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March 20, 2010

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Wheels within wheels

By Greyhawk

There's been no shortage of news stories lately on successful anti-Taliban efforts in Pakistan. It began with a leaked (but only after they knew it wouldn't hurt national security!) story from the New York Times ("The participation of Pakistan's spy service could suggest a new level of cooperation from Pakistan's leaders...") and for weeks thereafter it seemed a day didn't pass without news of another Taliban operative captured there. Here's a roundup of some of the roundups, crediting both the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence service for their great success. ("...by far the most extensive and successful targeting of the Afghan Taliban since the war began... The raids suggest that the two agencies are working closer together than ever before.")

Hooray for a new era of cooperation - but now comes this:

The former United Nations envoy to Afghanistan accused Pakistan of undermining negotiations with the Taliban by arresting senior Taliban officials.

Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who stepped down from the U.N. post this month, said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview broadcast Friday that he had been engaged in negotiations about a possible end to Afghanistan's war with "senior Taliban leadership" since last spring, with the apparent blessing of the insurgency's overall chief, Mullah Muhammad Omar.

These contacts, Mr. Eide added, stopped in the past few weeks after Pakistan captured the Taliban's operations chief and effective No. 2 Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi and detained more than a dozen other Afghan Taliban leaders.

Pakistan's motivation, Mr. Eide suggested, was to stop independent negotiations between the Taliban and the international community, so as to ensure its own control over any future settlement--a theory that Pakistani officials have denied.

More from the New York Times

"The Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played," he said in the interview, which he confirmed to The New York Times.

There has been a swirl of often contradictory reports about the arrest of Mullah Baradar, and a wide range of American and international reactions to it. Some American officials have welcomed Pakistan's new enthusiasm for hunting down Taliban leaders. Others have questioned Pakistan's motivations in detaining Mullah Baradar, who was open to early discussions about peace negotiations.

Eide's BBC interview is here.

Peter Galbraith, once the Obama administration's "man inside" the UN Afghanistan mission, says things weren't as Eide claims.

Mr Galbraith, who had a public falling out with Mr Eide last year, said of his former colleague: "He's had very irregular meetings with people who were once associated with the Taleban, but he has not been in any negotiations with the Quetta Shura. He's simply exaggerated his role."

In his final news conference as the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan earlier this month, Eide "cautioned against excessive militarization of international efforts" there, and "also warned that military operations against insurgents needed to be waged in a manner that did not impede efforts to negotiate a peaceful solution with them."

Prior to the announcement of the Taliban arrests, General McChrystal commented on senior Taliban leaders here.

FT: Do you think then that it would be conceivable that this conflict could end with senior figures in the Taliban perhaps playing a role in a future government in Kabul?

Gen McChrystal: It's hard to speculate about individuals, but I think that anybody who dedicates themselves to the future and not the past, and anybody whose future is focused on the right kinds of things for Afghanistan, under a constitutional fair umbrella, then I think it's likely that it will be a wide participation.

However, he added that the decision wasn't his, and "would be the Afghan people's." Further: "It's not my job to extend olive branches, but it's my job to help set conditions where people in the right positions can have options on the way forward."

General Petraeus commented in an interview here.

Senior commanders right up to the very top if they're willing?

As Secretary Gates observed recently. He noted the possibility of that is probably unlikely given the dynamics at present but I don't think it is something that anyone rules out. Again that was not an option pursued in Iraq. We certainly never approached the most senior al-Qaeda in Iraq or the most senior Sunni extremist leaders. However there were certainly some fairly high-level insurgent leaders who did indeed reconcile with the Iraqi Government so it is not something that can be ruled out but it is also not something that I would anticipate as they say in the United States: coming soon to a theatre near you.

Both those late January comments could be interpreted as a signal to the enemy that negotiations would be welcome - but a few days later came the announcements of the captures in Pakistan.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Afghan President Hamid Karzai discussed the topic during Gates' visit there this month.

On the issue of reconciliation with top Taliban leaders, Gates said it was important that it be done under terms set by the Afghan government. Recent captures of Afghan Taliban leaders by the Pakistani intelligence service have increased speculation that Pakistan is attempting to put its own imprint on any talks that materialize.

Returning to the original New York Times story on the capture of Baradar ("The New York Times learned of the operation on Thursday, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials... The Times is publishing the news now because White House officials acknowledged that the capture of Mullah Baradar was becoming widely known in the region...") for the sake of a complete account it's worth noting that the story broke after a weekend of highly-publicized assaults on the Obama administration's anti-terror policies from former VP Dick Cheney.

The thus-timely Times' account prompted responses like this one.

The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's top military commander, is no small matter. It's a "major victory." Given that Baradar is the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the war began, and his role in leading the Taliban's military operations, this is a success that may very well pay considerable dividends for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

As far as the politics is concerned, it's worth noting that U.S. leaders were well aware of Baradar's capture late last week, but deliberately kept the news under wraps in order to help bolster a sensitive and ongoing intelligence-gathering effort. This prompted Juan Cole to note:

[T]hat Joe Biden and others kept the arrest secret, in order to allow further operations against Taliban leaders in Karachi, shows a discipline that Bush and Cheney never had. They were always happy to prematurely release details of ongoing investigations to get a political bump, even if it meant allowing terrorists to escape.
Right. Dick Cheney was blasting the Obama administration on national security over the weekend, and it might have been tempting for Biden and others to use the Baradar capture as evidence that Cheney doesn't know what he's talking about. But the White House Grown-Ups knew the ongoing efforts were more important than making Dick the Clown look foolish. As Andrew Sullivan noted, the president and his team "are serious about national security and do not put domestic political games before it."

The author was perplexed as to why the Obama administration wasn't drawing even more attention to the great success.

I have my own reasons for taking any report on the CIA, ISI, UN, or the Obama administration (and this story involves all of them) with a grain of salt - perhaps best summed up by this: it seems certain that things are never as they seem.



Posted by Greyhawk / March 20, 2010 10:56 AM | Permalink

2 TrackBacks

Welcome to the Dawn Patrol, our daily roundup of information on the War on Terror and other topics - from the MilBlogs and various sources around the world. If you're a blogger, you can join the conversation. If you link to any of these stories, add a ... Read More

Obama in Afghanistan from Mudville Gazette on March 28, 2010 4:59 PM

"High on symbolism", says the BBC:The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says that for security reasons the visit - expected to last only a few hours - was not announced beforehand and Mr Karzai was given just an hour's notice. But while the trip is expect... Read More

2 Comments

Greyhawk, *Well done!* You make a very important point about taking all sources of information with a "grain of salt." History has this bad habit of flushing out the truth. She also has a bad habit of flushing out the other stuff. The trick is we must be willing to see the difference. *Thank you, Sir.*

The president and his team are serious about national security and do not put domestic political games before it." This is not what I thought of the current administration. He seemed to be more ocncern on domestic solutions of the problems than taking too seriously on national security. I thought I got him wrong. However, such seriousness would not be as intense as that of the previous administration... Am still hoping for the best in this administration as it deals with the national security and the like.

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November 26, 2010


America@war
[Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit.

That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary.

From their about page:

The Naval Institute shall remain

INDEPENDENT - A non-profit member association, with no government support, that does not lobby for special interests;

NON-PARTISAN - An independent, professional military association with a mission, goals and objectives that transcend political affiliations; and shall encourage

IDEAS - Through its respected journals Proceedings and Naval History, its conferences, its books and its online content, in support of those who serve.

"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation:

The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism.

Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented.

I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are.

"Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result.

Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web...

And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed.

The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down.

*****

But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:

Closing Blogs is nothing new. So many site's owners just give up on their own. They come and go, you know, these MilBloggers do. Like any other sort of blogger. Many post in the lonely down hours far from home, spill their guts for the world, then abandon their spots when the tour of duty is up. They have lives again somewhere in the world, and no need to share the details. So it goes.

Many are truly gone - no site left at all. "The page cannot be found." Other blogs remain, like abandoned defensive positions in shifting desert sands.

Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down.

If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real.

And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale.

We've already made history, it's time to save it.

(More to follow...)




Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
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The Mudville Gazette is written and produced by Greyhawk, who recently retired from 24 years of active duty in the US military, but will maintain this disclaimer: Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and nothing here is to be taken as representing the official position of or endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components.

Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house.

I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email.

Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed.

Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com

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*****

Tending Distant
Fires


Far from hearth and home, watching
Cold alone but not alone
On distant shore and only wanting
Safe return and little more

What tales we'll tell
When that time comes
When tales can be told

When things grim
Seem far away
When other fires go cold

Some distant sunset, vision fading
Memories remain
And tired eyes gaze 'pon folded flags
While distant drums beat their refrain

Saluting fallen friends whose names
And youth will never fade
Here's to those on other shores,
for them live well, the price is paid

- Greyhawk,
Baghdad,
December 2004