The American Bear

› Afghan soldier kills three Americans | The Washington Post

An Afghan soldier opened fire on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday after arguing with one of the Americans, killing two service members and a civilian, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The confrontation marked the deadliest insider attack in the country this year and added to the death toll from an intense fighting season, which U.S. and Afghan officials are watching closely for indicators of the Taliban’s resilience as American troops accelerate their withdrawal. In a separate attack Saturday, an Italian captain was killed by a grenade in western Afghanistan.

The insider attack occurred shortly after noon in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan, after an Afghan soldier got into a verbal dispute with an American service member, according to an account by the provincial governor’s office. The Americans returned fire, killing the Afghan gunman, provincial officials said. Afghan and American officials are investigating the incident, but provincial authorities said they had found no evidence that the Afghan soldier had links to the insurgency.

The U.S. military said an Afghan was detained after the shooting, but it provided no details about the circumstances.

Insider attacks became a paramount concern for the U.S.-led coalition here last year, when Afghan troops killed 64 foreign military personnel and civilians in 48 incidents. Far fewer have occurred this year. Before Saturday’s attack, five coalition members had been killed in so-called “green on blue” attacks.

U.S. military officials went to great lengths to study insider attacks last year after their prevalence began to poison the military partnership at the heart of the U.S. strategy for winding down the Afghan war. Investigators found that relatively few such attacks could be traced to the insurgency, with a high percentage stemming from fights over cultural differences.

Earlier Saturday, an Italian military training team was returning to its base in Farah province when it came under attack. One soldier was killed and three wounded in the blast, according to the Italian Defense Ministry.

The Taliban did not assert responsibility for that attack but hailed it in a statement. According to local reports, its statement, which could not be corroborated, said an 11-year-old child had lobbed a grenade at the Italians.

“This incident clearly shows the utter hatred of Afghans toward the foreign invaders who have occupied our land in the past decade,” the statement said.

Saturday’s military casualties came two days after seven Georgian troops were killed in a truck bombing in southern Afghanistan.

› Report confirms high toll from Afghan insider attacks in 2012 | Dan Murphy

The latest quarterly report from the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reports that 15 percent of US casualties in Afghanistan from “hostile action” came in the form of Afghan police and soldiers turning their guns on their erstwhile allies.

While the report prefers the more delicate “Afghans in uniform attacking their Coalition partners,” leaving the door open to the chance that some of these attacks are carried out by men in stolen uniforms and not official members of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), it’s a safe assumption that the vast majority of the perpetrators are just that. [++]

› Pipelinistan | William Blum

[…] The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia – reportedly containing the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world – and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is well situated for such pipelines to serve much of South Asia and even parts of Europe, pipelines that – crucially – can bypass Washington’s bêtes noire, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.”

Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:

The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels … From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.

When those talks with the Taliban stalled in 2001, the Bush administration reportedly threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the Afghan government did not go along with American demands. On August 2 in Islamabad, US State Department negotiator Christine Rocca reiterated to the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef: “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold [oil], or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” The talks finally broke down for good a month before 9-11.

The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech … . It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.

› Afghanistan Arrests Colonel For Turning Over Prisoners to Zakaria Kandahari | Jim White

I just can’t stay away from the continually unfolding story of the death squad in the Nerkh District of Maidan Wardak Province in Afghanistan. Recall that in this post, I came to the conclusion that the death squad seems virtually certain to have been run by the CIA or CIA contractors, making denials of involvement coming from the military meaningless. The role of the shady character known as Zakaria Kandahari, and especially his sudden and complete disappearance once the situation spiraled out of control, seems especially to fit that of someone under the control of a covert CIA paramilitary group that recruits and runs militia groups.

Today, Reuters is out with a report that gives this story yet another huge development. It appears that in the course of its investigations into the disappearance, torture and murders relating to a group of 18 missing men (with the New York Times telling us Saturday that up to 14 of those bodies have now been recovered), Afghanistan has now arrested a colonel in the Afghan army for turning prisoners over to [Kandahari and] the “rogue” militia. [continue]

Related:
Afghans protest against US forces after discovery of mutilated bodies

› Afghans protest against US forces after discovery of mutilated bodies | guardian.co.uk

When relatives identified three mutilated bodies dug up near a former US special forces base as their missing family members, they decided to take the corpses to the capital of restive Wardak province and organise a protest to spread word of their loss.

By noon on Tuesday, hundreds of people had flooded the streets of Maidan Shar town, blocking the main road to Kandahar and Kabul and shouting “Death to America” and “Death to special forces”. By early afternoon two more men were dead and one seriously injured after police opened fire to control what they said was an increasingly violent crowd.

The three bodies were just the latest grisly discovery in the troubled Nerkh district, where locals say a string of civilians disappeared into a military base housing US special forces. They claim they were then tortured and killed. Their families blame American forces, although the base was shared with Afghan troops and a US military spokesman strongly denied any abuses by foreign soldiers.

But locals have continued to blame US forces. “We have found 10 bodies of people killed by Americans in total, seven before and three more today, on the west side of the US base,” said Sediqullah, a de-miner whose brother’s body was one of the three found on Monday.

“His name was Atiqullah, he was 38 years old and a shopkeeper in Maidan Shar,” said the 42-year-old, before going on to list the names and professions of the other dead, who included a teacher, a taxi driver, a government worker and casual labourers. He said their bodies bore signs of torture.

“They cut their fingers and beat their stomach and head with rocks,” he said by phone from his home just outside Maidan Shar. “They were poor people who just had ordinary business and were just working to feed their families.”

A senior Wardak politician said the 10 men all vanished at the end of last year, and their families had been seeking news of them for months.

“When there was a lot of snow, about 10 people disappeared in Nerkh and already about a month and a half ago seven bodies were found. The last part of the process was today, when three more bodies were found,” said Hazrat Mohammad Janan, deputy head of the provincial council. “It is not clear who killed them, though protesters were accusing the US soldiers.”

Wardak was at the heart of a showdown between the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and US forces earlier this year. Karzai ordered all foreign special forces troops out of the province after receiving reports claiming that the elite units had been involved in the disappearance of civilians in Nerkh.

Eventually the two sides agreed that while special forces would leave that district, they would stay on in the rest of Wardak, a province with a heavy Taliban presence, until Afghan forces were better prepared to battle the insurgency alone.

Meanwhile government investigators continued to pursue the claims and now believe that at least 17 people from the province disappeared into US custody, the New York Times reported recently.

Most have now been found dead, and authorities want to arrest a man they say was part of a special forces unit operating there, the paper said. Evidence includes a video of a torture session conducted by “Zakaria Kandahari”, who investigators say is of Afghan descent but was raised in the US.

› 11 Afghan Children Killed in 2 Taliban Bombings | The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban attacks in eastern Afghanistan on Monday killed 2 American soldiers and 17 Afghans, including at least 11 children, adding to a particularly deadly season for civilians this year.

Early Monday, a roadside bomb destroyed a small truck, killing a family of seven — including two children — on their way home from collecting firewood in Mehtarlam, the capital of Laghman Province, officials said. A second attack, apparently aimed at American forces in a remote district of Paktia Province, killed two soldiers, an Afghan policeman and at least nine children when a suicide attacker on a motorcycle set off his bomb near a boys’ school.

(Source: circlingtheroundabout)

› Relatives of murdered Afghans demand death for American sergeant

Relatives of 16 Afghan civilians killed by a US soldier during a midnight rampage through two villages have expressed fury over a plea bargain that could see the perpetrator escape execution in return for confessing to the murders. They have called on US military prosecutors handling the trial of Staff Sergeant Robert Bales to imagine loosing their own loved ones to a gunman bent on murder and deaf to pleas of mercy.

“My last request from the world, all the countries, is that as a family of the victims we want our killer to be hanged,” said Haji Baran, who lost his brother Mohammad Daud in the massacre, last March. “If someone entered your house and killed the children and old men and women of the family, what would your response be?”

Bales will enter guilty pleas to charges of premeditated murder on Wednesday, his attorney told the Associated Press. He is expected to be sentenced to life in prison, but a court will decide in September if he will have the possibility of parole. Any plea deal must be approved by both a judge and the commanding general.

There are currently six men on death row in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, where Bales is being held, but none were convicted for atrocities against foreign citizens and the US military has not executed a service member since 1961.

Some relatives of the dead pledged to seek vengeance if Bales is sentenced to life in prison rather than execution for the attacks, in which he killed nine children and seven adults and burned some of the bodies. The scale of the massacre shocked Afghanistan and the west. Although there have been far larger death tolls from air strikes, they have been accepted, at least in foreign troops’ home countries, as tragic mistakes.

“A prison sentence doesn’t mean anything,” Said Jan, whose wife and three other relatives died, told the AP. “I know we have no power now. But I will become stronger and if he does not hang, I will have my revenge.”

› Red Cross Suspends Afghan Operations | Antiwar.com

The International Committee of the Red Cross has announced that it is temporarily suspending all operations in Afghanistan after a Wednesday suicide attack against their office in Jalalabad, which killed a security guard and wounded another staff member.

The Red Cross statement said the closures would remain “until further notice” and provided no indication of when they would start up again. The comments suggested that the offices in Jalalabad will remain closed, potentially for good.

The question of who was behind the attack is also unanswered, as the Taliban has openly disavowed the incident, saying they would never support an attack on Red Cross targets, and that their fighters have been admonished to not target independent aid agencies in general.

The Red Cross has had operations in Afghanistan since 1987, and continued throughout the Taliban’s rule of the 1990′s. The group is said to be in talks with Taliban officials as well as the Karzai government in trying to determine who carried out the attack.

› Foreign Aid Is Afghanistan's Resource Curse | FPIF

Rebellious American colonists once proclaimed that “taxation without representation is tyranny.” A corollary is more significant in the modern world: “government without taxation results in tyranny.”

This phenomenon is primarily observed in developing countries afflicted by the “resource curse,” in which the discovery of valuable natural resources has tended to exacerbate cronyism and repression, rather than sowing democracy or spreading prosperity. What is the mysterious incompatibility between natural wealth and democracy?

It appears that part of the answer is taxation. When government requires resources that can only be obtained from taxing its citizens, it must be ultimately responsive to those citizens. Force might work until the government coffers run out, but eventually citizens will put up with only so much. On the other hand, when a government has all the resources it needs—say, through oil or diamond wealth—it is free to ignore or oppress its citizens. A government with its own resources also has the wherewithal to suppress the population by force.

An analogous incentive structure is at play in many developing and post-conflict countries. Afghanistan, which manages to generate only about $2 billion per year of customs revenue and taxes and depends on international donors for the rest of its budget, is a prime example. With plenty of cash and no accountability to citizens—as well as minimal oversight by donors—Afghan officials are free to rip off donor resources and ignore or extort their fellow citizens with relative impunity.

In Afghanistan, as Astri Surkhe has pointed out, international donors have created a classic rentier society. Officials are busily engaged in rent seeking, not in applying resources to local needs. Even conscientious officials have no institutional reason to take local desires into account, and in any case have no representative structures for ascertaining these needs.

The lesson? Transplanting dollars does not transplant democracy. [++]

› Sgt. Bales Is Guilty But Not Crazy, And No-One Is Talking About It | Steve Hynd

It’s been in all the news, but what I haven’t seen is any pundit opinion on that news:

The American soldier accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children, as they slept in villages adjacent to an army outpost in Kandahar province early last year is to plead guilty at a hearing next week in an attempt to stave off the death penalty, his lawyer said.

… Henry Browne said his client, Sergeant Robert Bales, was “broken”, “crazed” and on his fourth deployment to Afghanistan when he slipped away from the outpost in the early morning of 11 March 2012 and went on a rampage, shooting and stabbing his slumbering victims. Mr Browne had indicated, however, that Sgt Bales’s state of mind hadn’t been such he could offer an insanity defence.

I think that the absence of punditry opinion on this is remarkable, especially given the plethora of people willing to give Bales an insanity out when reports of this massacre first hit the news. Yet it appears that even his defense lawyer admits his four tours, his seeing a friend blown up and his monetary troubles at home were not enough to push Bales over the line into the legal definition of insanity. His horrific actions, no matter what we may think about the mental state of someone who could carry out such acts, were self-admittedly pre-meditated, a quite deliberate act of terror.

The line of “insanity” isn’t easily drawn, obviously.

But if Bales was “broken” and “crazed” but not technically insane, capable of carrying out acts of deliberate terror but deserving of at least some of our compassion for the hardships he had endured that brought him to the decision to perpetrate those acts then for universal justice to prevail we have to be prepared to offer the same amount of nuance to others. What then of those we glibly write off as “terrorists” and consign to the rubbish bin of memory, like those who carried out the horrific attack in London recently? What of common murderers who have been pushed beyond some limit by the circumstances of their lives, yet not so far as to be legally “insane” – do they get the same compassion that was lavished on Bales?

Bales’ case should be a thought provoker, a stepping off point for debate about our definitions of insanity, guilt and extenuating circumstances, and a beginning of an approach to criminal justice that sees punishment at odds with compassion. Instead crickets, and that – while not anywhere near the level of 16 snuffed out lives and the impact of that on their families – is a crying shame itself.

› Kabul demands surrender of detainees in British custody in Afghanistan | guardian.co.uk

Afghanistan has demanded the handover of nearly 100 people who have been detained by British forces in Afghanistan, in some cases for more than a year.

Mohammad Daud Yaar, the Afghan ambassador to the UK, told the World at One on Wednesday that “the principle of national sovereignty” meant that they should be surrendered to Afghan custody. He added that he could promise that they would not be mistreated.

He was speaking a few hours after Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, confirmed that 80 or 90 people were being held at the site but rejected claims that it amounted to a secret detention facility.

[…]

UK lawyers acting for eight of the men, some of whom they say have been held for up to 14 months without charge, have launched habeas corpus applications in the UK high court in a bid to free them, raising comparisons with the outrage over the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. [++]

› Body of Zakaria Kandahari’s Videotaped Torture Victim Surfaces, 200 Yards from US Nerkh Base | Jim White

When last we left the saga of the US role relating to the “rogue” Afghan death squad in the Nerkh District of Maidan Wardak province of Afghanistan, the New York Times was studiously transcribing denials from various US government officials of any US involvement in the torture, disappearances and murders that are both the touchstone of US-trained death squad operations dating back at least to Central America in the 1980′s (if not all the way back to Vietnam) and the atrocities that prompted Hamid Karzai to announce that he was expelling US Special Forces from the province. Although Karzai eventually relented somewhat and agreed to only expel US Special Forces from the Nerkh District instead of the entire province, as I pointed out in my post on the Times’ transcription of US denials, evidence continues to accumulate that CIA paramilitary operations personnel almost certainly seem to have been involved in the training and deployment of the “rogue” Afghan Local Police unit based in Nerkh. With today’s new development, it seems very likely that these CIA paramilitary personnel (and their Afghan trainees) are still operating, with impunity, at the Nerkh base.

What we learn today is stunning and looks like a calculated move intended to strike fear into the local population around the Nerkh base (which is, of course, the aim of US-trained death squads organized under the COIN rubric). From the New York Times:

Family members on Tuesday found the body of a man missing since last November near the American Special Forces base to which he was last seen being taken, according to Afghan officials and victims’ representatives.

Afghan investigators said that after his disappearance, the man, Sayid Mohammad, was seen in a video undergoing torture at the hands of an Afghan-American named Zakaria Kandahari, who was the chief translator for an American Army Special Forces A Team stationed at the base in the Nerkh district of Wardak Province.

Mr. Mohammad’s body was found about 200 yards outside the perimeter of the Nerkh base, which is now occupied by Afghan special forces after the American unit was removed following protests by Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai.

Relatives of Mr. Mohammad said his body was largely intact but both of his feet had been cut off. They took his remains to the Nerkh district government center in protest. The partial remains of another missing person were also found near the base, family members and Afghan officials have said.

The article is silent on the question of how long the victim appeared to have been dead. Note that the Times reminds us that the Nerkh base no longer has US Special Operations Forces. I find it very hard to believe that a group of Afghan Local Police and Afghan Special Forces, after having drawn so much local anger and international attention to themselves through prompting Karzai’s outburst and expulsion of US Special Forces, would carry out such a brazen and brutal move on their own. However, if CIA paramilitary operatives are still present at the base and still directing (and protecting) the Afghan team, the move seems less surprising.

We also learn in today’s article that at least 17 people are now known to have been disappeared by this death squad. Nine of those victims have been found dead and eight are still missing. Afghan investigators are considerably less credulous of US denials of involvement than the Times is:

“There is no question that Zakaria directly tortured and murdered,” the investigator said. “But who is Zakaria? Who recruited him, gave him his salary, his weapons? Who kept him under their protection? He worked for Special Forces. That a member of their team was committing such crimes and they didn’t know it is just not credible.”

[continue]

› Taliban suicide blast in Afghanistan 'targeted Nato advisers'

Hizb-e-Islami claims deadliest attack in Kabul this year, which left 15 dead including two US soldiers, four Nato employees and two children.