Friday, February 13, 2009
The truth of the Holocaust: There were no Gas Chambers
Comment:
I have always maintained it was simply not logistically possible to methodically kill six million Jews from all across Europe in the time period the 'Holocaust' is said to have lasted. Two to three hundred thousand maximum may indeed have perished.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Turkey. A major policy shift?
David Ignatius, Ban Ki Moon, Tayyip Erdogan, Amr Moosa, Shimon Peres - Davos:
Comment:
The Caravan moves on.
The transcript of the Turkish PM:
Recep Tayyip Erdogan: (Simultaneous translation from original Turkish)
"First of all, before replying to the question as to what needs to be done, I think it’s also important that we analyse the current situation because we need to do a proper analysis of the current situation in order to determine what steps need to be taken.
I’m not going to start from 40 years ago in making the situation analysis, I am just going as far back as June 2008. If we look at back then, June 2008, there was a ceasefire which was stated [agreed to] and there was no problem to the ceasefire that was to last for 6 months, but when the ceasefire ended, 6 months later there were no rocket attacks at that point, in the meantime the Israeli side was to lift the embargo, the situation had to change in Palestine, however, the Palestinian Territories are like an open air prison because it is completely isolated from the rest of the world, so it is very much isolated, sealed, so if you try to bring in a case of tomatoes from any crossing into the Palestinian territories you must get the permission of the Israeli side because it is not possible otherwise so [Looking at this,] I look at this from a humanitarian point of view and I will also say a few words as Prime Minister, I visited Israel some time ago and then I went to Palestine and as the Prime Minister I waited for half hour with my wife in the car [for about half an hour] to be able to cross into the Palestinian territories from Ramallah.
But never has a diplomat coming from Israel had to wait for that long at our borders. I think we have to look at these aspects of the situation there on the ground. I also ask Mr. Olmert if there were any deaths as a result of these rockets attacks and he told me that there were no deaths, but that the attacks were a fact, so these rockets are being used but, they don’t kill anyone, so I’m told that it’s about the rockets themselves, they are of not very good quality, but in the meantime, there were more that 24 Palestinians who were killed during the ceasefire since last June, and the power was cut off, there was no food, the electricity didn’t exist in hospitals, so there were quite a number of difficult issues and we had already started as Turkey to send humanitarian aid to Palestine, so there was already a humanitarian issue then. And let me say, I have always been a leader who expressly stated that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity, Islamophobia too, is a crime against humanity.
For me the person being Christian, Jewish or Muslim is not important if the person is under stress, to me, the common denominator is that they are all human beings and so my approach is a humanitarian one, and that has been what I have taken as the basis of my efforts, for example we tried to send humanitarian aid the Turkish Red Crescent, tried to provide aid, but it took quite a while, two weeks sometimes, to have the trucks cross the crossings. I don’t know if President Peres is aware of this but it has taken us quite a lot of time, our diplomats have had to work very hard to make sure that the aid will flow into the Palestinian Territories. Even more interesting, is that the Israeli Prime Minister was in Turkey, Mr. Olmert was in Turkey four days before the war in Gaza started. as you have mentioned, we as Turkey have taken up an intermediation role between Israel and Syria for indirect talks and there were already four rounds of talks, which have taken place, indirect talks, and the fifth round was actually carried out with Prime Minister Olmert and myself present and our special envoys present in Ankara and we sat together for five to six hours and we were discussing the issues between Syria and Israel. I was on phone conversation with President Assad and my envoy was talking to the Foreign Minister Moallem and our goal then, to see if we could move to the next phase which was direct talks between Israel and Syria, so that was what we were trying to do and our goal in trying to do all this has been to achieve peace in the region and we have been trying to bring together officials from two countries which to date have not come together. We were making quite good progress, so much so that we were having problems with a few words only, in the language that we were talking. It was decided that a few days should lapse until a final decision could be reached and in the meantime, I was talking to Mr. Olmert with my Foreign Minister with me and our special envoy and Prime Minister Olmert had his advisers as well and I said that we could work to release the captured Israeli soldier who was held by Hamas but I said, and I also made the request, I said that the reforming change Party won the election in Palestine. We are talking about democracy, we would like to see democracy take root, so if we would like to see democracy take root then we must respect, first of all, the people who have received the votes of the people of the country they are running in, so we may not like them, but we have to respect the process. And I said to Prime Minister Olmert that they held the Ministers and Members of Parliament of Palestine. I suggested also, that there could perhaps be a gesture made, similar to the gesture made to President Abbas before, they could be released perhaps. But Prime Minister Olmert said that this would make things very difficult for President Abbas. But then I said, perhaps it would be possible to release some of the women and children and that could perhaps that be done as a gesture. President Olmert told me that he would talk to his colleagues and respond back the next day, but we got no response and in about 4 days after that, by December 27 we saw the war in Gaza. What happened was more than 1,200 people were killed including women and children. More than 5,000 were wounded and this was a disproportionate use of force, so if you look at all this from a humanitarian point of view and think of the military power of Israel including weapons of mass destruction and whether or not there is anything that is similar in Gaza, whether the Palestinians have any of that kind of military power, they don’t have that kind of power. The UN Security Council met and the resolution was announced but Israel did not recognize this resolution of the United Nations Security Council as Secretary General Ban Ki Moon mentioned, the UN centre was also hit during the course of this war. Schools, mosques were also hit, but mankind or humanity as a whole did not really act as quickly as it should have to try to help people there. In the case of Georgia people acted rather quickly, I include ourselves in that effort because we too worked very hard to help Georgians as well in a difficult time. So, what I am trying to say is that we should not be judging anyone by their race or religion if they are in distress. Our goal, everyone’s goal, is to try to help people in difficulty. I visited Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and I talked to many leaders, European leaders on the phone, unfortunately this whole thing lasted 3 weeks it was covered from the very beginning, television channels, BBC for example predicted that it would take about 3 weeks, indeed the whole process or the whole war took 3 weeks and this has lead to the destruction of the infrastructure. And the figures that the UN Secretary General mentioned are not sufficient to solve the problem, we need much more, not even 1 billion or 2 billion dollars would help in trying to restore the structures there because these people there do not have any means to rehabilitate their infrastructure and they now have to be burdened.
There is a lot of talk about Hamas, but Hamas are not the only people in Gaza, there are also civilians. Hamas is also a different face of the change and transformation party. The problem here is that their democratic rights have not been recognized, respected. Where we are now, the unilateral ceasefire was announced by Israel and then Hamas the next day announced a unilateral ceasefire as well. One is talking about a year-long ceasefire process, the other one proposes a year and a half. Another issue is of course to end the isolation of the Palestinian People. Will it be possible for Israel to do that, in other words, will the crossings be open for people to come in because how will those people survive where they are, under the conditions that they are in? If we respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Conventions that are internationally accepted, those crossings, first of all, must be opened so people can experience their rights, the rights of life. There is also the issue of arms being smuggled into the area. If one end of the tunnel is in Egypt then Egypt must stop this illicit arms flow. But if we consider Palestine as a State, and I think that there is also a question there, perhaps some question marks in peoples minds, this issue of the division within Palestine, and how to breach the differences between Fatah and Hamas. If we are trying to bridge that gap then we have to consider all the parties. And I said this to Mr. Olmert too, because if it’s only Fatah who is present on the Palestinian side, that is not going to be sufficient to project the results to all of the Palestinian people, Hamas has to be taken into consideration as well because they are a part of that society, they have won an election, so they too must be included in this equation. If it’s the UN who is going to take the lead, that’s the way it should be, I hope that the UN puts it weight behind these efforts and/or the United States under the Obama administration can take an important role. I hope, I expect, President Obama to be the voice of the silent masses and to put his weight, his administration’s weight, behind a solution. He must do this not within the agreements that have been previously made by the previous administration, including the last one that was made between the then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Livni. There’s got to be a new opening and Hamas must be considered in this process. If Turkey is asked to play some sort of a role, we too would be willing to be involved, but we must be careful and we must think of the whole process when we try to define the parties involved and we must definitely achieve peace in the Middle East because that is important and necessary for global peace. If the Middle East peace process does not yield a positive result, that means that we will not have peace in the world as a whole. So I think that in the National Unity government to be established in Palestine this party of Reform and Change must be there, and that is how the National Unity government has to be established then elections have to take place and once the new government is in place, whether we or not, like them will be and should be the government of the Palestinian people because we have to respect the will of the Palestinian people."
Next:
"One minute! One minute! Mr.Peres, you’re older than me. Your voice is coming too loud. I know that the reason of your voice’s coming this loud is a guiltiness psychology. My voice won’t come this loud, know that so. When it comes to kill, you know how to kill very well. I know how you shot, how you killed the children on plages, very well. Two people who had been prime minister in your country made important statements to me. You have prime ministers who said that “When i get in to Palestine on tanks, i feel myself a different kind of happy.” And you’re giving me numbers. I can give you names. You may be wonder. I also condemn who acclaims to this grimness. Because i suppose acclaiming the people who killed those children, those people, is another humanity crime. Look, we can not edge out a reality here. I keep a lot of notes here, but i don’t have a chance to reply all here. But i only say two words from here. First, - Please don’t interrupt me!
First, The Torah says in the sixth topic that “You are not going to kill!”. There is killing here.
This is also interesting too - Gilad Atzmon: Israel barbarism is on the further side of fiendishness - a Jewish. Oxford University International Communications Proffessor who is soldiering in Israil army, Avi Shalom give a talk to the English newspaper Guardian that - (The Davos moderator wants to interrupt Erdogan) I thank you too. From now on Davos is done to me. I don’t come Davos again. Know that so! You don’t let me talk. He talked about 25 minutes, you gave me 12 minutes."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan clashed with Shimon Peres, whose voice had risen as he made an impassioned defence of Israel’s actions, jabbing his finger.
Mr Erdogan said Mr Peres had spoken so loudly to conceal his “guilt”.
He accused the moderator of not allowing him to speak and said he did not think he would return to Davos.
The Turkish PM stressed later that he had left the debate not because of his disagreements with Mr Peres but because he had been given much less time to speak than the Israeli leader.
Turkey is one of the few Muslim countries to have dealings with Israel, but relations have been under strain since the Islamist-rooted AK Party was elected to power in 2002.
Late on Thursday, a WEF official said that Mr Peres and Mr Erdogan had spoken by mobile telephone, and both men now considered the matter closed.
Earlier the Turkish Prime Minister had made an address himself, describing Gaza as an “open-air prison”.
When the audience applauded Mr Peres, he said: “I find it very sad that people applaud what you said. You killed people. And I think that it is very wrong.”
The moderator, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, had given him a minute to reply, then asked him to finish, saying that people needed to go to dinner.
“I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak,” Mr Erdogan shouted before marching off the stage in front of Mr Peres, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and an elite audience of ministers and international officials.
Comment:
The Caravan moves on.
The transcript of the Turkish PM:
Recep Tayyip Erdogan: (Simultaneous translation from original Turkish)
"First of all, before replying to the question as to what needs to be done, I think it’s also important that we analyse the current situation because we need to do a proper analysis of the current situation in order to determine what steps need to be taken.
I’m not going to start from 40 years ago in making the situation analysis, I am just going as far back as June 2008. If we look at back then, June 2008, there was a ceasefire which was stated [agreed to] and there was no problem to the ceasefire that was to last for 6 months, but when the ceasefire ended, 6 months later there were no rocket attacks at that point, in the meantime the Israeli side was to lift the embargo, the situation had to change in Palestine, however, the Palestinian Territories are like an open air prison because it is completely isolated from the rest of the world, so it is very much isolated, sealed, so if you try to bring in a case of tomatoes from any crossing into the Palestinian territories you must get the permission of the Israeli side because it is not possible otherwise so [Looking at this,] I look at this from a humanitarian point of view and I will also say a few words as Prime Minister, I visited Israel some time ago and then I went to Palestine and as the Prime Minister I waited for half hour with my wife in the car [for about half an hour] to be able to cross into the Palestinian territories from Ramallah.
But never has a diplomat coming from Israel had to wait for that long at our borders. I think we have to look at these aspects of the situation there on the ground. I also ask Mr. Olmert if there were any deaths as a result of these rockets attacks and he told me that there were no deaths, but that the attacks were a fact, so these rockets are being used but, they don’t kill anyone, so I’m told that it’s about the rockets themselves, they are of not very good quality, but in the meantime, there were more that 24 Palestinians who were killed during the ceasefire since last June, and the power was cut off, there was no food, the electricity didn’t exist in hospitals, so there were quite a number of difficult issues and we had already started as Turkey to send humanitarian aid to Palestine, so there was already a humanitarian issue then. And let me say, I have always been a leader who expressly stated that anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity, Islamophobia too, is a crime against humanity.
For me the person being Christian, Jewish or Muslim is not important if the person is under stress, to me, the common denominator is that they are all human beings and so my approach is a humanitarian one, and that has been what I have taken as the basis of my efforts, for example we tried to send humanitarian aid the Turkish Red Crescent, tried to provide aid, but it took quite a while, two weeks sometimes, to have the trucks cross the crossings. I don’t know if President Peres is aware of this but it has taken us quite a lot of time, our diplomats have had to work very hard to make sure that the aid will flow into the Palestinian Territories. Even more interesting, is that the Israeli Prime Minister was in Turkey, Mr. Olmert was in Turkey four days before the war in Gaza started. as you have mentioned, we as Turkey have taken up an intermediation role between Israel and Syria for indirect talks and there were already four rounds of talks, which have taken place, indirect talks, and the fifth round was actually carried out with Prime Minister Olmert and myself present and our special envoys present in Ankara and we sat together for five to six hours and we were discussing the issues between Syria and Israel. I was on phone conversation with President Assad and my envoy was talking to the Foreign Minister Moallem and our goal then, to see if we could move to the next phase which was direct talks between Israel and Syria, so that was what we were trying to do and our goal in trying to do all this has been to achieve peace in the region and we have been trying to bring together officials from two countries which to date have not come together. We were making quite good progress, so much so that we were having problems with a few words only, in the language that we were talking. It was decided that a few days should lapse until a final decision could be reached and in the meantime, I was talking to Mr. Olmert with my Foreign Minister with me and our special envoy and Prime Minister Olmert had his advisers as well and I said that we could work to release the captured Israeli soldier who was held by Hamas but I said, and I also made the request, I said that the reforming change Party won the election in Palestine. We are talking about democracy, we would like to see democracy take root, so if we would like to see democracy take root then we must respect, first of all, the people who have received the votes of the people of the country they are running in, so we may not like them, but we have to respect the process. And I said to Prime Minister Olmert that they held the Ministers and Members of Parliament of Palestine. I suggested also, that there could perhaps be a gesture made, similar to the gesture made to President Abbas before, they could be released perhaps. But Prime Minister Olmert said that this would make things very difficult for President Abbas. But then I said, perhaps it would be possible to release some of the women and children and that could perhaps that be done as a gesture. President Olmert told me that he would talk to his colleagues and respond back the next day, but we got no response and in about 4 days after that, by December 27 we saw the war in Gaza. What happened was more than 1,200 people were killed including women and children. More than 5,000 were wounded and this was a disproportionate use of force, so if you look at all this from a humanitarian point of view and think of the military power of Israel including weapons of mass destruction and whether or not there is anything that is similar in Gaza, whether the Palestinians have any of that kind of military power, they don’t have that kind of power. The UN Security Council met and the resolution was announced but Israel did not recognize this resolution of the United Nations Security Council as Secretary General Ban Ki Moon mentioned, the UN centre was also hit during the course of this war. Schools, mosques were also hit, but mankind or humanity as a whole did not really act as quickly as it should have to try to help people there. In the case of Georgia people acted rather quickly, I include ourselves in that effort because we too worked very hard to help Georgians as well in a difficult time. So, what I am trying to say is that we should not be judging anyone by their race or religion if they are in distress. Our goal, everyone’s goal, is to try to help people in difficulty. I visited Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and I talked to many leaders, European leaders on the phone, unfortunately this whole thing lasted 3 weeks it was covered from the very beginning, television channels, BBC for example predicted that it would take about 3 weeks, indeed the whole process or the whole war took 3 weeks and this has lead to the destruction of the infrastructure. And the figures that the UN Secretary General mentioned are not sufficient to solve the problem, we need much more, not even 1 billion or 2 billion dollars would help in trying to restore the structures there because these people there do not have any means to rehabilitate their infrastructure and they now have to be burdened.
There is a lot of talk about Hamas, but Hamas are not the only people in Gaza, there are also civilians. Hamas is also a different face of the change and transformation party. The problem here is that their democratic rights have not been recognized, respected. Where we are now, the unilateral ceasefire was announced by Israel and then Hamas the next day announced a unilateral ceasefire as well. One is talking about a year-long ceasefire process, the other one proposes a year and a half. Another issue is of course to end the isolation of the Palestinian People. Will it be possible for Israel to do that, in other words, will the crossings be open for people to come in because how will those people survive where they are, under the conditions that they are in? If we respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Conventions that are internationally accepted, those crossings, first of all, must be opened so people can experience their rights, the rights of life. There is also the issue of arms being smuggled into the area. If one end of the tunnel is in Egypt then Egypt must stop this illicit arms flow. But if we consider Palestine as a State, and I think that there is also a question there, perhaps some question marks in peoples minds, this issue of the division within Palestine, and how to breach the differences between Fatah and Hamas. If we are trying to bridge that gap then we have to consider all the parties. And I said this to Mr. Olmert too, because if it’s only Fatah who is present on the Palestinian side, that is not going to be sufficient to project the results to all of the Palestinian people, Hamas has to be taken into consideration as well because they are a part of that society, they have won an election, so they too must be included in this equation. If it’s the UN who is going to take the lead, that’s the way it should be, I hope that the UN puts it weight behind these efforts and/or the United States under the Obama administration can take an important role. I hope, I expect, President Obama to be the voice of the silent masses and to put his weight, his administration’s weight, behind a solution. He must do this not within the agreements that have been previously made by the previous administration, including the last one that was made between the then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Livni. There’s got to be a new opening and Hamas must be considered in this process. If Turkey is asked to play some sort of a role, we too would be willing to be involved, but we must be careful and we must think of the whole process when we try to define the parties involved and we must definitely achieve peace in the Middle East because that is important and necessary for global peace. If the Middle East peace process does not yield a positive result, that means that we will not have peace in the world as a whole. So I think that in the National Unity government to be established in Palestine this party of Reform and Change must be there, and that is how the National Unity government has to be established then elections have to take place and once the new government is in place, whether we or not, like them will be and should be the government of the Palestinian people because we have to respect the will of the Palestinian people."
Next:
"One minute! One minute! Mr.Peres, you’re older than me. Your voice is coming too loud. I know that the reason of your voice’s coming this loud is a guiltiness psychology. My voice won’t come this loud, know that so. When it comes to kill, you know how to kill very well. I know how you shot, how you killed the children on plages, very well. Two people who had been prime minister in your country made important statements to me. You have prime ministers who said that “When i get in to Palestine on tanks, i feel myself a different kind of happy.” And you’re giving me numbers. I can give you names. You may be wonder. I also condemn who acclaims to this grimness. Because i suppose acclaiming the people who killed those children, those people, is another humanity crime. Look, we can not edge out a reality here. I keep a lot of notes here, but i don’t have a chance to reply all here. But i only say two words from here. First, - Please don’t interrupt me!
First, The Torah says in the sixth topic that “You are not going to kill!”. There is killing here.
This is also interesting too - Gilad Atzmon: Israel barbarism is on the further side of fiendishness - a Jewish. Oxford University International Communications Proffessor who is soldiering in Israil army, Avi Shalom give a talk to the English newspaper Guardian that - (The Davos moderator wants to interrupt Erdogan) I thank you too. From now on Davos is done to me. I don’t come Davos again. Know that so! You don’t let me talk. He talked about 25 minutes, you gave me 12 minutes."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan clashed with Shimon Peres, whose voice had risen as he made an impassioned defence of Israel’s actions, jabbing his finger.
Mr Erdogan said Mr Peres had spoken so loudly to conceal his “guilt”.
He accused the moderator of not allowing him to speak and said he did not think he would return to Davos.
The Turkish PM stressed later that he had left the debate not because of his disagreements with Mr Peres but because he had been given much less time to speak than the Israeli leader.
Turkey is one of the few Muslim countries to have dealings with Israel, but relations have been under strain since the Islamist-rooted AK Party was elected to power in 2002.
Late on Thursday, a WEF official said that Mr Peres and Mr Erdogan had spoken by mobile telephone, and both men now considered the matter closed.
Earlier the Turkish Prime Minister had made an address himself, describing Gaza as an “open-air prison”.
When the audience applauded Mr Peres, he said: “I find it very sad that people applaud what you said. You killed people. And I think that it is very wrong.”
The moderator, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, had given him a minute to reply, then asked him to finish, saying that people needed to go to dinner.
“I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak,” Mr Erdogan shouted before marching off the stage in front of Mr Peres, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and an elite audience of ministers and international officials.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Strategic Divergence: The War Against the Taliban and the War Against Al Qaeda
January 26, 2009
By George Friedman, Stratfor.com
Washington’s attention is now zeroing in on Afghanistan. There is talk of doubling U.S. forces there, and preparations are being made for another supply line into Afghanistan — this one running through the former Soviet Union — as an alternative or a supplement to the current Pakistani route. To free up more resources for Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq probably will be accelerated. And there is discussion about whether the Karzai government serves the purposes of the war in Afghanistan. In short, U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to focus on Afghanistan seems to be taking shape.
We have discussed many aspects of the Afghan war in the past; it is now time to focus on the central issue. What are the strategic goals of the United States in Afghanistan? What resources will be devoted to this mission? What are the intentions and capabilities of the Taliban and others fighting the United States and its NATO allies? Most important, what is the relationship between the war against the Taliban and the war against al Qaeda? If the United States encounters difficulties in the war against the Taliban, will it still be able to contain not only al Qaeda but other terrorist groups? Does the United States need to succeed against the Taliban to be successful against transnational Islamist terrorists? And assuming that U.S. forces are built up in Afghanistan and that the supply problem through Pakistan is solved, are the defeat of Taliban and the disruption of al Qaeda likely?
Al Qaeda and U.S. Goals Post-9/11
The overarching goal of the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, has been to prevent further attacks by al Qaeda in the United States. Washington has used two means toward this end. One was defensive, aimed at increasing the difficulty of al Qaeda operatives to penetrate and operate within the United States. The second was to attack and destroy al Qaeda prime, the group around Osama bin Laden that organized and executed 9/11 and other attacks in Europe. It is this group — not other groups that call themselves al Qaeda but only are able to operate in the countries where they were formed — that was the target of the United States, because this was the group that had demonstrated the ability t o launch intercontinental strikes.
Al Qaeda prime had its main headquarters in Afghanistan. It was not an Afghan group, but one drawn from multiple Islamic countries. It was in alliance with an Afghan group, the Taliban. The Taliban had won a civil war in Afghanistan, creating a coalition of support among tribes that had given the group control, direct or indirect, over most of the country. It is important to remember that al Qaeda was separate from the Taliban; the former was a multinational force, while the Taliban were an internal Afghan political power.
The United States has two strategic goals in Afghanistan. The first is to destroy the remnants of al Qaeda prime — the central command of al Qaeda — in Afghanistan. The second is to use Afghanistan as a base for destroying al Qaeda in Pakistan and to prevent the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan.
To achieve these goals, Washington has sought to make Afghanistan inhospitable to al Qaeda. The United States forced the Taliban from Afghanistan’s main cities and into the countryside, and established a new, anti-Taliban government in Kabul under President Hamid Karzai. Washington intended to deny al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan by unseating the Taliban government, creating a new pro-American government and then using Afghanistan as a base against al Qaeda in Pakistan.
The United States succeeded in forcing the Taliban from power in the sense that in giving up the cities, the Taliban lost formal control of the country. To be more precise, early in the U.S. attack in 2001, the Taliban realized that the massed defense of Afghan cities was impossible in the face of American air power. The ability of U.S. B-52s to devastate any concentration of forces meant that the Taliban could not defend the cities, but had to withdraw, disperse and reform its units for combat on more favorable terms.
At this point, we must separate the fates of al Qaeda and the Taliban. During the Taliban retreat, al Qaeda had to retreat as well. Since the United States lacked sufficient force to destroy al Qaeda at Tora Bora, al Qaeda was able to retreat into northwestern Pakistan. There, it enjoys the advantages of terrain, superior tactical intelligence and support networks.
Even so, in nearly eight years of war, U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have maintained pressure on al Qaeda in Pakistan. The United States has imposed attrition on al Qaeda, disrupting its command, control and communications and isolating it. In the process, the United States used one of al Qaeda’s operational principles against it. To avoid penetration by hostile intelligence services, al Qaeda has not recruited new cadres for its primary unit. This makes it very difficult to develop intelligence on al Qaeda, but it also makes it impossible for al Qaeda to replace its losses. Thus, in a long war of attrition, every loss imposed on al Qaeda has been irreplaceable, and over time, al Qaeda prime declined dramatically in effectiveness — meaning it has been years since it has carried out an effective operation.
The situation was very different with the Taliban. The Taliban, it is essential to recall, won the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal despite Russian and Iranian support for its opponents. That means the Taliban have a great deal of support and a strong infrastructure, and, above all, they are resilient. After the group withdrew from Afghanistan’s cities and lost formal power post-9/11, it still retained a great deal of informal influence — if not control — over large regions of Afghanistan and in areas across the border in Pakistan. Over the years since the U.S. invasion, the Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and increased their operations in Afghanistan. And the conflict with the Taliban has now become a conventional guerrilla war.
The Taliban and the Guerrilla Warfare Challenge
The Taliban have forged relationships among many Afghan (and Pakistani) tribes. These tribes have been alienated by Karzai and the Americans, and far more important, they do not perceive the Americans and Karzai as potential winners in the Afghan conflict. They recall the Russian and British defeats. The tribes have long memories, and they know that foreigners don’t stay very long. Betting on the United States and Karzai — when the United States has sent only 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and is struggling with the idea of sending another 30,000 troops — does not strike them as prudent. The United States is behaving like a power not planning to win; and, in any event, they would not be much impressed if the Americans were planning to win.
The tribes therefore do not want to get on the wrong side of the Taliban. That means they aid and shelter Taliban forces, and provide them intelligence on enemy movement and intentions. With its base camps and supply lines running from Pakistan, the Taliban are thus in a position to recruit, train and arm an increasingly large force.
The Taliban have the classic advantage of guerrillas operating in known terrain with a network of supporters: superior intelligence. They know where the Americans are, what the Americans are doing and when the Americans are going to strike. The Taliban declines combat on unfavorable terms and strikes when the Americans are weakest. The Americans, on the other hand, have the classic problem of counterinsurgency: They enjoy superior force and firepower, and can defeat anyone they can locate and pin down, but they lack intelligence. As much as technical intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites is useful, human intelligence is the only effective long-term solution to defeating an insurgency. In this, the Taliban have the advantage: They have been there longer, they are in more places and they are not going anywhere.
There is no conceivable force the United States can deploy to pacify Afghanistan. A possible alternative is moving into Pakistan to cut the supply lines and destroy the Taliban’s base camps. The problem is that if the Americans lack the troops to successfully operate in Afghanistan, it is even less likely they have the troops to operate in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States could use the Korean War example, taking responsibility for cutting the Taliban off from supplies and reinforcements from Pakistan, but that assumes that the Afghan government has an effective force motivated to engage and defeat the Taliban. The Afghan government doesn’t.
The obvious American solution — or at least the best available solution — is to retreat to strategic Afghan points and cities and protect the Karzai regime. The problem here is that in Afghanistan, holding the cities doesn’t give the key to the country; rather, holding the countryside gives the key to the cities. Moreover, a purely defensive posture opens the United States up to the Dien Bien Phu/Khe Sanh counterstrategy, in which guerrillas shift to positional warfare, isolate a base and try to overrun in it.
A purely defensive posture could create a stalemate, but nothing more. That stalemate could create the foundations for political negotiations, but if there is no threat to the enemy, the enemy has little reason to negotiate. Therefore, there must be strikes against Taliban concentrations. The problem is that the Taliban know that concentration is suicide, and so they work to deny the Americans valuable targets. The United States can exhaust itself attacking minor targets based on poor intelligence. It won’t get anywhere.
U.S. Strategy in Light of al Qaeda’s Diminution
From the beginning, the Karzai government has failed to take control of the countryside. Therefore, al Qaeda has had the option to redeploy into Afghanistan if it chose. It didn’t because it is risk-averse. That may seem like a strange thing to say about a group that flies planes into buildings, but what it means is that the group’s members are relatively few, so al Qaeda cannot risk operational failures. It thus keeps its powder dry and stays in hiding.
This then frames the U.S. strategic question. The United States has no intrinsic interest in the nature of the Afghan government. The United States is interested in making certain the Taliban do not provide sanctuary to al Qaeda prime. But it is not clear that al Qaeda prime is operational anymore. Some members remain, putting out videos now and then and trying to appear fearsome, but it would seem that U.S. operations have crippled al Qaeda.
So if the primary reason for fighting the Taliban is to keep al Qaeda prime from having a base of operations in Afghanistan, that reason might be moot now as al Qaeda appears to be wrecked. This is not to say that another Islamist terrorist group could not arise and develop the sophisticated methods and training of al Qaeda prime. But such a group could deploy many places, and in any case, obtaining the needed skills in moving money, holding covert meetings and the like is much harder than it looks — and with many intelligence services, including those in the Islamic world, on the lookout for this, recruitment would be hard.
It is therefore no longer clear that resisting the Taliban is essential for blocking al Qaeda: al Qaeda may simply no longer be there. (At this point, the burden of proof is on those who think al Qaeda remains operational.)
Two things emerge from this. First, the search for al Qaeda and other Islamist groups is an intelligence matter best left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command. Defeating al Qaeda does not require tens of thousands of troops — it requires excellent intelligence and a special operations capability. That is true whether al Qaeda is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Intelligence, covert forces and airstrikes are what is needed in this fight, and of the three, intelligence is the key.
Second, the current strategy in Afghanistan cannot secure Afghanistan, nor does it materially contribute to shutting down al Qaeda. Trying to hold some cities and strategic points with the number of troops currently under consideration is not an effective strategy to this end; the United States is already ceding large areas of Afghanistan to the Taliban that could serve as sanctuary for al Qaeda. Protecting the Karzai government and key cities is therefore not significantly contributing to the al Qaeda-suppression strategy.
In sum, the United States does not control enough of Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, can’t control the border with Pakistan and lacks effective intelligence and troops for defeating the Taliban.
Logic argues, therefore, for the creation of a political process for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan coupled with a recommitment to intelligence operations against al Qaeda. Ultimately, the United States must protect itself from radical Islamists, but cannot create a united, pro-American Afghanistan. That would not happen even if the United States sent 500,000 troops there, which it doesn’t have anyway.
A Tale of Two Surges
The U.S. strategy now appears to involve trying a surge, or sending in more troops and negotiating with the Taliban, mirroring the strategy used in Iraq. But the problem with that strategy is that the Taliban don’t seem inclined to make concessions to the United States. The Taliban don’t think the United States can win, and they know the United States won’t stay. The Petraeus strategy is to inflict enough pain on the Taliban to cause them to rethink their position, which worked in Iraq. But it did not work in Vietnam. So long as the Taliban have resources flowing and can survive American attacks, they will calculate that they can outlast the Americans. This has been Afghan strategy for centuries, and it worked against the British and Russians.
If it works against the Americans, too, splitting the al Qaeda strategy from the Taliban strategy will be the inevitable outcome for the United States. In that case, the CIA will become the critical war fighter in the theater, while conventional forces will be withdrawn. It follows that Obama will need to think carefully about his approach to intelligence.
This is not an argument that al Qaeda is no longer a threat, although the threat appears diminished. Nor is it an argument that dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not a priority. Instead, it is an argument that the defeat of the Taliban under rationally anticipated circumstances is unlikely and that a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan will be much more difficult and unlikely than the settlement was in Iraq — but that even so, a robust effort against Islamist terror groups must continue regardless of the outcome of the war with the Taliban.
Therefore, we expect that the United States will separate the two conflicts in response to these realities. This will mean that containing terrorists will not be dependent on defeating or holding out against the Taliban, holding Afghanistan’s cities, or preserving the Karzai regime. We expect the United States to surge troops into Afghanistan, but in due course, the counterterrorist portion will diverge from the counter-Taliban portion. The counterterrorist portion will be maintained as an intense covert operation, while the overt operation will wind down over time. The Taliban ruling Afghanistan is not a threat to the United States, so long as intense counterterrorist operations continue there.
The cost of failure in Afghanistan is simply too high and the connection to counterterrorist activities too tenuous for the two strategies to be linked. And since the counterterror war is already distinct from conventional operations in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan, our forecast is not really that radical.
Comment:
Taliban were never the same as Al Qaeda. Only now Stratfor has come to realize that. Now, the term 'Al Qaeda Prime' has been introduced. So who are the 'Subprime' Alqaeda? I think they will take another 7 years to figure that out.
These are none else but the Uzbeks earlier expelled from South Waziristan by a joint military plus Moulvi Nazir Lashkar operation, and now allied with the Punjabi Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
January 26, 2009
By George Friedman, Stratfor.com
Washington’s attention is now zeroing in on Afghanistan. There is talk of doubling U.S. forces there, and preparations are being made for another supply line into Afghanistan — this one running through the former Soviet Union — as an alternative or a supplement to the current Pakistani route. To free up more resources for Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq probably will be accelerated. And there is discussion about whether the Karzai government serves the purposes of the war in Afghanistan. In short, U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to focus on Afghanistan seems to be taking shape.
We have discussed many aspects of the Afghan war in the past; it is now time to focus on the central issue. What are the strategic goals of the United States in Afghanistan? What resources will be devoted to this mission? What are the intentions and capabilities of the Taliban and others fighting the United States and its NATO allies? Most important, what is the relationship between the war against the Taliban and the war against al Qaeda? If the United States encounters difficulties in the war against the Taliban, will it still be able to contain not only al Qaeda but other terrorist groups? Does the United States need to succeed against the Taliban to be successful against transnational Islamist terrorists? And assuming that U.S. forces are built up in Afghanistan and that the supply problem through Pakistan is solved, are the defeat of Taliban and the disruption of al Qaeda likely?
Al Qaeda and U.S. Goals Post-9/11
The overarching goal of the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, has been to prevent further attacks by al Qaeda in the United States. Washington has used two means toward this end. One was defensive, aimed at increasing the difficulty of al Qaeda operatives to penetrate and operate within the United States. The second was to attack and destroy al Qaeda prime, the group around Osama bin Laden that organized and executed 9/11 and other attacks in Europe. It is this group — not other groups that call themselves al Qaeda but only are able to operate in the countries where they were formed — that was the target of the United States, because this was the group that had demonstrated the ability t o launch intercontinental strikes.
Al Qaeda prime had its main headquarters in Afghanistan. It was not an Afghan group, but one drawn from multiple Islamic countries. It was in alliance with an Afghan group, the Taliban. The Taliban had won a civil war in Afghanistan, creating a coalition of support among tribes that had given the group control, direct or indirect, over most of the country. It is important to remember that al Qaeda was separate from the Taliban; the former was a multinational force, while the Taliban were an internal Afghan political power.
The United States has two strategic goals in Afghanistan. The first is to destroy the remnants of al Qaeda prime — the central command of al Qaeda — in Afghanistan. The second is to use Afghanistan as a base for destroying al Qaeda in Pakistan and to prevent the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan.
To achieve these goals, Washington has sought to make Afghanistan inhospitable to al Qaeda. The United States forced the Taliban from Afghanistan’s main cities and into the countryside, and established a new, anti-Taliban government in Kabul under President Hamid Karzai. Washington intended to deny al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan by unseating the Taliban government, creating a new pro-American government and then using Afghanistan as a base against al Qaeda in Pakistan.
The United States succeeded in forcing the Taliban from power in the sense that in giving up the cities, the Taliban lost formal control of the country. To be more precise, early in the U.S. attack in 2001, the Taliban realized that the massed defense of Afghan cities was impossible in the face of American air power. The ability of U.S. B-52s to devastate any concentration of forces meant that the Taliban could not defend the cities, but had to withdraw, disperse and reform its units for combat on more favorable terms.
At this point, we must separate the fates of al Qaeda and the Taliban. During the Taliban retreat, al Qaeda had to retreat as well. Since the United States lacked sufficient force to destroy al Qaeda at Tora Bora, al Qaeda was able to retreat into northwestern Pakistan. There, it enjoys the advantages of terrain, superior tactical intelligence and support networks.
Even so, in nearly eight years of war, U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have maintained pressure on al Qaeda in Pakistan. The United States has imposed attrition on al Qaeda, disrupting its command, control and communications and isolating it. In the process, the United States used one of al Qaeda’s operational principles against it. To avoid penetration by hostile intelligence services, al Qaeda has not recruited new cadres for its primary unit. This makes it very difficult to develop intelligence on al Qaeda, but it also makes it impossible for al Qaeda to replace its losses. Thus, in a long war of attrition, every loss imposed on al Qaeda has been irreplaceable, and over time, al Qaeda prime declined dramatically in effectiveness — meaning it has been years since it has carried out an effective operation.
The situation was very different with the Taliban. The Taliban, it is essential to recall, won the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal despite Russian and Iranian support for its opponents. That means the Taliban have a great deal of support and a strong infrastructure, and, above all, they are resilient. After the group withdrew from Afghanistan’s cities and lost formal power post-9/11, it still retained a great deal of informal influence — if not control — over large regions of Afghanistan and in areas across the border in Pakistan. Over the years since the U.S. invasion, the Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and increased their operations in Afghanistan. And the conflict with the Taliban has now become a conventional guerrilla war.
The Taliban and the Guerrilla Warfare Challenge
The Taliban have forged relationships among many Afghan (and Pakistani) tribes. These tribes have been alienated by Karzai and the Americans, and far more important, they do not perceive the Americans and Karzai as potential winners in the Afghan conflict. They recall the Russian and British defeats. The tribes have long memories, and they know that foreigners don’t stay very long. Betting on the United States and Karzai — when the United States has sent only 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and is struggling with the idea of sending another 30,000 troops — does not strike them as prudent. The United States is behaving like a power not planning to win; and, in any event, they would not be much impressed if the Americans were planning to win.
The tribes therefore do not want to get on the wrong side of the Taliban. That means they aid and shelter Taliban forces, and provide them intelligence on enemy movement and intentions. With its base camps and supply lines running from Pakistan, the Taliban are thus in a position to recruit, train and arm an increasingly large force.
The Taliban have the classic advantage of guerrillas operating in known terrain with a network of supporters: superior intelligence. They know where the Americans are, what the Americans are doing and when the Americans are going to strike. The Taliban declines combat on unfavorable terms and strikes when the Americans are weakest. The Americans, on the other hand, have the classic problem of counterinsurgency: They enjoy superior force and firepower, and can defeat anyone they can locate and pin down, but they lack intelligence. As much as technical intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites is useful, human intelligence is the only effective long-term solution to defeating an insurgency. In this, the Taliban have the advantage: They have been there longer, they are in more places and they are not going anywhere.
There is no conceivable force the United States can deploy to pacify Afghanistan. A possible alternative is moving into Pakistan to cut the supply lines and destroy the Taliban’s base camps. The problem is that if the Americans lack the troops to successfully operate in Afghanistan, it is even less likely they have the troops to operate in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States could use the Korean War example, taking responsibility for cutting the Taliban off from supplies and reinforcements from Pakistan, but that assumes that the Afghan government has an effective force motivated to engage and defeat the Taliban. The Afghan government doesn’t.
The obvious American solution — or at least the best available solution — is to retreat to strategic Afghan points and cities and protect the Karzai regime. The problem here is that in Afghanistan, holding the cities doesn’t give the key to the country; rather, holding the countryside gives the key to the cities. Moreover, a purely defensive posture opens the United States up to the Dien Bien Phu/Khe Sanh counterstrategy, in which guerrillas shift to positional warfare, isolate a base and try to overrun in it.
A purely defensive posture could create a stalemate, but nothing more. That stalemate could create the foundations for political negotiations, but if there is no threat to the enemy, the enemy has little reason to negotiate. Therefore, there must be strikes against Taliban concentrations. The problem is that the Taliban know that concentration is suicide, and so they work to deny the Americans valuable targets. The United States can exhaust itself attacking minor targets based on poor intelligence. It won’t get anywhere.
U.S. Strategy in Light of al Qaeda’s Diminution
From the beginning, the Karzai government has failed to take control of the countryside. Therefore, al Qaeda has had the option to redeploy into Afghanistan if it chose. It didn’t because it is risk-averse. That may seem like a strange thing to say about a group that flies planes into buildings, but what it means is that the group’s members are relatively few, so al Qaeda cannot risk operational failures. It thus keeps its powder dry and stays in hiding.
This then frames the U.S. strategic question. The United States has no intrinsic interest in the nature of the Afghan government. The United States is interested in making certain the Taliban do not provide sanctuary to al Qaeda prime. But it is not clear that al Qaeda prime is operational anymore. Some members remain, putting out videos now and then and trying to appear fearsome, but it would seem that U.S. operations have crippled al Qaeda.
So if the primary reason for fighting the Taliban is to keep al Qaeda prime from having a base of operations in Afghanistan, that reason might be moot now as al Qaeda appears to be wrecked. This is not to say that another Islamist terrorist group could not arise and develop the sophisticated methods and training of al Qaeda prime. But such a group could deploy many places, and in any case, obtaining the needed skills in moving money, holding covert meetings and the like is much harder than it looks — and with many intelligence services, including those in the Islamic world, on the lookout for this, recruitment would be hard.
It is therefore no longer clear that resisting the Taliban is essential for blocking al Qaeda: al Qaeda may simply no longer be there. (At this point, the burden of proof is on those who think al Qaeda remains operational.)
Two things emerge from this. First, the search for al Qaeda and other Islamist groups is an intelligence matter best left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command. Defeating al Qaeda does not require tens of thousands of troops — it requires excellent intelligence and a special operations capability. That is true whether al Qaeda is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Intelligence, covert forces and airstrikes are what is needed in this fight, and of the three, intelligence is the key.
Second, the current strategy in Afghanistan cannot secure Afghanistan, nor does it materially contribute to shutting down al Qaeda. Trying to hold some cities and strategic points with the number of troops currently under consideration is not an effective strategy to this end; the United States is already ceding large areas of Afghanistan to the Taliban that could serve as sanctuary for al Qaeda. Protecting the Karzai government and key cities is therefore not significantly contributing to the al Qaeda-suppression strategy.
In sum, the United States does not control enough of Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, can’t control the border with Pakistan and lacks effective intelligence and troops for defeating the Taliban.
Logic argues, therefore, for the creation of a political process for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan coupled with a recommitment to intelligence operations against al Qaeda. Ultimately, the United States must protect itself from radical Islamists, but cannot create a united, pro-American Afghanistan. That would not happen even if the United States sent 500,000 troops there, which it doesn’t have anyway.
A Tale of Two Surges
The U.S. strategy now appears to involve trying a surge, or sending in more troops and negotiating with the Taliban, mirroring the strategy used in Iraq. But the problem with that strategy is that the Taliban don’t seem inclined to make concessions to the United States. The Taliban don’t think the United States can win, and they know the United States won’t stay. The Petraeus strategy is to inflict enough pain on the Taliban to cause them to rethink their position, which worked in Iraq. But it did not work in Vietnam. So long as the Taliban have resources flowing and can survive American attacks, they will calculate that they can outlast the Americans. This has been Afghan strategy for centuries, and it worked against the British and Russians.
If it works against the Americans, too, splitting the al Qaeda strategy from the Taliban strategy will be the inevitable outcome for the United States. In that case, the CIA will become the critical war fighter in the theater, while conventional forces will be withdrawn. It follows that Obama will need to think carefully about his approach to intelligence.
This is not an argument that al Qaeda is no longer a threat, although the threat appears diminished. Nor is it an argument that dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not a priority. Instead, it is an argument that the defeat of the Taliban under rationally anticipated circumstances is unlikely and that a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan will be much more difficult and unlikely than the settlement was in Iraq — but that even so, a robust effort against Islamist terror groups must continue regardless of the outcome of the war with the Taliban.
Therefore, we expect that the United States will separate the two conflicts in response to these realities. This will mean that containing terrorists will not be dependent on defeating or holding out against the Taliban, holding Afghanistan’s cities, or preserving the Karzai regime. We expect the United States to surge troops into Afghanistan, but in due course, the counterterrorist portion will diverge from the counter-Taliban portion. The counterterrorist portion will be maintained as an intense covert operation, while the overt operation will wind down over time. The Taliban ruling Afghanistan is not a threat to the United States, so long as intense counterterrorist operations continue there.
The cost of failure in Afghanistan is simply too high and the connection to counterterrorist activities too tenuous for the two strategies to be linked. And since the counterterror war is already distinct from conventional operations in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan, our forecast is not really that radical.
Comment:
Taliban were never the same as Al Qaeda. Only now Stratfor has come to realize that. Now, the term 'Al Qaeda Prime' has been introduced. So who are the 'Subprime' Alqaeda? I think they will take another 7 years to figure that out.
These are none else but the Uzbeks earlier expelled from South Waziristan by a joint military plus Moulvi Nazir Lashkar operation, and now allied with the Punjabi Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Investigating Swat:
Comment:
It is clear from this documentary that all kind of Government writ has been lost in Swat, with no chance in sight of regaining the same.
Another fact becoming clear is that the uprising has it's roots in the change of judicial system from the Sharia-based one in the Wali-Swat days to the present one at time of the Princely State's merger with Pakistan, which turned out to be unacceptable to the populace.
The grievance initially took the form of the mainly peaceful agitation of Sufi Muhammad's Tehreek-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) during the 90s, and turned militant after leadership of the movement was snatched by his radical son-in-Law Fazlullah upon the arrest of Sufi Muhammed. The same movement morphed into Taliban-Swat following the bombing of the Bajaur Madrassa run by the TNSM in which 82 were killed including the administrator - Fazlullah's younger brother. The final straw came with the Lal Masjid siege and the subsequent firebombing of the premises with which open war was declared by the same Swat militants.
As the Army spokesman rightly answers when asked as to who was responsible. "No single person can be blamed. We all are responsible"
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