Anti-terror laws in Pakistan

Protesters in London demonstrating against Pakistan's "state of emergency". Image originally uploaded by Orhan

Not so great at catching actual terrorists, but very good for stifling dissent:

Another opposition figure contacted by Bhutto earlier in the week, cricket legend Imran Khan, was moved to Lahore's biggest prison early Thursday after being charged under anti-terror laws for protesting against emergency rule.

Musharraf said in a series of interviews that he would not consider quitting until the turmoil in the country was over, telling Sky News: "I am not a dictator, I want a democracy."

Anyone who thinks that we need to make a devil's bargain with Musharraf to avoid having the bomb fall into the hands of radicals should remember these points:

It was the Pakistani military, with the help of A.Q. Khan, that sold nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

It was the Pakistani military which backed the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11.

Musharraf signed a deal with the Taliban in September of 2006 that effectively gave them safe haven in Waziristan and has allowed them to relaunch attacks on Afghanistan. 2007 has been the most violent year in Afghanistan, since the 2001 invasion.

And while Musharraf has now disbanded his country's secular courts and turned his forces against protestors demanding a return to democracy, this is how the war against Pakistan's radical militants is going:

[I]n the last several days, the militants have extended their reach, capturing more territory in Pakistan’s settled areas and chasing away frightened policemen, local government officials said.

As inconspicuous as it might be in a nation of 160 million people, the takeover of the small Alpuri district headquarters this week was considered a particular embarrassment for General Musharraf. It showed how the militants could still thumb their noses at the Pakistani Army.

In fact, local officials and Western diplomats said, there is little evidence that the 12-day-old emergency decree has increased the government’s leverage in fighting the militants, or that General Musharraf has used the decree to take any extraordinary steps to combat them.

h/t John Cole

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.)

Are we driving our adversaries into each others arms?

The 9/11 attacks put the U.S. and Iran in the unusual position of being on the same side against multiple adversaries, the Taliban, al Qaeda and Sunni dominated Iraq. Because of this common interest, Iran was an American asset in the days after the fall of the Taliban.

Opinions differ wildly over how much help the Iranians actually were on the ground. But what is beyond doubt is how critical they were to stabilizing the country after the fall of Kabul.

This could've been an opportunity to end the decades long hostility between the two countries, but the hawks in both nations have a vested interest in keeping the conflict alive.

Instead of diplomacy, we've had years of sabre rattling, starting with the declaration of the "Axis of Evil", in which Iran and North Korea were apparently included simply for dramatic effect:

Tehran backed up the political support with financial muscle: at a donor's conference in Tokyo, Iran pledged $500 million (at the time, more than double the Americans') to help rebuild Afghanistan. In a pattern that would become familiar, however, a chill quickly followed the warming in relations. Barely a week after the Tokyo meeting, Iran was included with Iraq and North Korea in the "Axis of Evil." Michael Gerson, now a NEWSWEEK contributor, headed the White House speechwriting shop at the time. He says Iran and North Korea were inserted into Bush's controversial State of the Union address in order to avoid focusing solely on Iraq.

Given a president who thinks that open dialogue is a sign of weakness, and sends his vice president to strut on an aircraft carrier and talk about regime change, it's got to occur to the Mullah's that if Iraq ever emerges from chaos, they'll have 150,000 hostile forces on their border with nothing to keep them occupied.

So while John McCain sings "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran", Rudy Giuliani speculates about dropping tactical nuclear weapons and Joe Lieberman openly advocates "limited air strikes", we start to hear that Iran may hope to keep Iraq destabilized.

And now we see claims that Iran may be aiding it's old nemesis the Taliban:

Experts say a strengthened Taliban would benefit Tehran in a number of ways. Peter Tomsen, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, says a weakened Afghan state lessens the likelihood it can become a U.S. ally against Iran. By maintaining a certain level of instability, he says, “it keeps us tied down. After all, we have airbases in Afghanistan where we could mount attacks on Iran.” Some analysts call it “managed chaos,” a strategy they say is similar to the one Iran employs in Iraq. Abetting the Taliban also boosts Iran’s leverage at a time when it is under pressure to end its uranium-enrichment program. “It’s saying, ‘If you push us on the nuclear issue, we can make life hell for you not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan,’” says Amin Tarzi, an Afghan expert at Radio Free Liberty/Radio Liberty.

Now that the diplomats have been sidelined, and we have a leadership which talks publicly about opening a third front in a war that's already a fiasco, would anyone be surprised that Iran finds it in it's interests to keep the "Great Satan" distracted?

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.

The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies have set up shop in Waziristan

Pakistan treads carefully in kingdom of the Taliban

The Taliban have been in control of North Waziristan for more than a year and have established a militant Islamic “emirate” where political opponents are beheaded, girls are banned from schools, video shops have been closed and barbers are forced to display signs stating they will not shave beards.

Nowhere will this hurt more than in Washington, where intelligence officials have identified the remote and backward province as Al-Qaeda’s new headquarters. Bin Laden is believed to have regrouped his lieutenants and rebuilt his training camps there.

They allied themselves with local militants and began a battle with the Pakistani army for control. Since 2002 they have killed more than 750 Pakistani soldiers, executed 200 pro-government tribal elders and imposed sharia (Islamic law).

According to a number of Waziris opposed to Taliban rule, Musharraf’s deal effectively handed them over to Islamic militants and their Al-Qaeda allies, and turned the province into a terror-state.

Critics of “Talibanisation” have been murdered in a series of motorcycle drive-by shootings, lynched or beheaded, with warning notes pinned to their torsos.

[F]ighting erupted after men loyal to Tahir Yuldashev, the Uzbek commander who is believed to have up to 2,000 gunmen under his command, refused an order to disarm by local Taliban chiefs in North and South Waziristan who are under intense pressure from Islamabad to keep their side of the peace deals.

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

Battles raging among factions in Waziristan

Pakistan fights near Afghanistan kill 52

Fighting between local and foreign militants Friday killed 52 people in a conflict between Pakistanis and suspected al-Qaida-linked extremists.

Since fighting began last week, 213 people have been killed, including 177 Uzbeks and their local allies, [Pakistani Interior Minister] Sherpao told The Associated Press.

The minister said the conflict intensified Friday after foreigners failed to comply with an ultimatum from tribal elders to leave their territory. Security officials said tribal militias had fired rockets at the hideouts of the foreigners in several locations.

South Waziristan is generally off-limits to journalists, making it hard to verify reports of the fighting.

[T]he government has claimed that the violence in South Waziristan vindicates its policy of using traditional leaders, and not the army, to combat militancy along the border.

Some analysts, however, say militants with links to Taliban and al-Qaida are involved on both sides of the current conflict, which also pits local tribes against each other, and that blood feuds could deepen insecurity in a region viewed as a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.

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.

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.

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.

Rumors of an Afghan summer offensive

Taliban deploy 10,000 fighters for attack

(via AOP news)

More than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, were killed in fighting last year, the most violent year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. NATO commanders and analysts warn this year could be just as bad or worse.

Ater attempts at conventional pitched battles failed last year, the Taliban are expected to return to more conventional guerrilla tactics against government forces and the roughly 45,000 foreign soldiers in the country.

A key tactic is expected to be suicide bombings, which rose dramatically last year, killing more than 200 people, but which still remain much rarer than in Iraq. The Taliban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready and another 3,000 in training.

Afghanistan's government says the militants are still sponsored by Pakistan, their main backer until September 11 attacks on the United States.

Eikenberry outlines the Pakistani peace agreement

I was wondering what General Eikenberry meant when he warned of the growing threat of Talibanization inside Pakistan. Here are his comments on the agreement between Pakistan and the Waziri tribes, where he basically defines the term:

September 2006

Q General, General Abizaid this week said he was skeptical about a peace agreement that was reached by the Pakistani central government and the tribes in that semi-autonomous border area. Are you also skeptical? And how are you going to deal with the problem of Pakistan, of a safe haven for this larger, better organized Taliban challenge?

GEN. EIKENBERRY: First of all, a little bit about the agreement. The agreement, I think everyone knows, is in north Waziristan, a particular agency within the Federally Administered Tribal Agency of Pakistan. It sits against the Afghanistan border in southeastern Afghanistan.

The agreement itself -- the principles, the tenets of the agreement are very good.

So the tenets of the agreement -- the first, no Talibanization of the area. Broadly speaking, then, that means that there will not be an active campaign to expand extremism within the area -- very critical, because it's the ideology, at the end of the day, which has to be defeated.

Militarily, very important, as I looked at the agreement myself, is that firmly against supporting or allowing cross-border attacks by militants into Afghanistan -- very importantly, proscribes foreign fighters from having sanctuary within north Waziristan.

Then the last piece, ... this does not represent a removal or a relocation of Pakistan military army forces, from north Waziristan; they remain in north Waziristan. And I've been told by my Pakistani military counterparts, the intention is, then, with that capability, where they're now not present in setting up roadblocks and checkpoints, which are being turned over to the Pakistani police in the interior of north Waziristan, a relocation of those military forces to the border of Afghanistan, and then using that additional capability for quick reaction forces.

So that's the agreement. The tenets and the principles of the agreement are very sound. And now we have to wait and watch for the implementation.

Based on his comments, below: the plan has been a failure from the U.S. perspective. The Taliban have acheived a safe haven in Waziristan. They're recruiting and staging attacks on Afghanistan from within that safe haven. The peace deal with Pakistani forces has allowed them to triple cross border attacks and more are expected during a Taliban offensive this spring.

Are we at risk of losing ground in Afghanistan?

General Warns of Perils in Afghanistan

A senior U.S. military commander urged Pakistan yesterday to crack down on an entrenched network of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, training camps and recruiting grounds -- a sanctuary from which fighters have tripled cross-border attacks since September and are preparing an anticipated major spring offensive in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Army Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the outgoing top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, also warned that an even greater threat than the resurgent Taliban is the possibility that the government of President Hamid Karzai will suffer an irreversible loss of legitimacy among the Afghan population.

"Al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership presence inside of Pakistan remains a very significant problem," Eikenberry testified before the House Armed Services Committee, warning of the "growing threat of Talibanization" inside Pakistan.

"A steady, direct attack against the command and control in Pakistan in sanctuary areas is essential for us to achieve success," Eikenberry said, joining other U.S. officials in publicly pressuring the Islamabad government to crack down on the safe havens in its frontier regions.

Taliban forces in Pakistan's North Waziristan have staged mass attacks on U.S. border camps, including a strike in recent days that saw the U.S. military respond with artillery fire into Pakistan.

"The accumulated effects of violent terrorist insurgent attacks, corruption, insufficient social resources and growing income disparities, all overlaid by a major international presence, are taking their toll on Afghan government legitimacy," he said. "A point could be reached at which the government of Afghanistan becomes irrelevant to its people, and the goal of establishing a democratic, moderate, self-sustaining state could be lost forever."

A critical question, Eikenberry said, is whether the Afghan government is "winning." "In several critical areas -- corruption, justice, law enforcement and counter-narcotics -- it is not," he said. He called Afghan government institutions "extraordinarily weak."

Greater U.S. and international efforts are urgently needed to build a court and corrections system in Afghanistan, and to strengthen efforts to train an Afghanistan police force, which he said is "several years behind" compared with the development of the Afghan army. The Pentagon is seeking $5.9 billion this year and $2.7 billion in 2008 to build up Afghan security forces, including the police.

Eikenberry stressed that Taliban forces -- though making gains in relatively lawless regions of southern Afghanistan, which had few coalition troops until last summer -- have not been able to retake areas where the Afghan government and security forces have established a presence.

Pakistan's government in September struck a peace agreement that halted military raids in North Waziristan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but since then the number of cross-border attacks has as much as tripled.

News from the forgotten front

U.S. artillery rounds target Taliban fighters in Pakistan

The use of the largely ungoverned Waziristan area of Pakistan as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters has become a greater irritant between Washington and Islamabad since Pakistan put in place a peace agreement there in September that was intended to stop cross-border incursions.

Pakistani border forces, which had been active in stopping Taliban incursions into Afghanistan as recently as last spring, stopped offensive actions against them once the peace deal took effect, he said.

Members of Nicholson's brigade, which is based at Fort Drum, N.Y., recently were told that instead of going home this month after a yearlong tour, they will stay for an extra four months, until June.

The brigade of about 3,500 soldiers is being kept in Afghanistan because senior commanders decided they needed more forces to deal with an anticipated Taliban offensive this spring.