A tale of seven headlines, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, and media falsehood

mccleans canada...

Afghan intelligence chief says Karzai assassination plot hatched in Pakistan

canada east...

Afghan intelligence chief says Karzai assassination plot hatched in Pakistan

khaleej times...

Afghans link Karzai murder plan to Pakistan

associate press...

Afghans link Karzai assassination plan to Pakistan

kuwait times...

Karzai assassination plan hatched in Pakistan soil

cnn...

'Pakistan militants plotted Karzai ambush'

ah, but THEN there's the new york times...

Afghans See Link to Qaeda in Plot to Shoot Karzai [emphasis added]

for somewhat obvious reasons, i'm paying closer attention to what's going on in afghanistan than i might otherwise... we received a security warning yesterday about the shoot-out that was going on with this crowd of "pakistani militants" over in the northwest section of the city... not long after, amrullah suleh made this statement...

"We have no evidence whether ... the operation has had any mercy or go-ahead from the government of Pakistan and (its) special agencies," Saleh told reporters in Kabul. "There (is) very, very strong evidence suggesting that Pakistan's soil once again has been used to inflict pain on our nation." The militants involved in the weekend plot were in phone contact with people in Pakistan's Bajaur and North Waziristan tribal areas and the main northwestern city of Peshawar, he said.

did you see any mention of al qaeda there? good... neither did i...

amrullah suleh has a very dirty rep which i won't go into right now because i don't have any facts together, but i do know that there is a great deal of suspicion of pakistan and the pakistani government here, and, from what i can tell, for very good reason... i have heard it speculated that the serena hotel bombing was carried out by agents of pakistan's isi rather than the taliban... for one thing, it was a very technical, highly coordinated, and quite sophisticated operation, unlike anything the taliban could have carried out... but the ever-toadying u.s. press, led by water-carriers like the nyt, slavishly follow the administration line and link everything to al qaeda...

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Attack on Afghanistan's Independence Day

this is one of those times when i wish i didn't have to say "i was there"...

from the bbc...

At least one person has been killed and 11 were hurt in an attack on a military parade in Kabul attended by President Hamid Karzai and other dignitaries.

Security forces whisked Mr Karzai away from the scene and hundreds fled as shots rang out. Two MPs were reported to be among the wounded.

The parade was a celebration to mark 16 years since the overthrow of the country's Soviet-backed rule.

A spokesman for the Taleban said the movement had carried out the attack.

He said six militants had been deployed near the parade with suicide vests and guns. Three of them were killed and the other three arrested, he added.

In a live TV address after the incident, Mr Karzai confirmed that there had been arrests.

"Fortunately Afghan security forces quickly surrounded them," he said. "Some of them were captured."

"Everything is calm, rest assured."

Mr Karzai has frequently been the target of assassination attempts in recent years.

The parade, in central Kabul, was part of Afghan National Day celebrations, marking the capture of Kabul from the Soviet-backed government by the mujahideen in 1992.

here's the bbc video...

we were on the upper balcony where we could just barely see the mosque area across from the stadium... we saw the president's vehicles arrive and saw all the elaborate security precautions... we moved back and forth from my friend's room where it was on live afghan tv to the balcony, but when the president and his entourage moved in and the ceremony started, we clustered in front of the tv... after the opening prayer had been chanted, cannon fire commenced to signal the official start of the parade... it was shortly thereafter that we heard machine-gun or small arms fire open up and saw the dignitaries hitting the deck in the reviewing stands... we couldn't quite believe what we were seeing but after more gunfire and an explosion or two, we were convinced that an attack was underway... i ran out to the edge of the balcony and shot this short video clip that shows people and troops running into the mosque and away from the gunfire...



we moved to our rooms but, when we heard gunfire in the street just outside, we hustled down to the basement with our helmets and armored vests to the "safe room" where we spent the past couple of hours... we were allowed to come back to our rooms just about fifteen minutes ago but warned to stay off the balconies...

in a perverse kind of way, i'm actually glad to have had this experience... it gives me a much better feel for how a lot of people have to live their lives day-to-day...

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Afghanistan Independence Day 2008, celebrating independence with displays of military might

it's 7:30 a.m. here and i'm listening to the band practicing and final preparations being made for afghanistan independence day over at the big reviewing area in front of the main mosque a few blocks from here... at 9, things kick off and i plan to be out on the balcony getting some video clips of the fly-overs...

it's a mystery to me why countries insist on celebrating independence and freedom with displays of their capacity for death and destruction...

but that's just me...

i think the large sums of money spent on those tools of war and the fuel it takes to fly or drive them around for half a day would be better spent offering come-one, come-all picnic buffets in every major city around the country, or something more warm and inclusive like the feeling inspired by the giant billboard that greets arrivals at kabul international airport (see below)...


"Welcome to Afghanistan"
Large billboard that greets arrivals
at Kabul International Airport

but that's just me...

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What's the matter with Afghanistan?

this nyt article about afghanistan president hamid karzai's speech yesterday gives me the opportunity to say something i've been wanting to say for the past several weeks...

read the excerpt first...

President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the British and American conduct of the war here on Friday, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions.

Mr. Karzai said that he wanted American forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, and that the continued threat of arrest and past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from coming forward to lay down their arms.

He criticized the American-led coalition as prosecuting the war on terrorism in Afghan villages, saying the real terrorist threat lay in sanctuaries of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The president said that civilian casualties, which have dropped substantially since last year, needed to cease completely. For nearly two years the American-led coalition has refused to recognize the need to create a trained police force, he said, leading to a critical lack of law and order.

The comments came as Mr. Karzai is starting to point toward re-election next year, after six years in office, and may be part of a political calculus to appear more assertive in his dealings with foreign powers as opponents line up to challenge him.

But they also follow a serious dip in his relations with some of the countries contributing to the NATO-led security force and the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and indicate that as the insurgency has escalated, so, too, has the chafing among allies.

Complaints have been rising for months among diplomats and visiting foreign officials about what is seen as Mr. Karzai’s weak leadership, in particular his inability to curb narcotics trafficking and to remove ineffective or corrupt officials. Some diplomats have even expressed dismay that, for lack of an alternative, the country and its donors may face another five years of poor management by Mr. Karzai.

it's interesting that the writer points out that karzai is looking toward next year's elections but she fails to mention that his speech was given yesterday, two days before afghanistan national independence day... i wouldn't have known about it if i didn't happen to be here, but, then again, i'm not a "journalist" for the nyt either...

ever since i arrived here in kabul a month ago, i've been soaking up sights, conversations and observations just as fast as i can... whenever i'm in a new place, i immediately become a sponge and my learning curve goes up exponentially... then, when i've got enough raw material, i begin processing what i'm experiencing...

this is the first serious conflict/war zone i've been in since i arrived in vietnam forty years ago this coming july... before i got here, i was intensely curious to see what had changed about the dynamics of being in a hostile area in the intervening time and what remained the same... interestingly enough, my curiosity in that waned immediately upon my arrival and was replaced by something altogether different...

from the time i emerged from immigration and customs at kabul international airport and was driven in to town, i've been struck by just how virtually nonexistent the basic infrastructure is in the city... (i haven't been outside of kabul, so, right now, that's my only point of reference...) roads are shit... water and sewer is shit... the kabul river that flows through town is nothing but a sewage canal cum garbage dump with stone wall embankments... municipally-supplied electric power is spotty at best, most everybody has a back-up diesel electric power generator and most of the compounds housing internationals are powered exclusively by generators...

landline telephone service is a joke... there are 4-5 cellphone providers and they have done a relatively decent job of blanketing the country with service... thank god, because, without them, telephone communication wouldn't exist... internet service is provided by satellite downlink providers who beam service via microwave to those who can afford their usurious rates... needless to say, international organizations are paying through the nose... i know internet cafes are relatively plentiful but, because i'm not allowed to get out and about without an armed escort, i can't speak to that first-hand...

the pollution is ghastly, combining the exhaust of dense traffic with dust from mostly unpaved roads, the exhaust of the generators, the smoke and fumes of the wood and kerosene that's used for heating and cooking, and the general dust of a very dry climate... the city infrastructure might have been adequate at one time, pre-war, 35 years ago, for a population of 250,000 max., but now there's 5 million people trying to survive here...

food, fuel and basic supplies are mostly brought in over one highway from pakistan... afghanistan produces maybe 30% of its own food and much of that is seasonal... now that the taliban and pakistani militants are attacking that route in order to disrupt supply distribution and now that pakistan is restricting food exports (as are so many other countries), afghanistan is in a world of hurt...

i've found myself thinking (never a safe thing for me to do) over the past few weeks that, one, the u.s. has been here in afghanistan since almost immediately post-9/11, late 2001/early 2002... it's now 2008... question - WTF have we been doing here...?!?!?!? the additional question that springs to mind is, "ok, mr. smart guy, so what would YOU have done if YOU had been the BIG DECIDER in 2001/2002 and YOU got to tell everybody what to do now that the U.S. conquered itself another country...?" i came up with my own answers, but i've been asking some of my afghan counterparts the same question just to see what they think about it... interestingly enough, they agree with me (or i agree with them, whatever)...

i don't think any of this is necessarily rocket science... what i would have done immediately following the fall of the taliban, just as soon as the city was reasonably secured, is to set to work on these things, in priority order...

• restoring and extending full electric service throughout the city

• reconstructing and/or restoring clean water supplies and sewer service

• setting up and/or restoring basic health care services

• repairing and paving the roads and insuring adequate public transportation

• insuring adequate food supply and distribution

• restoring and/or setting up public education

once the above was taken care of for kabul, the focus could then move to the secondary cities and towns, moving down the main highways in concentric rings, eventually covering the major populations centers of the entire country...

what's so hard about that...? surely, the billions we've dumped into afghanistan and iraq would have covered all of that many times over... now it's six years later and very little of it has been done... i've talked to a number of folks here and they all say the same thing... if people were getting their basic needs met, nobody would be giving the time of day to the taliban or any other insurgents or drug lords, period...

what's not to understand...?

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Light posting day

it's 8:10 p.m. saturday evening here in kabul, 8:40 a.m. saturday morning on the u.s. west coast, 9:40 a.m. u.s. mountain time, 10:40 a.m. u.s. central time, 11:40 a.m. on the u.s. east coast, 12:40 p.m. in argentina, and 5:40 p.m. central european time... that pretty much covers the times zones of the people near and dear to me...

it's been a very sunny, slow and lazy day for me... my one-day "weekend" is friday but this week, tomorrow and sunday are afghan national holidays because, as i explained in a previous post, sunday is afghanistan independence day, the day afghanistan celebrates getting rid of the brits in 1919...

in celebration of actually having a decent amount of time to refresh and re-charge (altho' i will keep working on and off anyway as is my wont), i'm not going to knock myself out posting... for one thing, my internet service was down all morning and half the afternoon, which forced me to do some unaccustomed leisure reading and - no kidding - to lie in the sun for an hour or so on the balcony... it was just the ticket and i've slowed my pace considerably... this is a very good thing because it's the first time i've actually seriously kicked back since before i left buenos aires on march 24...

so...

if brother tim or jim is so moved, they can put up some posts... for me, i'm going to go read some more and then hit the sack...

p.s. check out how my colleagues and i arrange skype conference call times...

World Meeting Planner

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Afghanistan Independence Day helicopter practice fly-by

sunday is afghanistan independence day when they celebrate regaining their independence from the brits in 1919... i've had choppers doing practice fly-bys, two-by-two, 10 at a time, followed by screaming jets, at tree-top height directly off my balcony at 6 a.m. for the past 10 days (the parade ground is two blocks from where i'm staying)... the fuel consumption alone must be staggering... this morning, for good measure, they added in "cannon practice"... 12 major blasts in a row rocked the entire bldg... 'course i'm usually already awake thanks to the muezzin who chants the morning prayers from a loudspeaker at the top of the minaret of the mosque around the corner starting at 4:15 every morning... guess i'm going to have to drag out the ol' earplugs...

here's a youtube clip i took this morning right outside my room of two of the choppers...

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