"Balloon boy" gets more interest (and coverage) than the war in Afghanistan

"The public expresses a range of feelings about the news concerning the war in Afghanistan: a majority (56%) often feels that "it seems like the same news about the war in Afghanistan all the time, nothing ever really changes"; 42% say they do not often feel this way. Nearly as many (53%) say they do not always have enough background information to follow the news about Afghanistan. By contrast, far fewer Americans (26%) say the news about the war is so depressing they would prefer not to follow it. Only 20% say they feel guilty about not following news from the war in Afghanistan more closely."

Additional data crunching at the Pew Research Center, via Talking Points Memo.

For another viewpoint on the situation in Afghanistan, see the video at The Guardian, which I can't embed here. The 7-minute report comes from a British reported embedded with troops there. The report - "These People Just Want to be Left Alone" - has some notable comments starting at about the 4:30 mark from an American who can't figure out why the Afghan people can't be more like Clint Eastwood in a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western:

"These people are so fickle, man, and full of s***. They say, like, Taliban comes down and, like, f****** aggravates their towns and, like, harasses them and s***. It's like three dudes, two dudes, at a time. How many people are there in their village. Couple hundred, whatever. O.K., why don't you f****** kill those motherf******? All of you have AKs, or some type of weapon. "But, but, they come down and they kill us." Well, kill them! I mean, if someone's going into MY home town, I know my f****** town wouldn't stand for that s*** - they'd be like "F*** you, you're dead.""

The video goes on to demonstrate the frustrations of the soldiers with inadequate vehicles designed for the roads of Iraq and unsuitable for the wilds of Afghanistan.

The War in Afghanistan has now gone on longer than the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Iraq War. It's been over 8 years since October 7, 2001. Next milestones to surpass - American Revolution (8 years 4 months, 16 days) and the Vietnam War (8 years, 5 months, 21 days).

U.S. position in Afghanistan deteriorating

The National Intelligence Estimate now reportedly describes the situation as "grim."

"... a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community's 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington... According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan... Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation think tank, called the situation in Afghanistan "dire..."

Last week, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress "we're running out of time" in Afghanistan. "I'm not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan," Adm. Mullen testified.

Perhaps foreshadowing the NIE assessment on Afghanistan, Adm. Mullen told Congress, "absent a broader international and interagency approach to the problems there, it is my professional opinion that no amount of troops in no amount of time can ever achieve all the objectives we seek in Afghanistan."

Details will be lacking for a while, because "there are "no plans to declassify" any of it before the election..."

The privatization of war

From the transcript of Bill Moyer's interview with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:

JEREMY SCAHILL: …Right now there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about 50 percent of the total US fighting force. Which is very similar to what it was under Bush. In Iraq, President Obama has 130 thousand contractors. And we just saw a 23 percent increase in the number of armed contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan there's been a 29 percent increase in armed contractors. So the radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama…

BILL MOYERS: You know, you talk about military contractors. Do you think the American people have any idea how their tax dollars are being used in Afghanistan?

JEREMY SCAHILL:Absolutely no idea whatsoever. We've spent 190 million dollars. Excuse me, $190 billion on the war in Afghanistan. And some estimates say that, within a few short years, it could it could end up at a half a trillion dollars. The fact is that I think most Americans are not aware that their dollars being spent in Afghanistan are, in fact, going to for-profit corporations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are companies that are simultaneously working for profit and for the U.S. government. That is the intricate linking of corporate profits to an escalation of war that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. We live in amidst the most radical privatization agenda in the history of our country…

The rest of the transcript (and a video of the program segment) is at the link. A video version is here.

An Obama/GOP alliance?

An interesting essay today at Counterpunch. Herewith some excerpts:

With Obama pushing a huge troop escalation in Afghanistan, history may well repeat itself with a vengeance. And it’s not just the apt comparison to LBJ, who destroyed his presidency on the battlefields of Vietnam with an escalation that delivered power to Nixon and the GOP.

There’s another frightening parallel: Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, who accomplished perhaps his single biggest legislative “triumph” – NAFTA – thanks to an alliance with Republicans that overcame strong Democratic and grassroots opposition...

To get a majority today in Congress on Afghanistan, the Obama White House is apparently bent on a strategy replicating the tragic farce that Clinton pulled off: Ignore the informed doubts of your own party while making common cause with extremist Republicans who never accepted your presidency in the first place...

For those who elected Obama, it’s important to remember the downward spiral that was accelerated by Clinton’s GOP alliance to pass NAFTA. It should set off alarm bells for us today on Afghanistan.

NAFTA was quickly followed by the debacle of Clinton healthcare “reform” largely drafted by giant insurance companies, which was followed by a stunning election defeat for Congressional Democrats in November 1994, as progressive and labor activists were lethargic while rightwing activists in overdrive put Gingrich into the Speaker’s chair...

Today, it’s crucial to ask where Obama is heading. From the stimulus to healthcare, he’s shown a Clinton-like willingness to roll over progressives in Congress on his way to corrupt legislation and frantic efforts to compromise for the votes of corporate Democrats or “moderate” Republicans. Meanwhile, the incredible shrinking “public option” has become a sick joke.

As he glides from retreats on civil liberties to health reform that appeases corporate interests to his Bush-like pledge this week to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, an Obama reliance on Congressional Republicans to fund his troop escalation could be the final straw in disorienting and demobilizing the progressive activists who elected him a year ago...

Throughout the centuries, no foreign power has been able to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, but President Obama thinks he’s a tough enough Commander-in-Chief to do it...

When you start in the center (on, say, healthcare or Afghanistan) and readily move rightward several steps to appease rightwing politicians or lobbyists or Generals, by definition you are governing as a conservative.

It’s been a gradual descent from the elation and hope for real change many Americans felt on election night, November 2008...

More at Counterpunch.

Afghanistan

In The Daily Dish today, Andrew Sullivan references an essay by Joe Klein regarding the coming chaos of Afghanistan. Presidential elections are pending there - perhaps sooner than originally planned. What happens if the Afghanis elect someone other than Karzai, someone who isn't supportive of our presence? Do we congratulate them on their democratic process and back away? Or do we treat it as we treated Palestinian elections and ignore the result?

On a number of occasions I've alluded to Afghanistan in TYWKIWDBI, usually with a sense of foreboding. [the best thing I ever blogged about the country was the noncombat video of the wasps as a wonderful allegory; that video deserves a repost if/when (when) things heat up in Afghanistan].

When I wrote about the Anglo-Afghan War and the massacre of the British army in 1842, Soubriquet was kind enough to post the full text of the Kipling poem that ends with these memorable lines:

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

But for some probably illogical reason, the poem that comes to my mind when I think of Afghanistan is William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Afghan war heads toward Pakistan

Excerpts from an interesting article last month in Asia Times:

While the surge of 30,000 United States troops in Afghanistan can only lead to an escalation of fighting, a major problem looms across the border, where al-Qaeda plans a new front against the Pakistan army - a move that will further dry up Islamabad's vital support for the war in Afghanistan...

Simultaneously, al-Qaeda sources have told Asia Times Online, al-Qaeda has re-established itself in Somalia and Yemen.  From Somalia, the sources say, al-Qaeda plans to further disrupt trade routes around the Horn of Africa, while from Yemen, al-Qaeda aims to make a comeback in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia and beyond...

The objective, very much like the attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, was to spark a war between Pakistan and India that would force Pakistan to disengage from any support of the war in Afghanistan. As al-Qaeda sees it, victory in Afghanistan runs through Pakistan, and in combating the Pakistan army...

Apart from whatever steps the Pakistani army takes to suppress the militants, the pro-American coalition in Islamabad is losing its grip. The situation is developing into a struggle between the civilian government on the one side and the Supreme Court and the military establishment on the other side. The sole beneficiary of this is likely to be al-Qaeda, as the state will lose its focus in the war against that group. The loser will be the United States...

While the US focus is Afghanistan and the fresh 30,000 troops it will have there, al-Qaeda will push on to open up the war theater in Pakistan. At the same time, it has consolidated in Yemen and Somalia... Al-Qaeda took about five years to reach a turning point in the Afghanistan and Pakistani tribal areas, but the al-Qaeda leadership is convinced that its Yemen and Somalia operations will take a much shorter time.

More at the link.  Political cartoon via The Frustrated Teacher.

Pondering the remarkable history of Afghanistan

Last night I had a pleasant evening watching four of the hour-long segments of Michael Palin's documentary Himalaya (BBC, 2004). He begins the journey and the narrative quite logically at the Khyber Pass, noting that many of the worlds greatest armies have followed this route, since it is the only passage through the mountain chain. He mentions Alexander the Great, Darius the Persian, and Tamerlane the Great. Then this...

"And in 1842 the lone survivor of the British Army's attempt to pacify Afghanistan came staggering up this road to announce the annihilation of 17,000 of his comrades..."

That got my attention, since it referred to an event not covered in any of my (few) history courses. Searched the web today, and found the First Anglo-Afghan War, and then the catastrophe under the heading Massacre of Elphinstone's Army. Details at the link, but these excerpts give the flavor:

The remnants dragged on and made a last stand near the village of Gandamack on 13 January. The force was down to fewer than forty men and almost out of food and ammunition. They were surrounded on a hillock and when a surrender was offered by the Afghans, one British sergeant gave the famous answer "Not bloody likely!" All but two were slain.

Only one soldier managed to reach Jalalabad. On January 13 William Brydon, an assistant surgeon, rode through the gate on his exhausted horse. Part of his skull was sheared off by a sword. An Afghan shepherd had granted him refuge and, when the shooting was over, put him on his horse. It is said that he was asked upon arrival what happened to the army, and answered "I am the army."

The paintings above: Remnants of an Army and Last Stand

Reposted from 2009, because last night I rewatched The Kite Runner and was once again thoroughly impressed with the movie, so I'm going to embed the trailer here to encourage others to consider it.

The blurb provided by Paramount is succinct: 

"Amir is a young Afghani from a well-to-do Kabul family; his best friend Hassan is the son of a family servant. Together the two boys form a bond of friendship that breaks tragically on one fateful day, when Amir fails to save his friend from brutal neighborhood bullies. Amir and Hassan become separated, and as first the Soviets and then the Taliban seize control of Afghanistan, Amir and his father escape to the United States to pursue a new life.  Years later, Amir -- now an accomplished author living in San Francisco -- is called back to Kabul to right the wrongs he and his father committed years ago."

I think the movie deserves consideration by a new generation of viewers if for no other reason than to realize from viewing the opening scenes of the movie what Afghanistan was like before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the mullahs.

In the movie when the father and son flee Afghanistan, the father asks a friend to look after the house until the Russians leave.  When asked if they will leave he replies "everyone leaves Afghanistan," which reminded me of this post written 15 years ago.

The CIA delivered truckloads of cash to Afghanistan

We all heard stories about this years ago, but now it has been openly admitted.  As reported by the New York Times:

For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader...

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing. 

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan. 

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”..

It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. ..

But the C.I.A. has continued to pay, believing it needs Mr. Karzai’s ear to run its clandestine war against Al Qaeda and its allies, according to American and Afghan officials. 

Like the Iranian cash, much of the C.I.A.’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban...

Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan since the start of the war. During the 2001 invasion, agency cash bought the services of numerous warlords, including Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the current first vice president...

Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations. 

Much of it also still goes to keeping old warlords in line. One is Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek whose militia served as a C.I.A. proxy force in 2001. He receives nearly $100,000 a month from the palace, two Afghan officials said. Other officials said the amount was significantly lower. 

Mr. Dostum, who declined requests for comment, had previously said he was given $80,000 a month to serve as Mr. Karzai’s emissary in northern Afghanistan. “I asked for a year up front in cash so that I could build my dream house,” he was quoted as saying in a 2009 interview with Time magazine. 

When Karzai was asked how the money was used he offered this explanation:

During a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, where he was on an official visit, Karzai said the welcome monthly payments were not a “big amount” but were a “small amount,”He said they were used to give assistance to the wounded and sick, to pay rent for housing and for other “operational” purposes...

I have to close with a quote from retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Kabul bank was a big Ponzi scheme

KABUL, Afghanistan — Kabul Bank became Afghanistan’s largest financial institution by offering the promise of modern banking to people who had never had a saving or checking account. What it really dealt in was modern theft: “From its very beginning,” according to a confidential forensic audit of Kabul Bank, “the bank was a well-concealed Ponzi scheme.” 

Afghan and American officials had for years promoted Kabul Bank as a prime example of how Western-style banking was transforming a war-ravaged economy. But the audit, prepared this year for Afghanistan’s central bank by the Kroll investigative firm, gives new details of how the bank instead was institutionalizing fraud that reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars and obliterated Afghans’ trust after regulators finally seized the bank in August 2010 and the theft was revealed.

Going further than previous reports, the audit asserts that Kabul Bank had little reason to exist other than to allow a narrow clique tied to President Hamid Karzai’s government to siphon riches from depositors, who were the bank’s only substantial source of revenue...

What Kroll’s audit found is that on Aug. 31, 2010, the day the Bank of Afghanistan seized Kabul Bank, more than 92 percent of the lender’s loan portfolio — $861 million, or roughly 5 percent of Afghanistan’s annual economic output at the time — had gone to 19 related people and companies, according to the audit. 

Among the largest beneficiaries were a brother of Mr. Karzai and a brother of First Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim...

Further details at the New York Times. Someone remind me please why we're still pursuing nation-building in this country.

U.S. troops stealing millions of dollars

Charboneau contributed to thefts by U.S. military personnel of at least $15 million worth of fuel since the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And eventually she became one of at least 115 enlisted personnel and military officers convicted since 2005 of committing theft, bribery, and contract rigging crimes valued at $52 million during their deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a comprehensive tally of court records by the Center for Public Integrity...

Additional crimes by military personnel are still under investigation, and some court records remain partly under seal. The magnitude of additional losses from fraud, waste, and abuse by contractors, civilians, and allied foreign soldiers in Afghanistan has never been tallied, but officials probing such crimes say the total is in the billions of dollars... those who investigate and prosecute military wrongdoing say the convictions so far constitute a small portion of the crimes they think were committed by U.S. military personnel in the two countries...

So far, officers account for approximately four-fifths of the value of the fraud committed by military personnel in Iraq, while in Afghanistan, the ratio was flipped, with enlistees accounting for roughly the same portion, according to the Center’s tally. The reasons for the difference are unclear. But Sopko said he expects more officers to be investigated for misconduct in Afghanistan as the U.S. military mission there continues, so the ratio could change. Soldiers who had little or no prior criminal history, like Charboneau, say the circumstances of their deployments made stealing with impunity look easy, and so they made decisions that to their surprise eventually brought them prison sentences ranging from three months to more than 17 years...

More depressing reading at the Center for Public Integrity.

Get to know Balochistan/Baluchistan

It may be in the news in the year(s) to come. This westernmost province of Pakistan, comprising almost half of the country's area, is situated in an absolutely vital strategic area - Iran to the west, Afghanistan to the north, and the Punjab to the east. Here are excerpts from an article posted several weeks ago in Asia Times:

An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan's area, rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more than one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of Pakistan's 173 million citizens. Balochs are the majority, followed by Pashtuns. Quetta, the provincial capital, is considered Taliban Central by the Pentagon...

Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz....

Now imagine thousands of mobile US troops - backed by supreme air power and hardcore artillery - pouring into this desert across the immense, 800-kilometer-long, empty southern Afghanistan-Balochistan border. These are Obama's surge troops who will be in theory destroying opium crops in Helmand province in Afghanistan. They will also try to establish a meaningful presence in the ultra-remote, southwest Afghanistan, Baloch-majority province of Nimruz. It would take nothing for them to hit Pakistani Balochistan in hot pursuit of Taliban bands. And this would certainly be a prelude for a de facto US invasion of Balochistan.

What would the Balochis do? That's a very complex question.... As a whole, not only BLA sympathizers but the Balochis in general are adamant: although prepared to remain within a Pakistani confederation, they want infinitely more autonomy....

China - which built Gwadar and needs gas from Iran - must be sidelined by all means necessary. The added paranoid Pentagon component is that China could turn Gwadar into a naval base and thus "threaten" the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean...

Balancing Afghanistan and the Punjab

The National Interest is a conservative magazine founded by Irving Kristol and published by the Nixon Center.   I was therefore somewhat startled when an article in the magazine was emailed to me by a Pakistani friend who described the article as "spot on" in assessing the situation in the Punjab.  This friend is highly knowledgeable about affairs in that part of the world, so when he assessed the article as having a "clear assessment" of the situation, I paid attention.  Here are some excerpts from "A Mutiny Grows in Punjab":

U.S. STRATEGY toward Pakistan is focused on trying to get Islamabad to give serious help to Washington’s campaign against the Afghan Taliban. There are two rather large problems with this approach. The first is that it is never going to happen. As U.S. diplomats in Pakistan themselves recognize (and as was made ever so clear by the WikiLeaks dispatches), both Pakistani strategic calculations and the feelings of the country’s population make it impossible for Islamabad to take such a step, except in return for U.S. help against India—which Washington also cannot deliver.

The second problem is that it gets America’s real priorities in the region back to front. The war in Afghanistan is a temporary U.S. interest, in which the chief concern is not the reality of victory or defeat as such (if only because neither can be clearly defined) but preserving some appearance of success in order to avoid the damage to American military prestige that would result from obvious failure. By contrast, preserving the Pakistani state and containing the terrorist threat to the West from Pakistan is a permanent vital interest not only of the U.S. military and political establishments but of every American citizen...

If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains. By the same token, the greatest potential terrorist threat to the United States and its Western allies from the region stems not from the illiterate and isolated Pashtuns but from Islamist groups based in urban Punjab, with their far-higher levels of sophistication and their international links, above all to the Pakistani diaspora in the West...

But there comes a time in many wars when victory itself becomes so elusive, and the costs of pursuing it so great, that a broader and more detached view of national interests sees that these are best served by some form of compromise. This seems to me to be becoming the case in Afghanistan; not because of the costs of the Afghan war itself, which are bearable, but because of the way in which that conflict is destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States—and the world—which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan...

A central fact tends to be missed, in part because it is a deeply uncomfortable one for Americans, with their instinctive faith in democracy and their inborn desire to be liked and respected by other nations: that (and with deep regret I can attest to this from my own numerous interviews in Pakistan) the Afghan Taliban enjoy the sympathy of the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis at every level of society. And so the U.S. war there—and America’s demands of Pakistani assistance—are weakening the state. The support for the Taliban is not based in their religious ideology, which is alien to most Pakistanis. It is so prevalent because, as with the anti-Soviet mujahideen of the 1980s (who were also not admired for their extremist ideals), the Taliban are seen as a legitimate force of resistance against an alien occupation of the country...

The greatest potential catalyst for a collapse of the Pakistani state is not the Islamist militants themselves, who are in my view far too weak and divided to achieve this (a capacity for murderous terrorism should not be confused with a capacity for successful revolution); it is that actions by the United States will provoke a mutiny of parts of the military. Should that happen, the Pakistani state would collapse very quickly indeed, with all the disasters that this would entail...

THE OVERTHROW of the regime can never happen in peripheral areas like Waziristan, Baluchistan or even Karachi. It would have to happen in Punjab... It is the possible collapse of Pakistan, not the outcome of the present war in Afghanistan, which is the really terrible threat to America and its allies from this part of the Muslim world.

Much more at the link.

Photos from Afghanistan

U.S. Marine Cpl. Brian Knight, of Cincinnati, Ohio, with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, pauses briefly in the heat to rest with his heavy pack filled with mortar equipment, ammunition, food, and water in the Nawa district in Afghanistan's Helmand province on July 4, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

U.S. Marines from the 2nd MEB, 1st Battalion 5th Marines sleep in their fighting holes inside a compound where they stayed for the night, in the Nawa district of Afghanistan's Helmand province, Wednesday July 8, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Afghan boys play during a snow storm in Kabul on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Selections from a huge collection of photos at The Denver Post.

[David] Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press and over the past seven years has offered the general public a close-up, intimate look at the lives of troops fighting in the mountains and remote regions of Afghanistan.

The "Stans" of Central Asia

We're going to be hearing a lot more about these countries if Obama follows through on his plan to accelerate the war in Afghanistan and/or the search for Osama bin Laden.

Blogged today because I found this excellent map [click to enlarge] which I'll probably need to refer to for future posts or just for my own reading, because I often forget which "stan" is which. The other two "stans" - Afghanistan and Pakistan - are at the bottom of the map, not highlighted in color.

The article that featured the map is primarily concerned with access to Afghanistan for the U.S. war efforts, because Kyrgyzstan is cutting off U.S. access to its temporary base there. Note that other access routes involve flyover from Iran or travel across Pakistan. The Center for Budgetary Analysis says it costs $775,000 per year for every soldier sent to Afghanistan. Economics may become as important as geopolitics in terms of influencing the U.S. plans on foreign soils.

More some other time. Just wanted to get the map stored in the blog.

p.s. - if you have a moment, test your geography knowledge.

p.p.s. - if you have more time and are a newcomer here (not an old-timer) and enjoy geography and travel, check out the geography category items for TYWKIWDBI.

British "war poet" will go to Afghanistan

The British tradition of "war poetry" will be revived by the BBC, who are sending one of the country's leading poets to Afghanistan:

While a handful of visual artists have worked in the theatre of war since fighting began in October 2001, Armitage will be the first poet to be granted access...

The planned one-hour documentary, Behind the Lines, is to be produced by BBC veteran Roger Courtier, who hopes to send Armitage to Helmand for a month. Courtier believes the tradition of the British war poet deserves to be reinstated: "We think it is a fabulous idea..."

Others are less sanguine:

A lot depends on how long a writer is at war and if they are a combatant. Of course, a poet can give the view of a sensitive outsider, but you can almost become a voyeur if you are not careful."

Perhaps in memory of the British massacre in Afghanistan in 1842 the new poet could just add an additional verse onto Kipling's immortal poem:

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Paghman Gardens, Kabul, Afghanistan

"Paghman Gardens is a popular place near Afghanistan's capital city, Kabul. It is a place where people relax and spend the weekends there with friends and relatives. At the entrance is the European style monumental gate, similar to that of the Paris Arc de Triomphe but smaller.

After his 1927 – 1928 tour of Europe, India and Iran, King Amanullah brought in foreign experts to redesign Kabul. Paghman, a small village at the bottom of the Hindu Kush, became a holiday retreat with villas and chalets as well as the summer capital.

The new royal gardens were opened to the public under the proviso -as a matter of reform- that western dress was adopted there, as in the royal residential areas of nearby Kabul."

The photos above were taken in 1967 and in 2007. In between were the Soviet invasion (1978-1989) and the Afghanistan civil war (1992 - 2001). The photos show what two decades of war can do to a country.

Image credit here. Click image to enlarge.

Photos from Afghanistan

Door Gunner Petty Officer Richard Symonds of the Royal Navy wears a Santa Claus outfit as he delivers mail and presents to troops around Helmand province on December 25, 2010. (REUTERS/Sgt Rupert Frere RLC/Crown Copyright)

An Afghan woman clad with a burqa listens to speeches during a demonstration in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday, Dec. 10, 2010. Several hundred demonstrators, some holding photographs of the victims of three decades of war, shouted for justice and peace Friday in the Afghan capital, just hours before a suicide car bomber blew himself up in the east killing two civilians. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

An Afghan artist removes rubbish in front of her graffiti in an industrial park in Kabul December 19, 2010. A group of women in burqas rises from the sea to symbolize cleanliness. (REUTERS/Omar Sobhani)

Spanish soldiers carry construction materials and equipment for the establishment of the new Observation post Echo in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan on Dec 16th, 2010. (ISAF Public Affairs)

Four photos that for various reasons I found particularly striking, from a set of 43 impressive images at Boston.com's The Big Picture.

Free to enjoy dogfighting

"Afghan men hold a fighting dog on a long leash as it prepares for the weekly dog fights on December 11, 2009 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dogfighting is facing a resurgence after it had been banned under the Taliban for being un-Islamic."

Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Addendum: Anonymous offered an interesting counterpoint from Foreign Policy re the history of dog fighting in Afghanistan.

Like wrestling, the art in leverage, timing and speed. If, as occasionally happens, one dog shifts from wrestling to truly biting and drawing blood, the owners rush in and put both hands on the flanks of their own dogs, who break off immediately. The fight is called a draw and the next dogs come on.

No dogs die. Almost no dogs are injured (they are too valuable). Much yelling and wagering takes place, and by 2 in the afternoon everyone starts the long hike back to his village -- some with their honor enhanced by the audacity of their hounds and some with their honor diminished.

More at the link. The same source had another post about dogs in Afghanistan; unlike in Iran, the Afghan dogs are respected and while fierce are all household dogs, not strays.

I don't approve of dogfighting/bullfighting/cockfighting etc, but I may have been too quick with my implied condemnation. I also ran across something in my reading yesterday about the historically American "sport" of tying bulls to bears for fights; will blog later - but this is a football day.

"Those who do not learn from history...

... are doomed to repeat it" (George Santayana).

The BBC ran a piece last week recalling the end of the Soviet venture in Afghanistan, and comparing it to the current one...

By the late 1980s, Moscow's exit strategy was basically the same as Nato's today - to build up an allied government in Kabul with sufficient trained army and police forces to defend itself, thereby allowing foreign troops to leave.

But even with the backing of a 100,000-strong Soviet army and billions of rubles in aid, the Afghan government struggled to establish its legitimacy and authority much beyond the capital - much like President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed administration today.

This bleak assessment of the situation in late 1986 by the Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, sounds eerily familiar.

"Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old," Mr Akhromeev told Mr Gorbachev at a November 1986 Politburo session.

"There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels.

"The whole problem is that military results are not followed up by political actions. At the centre there is authority; in the provinces there is not.

"We control Kabul and the provincial centres, but on occupied territory we cannot establish authority. We have lost the battle for the Afghan people".

More at the link, and if that is not sufficiently cautionary, one can think back to the British experience in Afghanistan in 1842.

Two Afghan girls

Gulsum,12, holds a baby cannabis plant plucked out of the field while she works with her father Ghafordin on May 15, 2011 in Wakhil, in the mountainous upper Panjshir region, Afghanistan. The farmer has been growing cannabis for three years and has seen the prices triple since 2008. This spring he is planting less wheat in order to increase his marijuana crops. Known as the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, according to a 2010 report by the United Nations. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Shabaneh plays with the parallel bars May 10, 2011, as her aunt Somayeh Masroor, 44, takes a rest after she walked with her artificial leg at International Committee Red Crescent Orthopedic Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. Somayeh lost her right leg when she was 13 years old and traveling from Herat to Kandahar while they were caught in a fight between Soviet forces and Mujahedeen in Shajoor and their car hit a landmine off the road. (Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press)

Both photos from a group of 45 assembled at Boston.com's The Big Picture.