foreigners were behind a massive suicide bombing against India's embassy in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman said Tuesday, implying that Pakistan orchestrated the attack.

The spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, did not name Pakistan's intelligence agency but told reporters it was "pretty obvious" who was behind Monday's bombing, which killed 41 people and wounded 150.

An Afghan security report released earlier Tuesday found that the bombing could not have succeeded without the support of foreign intelligence agencies, another reference to Pakistan, India's archrival.

"The sophistication of this attack, and the kind of material that was used and the specific targeting, everything has the hallmark of a particular intelligence agency that has conducted similar attacks inside Afghanistan in the past. We have sufficient evidence to say that," Hamidzada said. "The project was designed outside Afghanistan. It was exported to Afghanistan."

The Taliban continue to deny any involvement. I haven't seen any U.S. spokesmen commenting on these allegations. Read more on this article...

Rubin: Attack on Indian Embassy in Kabul (Multiple Updates)

After the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul this morning, I wrote the following comment in response to a query from a journalist:

The war in Afghanistan is often depicted as a battle between jihadi groups and the U.S. or the west. But Afghanistan is also a theater for the struggle between India and Pakistan and for the domestic struggles of Pakistan. This is the second major terrorist attack on an Indian target since the election of a civilian government in Pakistan. Nine synchronized bombs killed 63 people in the Indian city of Jaipur on May 13, just before the first high-level diplomatic meeting between India and Pakistan after the elections. Part of the context of this attack is also the Afghan official, public charges that the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, organized the attempted assassination of President Karzai in Kabul in April. These attacks seem designed to sabotage any improvement of relations between Pakistan and either of its two neighbors, India and Afghanistan, to assure that Pakistan has no alternative but to continue to support militant organizations as part of its foreign policy.

I might add that there is also a consistent pattern of attacks on Indian road construction teams in southwest Afghanistan. These teams are constructing a road linking Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf via the Iranian rail and road network, which would bypass both Karachi and Pakistan's new port in Gwadar. This road also passes through the Baluch parts of Afghanistan and Iran, next to the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, where Pakistan charges India with supporting nationalist/separatist insurgents.

Juan Cole on Informed Comment links the bombing to the attack yesterday in Islamabad and posits:

Since the neo-Taliban want to pull down the Karzai government, trying to scare the Indians into leaving would be a way of removing one foreign pillar of support from the edifice of state.

The link to the Islamabad attack on the anniversary of the raid on the Red Mosque may well be valid, but, along with the pattern I cited above, it looks to me more like it forms a pattern of a regional strategy by those who want to place (or keep) the state in Pakistani in the jihadi camp. In addition, in my (admittedly limited) contact with Taliban and in examining Taliban texts from Afghan sources, I see a focus on foreign troops in Afghanistan, not the Karzai government or India.

I heard on the radio that "Taliban" have claimed responsibility for this act. (Also reported by Reuters.) Let's see which "Taliban." Did it come from the former Taliban leadership in Quetta, or did it come from the Haqqani group in North Waziristan? (Note that both command and control centers of the Taliban are in Pakistan.) The latter is campaigning for predominance -- last week a document surfaced in which Jalaluddin Haqqani charged Mullah Umar and the Quetta shura with incompetence. (The authenticity of this document has yet to be established -- facsimile above left from here. [UPDATE 1: A source in Kabul who has been investigating it tells me the document is mostly likely a fake. Psy-ops, I guess.]) Kabul is also focusing its accusations of terrorism on the Haqqani group, which it claims reports daily to the ISI and which has much closer links to al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban than does the Quetta shura.

UPDATE 2: Now I heard on NPR that the "Taliban" have denied responsibility. Let me stick my neck out here: I don't believe that the Kandahari Taliban leadership would mount an attack like this against the Indian embassy. The idea of such an attack came from some combination of all or some of the following: the Haqqani group (as part of a campaign for Pakistani support), Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida, and the Pakistani security agencies, or private entities under their supervision.

Reuters: The Afghan "Interior Ministry believes this attack was carried out in coordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region," that is, Pakistan's ISI.

Taliban (Quetta shura) spokesman denies responsibility:

Still, a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied that the militants were behind the bombing. The Taliban tend to claim responsibility for attacks that inflict heavy tolls on international or Afghan troops, and deny responsibility for attacks that primarily kill Afghan civilians.

"Whenever we do a suicide attack, we confirm it," Mujahid said. "The Taliban did not do this one."

Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the attack. I heard him on the BBC (I can't find the interview on line yet), and he sounded very sincere and pained by it, almost as if the attack were aimed at his government -- which it might be.

UPDATE 3: According to someone who who spent most of the 1980s with the mujahidin in Afghanistan, even then Jalaluddin Haqqani was saying that the number one enemy was India. I've asked a few people, and so far no one can recall hearing this kind of talk from the core Taliban in Quetta. In my experience, the Kandahari mujahidin resisted Pakistani influence quite strongly. Read more on this article...

AUGUST MOON OVER BEIJING

BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM


With all the political and natural upheavals that have taken place during the countdown to the Beijing Olympics, the August 8 opening date has an air of inevitability about it, being both a deadline and zero hour for a new era.

The prominence of the start date is not just a matter of feverish anticipation of a long (all too long?) hoped for event, but it has practical ramifications as well. Hotel prices will jump up astronomically during this period, automotive traffic flow will be forcefully controlled and curtailed, security commandos will descend upon the city and newly erected gates and walls will guard Olympic venues. The tightening up is both instinctive and unprecedented; China takes the honor of hosting the world of sports, and all it represents, with ultimate seriousness, so much so, that what was supposed to be a step forward to increased openness is looking more and more like a step backward to increased control.

The threat of terror may be trumped up, but the threat of terrible embarrassment is real, as spoilsport activists would like to steal a bit of the Olympic spotlight. Guarding against the latter in the name of the former, nervous state officials at airports and visa offices impose temporary clamps on traffic into the country.

The countdown continues. Dozens of giant construction projects, from subterranean train lines to twisted glass towers, get manic, last minute love and attention, hoping to meet the big deadline, hoping to finish finishing touches in time for the big event.

China boosters and China detractors alike are counting down to in uncanny unison, because the big day in the world of sports is D-Day for demonstrators as well.

Adding to the buildup of tension, the summer Olympics don’t open on just any old summer day, but a precisely selected one, said to be an auspicious date.

Much has been said about the lucky number eight and the Beijing Olympics, which will open at eight minutes past eight on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008.

In staging so elaborate an event where so many things could go so, so wrong, it’s somehow understandable that traditional superstitions be conjured up to steady the unsure hand of the host. To align a start time with lucky digits is not without cultural cachet, in many parts of Asia, 88888 would be the vanity license plate or vanity cell-phone number to kill for, easy to remember, and lucky, if you are prone to believe such things.

Beijing requested an August 8 start date after the IOC scheduled the 2008 Olympics to open on July 25. The official argument in favor of the postponement was the possibility of cooler weather, but numerology seems to have played a supporting role.

Once August 8 was officially anointed, number-crunching numerologists came up with various nonsensical permutations with putative meaning, only serving to heighten anticipation of the big day.

The calendar by which the Olympics are officially scheduled is of course the Western-imported Gregorian calendar, not the age-old Chinese one, which is a shame in a way, for choosing a date according to the lunar calendar makes more sense.

In Chinese calendar terms, the Beijing Olympics commence in the seventh month, not a big deal number wise (unless one is rolling dice) but significant nonetheless as it comes on the date of a half moon. The date is also the cusp of Lunar Autumn, a correspondence which can't have gone unnoticed, if only in hopes of getting, fingers crossed, some cooler weather.

But more striking in visual terms is the rise of the August moon.

The original start date was a waning moon, which would put the games, in the two weeks following July 25, under the darkest stage of the lunar cycle.

In contrast, the start date of August 8 coincides with optimal lunar illumination, the brightest fortnight of the lunar cycle, commencing with a half moon that blossoms to full moon during the height of the games.

While doing research for a memoir on the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, I was struck by how closely events on the ground back then hewed to the lunar calendar, even if most of us who were there were not consciously aware of it at the time.

The 1989 protests picked up speed during the new moon of May Fourth, waxing almost unstoppably as the moon brightened, then faltered and stalled out as the moon began to withdraw. The waxing gibbous moon presided over the joyful and peaceful demonstrations of mid-May, the waning gibbous moon saw martial law put into effect, while the night of June 3-4 was the darkest of the month, the night of no moon.

The rise of the full moon over Tiananmen marked the lyrical and literal apogee of the peaceful protests in May 1989 which saw the citizens of Beijing flock to Tiananmen Square a million strong under a bright clear sky in celebration of what they hoped would be a brilliant new chapter of Chinese history.

One need not be convinced that lunar tides play a role in human hearts to see such a correspondence as something more than coincidence. Military strategists, from the time of Sun Zi and Sun Bin to the age of sneak attacks and stealth bombing, pay attention to lunar illumination, carefully selecting attack dates that provide needed illumination or require the cover of darkness. The June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy involved precise calibration of both optimal moonlight and moon-related tides.

On the brighter side, there is a common, if not universal, human impulse to commune with the heavens by taking a walk on a moonlit evening.

Just as the mild weather of spring is more conducive to mass demonstrations than frigid mid-winter, so too is the full moon an attractor to those who gather out of doors at night, be they nature lovers, romantic lovers or those who find comfort and inspiration in the visual company of our nearest celestial neighbor.

Keeping the moon in mind, one can better appreciate the extreme lengths to which Beijing has gone in order to put the Olympics in the best possible light.

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Rubin: More Counter-Narcotics Success in Afghanistan's "Opium-Free" North

Health Warning: This post may contain irony. Readers impervious to irony should consult other blogs.

UNODC just published this year's World Drug Report, warning about rising heroin production in Afghanistan, but congratulating itself and its drug-warrior allies for the "fact" that "the problem is much localized. Most cultivation (80 per cent) took place in 5 southern provinces, which are the most unstable."

This just in, from Afghanistan's stable, "opium-free" north:

The bazaar sits on a small island in the river Panj, a narrow expanse of shallow but fast-flowing water that is all that separates the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan from the Afghan province of the same name. On either side loom the Pamir mountains, a range of high peaks that cuts the region off from the rest of the world.

When the bazaar opened about five years ago, the hardy Pamiri people of Tajikistan rejoiced that they would now have contact with people on the Afghan side of the river from whom they had been cut off for decades – by the Soviets, by war, and by ruined economies.

Some boasted happily that Tajikistan would soon be able to share its technical know-how with its Afghan brothers.

That know-how has since flowed both ways, although not as the optimists hoped.

The unprepossessing frontier bazaar squatting on the river Panj has become one of the largest arms-for-drugs trading centres in the world.

But opium cultivation is way down in Badakhshan! And Tajikistan is opium-free! I'm sure that any remaining problems can be dealt with through a robust eradication program in Helmand. (Please see health warning above.) Read more on this article...

"Hizbollah only has the Miss Lebanon title left to win"

Football is already highly politicized in Lebanon, where fans have been barred from some matches since 2005. Celebrated games in the past pitted Lebanese teams against Syrian teams, and turned into celebrations of Lebanese nationalism. More recently, it is the Sunni-Shi'i divide that has demarcated key matches; one of many symptoms of polarization. During a recent visit to Lebanon there were widespread worries (including among civilian supporters of Hezbollah) about the militarization of Salafi groups, particularly in the environs of Tripoli (where there have been recent clashes between Salafis and 'Alawis). Over the past few years Salafi groups held their noses and took Saad al-Din al-Hariri's money and accepted his role as a communal leader, but now they see him as a failed leader and they are making their own way. Recent calls by the Syrian ikhwan for Qatar to assist Lebanese Sunnis are only the tip of the iceberg. The Hezbollah led incursion into West Beirut is widely understood as a Sunni defeat, capped by the Doha agreement. Meanwhile, the horse-trading over the formation of a new government in Beirut only exacerbates the sectarian tensions. The best reasonable hope is that a consensus government--the norm in Lebanon, by the way--will provide a context for dialogue and reconciliation, not further deadlock and recrimination. There are long odds on the former possibility.

FT.com / World - Hizbollah outshoots football rivals: "'Hizbollah only has the Miss Lebanon title left to win,'" Read more on this article...

Rubin -- The Dilemma of anti-Extremist Pakistanis

Yesterday the New York Times ran a front-page article on the growth of al-Qaida in Pakistan and the failure of the Bush administration to devise any strategy to confront it.

(Instead they are apparently thinking again about attacking Iran. At an international meeting on Afghanistan a few months ago, an Iranian diplomat pulled me aside at a reception, his hair more or less on fire, and asked, "Does your government have any idea what is going on along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?" He has since been sidelined, as his bosses, like the Bush administration, think that the U.S.-Iran confrontation is more important than the threat from al-Qaida.)

Not that this is really news. As I noted in April:

The U.S Government's General Accountability Office (which, unaccountably, has continued to operate through the current administration) has issued a report entitled "Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas." Unlike, say, the "Patriot Act" or the "Protect America Act," in this case the title provides an accurate summary of the contents.

As usual, the Times article presented the alternatives as do nothing, Predator missile strikes, or invasion by U.S. Special Forces, without any discussion of competing Pakistani and Pashtun political agendas for the tribal agencies. A successful and sustainable strategy has to be carried out together with allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, within a political framework that they support. Pakistani physicist and public intellectual Pervez Hoodbhoy provides some thoughts on this today in Dawn, where he writes about "Anti-Americanism and Taliban" in Pakistan:

The recent killing of eleven Pakistani soldiers at Gora Prai by American and Nato forces across the border in Afghanistan unleashed an amazing storm.

Prime Minister Gilani declared, “We will take a stand for sovereignty, integrity and self-respect.” The military announced defiantly, “We reserve the right to protect our citizens and soldiers against aggression,” while Army chief, Gen Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, called the attack ‘cowardly’. The dead became ‘shaheeds’ [martyrs] and large numbers of people turned up to pray at their funerals.

But had the killers been the Taliban, this would have been a non-event. The storm we saw was more about cause than consequence. Protecting the sovereignty of the state, self-respect, citizens and soldiers against aggression, and the lives of Pakistani soldiers, suddenly all acquired value because the killers were American and Nato troops.

Compare the response to Gora Prai with the near silence about the recent kidnapping and slaughter by Baitullah Mehsud’s fighters of 28 men near Tank, some of whom were shot and others had their throats cut. Even this pales before the hundred or more attacks by suicide bombers over the last year that made bloody carnage of soldiers and officers, devastated peace jirgas and public rallies, and killed hundreds praying in mosques and at funerals.

These murders were largely ignored or, when noted, simply shrugged off. The very different reactions to the casualties of American and Nato violence, compared to those inflicted by the Taliban, reflect a desperate confusion about what is happening in Pakistan and how to respond.Unfortunately, as Hoodbhoy notes, U.S. behavior has reinforced such attitudes: There is, of course, reason for people in Pakistan and across the world to feel negatively about America. In pursuit of its self-interest, wealth and security, the United States has for decades waged illegal wars, bribed, bullied and overthrown governments, supported tyrants, undermined movements for progressive change, and now feels free to kidnap, torture, imprison, and kill anywhere in the world with impunity. All this, while talking about supporting democracy and human rights.

Even Americans — or at least the fair-minded ones among them — admit that there is a genuine problem. A June 2008 report of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs entitled The Decline in America’s Reputation: Why? concluded that contemporary anti-Americanism stemmed from “the perception that the proclaimed American values of democracy, human rights, tolerance, and the rule of law have been selectively ignored by successive administrations when American security or economic considerations are in play”.

American hypocrisy has played into the hands of Islamic militants. They have been vigorously promoting the notion that this is a bipolar conflict of Islam, which they claim to represent, versus imperialism. Many Pakistanis, who desperately want someone to stand up to the Americans, buy into this.

While it is understandable that U.S. journalists and politicians resort to shorthand like "Pakistan," "the Pakistanis," or "the Pakistan government," such simplifications are no basis for analysis. The tribal agencies are "federally administered" through the governor of NWFP, who is appointed by the President. In the Pakistani system of government, the president is the balancer between the military and the civilian government -- now he is the former Army Chief of Staff and military coup-maker. The current offensive against Mangal Bagh in the area around Peshawar and in Khyber Agency is being carried out by the Frontier Corps, which is under the command of the Ministry of the Interior, which is part of the civilian government, not by the Ministry of Defense, which answers to the Army Chief of Staff and the President and which has a very different agenda.

The New York Times concluded another recent article, on the offensive against Mangal Bagh, with this throwaway line, which many readers might have ignored:

Afrasiab Khattak, a leader of the Awami National Party, which now governs the North-West Frontier Province, of which Peshawar is the capital, has said he believed that Mr. Mangal Bagh and his men were a creation of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Khattak is in fact the provincial head of the Pashtun nationalist party that now governs the Northwest Frontier Province. The government of NWFP has recently appointed him "Pashtun Peace Envoy" for the province, FATA, and Afghanistan, and he is negotiating with the presidency and governor of NWFP (indirectly with the military) over his involvement in policy toward the tribal areas, over which the civilian political leaders have so far had no authority. According to Khattak, one part of the "government of Pakistan" is at war with groups created by another part of the "government of Pakistan." A policy toward "Pakistan" cannot address this problem.

I realize this poses more questions than it answers about what to do. More to come. Read more on this article...