AFGHANISTAN - A LESSON 200 YEARS OLD

As for the Taliban. I've read many recent media reports suggesting that negotiations in "high places" are being seriously considered between "our" side & theirs.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
Henry A. Kissinger

I am not quite sure where you are getting media reports...

.. Senior ministers and commanders on the ground believe they have created the right conditions to open up a dialogue with "second-tier" local leaders now the Taliban have been forced back in a swath of Helmand province.

They are hoping that Britain's continuing military presence in Helmand, strengthened by the arrival of thousands of US troops, will encourage Taliban commanders to end the insurgency. There is even talk in London and Washington of a military "exit strategy". ....<cont>

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday endorsed Afghan plans to hold reconciliation talks with moderate Taliban members.

We must support efforts by the government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who joined their ranks, not out of conviction but out of desperation," Clinton said in an address laying out the new U.S. strategy for the region that President Obama announced last week.

She added, "They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al Qaeda and support the constitution."

Clinton spoke at a conference aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan and jump-starting political support for the war-torn country. More than 80 countries and international organizations are attending.

At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead.

What followed is one of the more macabre scenes of this or any war. The grief-stricken relatives began to argue and fight over the remains of the men and boys who a few hours earlier had greedily sought the tanker's fuel. Poor people in one of the world's poorest countries, they had been trying to hoard as much as they could for the coming winter.

"We didn't recognise any of the dead when we arrived," said Omar Khan, the turbaned village chief of Eissa Khail. "It was like a chemical bomb had gone off, everything was burned. The bodies were like this," he brought his two hands together, his fingers curling like claws. "There were like burned tree logs, like charcoal.

"The villagers were fighting over the corpses. People were saying this is my brother, this is my cousin, and no one could identify anyone."

So the elders stepped in. They collected all the bodies they could and asked the people to tell them how many relatives each family had lost.

A queue formed. One by one the bereaved gave the names of missing brothers, cousins, sons and nephews, and each in turn received their quota of corpses. It didn't matter who was who, everyone was mangled beyond recognition anyway. All that mattered was that they had a body to bury and perform prayers upon. ...<cont>

THE HAGUE, Netherlands " The top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan said Friday he sees no signs of a major al-Qaida presence in the country, but says the terror group still maintains close links to insurgents.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal spoke on the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al-Qaida that prompted the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The invasion quickly toppled the Taliban regime that had sheltered al-Qaida leaders who plotted the 9/11 attacks, but has since bogged down amid a deadly insurgency.

"I do not see indications of a large al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan now," McChrystal told reporters at the Dutch Defense Ministry, where he met military officials.

But he warned that Osama bin Laden's network still maintains contact with insurgents and seeks to use areas of Afghanistan they control as bases.

"I do believe that al-Qaida intends to retain those relationships because they believe it is symbiotic ... where the Taliban has success, that provides a sanctuary from which al-Qaida can operate transnationally," he added.

The specter of al-Qaida terrorists being harbored by insurgents in lawless areas of Afghanistan serves as a reminder to America and its allies of why the increasingly unpopular war started.

Last month, McChrystal sent a "strategic assessment" of the war to U.S. and NATO leaders. He has not revealed its contents publicly, but said at the time that success in Afghanistan "is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort."

Considering what AQ effectively did to the Taliban and Afghanistan,

Do you even read the reports where AQ has supported and continues to support the Taliban in Pakistan and with their help the Taliban has been carrying out bombings and other destructive activities in Afghanistan?

I agree with working with any moderate Taliban, but to say

Quote:

Considering what AQ effectively did to the Taliban and Afghanistan,

is just ridiculous considering the Taliban has been carrying out the terrorist activities in Afghanistan supported by AQ in Pakistan. You act as though the Taliban is and has always been innocent bystanders or something and nothing could be further from the truth.

U.N. shuts Pakistan offices after deadly attack

Suicide bombing that kills 5 at food agency follows fresh Taliban threats

A suicide bomber who killed five staffers at the U.N. food agency's headquarters in Pakistan was dressed as a security officer and allowed to enter the heavily guarded building after he asked to use the bathroom.

The United Nations announced it was temporarily closing all its offices in Pakistan after the midday Monday bombing, which blew out windows and left victims lying in pools of blood in the lobby of the three-story World Food Program compound.

"This is a heinous crime committed against those who have been working tirelessly to assist the poor and vulnerable on the front lines of hunger and other human suffering in Pakistan," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Geneva.

Despite the office closures, the U.N. said its Pakistani partner organizations would continue distributing food, medicine and other humanitarian assistance. The world body said it would reassess the situation over the next several days.

Pakistani authorities launched an investigation into the major security lapse, saying they would question guards who failed to stop the bomber from carrying out the first suicide attack in Islamabad in four months.

Taliban leader vows attacks
The attack came a day after the new Pakistani Taliban leader met reporters close to the Afghan border, vowing more attacks in response to U.S. missile strikes on militant targets in Pakistan. Ending speculation he had been killed, Hakimullah Mehsud denied government claims the militants were in disarray and said his fighters would repel any army offensive on their stronghold in South Waziristan.

Authorities blamed Islamic militants for Monday's bombing but did not single out the Taliban.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) " President Barack Obama told congressional leaders on Tuesday his decision on a new Afghan war strategy would not make everyone happy, while Republicans urged him to heed his military commander's call for more troops.

Obama summoned key Democratic and Republican lawmakers for a meeting at the White House to hash out their views on how to overhaul strategy in the eight-year war, where the military says the Taliban has the momentum in the unpopular conflict.

Obama told the meeting his decision, to be announced in the coming weeks, would be based on what he thought would be the best way to prevent future attacks on the United States and its allies, a U.S. official said.

"He also made it clear that his decision won't make everybody in the room or the nation happy, but underscored his commitment to work on a collaborative basis," the official said.

At the heart of the debate within the Obama administration is whether it would be best to send more troops to Afghanistan and work to earn the trust of the Afghan people or to more narrowly focus the war effort using airstrikes against al Qaeda targets.

Republican Senator John McCain warned Obama against "half measures" and urged him to implement a plan by the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who wants as many as 40,000 more troops and trainers to fight the war.

"I am very convinced that General McChrystal's analysis is not only correct but should be employed as quickly as possible," McCain told reporters after the 90-minute meeting.

"There is no middle ground," said McCain, who lost the election to Obama last year.

Democrats countered that Obama was being responsible by taking his time to decide on a strategy in Afghanistan.

"We all realize the important decision the president has to make. Eight solders were killed on Sunday, one of them was from Reno, Nevada," said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, who represents Nevada.

PUBLIC UNEASE

Obama's meeting with lawmakers follows a brutal firefight in eastern Afghanistan last weekend in which eight U.S. troops were killed and NATO forces said more than 100 militants died.

There is growing public unease over the war as well as skepticism among members of Obama's own party who question whether it is worth sending in more troops.

"There were some on the other side of equation, who indicated that perhaps the political will was not there in terms of the people of this country to support another mission," said Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives.

Republican Senator Judd Gregg said there was "no consensus" in the meeting about what should be done in Afghanistan and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, spoke of the "diversity" of opinion in the room.

The debate over what to do in Afghanistan has been complicated by the uncertain outcome of the country's August election which was marred by widespread allegations of fraud.

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai is expected to win and Pelosi said there were questions whether his government could perform in a way that was not corrupt. "Do we have an able partner in President Karzai?" she asked.

While one option is to send additional troops, the administration is also looking at whether scale back the mission and focus on striking al Qaeda cells in neighboring Pakistan, an idea backed by Vice President Joe Biden.

The White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have sought to tamp down talk of a third option -- to withdraw from Afghanistan entirely.

"The president reiterated that we need this debate to be honest and dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan," said the U.S. official.

"Leaving Afghanistan isn't an option," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said earlier.

Obama's review could still take several weeks and a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday will focus largely on Pakistan, said Gibbs.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was in Washington on Tuesday for meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as lawmakers who hold the purse strings for future U.S. aid to Pakistan.

Qureshi urged the United States to make a long-term commitment to his country, Afghanistan and the region.

"The inconsistency of the past has to be kept in mind and we have to build on learning from the mistakes of the past," Qureshi said at a joint news conference with Clinton.

Last week, Congress passed a bill to allocate $1.5 billion a year in nonmilitary aid to Pakistan over the next five years as part of the Obama administration's strategy to fight extremism with jobs and reconstruction.

A string of successful operations recently killing or capturing high-level figures from Al Qaeda, particularly in the tribal areas of Pakistan, has fueled the argument inside the Obama administration about the necessity of a substantial troop buildup in Afghanistan, officials said.

Administration officials said the United States had eliminated more than half of its top targets over the last year, severely constricted Al Qaeda’s capacity to operate and choked off a lot of its financing. The sense of progress against Al Qaeda and its allies has helped shape the internal debate over the best way to fight in Afghanistan as President Obama explores alternatives to a large escalation.

The White House has begun promoting the missile strikes and raids that have killed Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere. Mr. Obama will visit the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday to call attention to the operations. While aides said the public focus was not related to the Afghanistan review, it could give Mr. Obama political room if he rejected or pared back the request for 40,000 more troops from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan.

The focus on so-called surgical strikes against terrorism suspects comes as the Afghanistan review accelerates. Mr. Obama met Monday with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; his national security team met separately. The president will host Congressional leaders on Tuesday to talk about Afghanistan, then meet with top advisers on Wednesday and Friday to consider a new strategy.

The internal debate has spilled out in public at times and created stress within the Obama team. Mr. Gates warned his colleagues in a speech Monday to keep their advice to the president private, a statement taken as a rebuke to General McChrystal, who last week said publicly that he did not think a smaller-scale option would work.

“It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilians and military alike, provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately,” Mr. Gates told the Association of the United States Army.

Just a day earlier Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, also appeared to chide General McChrystal for his public comments. But Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Mr. Gates’s comment was directed not just at the general but at all participants in the review. “To interpret this as being directed at only one person is really missing the point,” Mr. Morrell said.

The White House also tried to make it clear on Monday that Mr. Obama did not envision actually pulling out of Afghanistan no matter how he rules on General McChrystal’s request. “I don’t think we have the option to leave,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary.

Even the option advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for a scaled-back approach would not reduce the current force of 68,000 troops, officials said. Instead, it would keep troop levels roughly where they are now but shift emphasis to the sort of Predator drone strikes and Special Forces operations that have been used more aggressively over the last year.

That idea has its critics, including General McChrystal and other officials who do not overlook the value of such operations " indeed, General McChrystal used to head the Joint Special Operations Command, which was responsible for many of those operations. But they say they depend on a significant troop presence on the ground to provide intelligence and restrict the space where Al Qaeda can operate. They argue that defeating Al Qaeda requires fighting the Taliban, too, and warn of the difficulties in managing the relationship with Pakistan, which has often bristled at American drone attacks on its territory.

On Monday evening, Mr. Gates suggested that a shortage of troops had contributed to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. “The reality is that because of our inability " and the inability, frankly, of our allies " to put enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now,” he said.

Administration officials trace what they see as increasing success at killing individual Qaeda leaders to the stepped-up use of Predator and Reaper drones in the brutal and largely ungoverned border regions of Pakistan. President George W. Bush approved a more aggressive campaign of surgical strikes last year before leaving office, and Mr. Obama has embraced and expanded the program. The Obama team has also worked to strengthen its partnership with Pakistan’s government.

Of the 20 Qaeda or allied leaders most wanted by the United States in the Pakistani tribal areas, 11 have been killed or captured since July 2008, according to senior administration officials who provided a briefing on the operations on condition of anonymity. Another four added to the top-20 list have also been killed or captured, they said.

How much this all adds up to is hard to say. The Bush administration regularly cited its successes in eliminating high-level Qaeda figures, too, and yet the organization seemed to replenish itself. The Obama administration appears no closer than its predecessor to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri or the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.

But one official who has been involved in the struggle with terrorism under both administrations said Al Qaeda had been significantly degraded. Fewer than 100 Qaeda fighters are left in Afghanistan, according to American estimates, and many foreigners who fought with Al Qaeda in Pakistan have begun leaving.

Still, last month’s arrest of Najibullah Zazi, an American alleged to have been trained in a Qaeda camp in preparation for a possible attack in the United States, showed that Al Qaeda appeared still to be working to hit American targets even here.

A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle outside the Indian Embassy in the busy center of Afghanistan's capital on Thursday, killing 17 people and wounding nearly 80 in the second major attack in the city in less than a month.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the 8:30 a.m. assault and said the embassy was the target.

PAKISTAN: TALIBAN POSITIONS IN SOUTH WAZIRISTAN BOMBED

- The Pakistani air force has bombed several Taliban positions in South Waziristan in order to open the way for a large-scale land offensive in the region bordering on Afghanistan and strategic both for Pakistan and for the success of the US's war on terrorism. ''Jets have hit two strongholds in the Makeen and Ladha area and killed sixteen militants,'' reported a Pakistani intelligence official. The land offensive, said Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, is ''imminent''. ''We will not show any mercy for them,'' he added, referring to the Taliban, ''the only solution is to get rid of them. There is no room for them in Pakistan. I promise you this.'' The duty to win a military battle is shored up by the wounded pride of a military struck to its very core on Saturday evening when a Taliban commando took hold of the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, sowing terror and death and forcing troops to engage a siege which lasted many hours and ended with a raid.

Pakistan says 41 killed in market bombing

PESHAWAR, Pakistan " A suicide car bombing targeting Pakistani troops killed 41 people Monday, the fourth grisly militant attack in just over a week, as the Taliban pledged to mobilize fighters across the country for more strikes.

The Taliban also claimed responsibility for the 22-hour weekend attack on the nation's heavily fortified army headquarters, saying a cell from Pakistan's most populous province carried out the raid.

The claim that a Punjabi faction of the Pakistani Taliban was behind that strike is a sign the insurgents have forged links with militants outside their main strongholds in Pashtun areas close to the Afghan border, increasing their potency.

The army, however, maintained it was launched from South Waziristan " where the military is preparing for what will likely be a long and bloody offensive against the major base of the Taliban along the frontier.

In advance of that offensive, the militants have launched a wave of attacks across the country.

An Afghan immigrant accused of plotting a terrorist attack in New York after receiving training in Pakistan was in contact with a senior al-Qaida operative, intelligence officials familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press.

The CIA learned about Najibullah Zazi through one of its sources and alerted domestic agencies, including the FBI, intelligence officials said.