Racism Watch

Suggesting that Afghanistan may in certain respects not be at the cutting edge of modernity is racist now.

Which is good to know.

Making His Mind Up.

The Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth's criticism of Obama's dithering over Afghanistan was probably not wise. However as I said earlier this month the leadership vacuum has put the US's allies in an impossible position. It is almost impossible for the British government or that of any other NATO member to shore up support for staying in Afghanistan if the United States seems to be less than wholly committed to the enterprise.

Either go with the McCrystal plan to increase troop numbers or get out, either decision is better than no decision.

Obama's Dithering Towards Afghan Exit.

The Afghan war is growing increasingly unpopular, it was only a few months ago that most people supported it, now 73% think we should leave. Gordon Brown has belatedly attempted to reverse that today by making the case for staying, whilst simultaneously signposting a way out*.

Obama's dithering between the two options of escalating the war or winding down the NATO presence is putting other Nato leaders in an awkward position because they need to spell out a coherent position to their electorates. However without an American decision there is only one unilateral decision they can make. They can't promise to stay the course, because if the US decides to go the other way they would have to do a u-turn. On the other hand they can withdraw regardless of what Obama decides and if there is no American decision that is what they will have to do.

* As Dilbert creator Scott Adams points out, Gordon Brown was employing "the cat is on the roof" strategy of preparing the ground for an announcement.

More Afghan Bribery

This supports the idea of using bribery to buy off the Taliban's foot soldiers:

A Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed yesterday that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.

After furious denials in Rome of a Times report that the Italian authorities had paid the bribes, the Afghans gave further details of the practice. Mohammed Ishmayel, a Taleban commander, said that a deal was struck last year so that Italian forces in the Salobi area, east of Kabul, were not attacked by local insurgents.

The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taleban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.

Note the attacks only happened after the bribes stopped being paid, it was the Italian failure to tell the French of the arrangement that caused the failure, not the bribery itself.

Not that the Italian method of paying off a local chief is ideal, it would be better to pay the individual gunmen because there is a very strong possibility in Afghanistan that the money won't reach the people who need buying off.

This also shows the dangers of being allies of Italy. In Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down" (which the film was based on), he refers to suspicions by the Americans that the Italian forces in the country were cooperating with the local warlords in exchange for a quiet life, even to the extent of tipping them off before US raids.

Hooray For Bribery.

Afghans are known for changing sides back and forth during their long years of war — there is an old saying that “you can rent an Afghan but never buy one” — and battles have often been decided by defections rather than combat.

Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates. A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165m a day the United States is spending fighting the war.

This seems like a thoroughly good idea, bribery gets a bad reputation but in a war there is nothing wrong with it. The Colombian civil war is being won by the government partly because they are offering the FARC foot soldiers money to come in from the cold. If many of the Afghans are fighting for money then it is shameful that the USA and Europe are being outbid by a bunch of cave dwellers for whom the goat considered a form of high technology.

Update: In the comments Mark points to this, which is advocating a similar strategy but not calling it bribery.

Taliban Tally Bad.

I've been saying it for a while so I am glad that some in the media are now realising that either the Taliban were taught maths in Scotland or they are liars:

The Taliban has long exaggerated its military successes, but its figures for 2008 may be the militia's most startling claims yet.

The Taliban claims its forces last year killed 5,220 foreign troops, downed 31 aircraft, destroyed 2,818 NATO and Afghan vehicles and killed 7,552 Afghan soldiers and police.

Though third-party observers can rarely confirm casualty claims on the Afghan battlefield from the Taliban, the Afghan government, the U.S. or NATO, the Taliban's 2008 numbers would appear to be far from the truth.

NATO's member countries announce all troop deaths, providing names, ages and hometowns and how the soldiers were killed. According to an Associated Press tally of those announcements, 286 foreign military personnel died last year in Afghanistan, including 151 Americans and 51 Britons.

So given that it is known that the Taliban make stuff up it would be nice if the press adopted a more sceptical attitude when faced with reports about wedding parties being bombed and the only evidence to back up the story is the testimony of villagers in Taliban held territory.

Seasonal Let Down.

The eagerly anticipated "Taliban Spring Offensive" that was promised and supposed to overwhelm coalition forces appears to have gone the way of the "Brutal Afghan Winter".

I suppose a "Summer Onslaught" or an "Autumn Advance" are on the way.

Some of the salivating over the supposedly resurgent Taliban has been little more than anti-Western pundits indulging in onanistic fantasising.

Taliban Spin Doctors.

There was a report on the television news earlier this afternoon about a US bombing in Afghanistan that had killed 12 construction workers in the North East of the country. There have been numerous reports of US/ Nato bombing killing groups of innocent civilians of late and I had actually planned to write something along the lines of; a reliance of airpower will invariably lead to civilian casualties, whilst there are often a lot of bogus reports of wedding parties being hit genuine mistakes do appear to be occurring quite a lot of late in Afghanistan and there is a danger that they are endangering the mission by building up support for the Taliban etc.

However when went to look up the relevant story online in order to provide a link I read:

Nato says it is confident that reports that it killed a number of civilians in an air strike in Nuristan province on Monday are incorrect.

The provincial governor has said that 12 construction workers died.

But a spokesman for the Nato-led Isaf force says evidence so far "points to a successful strike" against a Taleban leader with no civilian deaths.

The incident has probably already seeped into the public consciousness though as a careless slaughter of the innocent, despite it now looking likely to be another example of the Taliban using the Western Media to spread lies about Nato. This tactic is quite an intelligent one from the point of view of the Taliban it has to be said and it is explained in better detail on the website "Strategy Page":

There are two main obstacles to establishing (or re-establishing) Taliban control of the country. There's the current government, which is basically a coalition of Pushtun and non-Pushtun tribes that disagrees with the few Pushtun tribes that supply most of the Taliban leadership and manpower. This lot can be taken care of by forming an alliance with many of the drug gangs, who will supply money to hire irregular fighters. These guys will be used to terrorize other tribes into going along with the Taliban. This worked fifteen years ago, and should work again. Except for one thing. The foreign troops and their smart bombs.

NATO and U.S. air power have been a disaster for the Taliban. It was a few dozen aircraft, dropping a few hundred smart bombs, that smashed the Taliban fighting force in late 2001. Since then, the Taliban have come up with some ways to limit the smart bomb damage, but have not been able to avoid the constant destruction these weapons deliver.

.....

But the Taliban have a plan for getting rid of the smart bombs, and it depends a lot on foreign journalists. These folks are always looking for an "exciting" story, and nothing is more exciting than "atrocities" committed by NATO or American troops. Defeats by NATO or American troops also plays well with the foreign reporters. So the Taliban endeavor to feed the foreign journalists as many suitable stories as possible. The Taliban understand that the story doesn't have to be true, just plausible. The news cycle is short, and the media proceeds on the assumption that news consumers have no sense of history. If the Taliban can get a story out there, they have succeeded, no matter how much the story is later discredited.

In a free society we cannot silence the media, quite rightly of course. The media ought by now to treat any claim of NATO massacres with the utmost scepticism until independent confirmation is made, but failing that then the press simply cannot be trusted.

Child Suicide Bombers

This article (via Nourishing Obscurity) on Afghan suicide bombers is truly horrifying. The use of child recruits is particularly savage:

In an incident that caused tears of fury among villagers, a six-year-old street urchin approached an Afghan security checkpoint and claimed that he had been cornered by the Taliban and fitted with a suicide-bomber vest. They had told him to walk up to a US patrol and press a button on the vest that would "spray flowers". Fortunately, the quick-thinking boy instead asked for help, and the vest was removed.

Read the whole thing as the blog cliche goes. The Taliban unlike the Iraqi terror groups appears unable to recruit bombers who aren't drug addicts, children, dupes or lunatics, which does at least mean that their bombers are of minimal competence. Still the combination of ignorance and desperation that the Taliban requires does mean that this looks like a situation where an aggressive hearts and mind campaign to warn the population of the Taliban's tactics could reap enormous benefits.

An Alliance Without Allies.

Michael Portillo, whom is usually a fool, makes some very good points about the war in Afghanistan here. Unlike Iraq, the Afghanistan war was not a war of choice because the Taliban were in symbiotic relationship with Al Qaeda who were responsible for the murder of thousands of civilians, including a couple of hundred Britons. Unfortunately the resolve to pacify Afghanistan that existed after the 9/11 attacks has largely evaporated, particularly so among many members of Nato.

Britain's government has left the armed forces underfunded which is shameful considering the sacrifices that are being demanded of them, but Gordon Brown has preferred to use the gargantuan increases in taxation to fund his personal follies such as the failed 'New Deal' scheme or to throw money at Labour voting areas. In short the government has consistently used the armed forces for various global vanity projects that will garner the government popularity, but refuses to fund the MOD is order to appease the pacifist leanings of many of their own backbenchers.

However Britain is at least meeting the commitments to keep the Taliban out of Afghanistan, and the army has been engaged in serious fighting, with all the losses that are entailed. Meanwhile other members of what is supposedly an alliance, are shirking their duties entirely or in part. Germany for example has troops in Afghanistan, and Angela Merkel has been resolute in refusing to be intimidated into leaving, but their soldiers are based in and around Kabul which is where the fighting isn't. Peace keeping is considered to be something distinct from fighting the groups that are threatening to destroy the peace. France, Spain, Italy and Turkey are all among the countries which have refused to commit more troops. Turkey aside most of the absentees are staying away purely for domestic political advantage, however short term that turns out to be.

Afghanistan has not been an easy place to win a war historically, and NATO is doing much better than other outside powers, but at the moment the strain of the struggle falls on a handful of members. The others need to be cajoled, persuaded and prodded into engaging fully. Germany for example wants to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the UK ought to make it clear that it cannot support the membership of a country that is unwilling to fight. Most of the members of NATO are also members of the EU, and thus receive money indirectly from the UK, that is another lever of power to be exploited.