AFGHANISTAN - A LESSON 200 YEARS OLD

KABUL " A suicide bomber killed 20 people " including three children " Thursday in a market in central Afghanistan in the deadliest attack against Afghan civilians in more than three months.

Suicide bombings and other attacks have become the No. 1 killer of Afghan civilians in the intensifying war between U.S.-led forces and the Taliban. A United Nations report released this week found that the number of Afghan civilians killed in war-related violence rose last year to its highest level of the 8-year-old war " with nearly 70 percent of the deaths blamed on the Taliban and their allies.

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a land of bandits

**** that! Whether the Afghans will ever become 'democratic' is moot. Right now they are the world's supplier of opium, a crop grown and distributed in the so-called 'secure' areas. This stuff becomes the currency of criminals and terror groups, no matter what their colour or stripe. To talk of 'liberty' and 'democracy' in a nation where the only career path is either drug grower or gun-man is meaningless. That might occur when the Afghanis can actually have a future that includes clean water, an education and a chance to engage in lawful trade.

ANALYSIS
Chris Morris
Chris Morris, BBC News, Kabul

Western diplomats in Kabul are still chewing over the potential implications of the presidential decree, and waiting on a precise translation of the long text from Dari into English.

Part of the concern is that even if Mr Karzai has no intention of misusing the power to make appointments, it simply doesn't look good, especially at a time when trying to entrench transparent democracy is one of the goals of the international mission.

On the other hand there is a lot of talk of "Afghanisation" - of Afghans taking more control over their own affairs.

And there are those who argue that the electoral process should not be immune from that. So the small print, the legal detail of what the decree says, and how it will be interpreted, will be critical.

Afghan insurgents attack Bagram air base

BBC's Mark Dummett on what is known about the Bagram attack

Suspected Taliban militants have attacked one of the largest and most-heavily fortified US bases in Afghanistan.

Ten insurgents were killed and seven US troops injured in the battle at Bagram air base that raged for several hours, a US official said.

May 21, 2010

David Beckham en route to Afghanistan to boost morale of troops

Afghan president 'has lost faith in US ability to defeat Taliban'
Jon Boone in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 June 2010 20.29 BST

Afghanistan's former head of intelligence says President Hamid Karzai is increasingly looking to Pakistan to end insurgency


US soldiers in Logar province, Afghanistan US soldiers in Logar province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Nikola Solic/Reuters

President Hamid Karzai has lost faith in the US strategy in Afghanistan and is increasingly looking to Pakistan to end the insurgency, according to those close to Afghanistan's former head of intelligence services.

Amrullah Saleh, who resigned last weekend, believes the president lost confidence some time ago in the ability of Nato forces to defeat the Taliban.

As head of the National Directorate of Security, Saleh was highly regarded in western circles. He has said little about why he quit, other than that the Taliban attack on last week's peace jirga or assembly in Kabul was for him the "tipping point"; the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, also quit, and their resignations were accepted by Karzai.

Privately Saleh has told aides he believes Karzai's approach is dangerously out of step with the strategy of his western backers. "There came a time when [Karzai] lost his confidence in the capability of the coalition or even his own government [to protect] this country," a key aide told the Guardian.

Saleh believes Karzai has long thought this, but his views were crystallised in the aftermath of last year's election when millions of votes were found to be fraudulent; Karzai blamed the US, UK and United Nations for the fraud.

According to the source, Saleh is deeply concerned by Karzai's noticeably softer attitude towards Pakistan. The president has long dropped his past habit of excoriating Pakistan for aiding the Taliban.

Saleh also echoes complaints of US commanders that Karzai refuses to behave like a commander-in-chief, and is not publicly leading the counterinsurgency campaign devised by Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato forces. ...<cont>

Time for an honest appraisal of mission
June 9, 2010/the AGE

Acting Chief of the Defence Force, Lieutenant General David Hurley, announces the death of two Australian diggers in Afghanistan. Photo: Stefan Postles

COMMENT
Kevin Rudd's favoured spin on Afghanistan is wearing thin. Asked about the war, he always trots out the same lines - it's ''difficult and dangerous'' work, he says, and there is no ''blank cheque'' as far as Australia's military commitment goes.

He said this yesterday when talking of two more Australian soldiers killed, the same words he used in April 2008 after the first Australian soldier died on his watch. He has said it for each fatality since.

Yet the PM is never frank enough to write a value on the cheque, to actually own up to how long he thinks Australia should stay in this conflict that stretches back to 2001....<cont>

"You can't look for lilywhite purity in Afghanistan; it doesn't exist by our standards"
Thomas Schweich, US Ambassador for Counternarcotics 2007-08.

It's one of the world's most dangerous places where friendships can be fickle and America's strategy of playing favourites means either a palace or a prison cell. Getting things done means getting cosy with some pretty unsavoury types, where a future US President seeks the counsel of an alleged drug runner and killer.

In early 2002, Foreign Correspondent's Mark Corcoran was in the southern Province of Kandahar, where he encountered two warlords who had become the key players in Washington's strategy to eliminate the Taliban.

Now Corcoran has returned to the war zone to discover they've both taken very different paths - one to high influence and prestige, the other to an American prison for life.
Their divergent destinies are an apt metaphor for the treachery and failed strategies of a war now dragging into its 8th year.

It's a white knuckle journey through Afghanistan's dark underbelly featuring a re-union - of sorts - with the man who's become known as The Bulldozer. ...<cont>

Aussies could be in Afghanistan 'until 2040'
Updated 5 hours 5 minutes ago

A former high-ranking United States defence official says Australian troops could be in Afghanistan for the next 30 years. ....

..... Mr Ellsberg says the recent deployment of 30,000 US troops is unlikely to be the last such deployment.

aussies could be in afghanistan until 2040

(CNN) -- American-led operations against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will happen "more slowly than we had originally anticipated," the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Thursday.

"I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it's more important that we get it right than we get it fast," Gen. Stanley McChrystal said on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

McChrystal, a counterinsurgency expert, was talking about the broad range of American operations against the Islamist movement that used to rule Afghanistan, not only armed combat.

"I want to make sure we've got conditions shaped politically with the local leaders, with the people," he said.

"We really want the people to understand and literally pull the operation towards them, as opposed to feeling they are being forced with something they didn't want," he said.

Meanwhile, American casualties in Afghanistan are likely to continue to increase, particularly through the summer, he said.

"It's likely that our casualties and violence will continue to rise particularly through the summer months. They could rise well into the fall," he said.

"We are pressuring the enemy, and they are reacting to that," he said.

they sure are , aren't they ?

...Meanwhile, American casualties in Afghanistan are likely to continue to increase, particularly through the summer, he said.

"It's likely that our casualties and violence will continue to rise particularly through the summer months. They could rise well into the fall," he said.

"We are pressuring the enemy, and they are reacting to that," he said.