Diane Abbott Blows Smoke on War in Afghanistan

Abbott raises question, offers no answer

As the Labour Party prepares vote for its next leader, longshot Diane Abbott has set about her last-ditch effort to stem the tide away from a choice between the Miliband brothers:

She's courting the soft-peacenik vote.

Abbott admitted that if there was a war for Britain to fight, she may commit British forces to it -- provided that it's a legal war. Abbott merely can't seem to find any currently ongoing that she deems to be legal.

"If it was a legal war I might do," she explained. "The problem with the Iraq War, it was widely judged to be illegal."

Moreover, Abbott questions the legality of thw war in Afghanistan.

"It might have been legal, a legal invasion, in the very first place, but 10 years on, where is the legality for it?" Abbott asked.

Simple: NATO's mission in Afghanistan was mandated by the United Nations. The United Nations has not withdrawn its mandate, nor did it ever attach an expiry date for that mandate.

None of the conditions affecting the legality of the war have changed.

In fact, the most elaborate explanation of Abbott's sentiments is that she regards the war to be counter-productive.

"I think what is perceived as a western occupation of Afghanistan is becoming counter-productive," Abbott mused.

Moreover, Abbott believes she has the answer: UN Peacekeeping.

"I think there should be a phased withdrawal," Abbott asserted. "We should give way to a UN peacekeeping force, ideally led by troops from an Islamic nation. But you will not win, you will not bring stability to the region with a war."

THe problem for Abbott is that a handover of Afghanistan from NATO combat forces to UN peacekeepers is that there is currently little peace to keep. But a handover to UN peacekeepers wouldn't merely require a pace: it would require a just peace.

The Taliban is extremely unlikely to agree to a just peace accord -- particularly not one hastily-negotiated.

Moreover, the Taliban is not interested in negotiating: they merely want to re-take power.

Some of the other insurgent groups fighting NATO forces -- just as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hisb-i-Islami could be negotiated with. But the historical experience negotiating with Hekmatyar -- in which Hekmatyar stabs his earstwhile-allies in the back in order to seize more power -- tells any informed individual that you simply do not bother.

At the end of the day, however, Abbott is clearly just blowing smoke. She asks the question about the legality of the war in Afghanistan, but attempts to offer no substantive answer.

Diane Abbott is merely fishing for votes among the soft-peacenik crowd. If this crowd falls for her empty platitudes and give her their vote, then they and Abbott deserve each other.

There's the "Taliban", Then There's the Taliban

It's important to know the difference

Ever since Canadian troops began the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the notion of negotiating with the Taliban has been a controversial topic.

Yesterday US President Barack Obama mused that his administration may consider negotiations with the Taliban.

Today Afghan President Hamid Karzai made public his approval with this development.

Considering that it's only a matter of time until certain individuals begin to harp on the subject, it's important to understand precisely what is actually being proposed by this.

While Taliban as become a pervasive blanket term for the entire insurgency in Afghanistan, it's important to understand that there are actually numerous groups that together make up the Taliban.

One of those groups is Hisb-I-Islami, a group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

While Hekmatyar is currently an ally of the Taliban he has, in the past, also been an opponent of the Taliban.

Hekmatyar founded Hisb-I-Islami in 1977 in cooperation with Mulavi Younas Khalis. The group opposed the communist-leaning policies of Hafiullah Amin. Hekmatyar himself had long been involved in the continuing conflict within the country between Islamic and communist thinkers. In 1972 Hekmatyar was accused of murdering a Maoist student and imprisoned for two years.

Hekmatyar first rose to prominence during the Afghan-Soviet war. With support from the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Hekmatyar led thousands of Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. However, Hisb-I-Islami had split into two factions at this point, with Khalis leaving to form a rival group.

After the formerly Soviet-backed Kabul government began to collapse in 1992 Hekmatyar attracted the support of most of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. He then seized control of Afghanistan until he and Hisb-I-Islami were driven out.

In 1993 Hekmatyar was invited to be Prime Minister under President Burhanuddin Rabbani. In 1994, however, Hekmatyar left the government and aligned with Abdul Rashid Dostum. An impassed ensued in which Hekmatyar's forces got bogged down outside of Kabul and in frustration shelled the city.

The bitter civil war continued until 1996, when Hekmatyar and Rabbani again agreed to form a government together. Hekmatyar was to be Prime Minister.

The Taliban would sieze control of much of Afghanistan later in 1996. Hekmatyar would flee to Iran, then later return to fight the Taliban.

Hekmatyar has proven a strangely reliable track record in which he continually demonstrates that he is reliably unreliable as an ally. Basically, he fights with any one particular group until another offers him a better deal, then he switches sides.

The deal the Karzai government is offering Hekmatyar right now would offer him an opportunity to go into asylum in Saudi Arabia, then later return to Afghanistan to join the government.

Whether or not this is a better deal than the one Hekmatyar currently has with the Taliban is essentially best known by Hekmatyar and the Taliban.

But one thing is nearly certain: which ever side Hekmatyar decides to align with he will wind up fighting them sooner or later -- much likely more sooner than later. His previous record has shown this.

That being said, having Hekmatyar as part of the government would at least take him off the field of battle for a span of anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years. One can only imagine what Afghan and NATO troops could do with Hekmatyar's Hisb-I-Islami off of their radar screens for that period of time.

Open Letter to the Taliban

Taliban issues "open letter" to Canadians

On August 15, the Taliban issued an open letter to Canadians urging them to pressure their government to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

In the letter, the Taliban promises more attacks on Canadians:

"Afghanistan has to try to have good relations with you, but if your government continues a reversed policy, the Afghans will be obliged to kill your nationals, in revenge for their brothers, their sisters, and their children. Events such as Logar will happen again, because occupied Afghanistan looks at all actors that are established in the interest of America with an eye of hostility.

Therefore, you have to convince your government to put an end to the occupation of Afghanistan, so that the Afghans are not killed with your hands and so that you are not killed with the hands of the Afghans.

The Canadian people have to realize if their sisters, their brothers, and their children are being killed in Afghanistan, it is because of the wrong policy of the government of Canada and their falling under the influence of others when they sent occupation soldiers to Afghanistan.

The Canadian people, when they express condolences for the death of two Canadian women in Logar in Afghanistan, and consider themselves grieved, they have to know that the Canadian forces, under American command, handicap tens among the Afghan people every day to this kind of condolence, and they kill, in addition to men, numbers of women and children, as well.

The Afghans did not go to Canada to kill the Canadians. Rather, it is the Canadians who came to Afghanistan to kill and torture the Afghan, to please the fascist regime of America. Your government did not take into account the national interests of Canada, and did not follow a neutral policy. It sacrificed its national and international respect and standing in service of the interests of America.”

The letter mentions the deplorable Logar incident in which three female aid workers were ambushed and brutally executed by Taliban fighters.

It was rather "thoughtful" of the Taliban to send us this letter. Frankly, it would be rude not to write them back.

As such, here is the Nexus' response to the Taliban letter:

Dear Taliban,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful letter of 15 August.

But upon reviewing the contents of said letter, many Canadians simply have no choice but to say "thank you, but no thank you" to your "generous" advice.

If anything could demonstrate precisely why you cannot be allowed to return to power in Afghanistan, your letter has certainly done so.

First off, given the history of your regime, one has to question your definition of "good relations". Are we to believe that you were maintaining good relations with Canada when you allowed Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to plot the 9/11 attacks which, along with 2,974 other people, took the lives of 24 Canadians?

At best, that was an act of astounding irresponsibility on your part. At worst, it was purely an act of passive-aggression.

Either way, Canadians cannot trust a Taliban regime, and certainly not to maintain "good relations" with us.

We also sincerely appreciated your disingenuous envokation of the Logar incident. If Canadians needed any more proof of what the Taliban thinks of both women and the Afghan people, it would be hard to imagine how. After all, not only do you apparently not understand the difference between aid workers and combatants, not only do you not seem to differentiate between men and women, but you also don't seem to feel any compunctions about assassinating people who have come to Afghanistan in order to help your fellow Afghans.

Not only did you not make an honest effort to fight poverty within your own country, but you're now apparently willing to kill those who've come to help them.

Which, believe it or not, is actually a step down from killing them your yourselves.

Few Canadians will pretend that no civilians have ever been killed in the course of the Afghanistan conflict. But we also recognize that there's a huge difference between accidentally killing Afghan civilians in the course of pursuing the Taliban (or when they fail to respect the rules established to ensure the mutual safety of Afghan civilians and NATO troops) and deliberately targetting them for terrorist attacks.

In fact, if the brothers, sisters, parents and children of those killed in Spin Boldak ever decide they want to take revenge for the deaths of their loved ones, odds are they're going to come after you.

You might want to stop and think about that.

Many Canadians will also remind you that our brothers, sisters and children whom you are killing in Afghanistan volunteered for that job and overwhelmingly support it. The families of our service men and women have also tended to overwhelmingly support the mission.

In short, Canadians are willing to pay the price for ensuring your brutal regime never returns to power in Afghanistan. Appealing to our grief for the loss of those you kill as a motive for capitulation is a poor gamble indeed.

We Canadians who support the mission will honour the sacrifice of our service men and women by continuing to support the cause they believed in -- namely, ensuring that you cannot return to power so you can continue to brutalize, terrorize and denigrate the Afghan population.

Canadians did not go into Afghanistan in order to kowtow to the American regime. Rather, Canadians have gone into Afghanistan because we have recognized a severe threat to global peace and security in your previous regime, and in the potential reestablishment of another.

We do not intent do withdraw from Afghanistan until we've assured that you cannot return to power there.

But we appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule -- spent devising new ways to kill Canadian troops as well as Afghan civilians -- to talk to us.

But there really isn't much to talk to you about.

In the meantime, you may want to spend your time wondering how many of your allies you can really trust. After all, should NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan tomorrow, who do you think Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is going to look at next?

Just think about that.

Sincerely,
-Patrick Ross

Plenty of Room for Debate on Afghanistan

Honest dissent qualifies as an important form of dissent

In the increasingly politicized, polarized and partisan political climate surrounding Afghanistan, honest debate has indeed become a rare occurrence.

There can be such a thing.

Rory Stewart, a former British Diplomat and author of The Places in Between, doesn’t think so.

"If you point out that our state-building enterprise is not working, people will quite quickly accuse you of being a reactionary or even a racist,” Stewart complains. “They will try to suggest that if you raise problems, you're being denigrating towards Afghans, that you're not respecting the sacrifice of the troops.”

"Anybody engaged in this debate comes under a lot of pressure from the military, from diplomats and from the Afghan government itself to try to suggest that everything is going well when it's not,” he concludes.

To this sense, he may be right. Perhaps the pressure being applied by proponents of the Afghanistan has been a little intense, but to this end, the pressure being applied by opponents of the mission has been no less so.

The finger of blame, which actually must be shared equally, aside, we as Canadians need to make more room for honest debate on the Afghanistan issue. Fortunately, this is where people like Stewart come in.

For his part, Stewart feels that NATO is in over its head in Afghanistan.

"NATO has set itself up for failure by taking on far more than it could possibly achieve,'' he announced during a recent visit to Ottawa.

"Canada's great challenge,” according to Stewart, “is to identify three or four things that could realistically be done with the kind of resources, commitment and will that we have. And to make sure we achieve them in a way that leaves Canadian people feeling proud, NATO feeling that it's done something and, most important of all, the Afghans feeling that they've gotten something out of this intervention.''

Stewart has suggested that NATO resort to a tactic similar to that which the United States used in Vietnam: holding the major cities with conventional forces, while using special forces to hunt insurgent forces in the countryside.

When one considers the historical state of affairs in Afghanistan, this almost makes sense. Historically, Afghanistan has only ever been successfully governed via a strategy often referred to as “encapsulation”, whereby a government maintains control of the easily-governed cities, while conceding control of the countrysides to the tribal jurgas that essentially rule the smaller villages and rural areas.

It’s a model whereby sovereignty is claimed over these outlying areas only officially, but actually exercised by the jurgas in return for government deferral to their localized authority.

Yet, this governmental strategy is what has led to Afghanistan becoming what it was prior to the post-9/11 invasions, and to this day: a country, incompatible with central government, without ability to assert sovereignty throughout its territory, and with porous, uncontrolled borders. Really not so much a failed state as a non-state: one that, in the ways that we define modern states, has actually never existed, except as a portion of land drawn in and labeled on a map.

Stewart may be right when he suggests that NATO may have to focus on state-building efforts in the north of the country, while negotiating with the southern jurgas in order to allow them to govern Khandahar and Helmand as they will.

With a preference for the Pashtun tribal codes of justice (as opposed to the sharia the Taliban would prefer to impose) as well as secure in already possessing what they want, the jurgas would have little need for the Taliban, and may well ally with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who shares no great love of the Taliban) against them. (Then again all this is merely a visit to the specularium.)

In a mission that needs to be defined for the future, people like Rory Stewart are actually offering the most valuable form of support: an honest concern about the nature of the mission, and should be engaged on the basis of those opinions, not merely on empty demands for unconditional or absolute support of the mission.

Karzai Points to Signs of Hope in Afghanistan Conflict

Karzai believes Taliban is on the verge of defeat

While meeting with US President George W Bush in Washington, Afghan president Hamid Karzai has said he believes his government is safely out of the woods in its battle with the Taliban.

"They're not posing any threat to the government of Afghanistan," insists Karzai.

Karzai does, however, concede that the Taliban continues to pose a very real threat to Afghan civilians. "It's a force that's defeated, it's a force that is frustrated," he said. "They are acting in cowardice by killing children."

Karzai is referring, among other things, to a recent Taliban bomb campaign that took the lives of 35 Afghans on the same day that a US airstrike killed seven Afghan children in the process of attacking an Al Qaida outpost.

Karzai's pronouncement came as the Royal 22nd Regiment--the Vandoos--has fought their way into hostile territory, and following the Taliban setback of a ceasefire declared by insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Hekmatayar, while still intending to establish a theocracy in Afghanistan through "political struggles", has reportedly grown fed up with the Taliban's attacks on civilians.

There have also been reported differences within the Taliban itself, as some members of the Taliban have reportedly denounced Mullah Mohammad Amar's appointment of Chechen and Uzbek commanders.

In short, the Taliban and its alliance with relatively independant insurgent groups in Afghanistan has grown increasingly unstable.

If Karzai's government is indeed as stable as he claims, this is a very good sign that Canada's misison in Afghanistan is moving in a successful direction. However, there is still plenty of work to be done--particularly rooting out and destroying Taliban forces in the south, as well as securing the gains made by NATO forces throughout Afghanistan so rebuilding and development work can be completed in safety.

Bush has also hinted at possible offensives against Al Qaeda outposts in Pakistan.

"With real actionable intelligence, we will get the job done," Bush announced.

While he has not solidly commited himself to gaining the permission of Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's recent struggles with the pro-Taliban Red Mosque have made it all the more likely that Bush will recieve such permission. Pakistan has already given permission for NATO to continue hot-pursuit operations into Pakisan.

Recently, a Pakistani brigadier-general promised a full-scale offensive against Al Qaida positions on the Pakistani side of the Aghansitan/Pakistan border. The US gift of a squadron of F-16 fighters to Pakistan during the past year will probably be very helpful in such an offensive.

However, with lingering security concerns regarding the border with Pakistan seemingly moving toward being solved, there are still concerns about Afghanistan's western border, with Iran. It has been reported that weapons being smuggled into Afghanistan from Iran are falling into the Taliban's hands. Although the Iranian regime is reportedly hostile to the Taliban, it is still very likely that the Iranian regime is supporting non-Taliban insurgent groups such as Hekmatayar's, if only to spite the United States in its support of the Karzai government.

Simply put, while progress is being made, the battle for Afghanistan is not over yet. And while it does raise necessary questions about how to finish the job, it does help to underscore the foolishness of forcing Canadian troops to leave a battle which they are winning, especially considering that allowing the Taliban to gain sufficient strength to re-assert itself at least in an effectively partioned Afghanistan would continue to pose a threat to the western world.

Although the Taliban may pose no threat to the Afghan government today, that doesn't mean they won't tomorrow. This battle is not over yet.