unknown unknowns

From the NYT:

DAVID DUNNING: Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”

Just to keep the record straight, people were laughing at Rumsfeld, because he only discovered "unknown unknowns" when it was completely self-serving to do so. There was nothing he didn't know before the Iraq war became an obvious disaster. Before the war, he told us that we knew Saddam had WMD, we knew he was a real threat to the U.S., we knew he was assisting Al Qaeda, and we knew that the war would be easy and over in a matter of weeks.

Rumsfeld dismissed anyone who doubted the wisdom of starting a second war while we were still fighting in Afghanistan. Not only did he ridicule them, he typically accused them of treason for giving 'aid and comfort' to the enemy.

Rumsfeld was neither smart nor modest in his answer. He was just attempting to deflect responsibility for his failures.

Hillary Clinton on the "forgotten front"

The forgotten frontline in the war on terror is Afghanistan, where our military effort must be reinforced. The Taliban cannot be allowed to regain power in Afghanistan; if they return, al Qaeda will return with them. Yet current U.S. policies have actually weakened President Hamid Karzai's government and allowed the Taliban to retake many areas, especially in the south. A largely unimpeded heroin trade finances the very Taliban fighters and al Qaeda terrorists who are attacking our troops. In addition to engaging in counternarcotics efforts, we must seek to dry up recruiting opportunities for the Taliban by funding crop-substitution programs, a large-scale road-building initiative, institutions that train and prepare Afghans for honest and effective governance, and programs to enable women to play a larger role in society.

Shah Wali Kot: snapshots of a battle zone

Canadian forces speaking with elders in Shah Wali Kot image uploaded by lafrancevi

8/28/2007

The battle in southern Kandahar province's Shah Wali Kot district started after the joint force was ambushed by a large group of insurgents who tried to overrun their position several times, before being strafed by airstrikes.

"Coalition aircraft destroyed the reinforced enemy emplacements and sniper positions as well as two trucks used to reinforce and re-supply the insurgent force,"

8/18/2007

Taliban militants kidnapped four Afghan engineers in the southern Kandahar province, the police said Saturday. The engineers, who were building a bridge, were abducted in Shah Wali Kot district in northern Kandahar on Friday afternoon, provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib told Xinhua.

6/5/2007

On Monday, Taliban fighters attacked Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops with rockets and gunfire in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province, sparking a four-hour battle, a coalition statement said. Fighter aircraft bombed three enemy positions, it said.

4/24/2006

While they have some beefs with the tactics of Canadian troops, Afghan villagers in Gumbad denied Monday that they had any involvement in the weekend bombing that killed four soldiers in the area.

The Shah Wali Kot district, of which Gumbad is a part, is routinely a hotbed of rumour and innuendo, a state that went into overdrive following the Saturday morning attack.

Published U.S. reports suggested Canadian troops brought the attack upon themselves by conducting inappropriate searches of homes and mosques, sometimes using dogs - considered unclean animals by Muslims.

6/28/2005

The Shah Wali Kot district is considered to be one of the last Taliban strongholds in Kandahar province, but Ges said that may soon end as the patience of the district’s residents grows thin with anti-coalition forces.

“For the most part, the people out here are tired of the Taliban,” said Ges.

“Because there is no government representation out here, the Taliban come out of the hills and take their food, beat on them, harass them, and then leave.”

Establishing security in the district is the first priority, said Ges, but another is to strengthen the positions of the district leadership. Once this is done, reconstruction efforts can begin in the embattled region.

10/24/2003

Since then, Taliban militants have indeed displayed a new assertiveness; they have even set up their own roadblocks. It was Talibs manning one such roadblock in the Shah Wali Kot district near Kandahar who stopped International Committee of the Red Cross irrigation engineer Ricardo Munguia, a citizen of El Salvador, and his Afghan co-workers. Acting on Mullah Dadullah's orders after Munguia's captors had used a satellite phone to request instructions as to his fate, the militants shot the engineer. (The murder was tragically ironic since the Talib leading the operation had once had his life saved by ICRC.)

We may lose in Afghanistan because George Bush got bored

For an example of the number one reason critics opposed the Iraq war from the start.

At critical moments in the fight for Afghanistan, the Bush administration diverted scarce intelligence and reconstruction resources to Iraq, including elite C.I.A. teams and Special Forces units involved in the search for terrorists. As sophisticated Predator drone spy planes rolled off assembly lines in the United States, they were shipped to Iraq, undercutting the search for Taliban and terrorist leaders, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan remains the forgotten front, even as the Taliban rebuilds and the Afghan population tire of being caught between American guns and their targets.

In all the posturing about expanding or ending the Iraq war, few in the Congress and none in the Executive branch make any mention of the risk that we could lose on both fronts.

Barack Obama would focus the war back onto al Qaeda

From his essay in the Foreign Affairs:

Iraq was a diversion from the fight against the terrorists who struck us on 9/11, and incompetent prosecution of the war by America's civilian leaders compounded the strategic blunder of choosing to wage it in the first place. We have now lost over 3,300 American lives, and thousands more suffer wounds both seen and unseen.

We must refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the central front in our war against al Qaeda -- so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run deepest. Success in Afghanistan is still possible, but only if we act quickly, judiciously, and decisively. We should pursue an integrated strategy that reinforces our troops in Afghanistan and works to remove the limitations placed by some NATO allies on their forces. Our strategy must also include sustained diplomacy to isolate the Taliban and more effective development programs that target aid to areas where the Taliban are making inroads.

People around the world have heard a great deal of late about freedom on the march. Tragically, many have come to associate this with war, torture, and forcibly imposed regime change. To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.

Taliban leader Dadullah reportedly killed by allies

In a victory against the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, NATO has reportedly killed Mullah Dadullah, The Taliban leader, who had threatened to launch a new summer offensive including suicide attacks and assassinations throughout the country.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 13 — The Taliban’s foremost operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, has been killed in southern Afghanistan and his body displayed by Afghan officials to journalists in this southern city Sunday morning.

The commander was killed in a joint operation by Afghan security forces, US coalition, and NATO troops in the next door province of Helmand, Asadullah Khaled, the governor of Kandahar said. News agencies reported that he was killed in an operation in Nahri Sarraj district, a strategic area of Helmand province that the Afghan intelligence service reported Saturday had been cleared of Taliban after an operation this week. A statement released by NATO confirmed his death.

The U.S. risks losing on two fronts

Obsessed and distracted by his focus on the Iraq war, George Bush may be on the verge of losing the forgotten war as well.

Richard Holbrooke has warned that corruption, anti-democratic trends, and the resurgence of the Taliban threaten NATO's success in Afghanistan.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - NATO risks losing the war in Afghanistan because of a "tremendous deterioration" in the popularity of the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke said Saturday.

Taliban guerrillas have vastly expanded their activities during the past year. Insurgents have now returned to many regions outside their traditional strongholds in the east that were rebel-free since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Holbrooke said he was struck during his visit by how unpopular Karzai's government had become because of corruption caused by the country's burgeoning drug problem.

He lambasted the U.S.-financed effort to train the Afghan police, saying it had produced a force that was corrupt and incompetent.

"The U.S. training program (for the police) under DynCorp is an appalling joke ... a complete shambles," he said. He referred to Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. a major provider of security and defence services in Afghanistan, Iraq and other troublespots.

Dyncorp is also a player in Iraq, awarded contracts to help set up law enforcement in that country. It's been cited for squandering tens of millions in that country.

More back and forth fighting in Afghanistan

Taleban fighters have seized local government offices in Afghanistan's south-eastern province of Zabul. A local spokesman said police in Khan Afghan district had withdrawn because they did not have enough ammunition.

Meanwhile, in Helmand province the Taleban are reported to have been forced out of the town of Sangin by Nato and Afghan troops.

Afghan army scores a victory in the Helmand district

Taliban flee Afghan-led Nato offensive

By Tom Coghlan in Nad Ali, Helmand

Afghan army forces and police have now purged the Nad Ali district of Helmand of 400 Taliban fighters, following a series of chaotic battles.

Allied commanders estimated 70 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting, while many others fled or gave up their weapons.

The operation, which began last week during the Persian new year celebrations of Nawruz, involved 400 Afghan security personnel, the biggest Afghan-led sweep yet in the Nato offensive in Helmand.

Crucially, it was also backed by local militias, whose commanders had sworn to remove the Taliban from their land.

The Afghan army soldiers patrolling through the fields of Nad Ali also boast new helmets, flak jackets and weapons - the first signs of a $2 billion US aid package designed to turn a ragtag force with an acute desertion problem into an army that would allow Western troops to begin pulling out. Another $6.2 billion is promised to the corrupt and widely mistrusted Afghan police force.

However, a senior provincial leader warned that the militia "must be controlled". "These are all Sher Mohammed Akhundzada's men," he explained.

Akhundzada was provincial governor of Helmand until British pressure caused him to be removed in December. British counter-narcotics officials are certain he was a key figure in the province's drugs trade.

h/t Afghanistan Watch

The Taliban continues its attacks in Southern Afghanistan

AFP - Taliban fighters attacked police posts in southern Afghanistan provincial capitals overnight, sparking battles that left seven rebels and two policemen dead, police said Saturday.

Taliban militants have stepped up their attacks in the past weeks although military officials reject the rebels' talk of a "spring offensive" as propaganda.

The ambush on the supply convoy Friday was the biggest of such attacks, which occur regularly but usually result in few or no deaths or trucks being set alight.

Pakistan's peace agreement with the Taliban led to an increase in Afghan attacks

More from the AP:

More suicide bombers enter Afghanistan

UNITED NATIONS - Suicide bombers are crossing the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan with increasing frequency, launching attacks directed against foreign military convoys with funding from abroad, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report to the Security Council on Tuesday.

Despite high losses during the past year, the Taliban insurgency appears to be "emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by tactical failures" in Afghanistan, Ban said in the report.

The September 2006 peace agreement between Pakistan and pro-Taliban fighters in that country's North Waziristan region did not prevent the border area from being used as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan, Ban said. Instead, the agreement led to a 50 percent increase in security incidents involving insurgents in Afghanistan's Khost province and a 70 percent increase in Paktika province — both on the border — between September and November, he said.

Increasing violence in Afghanistan

Slow Progress on Security and Rights

More than 1,000 civilians were killed in 2006, many of them as a result of attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces in southern Afghanistan. In all, more than 4,400 Afghans died in conflict-related violence, twice as many as in 2005 and more than in any other year since the United States helped oust the Taliban in 2001. The United Nations estimated that the armed conflict displaced 15,000 families – about 80,000 people – in southern Afghanistan.

Violence against women increases in Iraq and Afghanistan

From the AP:

Women under attack in Iraq, Afghanistan

Women are facing increasing violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, especially when they speak out publicly to defend women's rights, a senior U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council.

"What UNIFEM is seeing on the ground — in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia — is that public space for women in these situations is shrinking," Heyzer said Thursday. "Women are becoming assassination targets when they dare defend women's rights in public decision-making."

Germany increases its commitment to the fight in Afghanistan

NATO has been calling for more forces to support the mission in Afghanistan as the Taliban become resurgent and rumors of a spring offensive are in the air.

German Parliament Approves Planes for Afghanistan

As expected, Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, voted on Friday to send six to eight Tornado reconnaissance jets to support NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The planes will be stationed at the German base at Masar-i-Scharif in northern Afghanistan. Germany will also be sending an additional 500 support personnel in a mission that has been authorized until the next time the Afghanistan mission comes up for review on October 13, 2007.

Germany currently has around 3,000 soldiers stationed with the NATO mission in Afghanistan -- known as ISAF -- but they are confined to the relatively peaceful region of northern Afghanistan. Germany has led the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the north, and has been very successful in building up infrastructure, schools and other municipal institutions.

Nevertheless, Germany has in the past come under fire from NATO officials for not helping out in the increasingly bloody fight in southern Afghanistan. Given the expected Taliban "spring offensive," the Tornados are a much-needed support for the US, Canadian, Dutch and other soldiers fighting in the south.

Although harshly attacked by Republicans for not backing the war in Iraq; countries like Germany, France and Canada have had troops in Afghanistan since the start of the conflict in 2001.

The Taliban is encouraged by failures in Iraq

According to a report in Der Spiegel, the Taliban are encouraged by American setbacks in Iraq, and believe that NATO is divided and demoralized and can be expelled from Afghanistan.

TALIBAN LEADER MULLAH DADULLAH

The Taliban are gearing up for their "spring offensive" in Afghanistan.

Bloodthirsty propaganda is everywhere in northern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. Virtually every CD salesman in Peshawar is selling the latest films released by the Taliban leader. "Oh, you want the Dadullah tapes," says one. "They're very popular right now." ... He says Pakistani police already causes him enough trouble when they find terror DVDs in the suitcases of journalists at the airport.

The films herald a bloody spring in Afghanistan, one in which Western troops will face a newly strengthened Taliban army under a re-organized leadership. Well armed and better logistically organized than ever before, the Taliban are preparing for their fight against the hated NATO troops, whose alliance has recently shown signs of internal division.

Western intelligence agencies believe the Taliban have used the winter to thoroughly tighten their organizational structure.

Almost all the DVDs feature footage of the brutal execution of alleged CIA spies. The "helpers of the infidels" have their heads removed while still alive. About 250 such murders have occurred in recent months.

Mullah Abdullah has been a genuine nightmare for the foreign troops and intelligence agencies in Afghanistan for quite some time. The videos are analyzed with a meticulousness that matches their menacing character. "We know from experience that many of his pronouncements are not propaganda," says one Western anti-terrorism agent. "He's carried out most of his threats." Dadullah already threatened a wave of suicide attacks in 2006. No one took him seriously at first. By the end of 2006, the CIA's statisticians counted about 139 such attacks throughout the country -- five times more than in 2005. 2007 could be even bloodier.

NATO expects a rough year

Experts on the conflict believe the new Taliban tactic will cause serious difficulties for NATO. "If suicide attacks are carried out all over the country, it becomes difficult to decide on how to allocate troops," Pakistani Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid points out. NATO could quickly be demoralized, like the United States in Iraq, since it is already internally divided and disposes of no military reserves, much less a rapid reaction force. "2007 will be a very serious year," Rashid predicts.

Cheney and Bush continue to be led by the nose by bin Laden's declaration that Iraq is the central front in the war:

Some Politicians See Iraq As A Diversion From The War On Terror – But Osama Bin Laden Has Proclaimed That The "Third World War … Is Raging" In Iraq. Ayman al Zawahiri has called the struggle in Iraq "the place for the greatest battle," and terrorists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere have come to Iraq to fight democracy.

Are they falling for a sucker's bet? Will America have troops ready to respond if the threatened summer offensive occurs? Or will they have been spent on the surge in Iraq?

The Canadian View of Afghanistan

Is the country collapsing?

It's hard to overstate just how badly things are going at the moment, according to Barnett R. Rubin of New York University, a leading scholar on Afghanistan.

Otherwise, he warns, the resurgent Taliban, record opium production and a moribund reconstruction effort will push the country into chaos.

"It's not just about a military strategy," Masty says, "it's about who owns the process, and that should be the people of Afghanistan. Not just warlords and politicians in Kabul but real people in real villages."

"Afghans seriously believe that the $16 billion [US] in aid that the country has received since 2001 has been stolen or wasted."

Rubin also believes, along with every other Afghanistan expert contacted for this article, that the United States has yet to take its Afghan campaign seriously enough to invest the time, troops and resources that the situation requires. That might be changing, he says, but the war in Iraq, tensions with Iran and other pressing international demands could just as easily divert U.S. attention yet again from a country that's known nothing but war for the past 30 years.

[A]t the moment, Gannon says, the Afghan police are widely seen by the public as corrupt and untrustworthy. Police officers are often involved in violent crime, she says, often for understandable reasons.

Canada has roughly 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, mostly stationed in the south, where much of the fighting has taken place. Since 2002, 44 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan.

Quit making excuses and catch bin Laden

The Huffington Post points out this article:

General says eliminating bin Laden not priority

The Army's highest-ranking officer and the former leader of the secretive world of Special Operations offered his thoughts on the importance of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden during a luncheon here Friday.

"I don't know whether we'll find him," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said in a speech to the Rotary Club of Fort Worth. "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."

Schoomaker, pulled out of retirement in 2003 to lead the Army, pointed to the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killings of his sons, Uday and Qusay, and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence that bin Laden's capture or death would have little effect on the threats to the United States.

"So we get him, and then what?" Schoomaker said. "There's a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today. He's hiding, and he knows we're looking for him. We know he's not particularly effective. I'm not sure there's that great of a return" on capturing or killing bin Laden.

Killing Uday, Qusay and Saddam had little effect on threats to the U.S. because they weren't a threat in the first place.

Osama helped organize and fund the largest terrorist attack on the United States and followed it up with attacks in Madrid and London. Indonesia has also suffered severely. Al Qaeda has found a new safe haven in Pakistan, the one Islamic nation with nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Pakistan is also the most famous nuclear weapons proliferator in the world. A. Q. Khan lives comfortably at home and is regarded a national hero. If bin Laden ever gets a nuclear bomb, this is where he'll get it.

Despite what the General said, we are not actively hunting for bin Laden. Pakistan has halted operations in Waziristan and the Taliban are now resurgent. The U.S. has refused to pursue Taliban and al Qaeda forces into Pakistan with its own forces.

Britain will increase the number of troops in Afghanistan

Britain intends to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, even as it pulls out troops from Iraq. Dick Cheney praised the pullout, suggesting it affirmed progress in the country. He then denounced the Democrat's plan to do the same thing, claiming that would "validate al Qaeda".

Iraq leader welcomes troops' exit

Tony Blair's plan to recall 1,600 British troops from Iraq within the next few months has been welcomed by the country's president.

Jalal Talabani's spokesman said it was a "welcome catalyst" that would force Iraqi forces to take responsibility for the country's security.

"But Basra is still, in Tony Blair's words, a difficult and dangerous place, which means that this is far short of the victory they wanted in 2003 but something, they hope, short of a total defeat."

The BBC report has an interesting chart of the number of British forces in Iraq over the last few years, with a high of more than 40,000 in early 2003, dropping to less than 20,000 that May and less than 10,000 in May 2004.

EXCLUSIVE: Cheney Says British Troop Withdrawal Is Positive Sign

"Well, I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well," Cheney told ABC News' Jonathan Karl.

"In fact, I talked to a friend just the other day who had driven to Baghdad down to Basra, seven hours, found the situation dramatically improved from a year or so ago, sort of validated the British view they had made progress in southern Iraq and that they can therefore reduce their force levels," Cheney said.

Cheney also had harsh words for Democratic leaders, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., who says he wants to stop the surge of more U.S. troops into Iraq.

"I want you to know that the American people will not support a policy of retreat," Cheney told the soldiers.

Increase in troops to Afghanistan

The number of British troops in Afghanistan is set to rise Britain is to increase its military presence in southern Afghanistan by about 800 troops to 5,800.

But the UK's overall deployment in Afghanistan will only increase by 300 because the military is also reducing its presence in Kabul by 500 personnel.

The British troops are part of a 32,000-strong Nato force which is currently based in Afghanistan.

25,000 rally in Kabul to give amnesty to warlords

Afghan warlords in amnesty rally

Around 25,000 people have rallied in the Afghan capital Kabul, calling for a proposed war crimes amnesty for former military commanders to be made law.

The upper house of parliament has passed the controversial bill but it has yet to be signed by the president.

Tens of thousands of people were killed and tortured during decades of war and unrest in the country.

If the bill were to become law, those who led fighting first as leaders of the anti-Soviet resistance during the 1980s and then during the 1992-1996 civil war would be immune to prosecution for war crimes.

The protesters, waving placards with pictures of political leaders, gathered in the city's Ghazi football stadium, where people were executed and tortured during the Taleban era.

"Whoever is against mujahideen is against Islam and they are the enemies of this country," former fighter Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, now an influential lawmaker, told the crowd of demonstrators.

Things get worse in Afghanistan

Taliban Seize Rural District in Southwest as Police Flee

The police in Baqwa town warned their provincial headquarters that the Taliban were advancing in such large numbers they could not hold the district office, according to Baryalai Khan, the secretary to the provincial police chief.

Taliban forces have often overrun district offices in the past, sacking them and then usually leaving after a few hours. But this year they have seized and held entire regions.