- Reminiscent of a casting call for "America's Next
Top Model," the Obama administration has embarked on a search for
the ever-elusive "good Taliban" with whom it can negotiate a
partial military climb-down.
-
- In an exclusive--and revealing--March 8 interview with The
New York Times, President Barack Obama declared that the United States
"was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation
process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements
of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq."
-
- Reflecting desperation and ignorance when it comes to
the war-scarred Central Asian nation, like its Republican predecessor,
the Democratic administration has failed to come to grips with ubiquitous
facts on the ground.
-
- A rapidly-expanding Taliban insurgency against the U.S.-led
NATO occupation and the warlord-dominated Karzai regime has brought imperialism's
regional domination project to a screeching halt.
-
- After seven years of occupation and the slow bleed-out
of a protracted war, the Pashtun populated southern Afghan provinces and
Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA) are effectively controlled by a melange of far-right
Islamist Talibs and drug-linked militias loyal to the Hezb-i-Islami of
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
-
- First reported February 27 by Al Jazeera,
the now not-so-secret talks amongst Afghan officials, European diplomats
and Hekmatyar-aligned forces have progressed to the point that the puppet
Karzai regime "has been exploring the potential for negotiations with
the Taliban leadership council of Mullah Muhammad Omar," according
to The New York Times.
-
- In a March 13 follow-up article, the Times previewed
the new product line that the administration will soon be rolling-out to
a sceptical public tired of imperial wars and self-inflicted economic crises:
-
- The plan reflects in part a conclusion within the administration
that most of the insurgent foot soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan are
"reconcilable" and can be pried away from the hard-core organizations
of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least 70 percent of the insurgents, and
possibly more, can be encouraged to lay down their arms with the proper
incentives, administration officials have said.
-
- However, other unnamed "officials" were far
less sanguine of the prospects for the plan's success and told the Times,
-
- Several European officials said that the overarching
theme behind the Afghanistan review was that NATO was looking for a way
out of Afghanistan, and that everything done now was toward that end. "The
goal now is simply to get to a point to prevent Afghanistan and Pakistan
from becoming a place from which you can launch attacks on the West,"
a senior European official said. (Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker, "Obama
Afghan Plan Focuses on Pakistan Aid and Appeal to Militants," The
New York Times, March 13, 2009)
-
- While U.S. imperialism continues to dream of pipelines
and military bases stretching from Baku to Karachi and beyond, the fact
is that boat has long set sail.
-
- America's Search for the "Good Taliban"
-
- Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday,
Vice President Joe Biden claimed that "at least 70%" of Islamist
Taliban guerrilla fighters were "mercenaries" who could be persuaded--with
what else--cold, hard cash, to lay down their arms and join the "peace
process."
-
- According to Biden, "Five percent of the Taliban
is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated.
Another 25% or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their
commitment to the insurgency. Roughly 70% are involved because of the money."
-
- Memo to the Vice President: that "incorrigible"
five percent comprise the top leadership of the far-right Islamist movement,
including al-Qaeda-linked commanders such as "Mullah Bradar, Sirajuddin
Haqqani and Anwarul Haq Mujahid. These three have pledged their allegiance
to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who has transformed the Taliban into an
ultra-conservative force compared to a few years ago when the Taliban were
a Pashtun tribal movement," Asia Times reports.
- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KC13Df02.html
reports.
-
- In other words, nothing short of a complete U.S./NATO
withdrawal from the Central Asian "battlespace" will satisfy
Mullah Omar and his minions. And what of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, suddenly
everyone's newest "best friend forever"?
-
- Dubbed the "Michael Corleone of jihad" by <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KC13Df01.html>Asia
Times, the sociopathic former Afghan Prime Minister who pulverized Kabul
during the post-Soviet fall-out amongst mujahedin thieves in the early
1990s, is positioning himself for whatever he can grab.
-
- Biden certainly knows that late last year a select group
of Afghan diplomats plus Karzai's brother, Ahmad Wali, finally talked to
some Taliban, good or bad, with mediation by notorious Taliban-enabler
Saudi Arabia. That means, with US approval. ...
-
- Recently in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Karzai
people thought they had handed Hekmatyar the famous "offer he can't
refuse": asylum in Saudi Arabia first, then return to Afghanistan
with full immunity. They forgot that a proud Hekmatyar does not want asylum.
He wants a piece of the action in Kabul--preferably the meatiest part.
(Pepe Escobar, "Taliban set to burn the Reichstag?", Asia
Times Online, March 13, 2009)
-
- Lest we forget, this former darling of the United States,
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) during
the anti-Soviet jihad received the bulk of CIA-Saudi largesse as America's
plan to hand the Soviet Union "its own Vietnam" worked splendidly--for
the international narcotics trade and American-linked terrorist jackals.
-
- As Alfred W. McCoy pointed out, it was none other than
Hekmatyar, with Hezb-i-Islami as the "beard" for rather profitable
operations on both sides of the "Afpak" border, who pioneered
refining heroin inside Afghanistan.
-
- A piece of work from the get-go, Hekmatyar was a former
engineering student and founder of Afghanistan's Muslim Brotherhood. This
brave mujahid cut his political teeth by throwing vials of acid in the
faces of Kabul University women who refused to wear the veil. Accused of
murdering a leftist student, Hekmatyar fled to Pakistan where he continued
his activities with "guidance" from ISI handlers. When the Carter
administration began its destabilization campaign against Kabul's socialist
government at the behest of current Obama foreign policy éminence
grise, Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Hekmatyar
was waiting in the wings. McCoy writes:
-
- Instead of arranging a meeting with a broad spectrum
of resistance leaders, ISI offered the CIA's envoy an alliance with its
own Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the small Hezb-i-Islami
guerrilla group. The CIA accepted the offer and, over the next decade,
gave more than half its covert aid to Hekmatyar's guerrillas. It was, as
the U.S. Congress would find a decade later, a dismal decision. Unlike
the later resistance leaders who commanded strong popular followings inside
Afghanistan, Hekmatyar led a guerrilla force that was a creature of the
Pakistan military. After the CIA built his Hezb-i-Islami into the largest
Afghan guerrilla force, Hekmatyar would prove himself brutal and corrupt.
Not only did he command the largest guerrilla army, but Hekmatyar would
use it--with the full support of ISI and the tacit tolerance of the CIA--to
become Afghanistan's leading drug lord. (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity
in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991, pp. 449-450)
-
- And as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed
in their 2008 World Drug Report, http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/WDR_2008_eng_web.pdf
- with Afghanistan currently producing 92% of the world's
supply of illicit opium, that would give Hekmatyar literally billions of
reasons to "get back into the game" as they say.
-
- Although you wouldn't know any of this if you relied
solely on The New York Times. In fact, Carlotta Gall, a journalist
who certainly knows better, will only report that "Mr. Hekmatyar,
a ruthless, hard-line fundamentalist known for reneging on past agreements,
is widely rumored to reside in Pakistan," while glossing over his
documented history as a world class drug lord fully the rival of Colombia's
late, though unlamented, Pablo Escobar. And so it goes.
-
- These however, are pipe dreams bound to end in abysmal
failure for the United States. As Asia Times reports, "the
Taliban have a virtual siege all around the capital Kabul" and as
I write, are busily preparing their spring offensive. And with the Pakistan'
Army's truce with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and
the newly-launched jihadi outfit, Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council
of United Holy Warriors), planning to "surge" an estimated 15-20,000
fighters of their own across the border, one can expect a horrendous increase
in violence.
-
- In a prescient article published by Asia
Times, independent journalist and researcher Anthony Fenton cites the Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan (http://www.rawa.org/index.php)
on "the anticipated effect of the war's expansion on Afghans."
-
- The anti-fundamentalist and anti-occupation women's rights
group states: "The very first outcome of the surge for Afghan people
will be increase in the number of civilian casualties ... In the past seven
years, thousands of innocent people have been killed or wounded by the
US/NATO bombardments. In the past weeks under Obama's rule, around 100
Afghan civilians have been killed."
-
- RAWA adds that "The surge in level of troops will
also [result in a] surge in protests against the US/NATO in Afghanistan
and it will also push more people towards the Taliban and other terrorist
groups as a reaction against occupation forces and their mistreatment against
people."
-
- Despite these dire predictions, many of which have already
been bourn out on the ground--and on the bodies of ordinary Afghans caught
in the crossfire--any discussion of a complete U.S. and NATO withdrawal
from Afghanistan is "off the table."
-
- Fenton writes, "Contrary to the elite, bipartisan
consensus inside North America that supports the war's escalation, and
echoing fears that are common among Afghans, RAWA argues that 'We think
the 30,000 extra troops will only serve the US regional strategy in changing
Afghanistan to its military base, it will [have] nothing to do with fighting
the terrorist groups, as they claim'."
-
- If history is any judge of the present American trajectory,
particularly as imperialism embarks on its quixotic quest for the elusive
"good Taliban," if successful, Washington would insure they were
"trained-up fierce" and deployed as a new armed force for global
destabilization operations in Central, South Asia and the Middle East.
-
- As I documented in "Unconventional Warfare
in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers"
(Antifascist Calling, December 19, 2008), the Pentagon's field manual (FM
3-05.130) http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2008/12/unconventional-
warfare-in-21st-century.htmltitled Unconventional Warfare lays
it out in black and white:
- http://www.wikileaks.org/leak/us-fm3-05-130.pdf
-
- Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups
of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or
other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and
unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces
may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors,
individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or
insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries,
disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other
social or political "undesirables." (Unconventional Warfare,
p. 1-3)
-
- "Paging Mullah Omar, white courtesy telephone!"
-
- http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=view
- Article&code=BUR20090315&articleId=12716
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