Fragile and reversible..?

Invited to speak at the Forum for New Diplomacy in Paris, last week, General David Petraeus, former Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, and now Director of the CIA, considered that NATO’s military campaign in Afghanistan was making progress.
The number of insurgent attacks had decreased in eight of the last twelve weeks, compared to last year, for instance.
Back in March, General Petraeus told the Senate Armed Forces Services Committee that the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.
However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible.
The general thought fit, nevertheless, to reiterate the latter assessment at the Forum in Paris.
Those gains remain fragile and reversible, he stated.
The events of the last few weeks clearly evince that the general was wise to be cautious.
On July 12, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan President’s half brother, leader of the Kandahar Provincial Council, was assassinated by a member of his staff inside his own home.
The assassin, Sardar Mohammed, was then killed by the victim’s bodyguards.
The Taliban took responsibility for the deed.
Sardar Mohammed is a friend of ours, and we gave him the task a long time ago to infiltrate and reach Ahmed Wali Karzai, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, told The Christian Science Monitor.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was the most powerful figure in the Kandahar region.
He was the president of Kandahar. The governor, police chiefs and other officials all had to discuss things with him before they made a decision, a prominent provincial figure, Abdul Samat Zarih, told The Guardian.
A US official told the paper that his demise was first and foremost a setback for Afghanistan as a whole…
Karzai was active on many fronts.
He had long been suspected of thriving from Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade, but also of being on the CIA’s payroll.
In fact, he rented Mullah Omar’s former compound on the outskirts of Kandahar to the CIA and US Special Forces.
AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) operates, parallel to formal government structures, through a network of political clans that use state institutions to protect and enable licit and illicit enterprises, concluded one US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
In addition, he seems to have been involved in covert reconciliation talks with the Taliban…
His elimination was a clear blow to the President, and his Western patrons, as well as to the former’s authority in the country.
Five days later, Jan Mohammed Khan, President Karzai’s adviser on tribal affairs, was shot and killed in his home in western Kabul.
A member of the Afghan Parliament, Mohammed Ashim, was also killed in the attack.
Khan had previously been governor of Oruzgan province, dominated by the Pashtun, from 2002 until 2006, when he was forced to resign due to his alleged links to drug traffickers.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, stated that he was murdered because he had been aiding US forces in planning and executing night raids against Taliban militants, raids that have been effective but also very unpopular and denounced by President Karzai himself.
Last Wednesday, the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, was killed outside his office.
The assassin, concealing explosives in his turban, blew himself up next to the official.
US ambassador in Kabul, Ryan C. Crocker, declared that this series of assassinations did not demonstrate a resurgence of the Taliban’s capacity to strike at the heart of the Karzai regime, on the contrary.
Clearly these are horrific attacks, but they can be signs of weakness, he told the NYT.
Hamidi was among those slated to replace Ahmed Wali Karzai after his murder…
The mayor may have antagonized the Taliban by trying to regain possession of land in the north of the city that he claimed they had been occupying illegally…
On Thursday, or the next day, Taliban militants attacked the compound of Matiullah Khan, the nephew of Jan Mohammad Khan, and a powerful provincial leader in southern Afghanistan, located in Tirin Kot, capital of Oruzgan, north of Kandahar,
A car filled with explosives rammed through the gate of another compound, the Governor’s, and exploded, partially destroying the maternity ward of a hospital located next door. Ten infants and three women were killed.
The attack on Matiullah’s compound, home to the Highway Battalion, his militia, occurred simultaneously.
We have very good security here so they were not able to enter my battalion’s camp, so they attacked the television station instead, Khan, who escaped unscathed, told The Guardian.
Omaid Khapalwak, who worked for the BBC was killed in that attack against the Afghan Television building.
All in all, 21 people were killed, in addition to the perpetrators, and ISAF (allied forces) participation was necessary to restore order.
If the foreign troops hadn’t responded, the fighting would have lasted until morning, one resident told McClatchy, higly critical, apparently, of the local security forces' performance..
Because Khan’s militia controls the highway between Kandahar and Tirin Kot, convoys of supply trucks can reach US and ISAF forces unhindered.
According to The Guardian, Khan charges $1,700 per truck for his services.
Moreover, although his militiamen sometimes support US operations against the Taliban, Khan has been accused of bribing the latter to protect his lucrative activities, which allegedly includes drug trafficking with Ahmed Wali Karzai…
The Taliban are clearly targeting those powerful figures which are nominally allied with the president, and whom he needs to assert his authority in the south of the country, home of the Pashtun and center of the Taliban insurgency…
Eliminating them serves both to undermine Karzai politically but also to discredit him by emphasizing his feebleness: he and his warlords are powerless to prevent the Taliban from attacking whom they please when they please.
No one can protect them, and obviously not, alas, US and ISAF forces whose credibility also dwindles with each attack…
And yet, though purportedly allies and agents of both President Karzai and the West, they have their own agendas to pursue, and constituents and fiefdoms to protect…
As such, their interests do not necessarily coincide with their patrons’.
Promoting Karzai’s government and the West’s nation building and counterinsurgency agenda is not their sole preoccupation and certainly not the paramount one.
Their loyalties are multiple: tribal, economic, provincial, as are their allegiances.
Control of the drug trade also requires their attention.
As such, are they truly allies of Karzai and the West, or their own masters, which we have been compelled to try and co-opt, as we are unable to impose more compliant figures to take their place?
In any case, to base one’s counterinsurgency strategy on allies such as these is a risky proposition at best…
The Afghans will look after their own interests, and do not need us to do so, whatever agenda we may hope to pursue…
What, then, have we accomplished in Afghanistan these last ten years?
We are there to ensure that that country does not once again become a sanctuary to Al Qaeda or other terrorists, Petraeus said in Paris.
This objective has been attained, and the architect of the 9/11 attacks disposed of.
The only way to achieve that is to ensure that the Afghans secure themselves and govern themselves, he added.
That is something that we cannot do on their behalf.
In addition, of the 160 Afghan army battalions, only one is fully operational…
Ten years and billions of dollars to come to this…One battalion!
If, at the very least, we could protect the Afghan people, but we regularly kill innocent civilians, thereby objectively serving the interests and objectives of those we are there to defeat…
Last Wednesday, a French soldier killed three Afghan civilians and wounded three others at a checkpoint in Kapisa, a province in eastern Afghanistan.
A man, a pregnant women as well as a child riding in the car are now dead.
The French officially apologized to President Karzai for the tragic mishap, but the latter simply replied that no apology would be able to bring them back to life
The Taliban’s propaganda department shall undoubtedly make the most of this, and who can blame them for doing so?
Just this month, France lost seven soldiers, one to friendly fire, five in a suicide bomb attack, and one in a firefight.
So far this year, 18 have been killed, the most since France sent forces to Afghanistan ten years ago, and 70 since 2001..
During a formal ceremony at the Invalides in Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy paid them tribute.
You did your duty to the very end, he said, addressing the seven young soldiers, whose coffins rested in the center of the spacious Invalides courtyard, embodying the military virtues of discipline, bravery and honor. You died defending the great cause of freedom.
Yet, are we anywhere nearer to achieving our goals then when we first set foot on Afghan soil ten years ago…?
One prominent French politician, former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal spoke of a useless sacrifice, when describing the death of those seven soldiers.
The prime Minister François Fillon retorted that no one has the right to say that a soldier died in vain if he did so to defend his country and in the pursuit of peace.
And yet, though Royal’s comment was callous, especially for the bereaved, can it be simply dismissed as an opportunistic attack on a political rival?
Alas, I fear not…
Do not the brazen attacks on powerful allies of the Afghan president make a mockery of our efforts and pursuits in Afghanistan?
Is the situation not only reversible, but in the process of being reversed?
What is clear is the following: we shall never be able to build an Afghanistan in our image, nor should we wish to…
We have implicitly admitted as such, since a partial withdrawal of Western forces has been announced.
The US will withdraw 33,000 in the next year or so.
The remaining 88,000 are to leave by late 2014...
The French are to follow suit…
Why wait before sending them all home now, where they belong?
(the photograph above is by AFP)