From our partners at The Agonist

Sept. 2

Reuters – An apparent air strike by foreign forces killed six election campaign workers in Afghanistan’s north today, a government spokesman said, and NATO-led forces said hey were investigating the incident.

Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces while hunting militants have been a major source of tension between President Hamid Karzai and Western nations. Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.

Today’s attack happened in the Rostaq district of Takhar, a relatively peaceful province in the north near Tajikistan, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, unlike areas in the south and east where the resurgent Taliban are mostly active.

Spokesman Faiz Mohammad Tawhidi said the candidate, Abdul Wahid, and some of his supporters were wounded in the air strike, which Tawhidi said included two helicopters and two fixed-wing aircraft.

“Six of his campaigners have been killed in the aerial attack,” Tawhidi said.

He said the number of casualties could rise and that he had been told of the strikes by security officials.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said investigations were under way.

“We are now aware of the allegations and we’re looking into the operations taking place in the area,” the spokesman said

From our partners at Peace Action West

Tonight, President Obama sat at the same desk from which George W. Bush announced the bombing in Iraq in 2003 to declare the end of “combat operations.” The war in Iraq has faded to the background for most people in America, while soldiers and Iraqis have had their lives upturned and will continue to do so whether the “Operation Iraqi Freedom” portion of the war has ended or not.

As Peace Action West has been arguing since the debate around Iraq withdrawal began, leaving a residual force of 50,000 troops does not constitute the end of a war. In addition to the transitional force, who will still be armed and likely see combat, the number of private contractors is going to double. While it is encouraging that the Obama administration has followed through on its original timeline, we must be vigilant in remembering that the occupation of Iraq continues and make sure that at a minimum the troops are withdrawn by the end of 2011 as promised.

When President Obama discussed the end of the war in Afghanistan, it was clear that the voices of those of us who oppose the war are being heard, and congressional impatience about the war is having an impact. The president acknowledged the plummeting support for the war, and reemphasized his plan to start withdrawing troops in 2011, stating, “But make no mistake: this transition will begin – because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.” Unfortunately, he gave no indication of a clear end date for withdrawal, citing conditions on the ground as the deciding factor, and offered the same tired justifications for the war that fail to hold up to scrutiny.

While the war in Iraq is not over for the 50,000 troops, their families, and the people of Iraq, it’s only getting worse in Afghanistan. President Obama acknowledged flagging public support for the war, but implored Americans not to lose sight of what’s at stake.  We have seen all too clearly what is at stake this week, as 22 American troops were killed in just the last 5 days, and civilian casualties have spiked. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, “the strategy of the war on terrorism must be reassessed. . . . The experience over the past eight years showed that fighting [the Taliban] in Afghan villages has been ineffective and is not achieving anything but killing civilians.” In addition to the cost in lives, President Obama explicitly pointed out the cost here at home, with over $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far.

In his attempt to rally support for the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, President Obama did not offer anything new or convincing.  He is still asking for the tremendous sacrifice he eloquently described in the service of a strategy that is inappropriate to the threat from Al Qaeda and if anything is making the violence worse in Afghanistan. I have written many times before about why a military strategy is a tragic waste of resources, and President Obama did not offer any evidence to justify spending $1.7 billion per Al Qaeda member in Afghanistan every year.

President Obama talked about the tough decisions that will have to be made to deal with our country’s fiscal problems, but cutting our exorbitant military spending didn’t surface as one of them.  In discussing the war in Iraq, President Obama said, “there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.” It is our duty to respond not by accepting the misguided assumptions driving this war, but by redoubling our efforts to hold the president and Congress to defining a clear end game for Afghanistan and bringing our troops and tax dollars home.

From our partners at Newshoggers.com

By Steve Hynd

Another coming departure from the Coalition of the Unwilling:

After his meeting with NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Wednesday evening, President Bronislaw Komorowski said Poland’s involvement in Afghanistan was taking away vital funds for defence modernisation.

"The costs of operations are so significant they are having an effect on the modernization of the armed forces," Komorowski said during his trip to Brussels, Wednesday.

Poland has 2,600 troops in Afghanistan, with 400 hundred in reserve, and President Komorowski said during his recent election campaign that finding a concrete withdrawal date was an urgent policy goal.

The Dutch have already gone, Canada is to follow, Spain and Australia are thinking about it. The U.S. has convinced the new set of poodles in London to stay until 2015 no matter what the vast majority of the British populace think but Cameron/Clegg will be hurt by it at the next election. In any case, NATO is in tatters now that the Dutch have proven that it's Charter is not a "stay the course" document.

Meanwhile, 2010 is already the most deadly year yet for US troops in Afghanistan, with four months of the year still to go.

As allies leave, US troops will have to take up the slack and more will be killed. Unless, of course, Obama takes the hint from his allies and over 60% of US voters and heads for the exit too.

America can't afford Afghanistan either, in these times of unemployment and economic depression. But the Pentagon has a $547 million PR budget.

From our partners at The Agonist

Pepe Escobar | Sept ! | Asia Times

Dear reader: let’s sit back, relax, and take a trip down memory lane to prehistoric times – the pre-9/11, pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook world.

Ten years ago, Taliban Afghanistan – Talibanistan – was under a social, cultural, political and economic nightmare. Arguably, not much has changed. Or has it?

Ten years ago, New York-based photographer Jason Florio and myself slowly crossed Talibanistan overland from east to west, from the Pakistani border at Landi Kotal to the Iranian border at Islam Qillah. As Afghan aid workers acknowledged, we were the
first Westerners to pull this off in quite a while.

Those were the days. Bill Clinton was enjoying his last stretch at the White House. Osama bin Laden was a discreet guest of Mullah Omar – hitting the front pages only occasionally. There was no hint of 9/11, or of the invasion of Iraq, or of the “war on terror”, or of the rebranding of the AfPak war, or of a global financial crisis. Globalization ruled, and the United States was the undisputed global top dog. The Clinton administration and the Taliban were deep into Pipelineistan territory – arguing over the tortuous, proposed Trans-Afghan gas pipeline.

We tried everything, but we couldn’t even get a glimpse of Mullah Omar. Osama bin Laden was also nowhere to be seen. But we did experience Talibanistan in action, in close detail. So why revisit it now? Blame it on the lure of archeology and history. This is both a glimpse of a long-lost world and a window to a possible future in Afghanistan.

If schizophrenia defined the Taliban in power, US schizophrenia still rules.

From our partners at Just Foreign Policy

President Obama wants credit for keeping his promise to end the war in Iraq. Some credit is due: the President reaffirmed his commitment to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, as required by the agreement between the U.S. and Iraq. But only partial credit is due, because the war-ending task is very far from complete.

The Iraq war is not over. This is not a left-wing critique. The consensus account of mainstream U.S. print media is that the 50,000 U.S. troops who remain have been "rebranded" from "combat" brigades to advise-and-assist brigades. The unfailingly pro-war Washington Post editorial board wrote yesterday:

For one thing, combat won’t really end on Sept. 1. Fifty thousand U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, and their duties will include counterterrorism work as well as continuing to train and assist Iraqi forces….

Moreover, the United States government is still "meddling" in Iraq’s internal political affairs, to use the term our media uses when countries we don’t like do it. U.S. officials are still trying to determine who will be in the Iraqi government and who should not. This is a key factor in the current political impasse in Baghdad, a fact which is generally omitted in mainstream press accounts that bemoan the failure of Iraqi politicians to form a government. It’s true that there is a failure on the part of Iraqi politicians, but they have enablers in their failure: the outside powers, including the U.S., Iran, and other countries, which are lobbying furiously for a government to their liking, and working to block any government that they don’t like. The impasse between the Iraqi politicians is also an impasse between the outside powers, fighting a proxy political war for influence in Iraq.

read more

From our partners at Newshoggers.com

By Dave Anderson:

We were told that the Iraqi insurgencies were desperate from 2003 to today despite most of those groups achieving one of their primary objectives,  forcing the United States out of Iraq, or at least out of their region and their hair.  High levels of US casualties were a sign of desperation.  Low levels of US casualties were a sign of desperation.  Successful IED attacks were a sign of desperation, unsuccessful IED attacks were a sign of desperation.  Effective assassination campaigns as well as a four year choke-hold on Iraqi oil exports through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline were definitely signs of desperation.  Boycotting elections and participating in elections were both signs of desperation.  They were desperate at all times despite denying the United States its maximal goal set.   

Now it looks like the Taliban is officially getting 'desperate:'

The number of US wounded in Afghanistan is reaching the same levels as the number of wounded needed to retake Fallujah in the Fall of 2004. 

As the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan continues, Landstuhl is
experiencing an increase in wounded patients to levels unseen since the
2004 battles in the Iraqi city of Fallouja.

The complexity and severity of wounds are also increasing, said Army
Col. John M. Cho, a chest surgeon who is the hospital's commander. On a
medical rating scale, the number of patients above a level considered
extremely critical has increased 190% in the last two months, he said.

November 2004 saw intense house to house fighting between heavy infantry against dug-in opponents who had months to prepare positions for the anticipated assault.  Afghttp://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d8345f80b469e200e5501e4f718833/post/composehanistan has not had any large division size assaults against prepared positions that will grind up infantry and spit out dead and wounded.  So if Afghanistan's wounded levels are comparable to the wounded levels seen during the Fallujah assault, the frequency and intensity of combat is most likely as high or higher than it had been at any point in Iraq when those insurgents were desperately fighting the US to a strategic draw. 

And the Taliban has expanded its presence into non-Pashtun dominated areas over the past couple of years:

Petraeus acknowledged the spread of Taliban influence, especially to
parts of the formerly peaceful north, but said the campaign to counter
the insurgency was nearing its final stages.

"I don't think anyone disagrees that the footprint of the Taliban has
spread," he said, adding the insurgents had "reconnected in various safe
havens and sanctuaries outside and inside the country," a reference to
Pakistan.

Fighting has expanded from the Pashtun south and east to the entire ring road including areas where NATO/ISAF forces had long considered to be relatively secure.  This is putting pressure on governments whose forces have low domestic backing for the Afghan deployment in a bind as the north was the easy deployment zone.  Now German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish forces are in routine combat and are taking politically very difficult casualties.  Those nations are likely to draw down their forces, like the Dutch did, because the political costs are not worth the minimal security benefits.  Peak foreign forces is either this week or last week, and foreign forces will draw down significantly even if the US does not. 

So the only conclusion that one can rationally draw from this evidence is that the Taliban is desperate:

Petraeus said the intensified fighting was a reflection of the
militants' desperation as the alliance poured in more resources in an
effort to speed an end to the war which began in 2001 when a US-led
invasion toppled the Taliban regime.

From our partners at The Agonist

Noah Schactman | August 30

Wired – There may not be quite as many bombs falling from the sky. But don’t let that fool you. The United States has dramatically escalated its air war over Afghanistan.

Spy plane flights have nearly tripled in the past year; supply drops, too. There are even more planes buzzing over the heads of troops caught in firefights, according to statistics provided to Danger Room by the Air Force (.pdf).

The increased numbers show how the American military has retooled its most potent technological advantage — dominance of the skies — for the Afghanistan campaign. But so far, at least, the boost in air power doesn’t seem to have shifted the war’s momentum back to the American-led coalition.

An influx of Reaper drones and executive-jets-turned-spy-planes allowed U.S. forces to fly 9,700 surveillance sorties over Afghanistan in the first seven months of 2010. Last year, American planes conducted 3,645 of the flights during a similar period.

From our partners at The Agonist

Aug 30

The Guardian – The bodies of five volunteers working for a female MP have been found riddled with bullets in western Afghanistan, amid a growing campaign of violent intimidation against women running in the country’s elections.

The men, aged between 20 and 35, were found dead by villagers in the Adraskan district of Herat province, some distance from where they were kidnapped by gunmen on Thursday while out campaigning for Fauzia Gilani.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 10 of her campaign workers as they travelled in remote countryside. Five of the workers were released before the others were found dead.

The insurgent movement has not yet claimed responsibility for the murders, but Gilani – one of hundreds of women running in next month’s elections – said she believed the “enemies of Afghanistan” were responsible.

“These people were just my volunteers,” she said. “They were just trying to help – I wasn’t paying them any money.”

She said she did not know whether they were targeted because she is a woman, but said that in western Afghanistan, the “society is controlled by men”.

From our partners at Newshoggers.com

By Steve Hynd

On Thursday, veteran correspondent and director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy Selig S. Harrison had some important geopolitical news in an op-ed piece for the New York Times. Harrison reports that Pakistan has effectively handed control of an entire strategic portion of Pakistani-occupied Kashmir to China, which has moved in thousands of troops.

The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to Azad (Free) Kashmir in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency. But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: a simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.

China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours.

Chinese troops are improving infrastructure – roads, railroads and dams – as well as building permanent-looking bases. And Harrison is clear about the move's strategic importance to the region.

What is happening in the region matters to Washington for two reasons. Coupled with its support for the Taliban, Islamabad’s collusion in facilitating China’s access to the Gulf makes clear that Pakistan is not a U.S. “ally.” Equally important, the nascent revolt in the Gilgit-Baltistan region is a reminder that Kashmiri demands for autonomy on both sides of the cease-fire line would have to be addressed in a settlement.

…Gilgit and Baltistan are in effect under military rule. Democratic activists there want a legislature and other institutions without restrictions like the ones imposed on Free Kashmir, where the elected legislature controls only 4 out of 56 subjects covered in the state constitution. The rest are under the jurisdiction of a “Kashmir Council” appointed by the president of Pakistan.

Now, China isn't exactly a U.S. enemy and if they want a base in the Gulf then they're legally allowed one if the host nation (Pakistan) will co-operate - but many analysts have written about China's maritime expansion in worrying tones, seeing an eventual confrontation with the US as more possible because of it.

However, others worry more about a nascent confrontation between India and China, with Pakistan a troubling third nuclear-armed party to any possible conflict. And many more have written that solving the "Kashmir Problem" is essential to solving the Indo-Pakistani rivalry that fuels, amongst other instability, the proxy war that the U.S. trapped itself into refereeing in Afghanistan.

So China's presence in this key Kashmiri area matters.

Yet I'm not seeing any foreign policy "wonks" commenting on Harrison's report. What gives?

Update: Eric Randolph at the excellent Current Intelligence webmag mentions the Harrison report as he looks at other recent Chinese provocations of India. He writes:

The PLA sees Kashmir as a vital part of achieving strategic regional dominance, since it provides an easy way of ensuring co-operation with Pakistan (on top of all the aid and nuclear trading), and a highly symbolic way of pressuring India, which hates anyone interfering in Kashmir.

…In observing the inscrutable goings-on of Chinese politics, it is always difficult to judge where real decision-making lies, but these latest reports show the extent to which China’s strategic interests have the potential to rile India, and are being carried out by an increasingly autonomous military that is unconcerned about causing offence.

That's surely noteworthy.

From our partners at The Agonist

Elyas Wahdat | Khost | Aug 28

Reuters – Foreign and Afghan troops killed 24 insurgents as they fought off pre-dawn attacks on two bases in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, with the Taliban saying suicide bombers were among the attackers.

The attacks targeted the U.S. military’s Forward Operating Base Chapman and nearby Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost province near the eastern border with Pakistan, where U.S. and other foreign forces have been stepping up operations against a resurgent Taliban.

Seven Central Intelligence Agency officers were killed by a suicide bomber inside Chapman last December, the second-most deadly attack in CIA history. [ID:nSGE5BU01G]

Despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops, violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.