The power of oil . . .

IRANIAN OIL has all sorts of political complexities, a lot of which are not immediately apparent to those of us who rely on orthodox news sources and commentary. Indeed, as we see, the Iranian nuke project and the posturing over Hormuz is rather a side-show, a distraction for American conservatives to dick-thump over.

ALJAZEERA has a report by Pepe Escobar, who is the roving correspondent for Asia Times, titled "All aboard the New Silk Road(s)", where he believes that Iran, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US are all scrambling to get the upper hand across Eurasia. Add Russia to the mix and we have a three-ring circus here, folks, as the Great Game continues.

In the complex chessboard where the New Great Game in Eurasia is being played, both Kings are easy to identify: Pipelineistan, and the possible, multiple intersections of a 21st century Silk Road.  

Few have noticed a crucial meeting that took place during the recent Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, between senior Foreign Ministry diplomats from Afghanistan, India and Iran. Their ultimate goal; a new Southern Silk Road connecting Iran to Central and South Asia through roads, railways and last but not least, major ports.

The crucial Silk Road port in this case is Chabahar, in Sistan-Balochistan province in southeast Iran. Tehran has already invested $340 million to complete 70 per cent of the port construction - a decade-long project.

But with US and EU sanctions biting harder and harder, Tehran expects Delhi to come up with a closing $100 million. India has already invested $136 million to link Chabahar to Afghanistan's ring road system.

One does not have to be Alexander the Great to notice the fastest connection between Kabul and India would be through the fabled Khyber Pass. But that does not take into account the accumulated historical venom between Islamabad and Delhi - their constant promises to increase cross-border trade notwithstanding.

With Chabahar linking Iran directly to Afghanistan and India, in theory Pakistan is sidelined. But it's much more complicated than that.

• • •

Enter Pipelineistan - via the key Iran-Pakistan umbilical cord in the making: the 2,700 kilometre-long IP gas pipeline, from Iran's gigantic South Pars field through Balochistan and Sindh and into Punjab.

According to National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) managing director, Javad Oji, the stretch from Iranshahr in southeast Iran to Zahedan and the Pakistani border is 90 per cent ready. The 900 kilometre-long pipeline on the Iranian side should be active one year from now. It's up to Islamabad to finish its stretch.

Totally in character in terms of interminable Pipelineistan soap operas, IP used to be IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) - but Delhi pulled out, forced by relentless pressure from the Bush and Obama administrations.

And it's here that the going gets really tough - because there's nothing Beijing would love more than turn the former IPI into IPC.

Now, add the confrontation between China and its neighbors bordering the South China Sea and further North over deep-sea oil deposits, and the future has all sorts of interesting possibilities.

Pepe has another article, in Tom's Dispatch, "Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak", which points out that

Iran's relations with both Russia and China are swell -- and will remain so no matter who is elected the new Iranian president next month. China desperately needs Iranian oil and gas, has already clinched a $100 billion gas "deal of the century" with the Iranians, and has loads of weapons and cheap consumer goods to sell. No less close to Iran, Russia wants to sell them even more weapons, as well as nuclear energy technology.

And then, moving ever eastward on the great Grid, there's Turkmenistan, lodged deep in Central Asia, which, unlike Iran, you may never have heard a thing about. Let's correct that now.

Gurbanguly Is the Man

Alas, the sun-king of Turkmenistan, the wily, wacky Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Nyazov, "the father of all Turkmen" (descendants of a formidable race of nomadic horseback warriors who used to attack Silk Road caravans) is now dead. But far from forgotten.

The Chinese were huge fans of the Turkmenbashi. And the joy was mutual. One key reason the Central Asians love to do business with China is that the Middle Kingdom, unlike both Russia and the United States, carries little modern imperial baggage. And of course, China will never carp about human rights or foment a color-coded revolution of any sort.

The Chinese are already moving to successfully lobby the new Turkmen president, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, to speed up the construction of the Mother of All Pipelines. This Turkmen-Kazakh-China Pipelineistan corridor from eastern Turkmenistan to China's Guangdong province will be the longest and most expensive pipeline in the world, 7,000 kilometers of steel pipe at a staggering cost of $26 billion.

So, the players are making plans, but the future will be different from our expectations, it always is. My guess, my stupid opinion is that technology will have some surprises, and that 30 years from now, petroleum oil will be a 3rd world fuel of decreasing importance.

H/T — Daniel

Reach out and touch someone . . .

THE TELEGRAPH has a book review by Toby Harnden of an account of the British trials in Afghanistan, "Dead Men Risen". This column is about the snipers.

Operating from a remote patrol base in Helmand, two British snipers were responsible for killing 75 Taliban fighters in just 40 days. In one remarkable feat of marksmanship, two insurgents were dispatched with a single bullet.

Apparently, the twofer is known as a "Quigley".

Skimming in the quagmire

Wikileaks via Der Spiegel:

"In 2009, the German government transferred €50 million ($66.14 million) to the Afghan Army National Trust Fund. The money from Germany was intended to "improve the operational capabilities and development of the ANA (Afghan National Army)," according to the publicity materials from the Bundeswehr, Germany's armed forces."

Germany specified the projects the donation should be used for, including schools and barracks for the ANA.

Months later, "a sharply worded demarche from Germany's then-ambassador to NATO in Brussels" pointed out that : "As of today, no project financing has occurred."

The Germans were also extremely pissed to discover that "the US Army Corps of Engineers wanted to charge an "administrative fee" of 15 percent for the disbursement of the funds." That's a fee of nearly $10-million US.

Nothing we can do about it, said Washington : "The administration of trust funds is conducted under American budgetary law."
However in "a gesture of goodwill: The Americans wired €3 million back to the Bundeswehr."

I'm sure the German public will be just fine with donating the remaining $6-million US "fee".

Things that grow in the darkness

Being any part of National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa (or over there in Hull) can be frustrating. It's like living in a mushroom farm much of the time. Things grow out of cracks and turn into things you don't expect.

However, if you are the Commander of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) you would expect that you are close enough to the oracle to at least be given a "heads up" that an expeditionary mission is coming your way. It kind of goes with the territory, the security clearance and the film-star wages. There is, after all, that planning thing, then the staffing thing and, most difficult of all, that logistics thing to organize.

So, when politicians start to rumble about that there will be an extended role for the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan as trainers you'd expect that such discussions would include certain key figures in uniform, like the Chief of Defence Staff and the Commander CEFCOM.

But not when Harper is in charge.

For the past two weeks the only thing I have been hearing is, "We didn't see that one coming." And that is now verified by the Commander responsible for organizing the mission.(Emphasis mine)

"Right now we are just at the fact-finding stage, determining what is available at what rank, what skill set, what timeline," Lessard said in an interview with Postmedia News after arriving in Kandahar. "We are not looking at one option in particular. There are individual positions, left and right."

As well as meeting for 45 minutes in the Afghan capital with Gen. David Petraeus, the American who runs NATO's war here, Lessard spoke with Maj.-Gen. Stu Beare, a Canadian who is one of two deputy commanders for training.

"It is mind-boggling, all the positions. What we are looking at are things that make sense. We do not want to just scatter people all over the place," said Lessard, who also conceded he was surprised by the government decision to deploy trainers.

"Quite frankly, I did not know what was going to happen," he said, "but in the military, we are ready for anything."

Lessard's comments and description of the task he has been handed go further by confirming that the Harperites, despite all their confident claims, had and have no idea what the training role would be. You will recall that I made this point:

Canada cannot meet the demand to start filling Caldwell's requirements by this winter and next spring. We still have a combat role and will not be able to deploy personnel to a bolstered NTM-A until well after that. We can safely assume that other NATO allies will fill that demand long before we have personnel available. This is the kind of commitment many NATO nations view as a healthy and safe way to deploy without wearing the political splatter of combat casualties. We aren't going to be there for any of it.

Sure enough, Lessard expanded on that too.

The Harper government's announcement two weeks ago that Canada will undertake a mission to train the Afghan National Army _ in the relatively safer confines of Kabul once the combat mission ends _ clearly caught the military by surprise.

Up until late October there had been no planning undertaken for a follow-on mission, said defence sources in Ottawa.

Lessard said they have yet to sketch out what the training scheme will look like because a seven-member fact-finding team has just heard from NATO about what positions need to be filled.

He confirmed that not all Canadians will be based in the Afghan capital, despite what the Conservative government has said.

"It is to be Kabul-centric. What that means is: the emphasis is to be on Kabul, but not solely Kabul."

Many of the positions at the recently established NATO Training Mission Command in Kabul are already taken, but there are positions at the various military schools scattered around the country.

So .... while Harper and MacKay have known for some time now that they were going to commit to a role in Afghanistan beyond July, 2011, they never bothered to have that conversation with the organization responsible for planning and executing such a concept.
The assertion by Harper that the mission would be in Kabul was actually an uninformed assumption on his part and now turns out to be far from reality.What is clearly apparent is that Harper and MacKay had no idea what the mission would look like, the proof being offered that, after actually asking NTM-A what positions need to be filled, the Commander CEFCOM is still trying to give it form. And it isn't going to look like what Harper said it would.

The mushrooms grow strong at 101 Colonel By Drive.

Saturday, 27 November, 2010 is a day to mark on your calendar

Just put a red X on that date and stare at it for a minute. Read this and know that it was predictable. Here's why.

At 1900 hrs AFT on 27 December, 1979, 30 members of KGB Spetsgruppa Z, 24 members of GRU Spetsgruppa A, 520 men from the 154th Separate Spetsnaz Detachment of the Soviet Ministry of Defence and 87 members of the Soviet 345th Guards Airborne Regiment executed Operation Storm 333.

They were dressed in Afghan army uniforms.

By the following morning the operation was complete and elements of the special force had taken control of Tajbeg Palace, just outside Kabul, and killed President Hafizullah Amin along with all of his 200 man bodyguard. Simultaneously, the force took control of the Ministry of Interior building, the Internal Security building and the Darul Aman Palace which served as the General Staff Headquarters. The Soviet force suffered 19 killed and over 50 wounded. The Afghan defenders lost over 200 killed and over 200 wounded with some 1700 troops captured.

The Soviet special forces had arrived two days earlier among a draft of airborne troops which arrived in Kabul on 25 December, 1979. The Soviet 103rd Guards Airborne Division landed at Bagram air base on the morning of 27 December.

As the Soviet special forces were taking key government centres in Kabul, the Soviet 40th Army had already entered Afghanistan from the north crossing the Amu Darya river at Termez, Uzbeck SSR and the then Turkmen SSR town of Kushka. At the same time an air bridge was established into Bagram air base. By the end of December the Soviets had 80,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan. Two weeks later that number was closer to 100,000.

That Soviet invasion was in response to months of insurgency and open revolt by large segments of the Afghan population. Ostensibly carried out at the request of Afghan government (they were invited in), the actual plan was a takeover of Afghanistan utilizing the well-tested Soviet method of armed stabilization. The Soviets also had a great deal of mistrust in Hafizulla Amin who had come to power in a violent coup during which his predecessor, Nur Muhammad Taraki, had been purposely killed. The history of Afghanistan politics prior to that event is a tangle of uprisings, civil war and factionalized infighting.

Once the Soviets had occupied Afghanistan they took control of all major urban centres and had installed Babrak Karmal as president. The mass occupation was intended to quell the uprisings and restore calm to the entire country. It did the opposite.

The presence of Soviet troops, not yet engaged in open warfare, had the effect of causing even greater rebellion which the Afghan army and security forces were unable to contain. In fact, the desertion rate of the 80,000 strong Afghan army had reached critical levels which saw huge numbers joining independent rebel factions - a loosely allied and largely disorganized body which would come to be known as the mujahideen.

The Soviets were dragged into open warfare with the mujahideen and, in a future post, I will detail some of what happened, how they became so strong and the massive mistake that took place after the Soviets realized they had been defeated. What the Soviets left in Afghanistan was a political vacuum and a well armed insurgent force. What followed their departure was a mass fratricide. While the Soviets have to take some of the blame, most of the fault lies with the countries that treated the Soviet withdrawal as the end game. Failure by the nations which had armed the mujahideen to acknowledge the obvious danger they had created would erupt into a bloodbath.

Gen Boris Gromov walks out of Afghanistan

On the 15 February, 1989, Lt. General Boris Gromov, commander of the Soviet 40th Army walked across the bridge at Termez, Uzbeck SSR and became the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan, completing a withdrawal which had been agreed upon two years earlier. The Soviet engagement in Afghanistan lasted 9 years, 1 month and 20 days.

No one followed them across the Termez bridge.

From the time of the first air attacks and the NATO commitment to support the U.S. assault on and occupation of Afghanistan on 7 October, 2001 to Saturday, 27 November, 2010, NATO forces, including Canada, have been at war for 9 years, 1 month and 21 days.

And there is no end in sight.

Some pertinent reading.

Calendar creep on the Afghan map

Interesting things coming out of the Lisbon NATO summit. Canada's grand emissaries to the summit had better be prepared to explain, with absolute clarity, what their hillbilly mouths agreed to.

First is this from the Afghanistan Daily Outlook. (The link will probably not survive so I'll quote the relevant line)

NATO nations formally agreed Saturday to start turning over Afghanistan's security to its military next year and give them full control by 2014. The U.S. and its allies appeared to take conflicting views on when NATO combat operations would end. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he did not expect NATO troops to stay in the fight against the Taliban after 2014. "I don't foresee ISAF troops in a combat role beyond 2014, provided of course that the security situation allows us to move into a more supportive role,"

That requires a careful re-read. Canada has committed to pulling out of a combat role commencing mid-2011 and starting a new mission in a training role by the end of next year. NATO has determined that an end date for its combat involvement will be 2014, if the security situation allows it, and then to take on a more "supportive" role. That could be anything from training to providing combat support in the field. The issue is that Canada assuming a training role, supposedly until the end of 2014, without grinding out the details in a proper national discussion, may well end up committed well past that advertised time.
The NATO plan is highly conditional. The US has rejected any end date and has stated that they will continue combat operations alone, if necessary.

By contrast, US officials insisted that the Nato transition plan did not guarantee an end to American combat operations. US forces could go on fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan even after transition, they said.
Transition and ceasing combat operations are “not one and the same”, said a senior US official. Speaking to reporters at the Nato summit , Barack Obama, the US President, said: “One thing I am pretty confident we will still be doing after 2014 is maintaining a counter-terrorism capability. It’s going to be pretty important to us to continue to have platforms to execute those counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan.”

And now the Harper statement:

Regardless of what role NATO forces may play in Afghanistan after the deadline, Canadian soldiers will not be there to participate, according to Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon.
Combat troops are pulling out next year as planned, he said, and the military trainers pledged to NATO this week will not stay past March, 2014, regardless of what other members of the alliance do. “There is no flexibility,” he said.

Right. Given that just this past summer Harper was rattling on that after 2011 the Afghanistan mission would be completely "civilian", there is absolutely no reason to believe that statement. Without a proper national discourse this is nothing but foreign affairs governance by press release.
And we don't know whether Harper and Cannon have consulted with Bob Rae yet.

Support of the training mission

A poll asks a question about something no one knows anything about.

An (sic) narrow majority of Canadians support keeping upwards of 1,000 troops in Afghanistan until 2014 to train Afghan forces, says a new Ipsos-Reid poll that also shows the decision is most popular with westerners and men.

Fifty three per cent of respondents said they support the revamped and extended mission, although there is a caveat. Slightly more than six in 10 said there should be a debate and vote in Parliament even if the new mission involves only training, said the poll, which was released Friday.

That's nice. Maybe Ipsos-Reid can give us some answers we can't get anywhere else.

What's the mission? At this point no one has actually answered that question. There's nothing close to a defined mission and the more we all look at it, the more we're left scratching our heads. Far from appearing to be a decision to do something to benefit both Canada and Afghanistan, this whole idea looks like it exists solely to remain "involved". To date, however, no one has been able to describe what that future involvement looks like.

We've been fed a lot repeating information that Canadian troops would be located at the training establishments in and around Kabul. I pointed out earlier how that seemed highly unlikely. Now, from the Nato Training Mission - Afghanistan (NTM-A), we have even more evidence that this training mission is unlikely to involve anything like a cohesive unit under Canadian command. (PDF page 27).

BruceR has done the breakdown of the deficit in trainers by location and specialty. It becomes quickly apparent that 900 trainers offered by Canada would be hard pressed to gather in Kabul as a unit since the current shortfall calls for something other than the likes of an infantry battalion. Specialist trainers seem to be the greatest demand and the identified needs are scattered all over the country. If those are the training positions Canada is likely to fill then the first "training" roto is going to be comprised of a varied group of occupation specialists, split into small numbers, sown through different training establishments all over Afghanistan. Administering, managing and leading that type of mission will be a near nightmare.

So, Ipsos-Reid can ask all the questions it likes. People are answering from a position of zero knowledge. Something similar to their support (or lack thereof) of the combat mission which involved (involves) paltry amounts of information being provided by the government. Unless you know where to look and what to look for there is precious little on which to form an opinion.

And perhaps if average Canadians knew about some of the nasty bastards, (who are the sons of the nasty bastards which made a past excursion in the Khyber Pass less than pleasant), whose activities are doing more to expand the enmity of Afghans to the presence of NATO, they might be less inclined to agree with any further Afghanistan deployment at all. Subject of a future post.

Why is Harper afraid of a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan?

Because there's obviously something he's not telling you and a debate would require someone to answer some very embarrassing questions.

If Harper is so confident that he has the Liberals on side, he should have nothing to worry about. Right?

Maybe not.

A debate would shed some light on the fact that Elmer MacKay's little boy, Pete, the adrift (recently) Minister of National Defence, seems to be playing catch up on the file that should be papering his desk. MacKay seems to know nothing until that detestable little slime-ball from the PMO, Dimitri Soudas, speaks.

It would certainly appear that defence policy is coming from some desk in the Prime Minister's office - not from 101 Colonel By Drive.

There has to be more, however, because Harper's insistence that he doesn't need the approval of Parliament is not only contemptuous but obviously so. While Harper is running a wildly incompetent government this plan for a new mission in Afghanistan looks like it's been on the stovetop for a while. And that is what Harper doesn't want to have to answer.

While you misled Canadians, how long have you had this plan in place? (I'm saying last April, and I have a very good reason for that.)

Then there is the concept of "classroom" instructors being the advertised form of mission. So far, anyone I've spoken to has burst out in laughter at the idea. For one thing, the troops we send don't actually do the instruction. They monitor the Afghan instructors. (Unless we've suddenly developed a huge number of Pashtu and Dari speakers). Those who do actually lead instructional sessions are doing so through interpreters.  Ever done that? It's very difficult, even with enthusiastic, well-educated students.That means we have to send instructors and instructor supervisors who are adept and extremely well organized. What's the impact on Canadian Forces schools and the specialist training in the Canadian Forces?

Here's an obvious question that just doesn't seem to get asked: If we're going to deploy a pure training element to Afghanistan to assist in the advanced training of specialists and leaders, why don't we just bring them to Canada and train them here at our own bases, develop their instructor cadre in complete safety and save billions of dollars not having to support Canadian troops at distant overseas posts?

Ask that question in a parliamentary debate and Harper or one of his hillbilly crowd will have to explain why they don't see that as a good idea... and I can tell you it would not make them look pretty.

Why doesn't Harper want the support of parliament via debate? Because at the very least his misleading of the Canadian public will be an open sore which will get a lot of attention.

Coward.

Lies, confusion and things that don't add up

Greg Weston is quite correct. Nothing about what Harper has been saying actually adds up. And when I say "nothing" I mean it is impossible to make sense of the intentionally vague picture Harper is painting. For one thing, as Weston points out, Harper has been stringing the public along with a lie.

Less than a year ago, the prime minister was clear: "We will continue to maintain humanitarian and development missions, as well as important diplomatic activity in Afghanistan," he said in a January interview with CanWest News.

"But we will not be undertaking any activities that require any kind of military presence, other than the odd guard guarding an embassy. We will not be undertaking any kind activity that requires a significant military force protection, so it will become a strictly civilian mission."

That was never true and Harper knows it. Since the extension to 2011 was approved there has always been a caveat which Harper has neatly avoided - the withdrawal was from Kandahar, not Afghanistan, and a redeployment was always a strong likelihood. Further, Harper has known for at least a year that the demand for NATO trainers was focusing on both the Netherlands and Canada for significant contributions to the NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan (NTM-A). I will go so far as to suggest that he knew in April 2009, after the NATO summit, that he was going to commit troops beyond 2011. The question is whether he and MacKay actually shared that with the Chief of Defence Staff.

I can say with absolute certainty that, in the last two days, the only thing coming out of those who would likely be deployed is questions. Harpers yet-to-be-defined training mission has yet to make it down to CF regional headquarters with anything even close to clarity. The regular complaint was that this is another government plan cast in jelly.

The commander of NTM-A, US Lt. General Bill Caldwell, said in late September that the training mission needed a lot of additional trainers. At that time he identified the need as 900. That number has since been reduced to 750. To be clear, Caldwell was making a specific point that the goal was to professionalize the Afghan security forces and generate critical support functions within those forces. For that he was asking for skill sets from NATO armed services which extended into areas of logistics, equipment maintenance, communications, intelligence analysis, and above all, consistent and professional leadership.

That would suggest that all the positions Caldwell is looking to fill are "behind-the-wire" instructors and mentors. And that would be a mistaken assumption. The mission Caldwell commands has upwards of 10,000 NATO personnel on the books, a good majority of them operating outside the wire as mentoring teams attached to field combat units. The "classroom" billets amount to no more than 1500. Since Caldwell's address in September there has already been some realignment which has brought some of the specialist instructors in from the field to fill static trainer positions. Canada has about 125 people in those billets already and another 325 in the field with Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams (OMLTs), Operational Mentoring and Advisory Teams (OMATs) and Police - Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams (POMLTs). Caldwell's shortage of trainers is not so much in the classroom as it is outside the wire with the Afghan army and police mentoring teams.

Back to Weston's article for a moment. He makes this observation regarding current CF involvement in Afghan army and police training.

The department won't say exactly where all the "training and mentoring" of Afghans is happening. But it does acknowledge that fewer than 125 Canadian soldiers are assigned to various training centres, headquarters and other relatively safe areas.

The vast majority are on special teams training Afghan soldiers in the field, outside the wire, in combat zones littered with lethal roadside bombs.

In fact, aside from the less than 125 who are assigned to more static roles, the Canadian OMLTs are operating in and around the Canadian area of operations in Kandahar Province. The only way they can operate successfully is to function with the support of the Canadian combat headquarters in Kandahar. Once the Canadian combat operation in Kandahar ends then so too does the ability to maintain mentoring teams in the same AO.

Back to Caldwell and his plea for specialist trainers. He makes a critical point in his address which impacts on what Harper is peddling.

... we have identified 15 priority capabilities that we believe you [NATO] can reasonably pledge against and begin filling by this winter and next spring. These requirements represent half of the total current trainer shortfall, but most importantly represent the gendarmes, pilots, doctors, and other key enablers that will get us through a critical and exponential growth period. If these commitments are pledged and fulfilled with boots on the ground, it would cover our critical needs through the summer of 2011…and further… allows us to begin the process of transition.

Let's take those sections I highlighted one at a time:

1. Canada cannot meet the demand to start filling Caldwell's requirements by this winter and next spring. We still have a combat role and will not be able to deploy personnel to a bolstered NTM-A until well after that. We can safely assume that other NATO allies will fill that demand long before we have personnel available. This is the kind of commitment many NATO nations view as a healthy and safe way to deploy without wearing the political splatter of combat casualties. We aren't going to be there for any of it. 

2. Harper and his cheerleaders are rapping on that this will be a behind-the-wire mission, yet Caldwell makes it clear that of the 900 trainer shortfall at the time of his address, only 450 were needed in the specialist lanes. The other 450 were something else and that was mentoring teams in the field with ANA and ANP forces. Once Canada's combat mission is withdrawn, we will add a 325 person deficit to the number of mentoring team trainers. That adds up to 775 trainers needed for operations in the field with mentoring teams once we end our combat involvement in Afghanistan. This is emphasized by the call by the US to make our training role "outside the wire". 

3. The critical need described by Caldwell is through the summer of 2011. Given that JTF-Kandahar will not wind down until the end of July 2011, that puts Canada outside the bracket for deployment to a new mission which would require our presence as trainers through the summer, even if those all trainers did constitute "classroom" instructors, which they do not.

The question then becomes, what will Canadian Forces do in a training role and how do we assume safer "behind-the-wire" trainer positions which have already been claimed by other NATO allies. Telling them to fill the operational mentoring teams with their people so we can move into Kabul is simply not going to fly. We're going to be late coming to the game. We won't get to pick which line we're playing on.

If we end up sending a majority of our people to mentoring teams that puts our troops right back into the field with the same or higher levels of risk that they had prior to the end of 2011. Further, without a combat headquarters to support mentoring teams it means breaking up Canadian units into small components operating under various different allied commanders. It's no longer a Canadian mission - it's just Canadian troops tossed into a US or UK or other national mission complete with some significant warts we really don't like.

The other possibility is that Harper is simply putting lipstick on a pig. He's made the whole thing so obscure that I can't help but believe that he's making an approximate 1000 troops a matter of interpretive materiality. Certainly 750 trainers attached to combat units cannot operate with a support element of 250. So the proof will be in the actual numbers. If the number starts to inflate in any way that should start bells ringing.

As we were moving the glasses around the table yesterday one very senior individual remarked, "Watch the footprint. If the rolling stock and the armour stays in Afghanistan then Harper has simply sprayed a different colour on the same mission."

In short, none of what Harper has vaguely described adds up. The timing is off by almost a full year and unless something changes, and allies are willing to step aside, the only role actually available will be in the operational mentoring teams ... in the field ... outside the wire.

Gee... ya think?

The editorial writers at the newspamazine which likes to call itself Canada's national rag have this to say: (Emphasis mine)

But Parliament has already adopted a resolution that expressly supports the training mission beyond July, 2011. That resolution of March, 2008, called for an end only to Canada’s presence in Kandahar. It went to say that Canada, with its allies, including Afghanistan, “must set firm targets and timelines for the training, equipping and paying of the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, the members of the judicial system and the members of the correctional system.” The Canadian government’s decision to stay in Afghanistan to train soldiers is entirely consistent with that resolution. For quite a while now, Mr. Harper has given the public the impression that Canada’s military would be leaving the country entirely. But there is nothing in the resolution’s letter or spirit to suggest that.

Wow. That is a strangely familiar line of dialog.
Oh right! From back in 2008, 26 months ago, when I wrote virtually the same thing and predicted exactly how Harper would mislead the public a la the Globe and Mail editorial writers' newly astute observations.

How... coincidental.

OK then. Having been involved with several meetings and having been out in the bazaars (the likes of which Harper, MacKay and the G&M are denied entry) I will have a post tomorrow which will shed even more light, present even tougher questions and make even more concrete predictions.

I may even suggest that certain editorial writers lay their dinks on the table and let me take a few swings with a ball peen hammer. (I don't do this for money. I just like to watch the elitists squirm, or scream, as the case may be.)

Extending the quagmire

NDP Paul Dewar says extending the Afghan mission past 2011 to 2014 requires a vote in Parliament.

Lib Bob Rae says : "In principle I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary."

Steve says I wasn't gonna ask you anyway.

Told ya so!

Like Cathie, I'm just shocked!

Well, not actually. Because as we, and Cathie have been regularly pointing out, Harper never planned to depart Afghanistan.

So... Harper can tell you he didn't really lie. He just had Soudas emerge from his sty and do it for him.

What kind of mission?

Come again?

Up to 750 trainers and at least 200 support staff would work outside the combat zone at a training academy or large training facility for Afghan soldiers and police officers, the CBC's James Cudmore reports. They would remain in Afghanistan until 2014 at the latest.

Where did that come from and who decided it? Why is this information not out there for all of us to digest? And while the loyal opposition hasn't even been given the opportunity to have a look at... whatever this plan is, neither has anyone else. Harper is now using the members of the Canadian Armed Forces as his own world-stage ego brush.


Want to know who else doesn't know? The troops who are going to have to keep going back to Afghanistan. Nobody has a clue and they are none too happy about it.


Here's the prime line of the day from the bazaars neither MacKay nor Harper are allowed to enter:


Oh, isn't that fucking lovely. We'll have more people "training" the Afghan army than we will have training our own. We've got a critical backlog of basic training to the rank of corporal and we're going to train a bunch that has a desertion rate that's right off the scale. Fucking brilliant.


I don't think I even want to add to that.

Banksters, Afghan style

Der Spiegel in July: "Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai."

The Dubai villas are usually registered in the name of those issuing the loans, such as Sherkhan Farnood, deposed chairman of Kabul Bank, who transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from Afghanistan to Dubai in 2009.

In July Farnood boasted :

"Kabul Bank is so flush that it is building a $30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass."

Since yesterday Kabul Bank is more like a clusterfuck of shimmering droves of Afghans making bank withdrawals and the only bulletproof part is the time-honoured bankster strategy of asking the US Treasury for a bailout. Farnood today :

"If we survive Saturday and Sunday, we will be okay," said Farnood, who spoke at his luxury waterfront villa in Dubai shortly after his return to the Persian Gulf emirate from Kabul.

Mahmoud Karzai, brother to President Karzai, third largest shareholder in Kabul Bank and ... wait for it ... proud owner of a Dubai villa :

"America should do something. If the Treasury Department will guarantee that everyone will get their money, maybe that will work," said the president's brother, who rushed to Kabul on Wednesday from Dubai, where he spends most of his time in a Palm Jumeirah villa purchased with Kabul Bank money. "

Quick financial status update on your investment as a shareholder in those Dubai villas :

Canada's aid in Afghanistan will amount to $1.9B over the ten-year period ending in 2011, making Canada one of Afghanistan's largest donors. In the 2008/2009 fiscal year, Canada disbursed approximately $224M but unfortunately the Dubai real estate market collapsed in 2008.

Perspective . . .

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a delightful article by P.J. O'Rourke, "The 72-Hour Expert Everything you always wanted to know about Afghanistan". P.J. acerbically observes

In Kabul I was met at the airport by M. Amin Mudaqiq, bureau chief for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Afghan branch, Radio Azadi. “Our office is just down the main road,” he said, “but since it’s early in the morning we’ll take the back way, because of the Suicides.” That last word, I noticed, was pronounced as a proper noun, the way we would say “Beatles” slightly differently than “beetles.” And, in a sense, suicide bombers do aspire to be the rock stars of the Afghan insurgency (average career span being about the same in both professions).

“The Suicides usually attack early in the morning,” Amin said. “It’s a hot country and the explosive vests are thick and heavy.”

I’d never thought about suicide bombing in terms of comfort. Here’s some guy who’s decided to blow himself gloriously to bits and he’s pounding the pavement all dressed up in the blazing sun, sweat running down his face, thinking, “Gosh this thing itches, I’m pooped, let’s call it off.”

“It’s the same with car bombs,” Amin said. “You don’t want to be driving around the whole day with police everywhere and maybe get a ticket.”

Imagine the indignity of winding up in traffic court instead of the terrorist equivalent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

• • •

The Pashtun tribal leader was joined by a Turkmen tribal leader who has a Ph.D. in sociology. I asked the Turkmen tribal leader about the socioeconomic, class, and status aspects of Afghan tribalism.

“No tribe is resented for wealth,” he said. So, right off the bat, Afghans show greater tribal sophistication than Americans. There is no Wall Street Tribe upon which the Afghan government can blame everything.

Even the worst of Afghan governments never acquired the special knack of pitting tribe against tribe that is vital to American politics—the Squishy Liberal Tribe vs. the Kick-Butt Tribe; the Indignantly Entitled Tribe vs. the Fed-Up Taxpayer Tribe; the Smug Tribe vs. the Wipe-That-Smirk-Off-Your-Face Tribe.

• • •

There was one other point that people in Kabul agreed on. Whatever it is that America does in Afghanistan, America should proceed with wisdom. The governor told a story about wisdom.

There was a student who had been studying for many years at a madrassa. He had memorized the Koran and learned all the lessons his teacher taught. One day he went to his teacher and said, “I am ready to leave and go be a mullah.”

His teacher said, “I think you should stay here for a few more years.”

“Why?” asked the student. “Is there some additional degree or higher certificate that I will get?”

“No,” said the teacher, “all you will get is wisdom.”

“But I’m ready to be a mullah now,” said the student. And he left the madrassa and wandered from village to village looking for a mosque where he could be the prayer-leader.

Finally the student came to a village where a corrupt old mullah was using the mosque as a stall for his cow. The student was outraged. He gathered the villagers together and told them, “I have studied at a madrassa. I have memorized the Koran. It is a great sacrilege for your mullah to use the mosque as a stall for his cow.”

The villagers beat him up.

The student limped back to the madrassa and told his teacher what had happened. The teacher said, “Follow me.” They went back to the village where the mullah was using the mosque as a stall.

The teacher gathered the villagers together and told them, “I see you have a beautiful cow being kept in your mosque. It must be a very blessed animal. And I hear the cow belongs to your mullah. He must be a very holy man. In fact, I think that this cow is so blessed and your mullah is so holy that if you were to take one hair from the cow’s hide and one hair from the mullah’s beard and rub them together, you would be assured of paradise.”

The villagers ran into the mosque and began plucking hairs from the cow’s hide. The cow started to buck and kick and it bolted from the mosque and disappeared. Then the villagers ran to the mullah’s house and began plucking hairs from the corrupt old mullah’s beard. And they tugged and they yanked so hard at the mullah’s beard that he had a heart attack and died.

“You see,” said the teacher to the student, “no cow in the mosque and a need for a new mullah—that is wisdom.”

Wisdom, indeed.

Blood on whose hands?

CNN : WikiLeaks founder may have 'blood' on his hands
Reuters : WikiLeaks may have blood on its hands, U.S. says
Both sources quote Admiral Mike Mullen :

"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing," Mullen said. "But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

Guardian : The War Logs :

"...the marines opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded."

Two hours later they returned to confiscate camera evidence.
A news photographer said they told him : "Delete them, or we will delete you."
A US army colonel paid $2,000 to the families of each victim and Major General Francis Kearney ordered the marines to pull the entire 120-man company out of the country.

Washington Post reader question to Assange :

"Did you take steps to delete the names and other identifying information of informants before you released the 90,000+ documents? If not, how do you answer the charge that your actions may get these informants killed?

Assange :

"We released 36,000 out of the 92,000 or so documents in the Afghan War Diaries.
15,000 have been held for further review because they may contain information about innocents or informants. We also asked the White House to provide resources to help us vet the materials; the White House did not respond."

Yesterday Obama signed the new Afganistan troop surge bill, passed by both Democrats and Republicans.
Last month, after accusing Stephen Harper of making a decision to “cut and run” from Afghanistan, Michael Ignatieff called for Canadians to stay in Afghanistan after 2011 as police and army trainers.

Harper and Iggy both supported the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and both voted to extend the Afghanistan occupation from 2009 to 2011.
Former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff is providing Harper and Obama with the cover necessary to support and extend that occupation.

It's down to the rest of us now to blow that cover : Rethink Afghanistan .

War is a racket villa in Dubai

Der Spiegel :
"Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai. Amid concerns that the money could be the result of corruption, American politicians have temporarily cut off [$3.9-billion in] aid to the Afghan government."

Proud new owners of villas in Dubai:
"a brother and a cousin of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, one of Karzai's former vice presidents and the brother one of the country's two current vice presidents."

Properties are registered under the names of the individuals issuing the loans, such as Sherkhan Farnood, the founder and chairman of Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest private bank.
Farnood : "What I'm doing is not proper, not exactly what I should do. But this is Afghanistan."

Kabul Bank's executives helped finance President Hamid Karzai's reelection campaign last year, and the bank is partly owned by Mahmoud Karzai, the Afghan president's older brother, and by Haseen Fahim, the brother of Karzai's vice presidential running mate.
Karzai's brother has "an informal home-loan agreement with Kabul Bank and pays $7,000 a month in interest".

Khalilullah Fruzi, chief executive of the bank, says "Kabul Bank is so flush that it is building a $30 million headquarters, a cluster of shimmering towers of bulletproof glass."
The bank is also spending millions to hire gunmen from a company called Khurasan Security Services, which, according to registration documents, used to be controlled by Fruzi and is now run by his brother.

Meanwhile, a new survey finds that corruption in Afghanistan has doubled since 2007, with one in seven Afghans paying nearly $1 billion in bribes last year, and US contractors are leaving the country without paying Afghan construction companies hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars owed, but McCain says winning Kandahar is the key to winning the war.

And so it goes....



Canada's aid in Afghanistan will amount to $1.9B over the ten-year period ending in 2011, making Canada one of Afghanistan's largest donors. In the 2008/2009 fiscal year, Canada disbursed approximately $224M.
And I'll bet you never expected to be part owner of a villa in Dubai.

Perspective

Some things aren't worth reading (I've written some of them) and others are.

This one... yeah. A definite read.

The UN sanctioned, NATO led mission to Afghanistan...

... appears not to be doing it for the UN.

UN officials say are withdrawing some of their 300 international staff in Afghanistan because of increasing security threats.

Nine years and this is where we are.

The report said violence rose dramatically in Afghanistan during the first four months of this year, and the number of incidents involving improvised explosive devices increased 94 per cent compared to the same time last year.

Nine years.

In 2008 The House of Commons resolved....

To withdraw all Canadian troops from Afghanistan by July 2011. Right?

Wrong!

The motion adopted by the House of Commons on 13 March, 2008 says no such thing.

Having heard all the push-pull politics going on it is interesting to watch Harper yap on that there will be no turning back on the decision to withdraw since that was the decision of parliament.

He's playing a game. This is now the oft repeated line:

“we are working according to the parliamentary resolution that was adopted in 2008 by which Canada's military mission will end and will transition to a civilian and development mission at the end of 2011.”

Except that's not what the resolution says. The wind-down of the combat mission in the parliamentary resolution reads as follows: (my emphasis)

(c) the government of Canada notify NATO that Canada will end its presence in Kandahar as of July 2011, and, as of that date, the redeployment of Canadian Forces troops out of Kandahar and their replacement by Afghan forces start as soon as possible, so that it will have been completed by December 2011;

That's reasonably clear.

So, why is Harper peddling a line which is so obviously inconsistent with his own past war-drumming and a resolution which, without having to stretch, allows the government to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan anywhere but Kandahar?

Comments?