The battle for Afghan hearts and minds by Niki2

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The battle for Afghan hearts and minds

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Thursday, January 7, 2010 06:58
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Monday, December 21, 2009 9:31 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- "Why are the Americans in our land? What can I say, we are powerless."

The words of an Afghan farmer, Khan Mohmad, who fled war-torn Helmand province, leaving his land behind and finding refuge in a dreary camp on the outskirts of Kabul.

Khan Mohmad along with thousands of other displaced Afghans now squat in makeshift clay huts, using any bits of trash to make a home.

He is a striking man. His eyes lined with kohl and his dirty blond hair wrapped in a gray-black turban as he speaks in a soft but frustrated tone.

"We moved here because of the American oppression," Khan Mohmad says. "If the Taliban shoot one bullet on the Americans from our village, the Americans will bombard the entire village."

He's not the only one discontented and scared of America's intentions when it comes to the war in Afghanistan.

"The Americans are bringing us devastation, they are not helping. If they were helping us, then why are there 770 displaced families freezing in this camp?" says Juma Khan.

Both Juma Khan and Khan Mohmad were among a crowd of men speaking to us at the Charahi Qambar camp.

From the horizon the camp sprawls out for acres.

All from some of the most volatile areas of the country, they've seen Afghans killed and maimed, caught in the crossfire of war.

The consensus among the group here is that they just want the fighting to stop and do not want to see more dead Afghans.

"I want all the coalition authorities and all our brothers to reconcile with the Taliban, so we can solve this problem," Said Mohammad. "Make everyone happy and bring peace to our country so we can go back home."

Just a 20-minute drive from the camp is the bustling capital with shops lining the streets and horns blazing in the endless traffic jams.

Here you get a different Afghan perspective. Many here say that they welcome the international community's efforts and a possible troop increase. They say their country is not ready to do it on its own.

"NATO plays a key role in Afghanistan," Mohammad Zia says, "but still they need to focus and expand their civilian projects, such as reconstruction, job creation, and assist the counternarcotics struggle."

Afghans throughout the provinces, cities and villages, have said time and again that all they want is peace and stability.

And Zia believes that can't happen without the additional forces.

"We welcome their arrival if they really expel the Taliban, terrorists, and al Qaeda from the borders of Afghanistan," he says, "but if they come and kill more civilians and destroy villages, then they shouldn't come."

Afghanistan is still a country divided, primarily by ethnic groups. And many Afghans are afraid that if the international community decides to pull out, another civil war may erupt.

"Because of the critical situation and widespread discrimination among the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan we have to welcome the arrival of new troops," says 45-year-old Ali Mohammad Ali.

The international community already knows that they can't do it alone. In his assessment sent to Washington the top NATO commander in the country made it clear that the mission in Afghanistan would fail without the support of the Afghans themselves.

A sentiment shared by the Canadian Ambassador to the country, William Crosbie.

"We can not win the war in Afghanistan. Afghans have got to win the war in Afghanistan," Crosbie says, "We are here to support them, and we know we can't win by military means (alone)."

Both the Taliban and the Coalition forces know this is not just about warfare and weaponry, the biggest battle will be for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

Back at the camp Lala Jaan, timid and young, stuck out in the crowd of men because of his shorter beard and round face. He came after escaping after a U.S. airstrike hit his village in Kandahar, maiming him for life.

"The Taliban shot at the Americans, and then the Americans bombarded the whole area. A bullet hit and mutilated my hand," he says.

He showed us his left arm, mangled and deformed. He gestures to it with his right hand, also disfigured when a bullet was shot through it.

But still he seeks the help of the United States.

"I ask that the United States government and President [Hamid] Karzai help the poor people in this camp," he says.

"Everyone here will die because of the cold winter, the snows will start soon. Someone told us we should leave this place (for safety), but where can we go?"

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Monday, December 21, 2009 9:33 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Really? Getting involved in foreign affairs is a BAAAD thing?

Man, someone should have written a document preventing this a long time ago....

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Monday, December 21, 2009 11:52 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Bumping 'cuz some have asked questions about how the Afghans feel about us, and this helps answer it--especially the video.

Wulf, your snarks here and in other places are rude and have nothing to do with the threads themselves. Not worth responding to.

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Monday, December 21, 2009 11:59 AM

GINOBIFFARONI

As this conflict also includes Pakistan, I think it is fair to look at what is and has been happening there as well

FED UP WITH KARZAI? TRY ZARDARI
December 21, 2009
Washington is finally getting some of the democracy it has long been calling for in Pakistan. The result is a disaster for US “Afpak” policy.
The Obama administration is fast discovering that its man in Islamabad, President Asif Ali Zardari, may be an even bigger ethical and managerial liability than its overseer in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai.

Over the years, I’ve met every Pakistani leader save the current one, President Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto. But I’ve written for decades about corruption charges that relentlessly dog him. At one point, I was threatened with having acid thrown in my face if I kept writing about the Bhutto-Zardari’s financial scandals.

Asif Ali Zardari became known to one and all as “Mr 10%” from the time when he was a minister in his wife’s government, in charge of approving government contracts. Critics say the 10% and other brazen kickbacks produced millions for the Zardari-Bhutto family.

But Benazir Bhutto repeatedly insisted to me that she and her husband – who was tortured and jailed for years on corruption charges – were innocent, victims of political persecution in Pakistan’s utterly corrupt legal system where “justice” goes to the biggest payer of bribes, and politicians use courts to punish their rivals. Small wonder so many Pakistanis are calling for far more honest and swifter, if more draconian, Islamic justice.

In 2008, Washington sought to rescue Musharraf’s foundering dictatorship by convincing the popular Benazir Bhutto, who had exiled herself to Dubai, to front for him as democratic window-dressing for continued military rule. Her price: amnesty for a long list of corruption charges against her and her husband. The US and Britain quietly arranged the amnesty for the Bhuttos and thousands of their indicted supporters (and other political figures).

Benazir confided in me she had a secret plan to oust Musharraf once she got back into power. Just before her assassination, Benazir also told me jealous associates of Musharraf were gunning for her.

Asif Zardari then inherited Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party, the nation’s largest, as a sort of personal property. He became president, thanks to strong US and British political and financial support. His rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was regarded by the western powers as insufficiently supportive of the war in Afghanistan, and too independent-minded.

Zardari repaid America’s support by facilitating the US war in Afghanistan, and allowed the Pentagon to keep using Pakistan’s bases and military personnel, without which the war in Afghanistan could not be prosecuted. Washington promised Pakistan’s elite, pro-western leadership at least $8 billion.

That sleazy deal has now come unstuck thanks to Pakistan’s newest, rather improbable democratic hero, Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. As chief justice of the Supreme Court under Musharraf, Chaudhry was expected to rubber stamp government decisions.

Instead, Justice Chaudhry began enforcing the law by reinstating the dismissed corruption charges and examining the legality of Musharraf’s self-appointed second term.
Musharraf had Justice Chaudhry kicked off the bench. He, and a score of fellow judges who would not toe the line, were placed under house arrest. Some were beaten. Their pensions were cancelled.

Shamefully, Washington and London, who claim to be waging war in Afghanistan to bring it democracy, gave Musharraf a green light to purge Pakistan’s judiciary.

But the ebbing of Zardari’s power has resulted in the reinstatement by parliament of Justice Chaudhry, who promptly reinstated all the old charges. For the first time, Pakistan was tasting the true institutions of democracy at work. Its US-engineered regime is running scared.

Zardari has presidential immunity against criminal charges. But his chief lieutenants face prosecution, notably regime strongman, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, and Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar. Both are key supporters and facilitators of US military operations in Afghanistan, America’s use of Pakistani bases, and Pakistan’s war against its own rebellious Pashtun tribesmen (aka “Taliban”). Malik is due in court on 2 January, 2010 and is banned from leaving Pakistan.

Opposition parties are demanding Zardari and senior aides resign. Islamabad is in an uproar just when Washington needs Pakistan’s government to intensify the war against the so-called Pakistani Taliban and support President Barack Obama’s expanded war in Afghanistan. Washington is also intensifying drone attacks inside Pakistan, that are provoking fierce public outrage against the US, and weighing air attacks on Baluchistan Province.

Skeletons are dancing out of Zardari’s closets: $63 million in illegal kickbacks and commissions allegedly hidden in Swiss bank accounts; accusation of laundering $13.7 million in Switzerland. Charges of kickback on helicopter and warplane deals. In 2003, Swiss magistrates found Zardari and Bhutto guilty of money laundering, sentencing then to a six month suspended jail term, a fine of $50,000, and ordered them to repay $11 million to Pakistan’s government.

Zardari’s has an estimated personal fortune of $2 billion; luxurious properties in the US, France, Spain and Britain, and on it goes. Amazingly, he avoided trial in Switzerland by claiming mental illness.

In 2008, Gen. Musharraf had all charges against the Bhuttos dropped as part of the US-engineered plan for a diumverate with Benazir.

The Bhuttos remain one of the largest feudal landowners
in a desperately poor nation where annual income is US$1,027 and illiteracy over 50%. Pakistan has been ruled since its creation in 1947 by either callous feudal landlords, who bought and sold politicians like bags of Basmati rice, or by generals.

It appears that Zardari’s days as Washington’s man in Islamabad are numbered. Anti-American fury is surging, with popular claims that Pakistan has been “occupied” by the US, treated like a third rate banana republic, and is run by corrupt, US-installed stooges and crooks. Shades of Iran under the Shah, and Egypt under Sadat.

Many Pakistanis blame the current bloody wave of bombings in their nation on US mercenaries from Xe (formerly Blackwater), and old foe India staging attacks in revenge for decades of bombings in Kashmir, Punjab and its eastern hill states by Pakistani intelligence.

Most Pakistanis believe Washington is bent on tearing apart their unstable nation to seize its nuclear weapons.

In the process of prosecuting its occupation of relatively insignificant Afghanistan, the US has turned Pakistan, a nation of great strategic importance, into a bitter foe.

Washington is almost back to square one in turbulent Pakistan. When Zardari goes or is kicked upstairs as an impotent figurehead, attention will turn to Pakistan’s 617,000-man military and its commander, Gen – or should we say “president-elect” Ashfaq Kiyani? He is already in almost constant contact with the Pentagon. The weak prime minister, Sayed Yusuf Gilani, might also be invested with more real powers.

In 2010, the ugly acronym, “Afpak,” will bedevil, befuddle, and consume the Obama White House that so unwisely and rashly ignored Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s wise warning to avoid land wars in Asia.

30

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009

http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/fed-up-with-karzai-
try-zardari.aspx

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Monday, December 21, 2009 12:39 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Sigh...unfortunately that comes as no surprise. Corruption,"bakshish", they are a way of life in that area of the world, so I don't know how you're going to get ANYONE in high office who's not involved....dammit!

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Monday, December 21, 2009 2:08 PM

DREAMTROVE

This is a duplicate thread.

I want to return to the thread title "Afghan War." It does not matter which foreign powers are involved, Afghans *are* fighting it. That's why the title. "War in Afghanistan" limits it, excluding the 1/2 of the war which is in what we technically call "Pakistan."

But still, this is more of that. As for Khan and his ilk, trust me dude, the Americans there don't want to be there any more than you want them their. Take that up with Senoir si se peude. And *do*. Don't just dick around about it. Go to the UN, condemn the US for its actions in your country.

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Monday, December 21, 2009 2:32 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
This is a duplicate thread.

I want to return to the thread title "Afghan War." It does not matter which foreign powers are involved, Afghans *are* fighting it. That's why the title. "War in Afghanistan" limits it, excluding the 1/2 of the war which is in what we technically call "Pakistan."

But still, this is more of that. As for Khan and his ilk, trust me dude, the Americans there don't want to be there any more than you want them their. Take that up with Senoir si se peude. And *do*. Don't just dick around about it. Go to the UN, condemn the US for its actions in your country.

Go to the UN ?

Doesn't exactly work for the Palestinians

Nicaragua's protest had the UN find the US guilty of warcrimes to no result

Khans best bet is likely to pick up a rifle and send some Americans home personally, talk and protest seems to go nowhere with your beltway crowd.

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Thursday, January 7, 2010 6:58 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/washington/story/71434.html

KABUL, Afghanistan — Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil spends his days going from one high-level official meeting to another with the swagger of a tribal elder, advocating for the needs of Kunar province, his home region.

Each encounter — with President Hamid Karzai, with Karzai's chief of staff or with one of Afghanistan's other presidential candidates — begins the same: They thank him for his honorable service to the people of Kunar.

Despite those endorsements, the Pentagon says that Wakil is among 74 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who've returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release from the island prison camp.

Wakil scoffs at the suggestion. So do those who know him.

"How could he be a terrorist? He is never far off the government's radar," leading Afghan presidential candidate Mirwise Yaseeni said. "His family is here. I have never known him to do anything criminal."

Pentagon officials didn't respond to a request for comment on why Wakil was included in a report that was leaked in May. The report itself says only that Wakil has "associations with terrorist groups."

The discovery that Wakil, far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan's U.S.-allied government raises questions about the report's credibility, however. Despite his bravado, Wakil acknowledges that the report has him worried that he'll be detained again.

Never out of his reach are a stack of legal documents, letters signed by scores of high-ranking officials and frayed newspaper clippings that he believes prove that he isn't — and never has been — a terrorist. Documents in hand, he's always prepared to make the case he was never given the opportunity to make at Guantanamo.

"For six years, I was ready to go to court and defend myself. They should show the world their proof against me," Wakil said. "I am ready to answer any question."

Unknown officials leaked the Pentagon report naming Wakil to The New York Times just as debate was peaking over President Barack Obama's plans to shutter Guantanamo. On the same day that The Times published its story, former Vice President Dick Cheney cited the report in a speech blasting the idea of closing Guantanamo; that same day, Obama made his own presentation defending his plans.

In subsequent weeks, Congress rejected Obama's request for $80 million to pay for the closure and restricted his ability to relocate Guantanamo detainees to the United States.

Since then, The New York Times has said that its initial news story made a crucial error, lumping together 27 former detainees who the Pentagon said were confirmed as having returned to terrorism — including several who were dead or in prison — with 47 others, including Wakil, who were suspected terrorists, defined in part as those whose activities were "unverified or single-source but plausible."

Wakil's case adds more questions about just what's meant by "returning to terrorism."

Wakil, who's now 49, represented Kunar province in the grand assembly that helped name Karzai president in June 2002. Wakil met with American officials several times after they descended on Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

At the time he was well-known as an anti-Taliban commander and was considered a potential candidate to serve as Kunar's governor.

Wakil traces his detention to an August 2002 meeting he had with an American commander after U.S. troops shot a resident at a bazaar. Wakil said he went to the U.S. base in hopes of defusing tensions.

"'Don't take any direct action here. Coordinate your actions with the local forces. You don't understand the local security.' This is what I advised him," Wakil said. "I talked to the Americans as an elder of the area. 'If there is anything I can do, please let me know.'"

At the gate, as he was leaving the meeting, he and nearly a dozen others were detained and taken to Bagram air field. Within days, only he and Sabar Lal, his military commander, remained in custody. After seven months, he and Lal were transferred to Guantanamo, where for the next six years the tribal leader was known as detainee 798. Lal was released in October 2007, Wakil in April 2008.

"I told them I am a supporter of this government. Why am I detained?" Wakil said. "I said everyone in my province will fight for my release all the way up to the president. They told me no one will fight for you because you are a bad person."

His uncle had formed Jama'at-ud-Da'wah Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim-based group created in the 1980s to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The State Department considered it a terrorist organization. While Wakil admits that he was a member of the group, he said he was never a fighter, that his group promoted a certain thread of Islam, not terrorism.

According to Defense Department documents from Wakil's Combatant Status Review Board hearing at Guantanamo, the United States charged that Wakil helped members of al Qaida escape from Kunar into neighboring Pakistan. The U.S. also charged that he obtained weapons that were used in a rocket attack on the main military base in Kunar.

The charges, the documents say, were based on a source.

In response, Wakil told the review panel he thought that a political enemy, whom he didn't identify, had set him up. He denied working on behalf of al Qaida; instead, he said he suspected that an al Qaida operative had assassinated his uncle.

Mohammed Roze, who directs the Afghan government's peace and reconciliation commission in Kunar, said he thought that Malik Zarin, who was then the head of the rival Mushwani tribe, had turned Wakil in because the Mushwani tribe opposed a poppy-eradication program that Wakil had begun in Kunar around the time of his arrest. Zarin had built close ties with American forces in Kunar, Roze said. He said that Wakil was never a threat to American troops.

Wakil's reputation in his province eventually helped his case. Fellow residents compiled hundreds of letters on his behalf. Politicians, including some who'd eventually seek his support, also wrote on his behalf.

"To some extent, he might have used his influence" to earn his release, said Mohammed Akram, the administrative director of the national peace and reconciliation commission, which help Kunar's tribal leaders secure Wakil's release.

Upon his release to Afghan authorities, Wakil met with Karzai, who he said apologized for his detention.

"He told me, 'This was beyond my authority. I was very sad but I knew the people were fighting on your behalf,' " Wakil said. He's since met with the defense and interior ministers and with Karzai's chief of staff a half-dozen times.

Karzai's government confirmed Wakil's account. "Whatever Haji Rohullah says about meeting with Karzai and his chief of staff is true. He is an honorable man, so whatever he said happened is correct," Karzai's chief of staff, Omar Daudzai, told McClatchy.

Wakil calmly stroked his beard as he described rough treatment at Bagram and Guantanamo, though he prefers to refer to his treatment by his American captors as "disputes." He said he was now working on behalf of his province and encouraging people to support the government and participate in the national election Aug. 20.

He raised his voice only once, as he described his anger that once again he's facing accusations and no trial.

"Where is the justice? I am still being threatened because of this," Wakil said, his arms flailing. "But I do not want to retaliate. People respect me now more than before because they know I am innocent. It is my job as a tribal elder to suffer on behalf of my people."

(McClatchy special correspondent Hashim Shukoor contributed to this article.)

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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