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Afghanistan's Karzai passes 50% of vote, but partial recount is ordered
The incumbent now has 54.1% of the votes counted in the presidential election. But the U.N.-backed commission that must certify the vote orders a partial recount, citing fraud allegations.
By M. Karim Faiez and Laura King Los Angeles Times September 8, 2009
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey -- Afghanistan's electoral chaos deepened today as the U.N.-backed commission that must certify the vote ordered a partial recount due to fraud allegations
U.S., U.N. Meet Karzai Over Vote Fraud Allegations
ABC News By Nick Schifrin 09/08/2009
They Say Election Commission Plans to Count 'Knowingly' Fraudent Ballots
Kabul - The United States and United Nations became so concerned about the legitimacy of the vote count in last month's Afghan election that they called an emergency meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai
Recount clouds Karzai poll lead
Tuesday, 8 September 2009 BBC News
Latest results from Afghanistan's presidential election show President Hamid Karzai with 54.1% of the vote after 92% of polling stations declared.
Can the U.S. Still Work with Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai?
By TIM MCGIRK / KABUL Tim Mcgirk / Kabul time.com
In the good old days, Afghan President Hamid Karzai would dial into a weekly videoconference call with his buddy George W. Bush. No longer. The Obama Administration cut Karzai's direct access to the White House
No good choices in Afghanistan
McClatchy Newspapers By Nancy A. Youssef, Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay 8 Sept 2009
WASHINGTON - As the Obama administration and Congress begin a heated debate about how many more American troops to send to Afghanistan, military observers, soldiers on the ground there and some top Pentagon
Afghanistan's future in peril
Tuesday, 8 September 2009 BBC News
Mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing in the recent elections has thrown international commitment to Afghanistan into peril, says guest columnist Ahmed Rashid.
Taliban claim reponsibility for Kabul attack
AP via Yahoo! News - Tue Sep 8, 1:23 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – A Taliban spokesman has claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack near the military airport in Kabul. An Afghan official says one civilian has been killed and seven wounded.
Afghanistan Explosion Kills Two Canadian Soldiers Near Kandahar
By Jay Shankar
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- An explosion near Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar city killed two Canadian soldiers and wounded five, Canada’s National Defence Department said.
Dig in or walk away?
The Guardian By Simon Tisdall 09/07/2009
Afghanistan's election debacle has increased the crushing weight of intractable problems besetting western policymakers
NGO alleges US "occupation" of Helmand clinics
KABUL, 8 September 2009 (IRIN) - NGOs and health officials have expressed concern over what they call the "occupation" of health centres, or former health centers, in parts of Helmand Province,
Afghan Rights Group Says Mostly Civilians Killed in NATO Airstrike
By Ayaz Gul VOA News 07 September 2009
An independent Afghan rights group says most of those killed last week in a controversial NATO airstrike on two hijacked fuel trucks were "non-combatants." The deadly attack is now the subject of a NATO investigation.
Taliban call for probe as fall-out from Afghan air raid reverberates
Mon Sep 7, 4:23 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban Monday called on the international community to shed full light on a NATO air raid that killed dozens of people in Afghanistan, as the fall-out from last week's incident reverberated worldwide.
Afghan illegal migrants flee from Indonesian shelter house
JAKARTA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Eleven Afghan illegal migrants fled from a shelter house in the capital city of Indonesia's Riau province, Pekanbaru, the Antara news agency reported on Tuesday.
The Afghan Stakes
Wall Street Journal By Bret Stephens 09/08/2009
A U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would have terrible consequences in the war on terror.
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Afghanistan's Karzai passes 50% of vote, but partial recount is ordered
The incumbent now has 54.1% of the votes counted in the presidential election. But the U.N.-backed commission that must certify the vote orders a partial recount, citing fraud allegations.
By M. Karim Faiez and Laura King Los Angeles Times September 8, 2009
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey -- Afghanistan's electoral chaos deepened today as the U.N.-backed commission that must certify the vote ordered a partial recount due to fraud allegations, only hours before a tally indicated for the first time that President Hamid Karzai had garnered enough votes for a first-round victory.
Election officials said that with 92% of the vote counted, Karzai had 54.1% -- more than the absolute majority he would need to win the Aug. 20 vote. His main rival Abdullah Abdullah, who had polled nearly even with the president in early returns, trailed with 28.3%.
But the order earlier in the day by the Electoral Complaints Commission, which the watchdog group said was based on "clear and convincing evidence of fraud," rendered that result effectively meaningless for now.
The recount could take up to three months, commission officials said, which could set the stage for a lengthy bout of political paralysis amid fears of ethnically motivated violence by supporters of the two main contenders. Karzai is a Pashtun, the country's largest ethnic group; Abdullah is identified with the Tajik minority of northern Afghanistan.
The commission's order did not say how many suspect ballots would be reexamined, but some of the most serious fraud allegations come from the south and east, which are dominated by Pashtuns. According to complainants, a number of polling stations reported 100% of the votes had been cast for the Afghan leader, often providing them in suspiciously round numbers such as 200 or 500.
Karzai said previously he would accept the Electoral Complaints Commission's verdict on the vote, but he has also complained angrily that Western governments -- in particular that of the United States -- had wanted from the beginning to see a runoff election.
The president's aides angered the Obama administration when they issued a virtual declaration of victory within hours of the vote having been completed, saying it appeared there would be no need for a runoff.
Securing some kind of credible outcome will now be an extremely difficult task, dashing the hopes of many in the international community who saw the election as a key benchmark toward creating a stable democracy in Afghanistan. A widely accepted and legitimate Afghan government is viewed, in turn, as a crucial bulwark against the Taliban-led insurgency.
The results released today by the separate Independent Election Commission, a body whose leaders are appointed by the president, marked the first time in weeks of vote-counting that Karzai had crossed the 50% threshold. As the tally has mounted, released in piecemeal, the president had steadily widened his lead over Abdullah, his former foreign minister.
The complaints commission, headed by a U.N.-appointed Canadian, Grant Kippen, had previously reported receiving some 2,000 claims of election irregularities, nearly 700 of them potentially serious enough to alter the outcome. But today marked the first time the body had publicly leveled allegations of fraud.
If the vote results had dictated a runoff, that contest was to have been held in October. It was unclear if such a race could go ahead following a recount, because of the complications of holding a vote in Afghanistan's harsh winter conditions.
Adding to the overall mood of anxiety, insurgent attacks around the capital have been intensifying. Today, a suicide car bomb blew up outside the entrance to NATO's military base at the international airport, killing three civilians.
The fiery explosion comes less than a month after a brazen attack on NATO's main headquarters in the capital, a preelection suicide car bombing that killed seven people, all civilians.
The U.S. military also announced that four American service members were killed this morning during an attack in Kunar province along the border with Pakistan. No further details were released.
Meanwhile, NATO's International Security Assistance Force acknowledged for the first time that civilians were among the dead in a lethal airstrike Friday in northern Afghanistan. A German commander called in a U.S. airstrike that obliterated two hijacked fuel tankers, and local officials have said many village bystanders were among the scores killed.
"Subsequent review has led ISAF to believe that along with insurgents, civilians also were killed and injured in the strike," the Western military said in a statement.
The airstrike controversy has caused a huge outcry in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel today told lawmakers there would be a full accounting of events surrounding the strike, but that some of the criticism of German forces had been "premature."
laura.king@latimes.com
Faiez is a special correspondent.
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U.S., U.N. Meet Karzai Over Vote Fraud Allegations
ABC News By Nick Schifrin 09/08/2009
They Say Election Commission Plans to Count 'Knowingly' Fraudent Ballots
Kabul - The United States and United Nations became so concerned about the legitimacy of the vote count in last month's Afghan election that they called an emergency meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai late today, criticizing a decision by the Independent Election Commission to count "knowingly" fraudulent votes.
The meeting, according to a U.S. official and two Western officials in Kabul, came after the commission crossed a "red line," having reversed an earlier decision not to count fraudulent votes.
That reversal, the western officials said, came after the commission was "threatened," according to the western officials. They would not elaborate on who had delivered the threats.
The commission's decision is significant: The western officials estimated that the number of fraudulent votes could top 1 million, meaning that if they were thrown out, Karzai would almost certainly receive fewer than 50 percent of the vote, forcing him into a runoff with his main challenger, former Karzai minister Abdullah Abdullah.
By including the votes in a preliminary tally scheduled to released within the next two days, Karzai is guaranteed to eclipse 50 percent, the officials said. Most of the fraudulent ballots, they said, were cast for Karzai.
There was no indication of how Karzai responded to the meeting, attended by U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and U.N. Special Representative to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith.
Karzai's aides did not return late-night phone calls or texts from ABC News.
There was also no indication of whether the sudden and swift pressure from the international community would cause the commission to rethink its decision to include fraudulent ballots.
At stake is the outcome of a process that the United States had hoped would provide some stability to an increasingly violent Afghansitan.
U.S., U.N. Call Out Karzai Over Vote Fraud Allegations Widespread allegations of fraud could rob the next government of a mandate at just the moment when Washington is considering sending thousands more troops into a country at its most violent point in eight years. The United States admits it needs a government seen as legitimate if it is going to bring some stability to Afghanistan.
"This period will define whether we have any chance of success in Afghansitan, or whether we throw that chance away," one of the western officials said.
The commission's decision to include fraudulent votes, assuming it stands, does not signify the end of the process. It will release a preliminary result that cannot be finalized until a separate group judges all fraud claims.
That second group -- the Election Complaints Commission -- has the authority to throw out as many ballots as it wishes, and could theoretically throw out all the likely fraudulent ballots included in the preliminary tally.
But the two Western officials feared that if the inclusion of fraudulent ballots in the preliminary tally pushed Karzai's total far above 50 percent, the Election Complaints Commission would find it extremely difficult politically to disqualify enough ballots to force a second round.
"It's a terrible scenario," one of the election officials said, calling the prospect of a foreign-led Election Complaints Commission essentially reversing the decision of a mostly Afghan Independent Election Commission the "worst possible outcome."
U.S. officials, who have poured millions of dollars into the process, have publicly declared neutrality, an attempt to counter widespread perceptions that they are trying to influence the vote.
Tonight the U.S. embassy declined to confirm whether the meeting with Karzai took place, but issued a strong paper statement earlier in the day that seemed to come in direct response to the Independent Election Commission's decision to include fraudulent votes.
U.S., U.N. Call Out Karzai Over Vote Fraud Allegations "The United States and the international community are looking to the Independent Electoral Commission to carry out its legal mandate to count all votes and to exclude all fraudulent votes," said Caitlin Hayden, the embassy's spokeswoman. "Anything less than rigorous vetting would call into question the credibility of the announced results."
Over the last week, Karzai's aides have privately grumbled about the process, accusing the United States of meddling and arguing that their own figures showed the president being reelected with at least 55 percent of the vote.
Karzai himself told the Le Figaro newspaper that the United States was trying to manipulate him.
"The Americans attack Karzai in an underhand fashion because they want him to be more tractable," he said, according to Reuters, referring to himself in the third person.
Arsala Jamal, the former governor of Khost province and an advisor to the Karzai campaign, did not deny that fraud had been committed in the election, but said it had been committed equally by all candidates.
"We are not ruling out fraud in this election. We are not saying it was 100 percent perfect elections, there were shortcomings. There were shortcomings from all quarters. We have filed dozens of complaints against Abdullah's camp," he told ABC News over the weekend.
But the Western officials, who spoke on condition they would not be identified, said the election data clearly indicated that the vast majority of fraud had been committed on Karzai's behalf.
The officials pointed to multiple ballot stations in Helmand and Kandahar whose results seemed to suggest fraud. In areas where turnout was reported to be very low, some polling stations reported turnout higher than 90 percent.
At one polling center in Helmand's Now Zad district, Karzai received exactly 2,750 votes. His opponents received zero.
"It was a free for all," one of the Western officials said when asked about the extent of the fraud.
On Saturday, the Independent Election Commission announced it was invalidating 447 polling stations out of more than 28,000, evidence that those within the commission who wanted to identify fraud had won a serious internal debate.
U.S., U.N. Call Out Karzai Over Vote Fraud Allegations The stations were excluded, according to the Western officials, because they triggered one of three alarm bells: Too many votes were cast (that was partially because the commission's computers couldn't input a four-digit vote total, something that happened despite each polling station only receiving 600 ballots); a candidate received over 95 percent of the vote; the polling station never opened but reported results.
"We thought we had progress," one of the western officials said about the commission's decision to annul those results.
The commission's decision today to include fraudulent votes means they will have changed their criteria mid-stream. But it is not clear whether the results from the 447 polling stations already excluded will be reinserted into the tally.
The commission plans to release the final tally one day before or on the anniversary of the death of Ahmed Shah Masood, who was assassinated in the days before 9/11. Abdullah was once one of his senior advisors, and some officials have said in the past they feared timing any result that favored Karzai to that date.
Abdullah himself said on Saturday that he could not necessarily control the reaction of his followers to an announcement result, although in English he urged them to be calm.
"I can't promise you that I will stop the people from participating or demonstrating or stop people from peacefully demonstrating," he said in Farsi. "The only thing which I ask people not to do is commit violence."
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Recount clouds Karzai poll lead
Tuesday, 8 September 2009 BBC News
Latest results from Afghanistan's presidential election show President Hamid Karzai with 54.1% of the vote after 92% of polling stations declared.
The results push President Karzai past the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off with rival Abdullah Abdullah.
But the figures were thrown into doubt by the UN-backed election complaints commission ordering a number of recounts and audits of votes.
It warned that it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud".
The 20 August election has been overshadowed by claims against all the main candidates of fraud and ballot-box stuffing.
A credible election result was seen as a key objective for the West, as it continues its campaign against the Taliban.
The latest results came in from the south, where President Karzai enjoys strong support.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said Abdullah Abdullah remained second, with 28.3% of the vote.
However, it said it had set aside results from 600 polling stations where it suspects irregularities and the list of those stations had been sent to the complaints commission (ECC).
'Clear evidence'
Earlier, the ECC said a recount and inspection should be done for any polling station where 600 or more votes were cast, or where any single candidate got more than 95% of votes.
Grant Kippen, chairman of the complaints commission, said it was not known how many polling stations this would involve.
He said investigations conducted in Ghazni, Paktika and Kandahar found "clear evidence of irregularity" within polling stations and ballot boxes.
"We decided based on those investigations... that we would order the IEC to conduct an audit and recount of polling stations around the country."
Results from a number of polling stations showed President Karzai winning 100% of the vote.
The BBC's Chris Morris, in Kabul, says international pressure is being applied to ensure that the IEC is doing its job fairly.
However, the election is a complex process and becoming more complex by the day, our correspondent adds.
The election results have been released piecemeal by the IEC.
The previous figures, released on Sunday, gave Mr Karzai 48.6% of the vote against 31.7% for Mr Abdullah.
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Can the U.S. Still Work with Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai?
By TIM MCGIRK / KABUL Tim Mcgirk / Kabul time.com
In the good old days, Afghan President Hamid Karzai would dial into a weekly videoconference call with his buddy George W. Bush. No longer. The Obama Administration cut Karzai's direct access to the White House earlier this year. The new Administration views Karzai's corrupt and flailing presidency as a big reason that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are regaining so much ground in Afghanistan.
Last month's presidential election was meant to help that. Democracy, at least, was one thing that the U.S.-led forces in the central Asian nation had managed to make work. Instead, the polls have turned into a disaster. Opposition politicians and Western diplomats allege epic-scale ballot-box stuffing, mainly by - but not exclusively - supporters of Karzai. The U.N. says votes in districts where fraud is proved to have taken place should be annulled. Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission has ordered a partial recount of the vote, citing "clear and convincing evidence of fraud." Karzai's closest challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister, decried the vote as "state-engineered fraud."
Yet whether he wins in the first round or is forced into a runoff with Abdullah, Karzai will almost certainly stay in power. That means Washington must continue to deal with him.
The problem is, Karzai's legitimacy is shot. Even before the election, many Afghans (though perhaps not a majority) were angry with him over his failure to curb a system of corruption and patronage that had paralyzed efforts to repair the war-thrashed nation. The international aid community is disheartened by the prospect of another five years of a government that is infested with warlords and drug traffickers. And Washington is fed up with Karzai's duplicity and fecklessness. Despite the fact that he came to power on the back of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Karzai used the latest poll as a chance to portray himself as the one Afghan willing to stand up and criticize the way U.S.-led coalition forces have inflicted civilian casualties while chasing the Taliban. "Karzai wants his legacy to be an Afghan leader who stood up against the foreigners," says Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies. "He also thinks the international community is trying to undermine him."
Public opinion in both the U.S. and Europe is tiring of bad news from Afghanistan. President Obama faces questions from both the left and right. What is the point of pouring more troops or billions of dollars into Afghanistan, his critics say, when the Taliban seem to be gaining ground and the money simply vanishes into the baggy pockets of Kabul officials?
But if the U.S. quit on Karzai, the result would be disastrous for both Afghanistan and the U.S., says Ashraf Ghani, a U.S.-educated presidential contender. "If the U.S. leaves, it will be 'dog eat dog' here. We'll be the human zoo of the region," says Ghani. Like other Afghan intellectuals, Ghani foresees a grisly scenario in which the Taliban sweeps into Kabul, taking revenge on thousands of "collaborators" who helped Karzai and the Americans. Millions of ordinary Afghan citizens - including those who embraced the Western promises of education for girls, democracy and a place for Afghanistan in the 21st century - would flee the country.
To keep that from happening again, Karzai will need to show results - and fast. For starters, Afghans say he must dismiss corrupt officials, enforce law and order, and use foreign-aid money to build the roads, dams, bridges and schools that he and the international community have long promised but never delivered. This would win back many Afghans and stall the Taliban's advance. But it won't be easy. To secure victory in the recent election, the President had to indebt himself to the very warlords who are strangling the country with their greed.
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No good choices in Afghanistan
McClatchy Newspapers By Nancy A. Youssef, Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay 8 Sept 2009
WASHINGTON - As the Obama administration and Congress begin a heated debate about how many more American troops to send to Afghanistan, military observers, soldiers on the ground there and some top Pentagon officials are warning that dispatching even tens of thousands more soldiers and Marines might not ensure success.
Some even fear that deploying more U.S. troops, especially in the wake of a U.S. airstrike last week that killed and wounded scores of Afghan civilians, would convince more Afghans that the Americans are occupiers rather than allies and relieve the pressure on the Afghan government to improve its own security forces.
The heart of the problem, soldiers in Afghanistan and some officials in Washington told McClatchy, is that neither Barack Obama's White House nor the Pentagon has clearly defined America's mission in Afghanistan. As a result, some soldiers in the field said, they aren't sure what their objectives are.
Current officials and military officers who are wary of escalation refused to speak on the record because they aren't authorized to talk to the media and because doing so would be hazardous to their careers.
The administration's stated goals in Afghanistan have ranged from eliminating the threat posed by al-Qaida — which is based in neighboring Pakistan, not in Afghanistan — and building a stable democratic state, depending on what administration official is speaking and when.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates attempted to define the administration's strategy. He said that before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Taliban not only provided al-Qaida refuge but "cooperated and collaborated" with the terrorist group. Because of that, he said, the United States must ensure that a stable government exists in Afghanistan so the Taliban — and ultimately al-Qaida — can't return.
The situation in Afghanistan, including last month's still-inconclusive election and a review by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, have made it hard for the president to speak out more definitively, said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institution who was in Afghanistan for the August election.
Obama must do so soon, however, O'Hanlon said: "He can't expect the country to continue to tolerate a mission that he himself has not explained."
Obama might explain it soon, although the timing and format haven't been decided, administration officials said.
Although recent polls have found public support for the war in Afghanistan ebbing, aides said the president is committed to the effort but aware of the need to avoid wading into a quagmire.
"Momentum is a terrible way to make decisions," said a senior White House official who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Obama will avoid decisions that "will bind the country forever," he said.
The White House is due to send a series of benchmarks for measuring progress in Afghanistan to Congress by Sept. 24, where support for the effort is eroding among liberal Democrats and even some conservatives.
Officials, however, concede that no amount of additional American force can by itself ensure success.
Even the limited goal of eradicating al-Qaida requires substantially more cooperation from Pakistan than the country has provided so far — or than U.S. military and intelligence officials and diplomats privately say they expect amid mounting anti-Americanism there.
Critics worry that a likely middle course — sending more American troops to train and expand the Afghan security forces — can't assure success, either, because those forces are controlled by a government that's riddled with corruption and more feared than respected by its people. Widespread allegations of fraud in last month's presidential election have only compounded the problem, officials conceded.
Despite the Obama administration's decision to send 17,500 more troops and 4,000 trainers in this year, violence is at its highest level of the eight-year war. Attacks against coalition forces are at their highest, too, with at least 308 troops killed in 2009, which last month became the deadliest year of the war.
Military leaders and some in the administration and Congress concede that the situation is
deteriorating and that the options aren't appealing. However, they argue, doing nothing would be worse.
Officials who have read McChrystal's assessment say it doesn't ask for more troops directly. That request is expected this month.
However, they said, the U.S. commander spells out a dire scenario that all but says he needs more troops. The Afghan forces need more training, the assessment says, without saying how many; the mission needs more civilians; and the coalition needs to move its forces out of remote outposts and toward population centers.
The request could be for as many as 45,000 troops; a compromise would send about 21,000 more. There are now 62,000 U.S. troops and 39,000 NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The addition of more troops, some U.S. experts and officers said, will mean more targets for the Taliban to attack. That in turn probably will produce more civilian casualties, which would fuel greater disdain for the U.S.-led military presence and the Kabul government, creating more recruits for the insurgents.
The additional U.S. and allied casualties also would produce political consequences in Washington and other NATO capitals, which already face rising popular opposition to the war. Those tensions in turn could further strain the already troubled trans-Atlantic alliance.
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Afghanistan's future in peril
Tuesday, 8 September 2009 BBC News
Mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing in the recent elections has thrown international commitment to Afghanistan into peril, says guest columnist Ahmed Rashid.
Claims of mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing during the 20 August presidential elections has plunged Afghanistan into a deep political and constitutional crisis for which neither the Afghan leadership nor the Americans or the UN have any easy answer.
The rigging was assured months ago when President Hamid Karzai began to ally himself with regional warlords, drug traffickers and top officials in the provinces who were terrified of losing their jobs and their lucrative sinecures, if President Karzai lost.
The reports coming in from around the country but especially from the Pashtun south - the heartland that voted for Mr Karzai overwhelmingly in 2004 - are becoming more indisputable every day.
Supporters of both Mr Karzai and leading contenders like Dr Abdullah are all alleged to have carried out ballot-box stuffing after voting ended on 20 August.
It is a sad denouement for a man whose humility and moderation touched everyone when he was chosen as interim president in the Bonn talks in 2001.
Despite Afghanistan's backwardness, only a democratic set-up can prevent a return to civil war and ethnic conflict.
However what is now at jeopardy is the entire international commitment to Afghanistan, the danger of ethnic and political warfare, assassinations and bombings between rival candidates and an increase in the Taliban-led insurgency as they smell victory.
Anger and criticism
Today there is a growing debate in Washington and European capitals about what constitutes success in Afghanistan, and whether it is worth backing a Afghan leadership which has shown itself unable to come up to the real task of leading.
In Washington there is for the first time anger and criticism at the Obama plan that was announced only in March.
Will American and European public opinion hold up long enough for his plan to work and how many more troops, how much more money will be needed?
Unfortunately the election results have only strengthened the arguments of many dissenters in Washington who are insistent that the Afghans are incapable of learning and unwilling to build a modern state and Afghan society should be left well alone.
Unfortunately the same dissenters do not sufficiently criticise the past policy failures of President George Bush which have led Afghanistan to this impasse and the dissenters do not offer solutions.
So what needs to be done?
Firstly the American and European people need to be told the truth.
How their governments have failed them in Afghanistan over the past eight years, why so little nation-building and reconstruction has been done, and why insufficient troops and money were spent in Afghanistan as compared to Iraq.
Governments also need to explain how the terrorist threat has grown and al-Qaeda now covers much of Africa and Europe while the Taliban have become a brand name that stretches deep into Pakistan and Central Asia, and in the future could possibly extend into India and China.
Secondly rebuilding the Afghan state and economy must be tackled at breakneck speed.
Much of this is now understood by President Obama. His plan, for the first time places emphasis on things like agriculture, job creation and justice. However will Obama be given the time to carry out his plans?
The insurgency can never be finished as long as the insurgents enjoy a safe haven.
The Afghan Taliban were made welcome in Pakistan in 2001 when they retreated from Afghanistan and are still made welcome because of a certain logic put forward by the Pakistan army, which mainly involves containing India's growing power in the region and in Afghanistan in particular.
President Bush treated then President Pervez Musharraf with kid gloves.
In recent months the army has now shifted its stance to take on the Pakistani Taliban in a determined fashion - since April the army has lost 312 soldiers and killed some 2,000 Pakistani Taliban.
Yet still there is no strategic shift by the army to take on the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda in their safe havens in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan.
No breakthrough
Despite the regional strategy that is being pursued by the US, there is still no breakthrough with Pakistan, while India acts tough towards Islamabad offering the Americans little room to manoeuvre.
There is no easy way out of this quandary except more time, greater trust-building and more international aid to Pakistan.
Lastly there have to be Afghan partners on the ground to help implement a minimalist state-building strategy.
Unfortunately President Bush ignored that for too long - the lack of good governance, the corruption, the growth of the drugs trade and the failure to build representative institutions were all ignored.
To emerge from this mess with even moderately credible Afghan partners will be extremely difficult, but it has to be done because without a partner the US becomes nothing but a naked occupation force which Afghans will resist and Nato will not want to be a part of.
The only answer once the final tally for the elections is made is a national government of all Afghan stake holders.
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Taliban claim reponsibility for Kabul attack
AP via Yahoo! News - Tue Sep 8, 1:23 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – A Taliban spokesman has claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack near the military airport in Kabul. An Afghan official says one civilian has been killed and seven wounded.
Police say the vehicle exploded near the entrance to the airport in the Afghan capital early Tuesday. The blast rattled windows more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid says the attack was against a NATO convoy and that three Landcruisers were destroyed. NATO forces say they do not yet have details on the incident. An Afghan health ministry official says one civilian was killed and seven wounded.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
KABUL (AP) — A car bomb exploded near the entrance to the military airport in Afghanistan's capital early Tuesday, police said. The blast rattled windows more than a mile away.
The attack appeared to be aimed at an international convoy, said Rohullah, a police official for the area who like many Afghans goes by one name.
A witness said he saw the car ram into a line of SUVs.
"I saw three or four Landcruisers for the foreigners just in front of the gate ... then there was a car and it hit them then blew up," said Humayun, who watched the attack from his nearby shop.
There were no official casualty figures, but an Associated Press reporter at the site saw two people carried to ambulances, and Humayun said he saw three injured people being carried away.
The blast occurred about 8:22 a.m. local time and the air was still thick with smoke about an hour later. Fire trucks ringed the area.
U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician confirmed an explosion south of the airport, but said he did not yet have further details.
Insurgent attacks, often deadly, occur in Kabul despite tight security and blast walls. Suicide bombers have hit government buildings and gunmen have overrun ministries.
NATO said that two militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the rear gate of Camp Phoenix outside Kabul late Monday, but there were no injuries to anyone inside and no damage to the base. Afghan police said the two militants were killed.
In the runup to Aug. 20 elections, a suicide attack near the main gate of NATO headquarters killed seven people, gunmen briefly took over a bank in the city, and insurgents fired on the presidential palace and unleashed suicide car bombers on NATO convoys.
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Afghanistan Explosion Kills Two Canadian Soldiers Near Kandahar
By Jay Shankar
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- An explosion near Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar city killed two Canadian soldiers and wounded five, Canada’s National Defence Department said.
Yesterday’s explosion struck a vehicle carrying the soldiers in Dand district, about 14 kilometers (8.6 miles) southwest of Kandahar, according to a statement on the ministry’s Web site.
The injured soldiers were evacuated by helicopter to a medical facility at the Kandahar airfield, according to the statement. At least 309 coalition soldiers have died so far this year, compared with the death toll of 294 for the whole of 2008, iCasualties.org, which tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, said on its Web site.
Three members of a family died and two others were injured when a rocket hit their house in a densely populated residential area on the outskirts of Kabul, Agence France-Presse reported, citing an unidentified Interior Ministry official. AFP didn’t say who fired the rocket.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net.
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Dig in or walk away?
The Guardian By Simon Tisdall 09/07/2009
Afghanistan's election debacle has increased the crushing weight of intractable problems besetting western policymakers
Hopes that a successful Afghan presidential election would assist western efforts to secure, stabilise and develop the country recede with every percentage point that is added to Hamid Karzai's tally. Karzai is said to have obtained 48.6% of the vote against 31.7% for his nearest rival with about 25% of ballots still to count. Only a small miracle or a massive counter-fraud can now stop him surpassing the 50% threshold required for re-election.
Karzai's looming "victory" is viewed with gloom in western capitals. It is believed, and not only by his opponents, to have been achieved via blatant, systematic, indefensible vote-rigging, bribery and intimidation. It was already tainted by pre-poll pacts between Karzai and notorious warlords and drug-traffickers. It was facilitated by the collusion of corrupt provincial officials afraid of losing their jobs. And it followed US and British failure to find a viable alternative candidate, or to install an Afghan "chief executive" or a western diplomatic satrap, to curb Karzai's powers.
The election debacle has thus increased, rather than eased, the crushing weight of intractable problems besetting western policymakers and soldiers struggling to make sense of Afghanistan. These difficulties are approaching critical mass as civilian deaths continue, western casualties mount and public support slides. Notwithstanding Gordon Brown's Afghan plan, enunciated last Friday, pressing decisions about what to do next, and how, will be made in the Oval Office, not Downing Street.
Barack Obama faces no shortage of advice, primarily from his top Afghan commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who has been reviewing strategy. McChrystal's broad conclusions – giving priority to protecting the Afghan people and enhancing government and civilian capacity – have already been leaked. Decisions on more specific proposals, such as raising US troop levels by 40-45,000 to well over 100,000 and pushing for more Nato troops, too, are now imminent.
Raising force levels again (he already sent an extra 21,000 earlier this year) represents an enormous political risk for Obama and one he is not in particularly good shape to take. His approval ratings have fallen faster than any first term president since Gerald Ford, he faces increasing resistance to his domestic agenda, notably healthcare reform, and the Afghan imbroglio is being recast by conservatives as Obama's "war of choice" rather than the "war of necessity" that he describes.
As in Britain, there is no consensus over war aims: is it self-defence, is it democracy promotion, is it nation-building, or is it about smashing the heroin trade? Few seem to agree. Among US allies there is diminishing appetite for the fight; it has become a divisive election issue in Germany while Japan's new government has pledged to end its involvement. On top of that, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, and defence secretary Robert Gates freely admit time is running short to turn things around. Congressional Democrats, mindful of next year's mid-term polls, heartily agree.
Speaking last week, Mullen suggested the worsening security situation in Afghanistan must be reversed within the next 12 to 18 months or else the game would be up. "I think it is serious and it is deteriorating and I've said over the last couple of years that the Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated," Mullen said. He spoke after a Washington Post-ABC News poll found most Americans felt the war was not worth fighting. Yet another international conference on Afghanistan, as proposed by Brown and Germany's Angela Merkel, is unlikely to change this dynamic.
Amid myriad solicited and unsolicited suggestions, Obama's choice boils down to two options: take full ownership of the war and dig in for the long haul, or lower one's sights and walk away as quick as is decent.
Opinions about which way he should jump vary hugely. George Will, honorary archdeacon of American conservative columnists, surprised his fans last week by advocating retreat. Washington should wash its hands of a country where travelling around is "like walking through the Old Testament", he said. "Forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively reviewed policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500 mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."
Will's offshore strategy ignored the fact that Afghanistan is landlocked – but it was clear what he meant.
Others urge Obama to roll his sleeves up and get stuck in. "Is winning in Afghanistan in the US vital national interest? I believe it is," said Thomas McClanahan in the Kansas City Star. "Pulling out would hand the jihadists a triumph and once again open up Afghanistan as a launching pad for terrorist strikes." Bruce Riedel, an Obama adviser, and Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution were at pains in the Wall Street Journal to emphasise western achievements, including economic growth and falling support for the Taliban, that they said should not be lightly squandered.
Just how high Afghanistan still stands in American consciousness, and why, was illustrated by a timely Chicago Tribune editorial. It complained Obama had not "spent enough time reminding Americans that an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban and al-Qaida would regain its role as a terrorism hatchery". September would be crucial for the US debate on what to do, it added. "As that plays out, none of us should forget how that lawless country tolerated the development of one particularly heinous terror plot. It came to fruition eight years ago this week, on the 11th of the month."
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NGO alleges US "occupation" of Helmand clinics
KABUL, 8 September 2009 (IRIN) - NGOs and health officials have expressed concern over what they call the "occupation" of health centres, or former health centers, in parts of Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, by Afghan and international military forces.
Prominent Afghan NGO Ibn-Sina, which provides health services in the insurgency-stricken province and works closely with the Health Ministry and UN agencies (according to the UN Population Fund it provides primary health care services in 41 clinics around the country), told IRIN that US forces had turned three Basic Health Centres (BHCs) in Helmand into military bases, though it acknowledged that only one had been fully operational before US forces arrived.
"The Miyanposhta BHC in Garmsir District was operational but it has become dysfunctional since US forces occupied it almost two months ago," Noor Khaled, an Ibn-Sina official, told IRIN, adding that the BHC in Nawa District was now both a health centre and a US base.
Noor said the third clinic, in Khan Nishin District, had been disused for over a year prior to being taken over by US forces.
"One of the two buildings in a health clinic in 52 [name of area] of Nawa has been occupied by US and Afghan forces which has impacted health services because people are scared and do not want to go to this clinic. The clinic in Miyanposhta was functioning when US forces occupied it. It is now closed. And the clinic in Khan Nishin District was closed before US forces occupied it," Enayatullah Ghafari, director of Helmand's health department, told IRIN.
Efforts were under way to persuade the US army to vacate the buildings: "We have conveyed requests to them to evacuate the locations and hope they will do so in the near future," Ghafari said.
Ibn-Sina and the provincial health department expressed concern about the safety of health workers and patients in the "partially occupied" BHC in Nawa District, and warned it could be shut down completely.
"The presence of military forces in a medical compound certainly jeopardizes the safety of civilian health workers there," said one health official who requested anonymity.
US army denial
US forces have categorically denied any wrongdoing and have expressed a willingness to help rebuild and reopen clinics in Helmand.
"None of these buildings have been used as clinics in recent memory as most of them were closed under the Taliban. There were no doctors or medical equipment in the facilities when the marines arrived in the area," Maj Bill Pelletier, a public affairs officer with the US marines in Helmand, told IRIN.
Pelletier said two of the clinics had been used by the Afghan police and army for over a year, and the health centre in Garmsir District had been occupied and destroyed by insurgents prior to coming under US control.
"During a recent visit to the facility, one of our military lawyers said he saw no evidence whatsoever that there are any markings or other indications that the facility is a protected place, or is otherwise identified in any way as a medical facility," said Pelletier, adding that the marines had not contravened any international law by occupying the buildings "because they did not do so with the intent of using the buildings' erstwhile status as medical shelters as protection from enemy attack".
"The Afghan national security forces and the marines are prepared to re-locate their checkpoints once the Ministry of Public Health [MoPH] is ready to support the facilities as clinics," he said.
Under international humanitarian law, civilian health centres must be protected from armed attack and occupation by military forces. However, dilapidated and completely dysfunctional health centres do not have such a status, experts say.
Due to insecurity and an absence of independent actors on the ground, it was difficult for IRIN to verify the accounts of the US military or the health department in Helmand.
Clinics allegedly raided by coalition forces
Meanwhile, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), an NGO working on development issues, has accused the International Military Force (IMF) in Afghanistan of raiding an SCA Hospital in Shaniz, Wardak Province, on 2 September, 2009 in search of insurgents.
The NGO said doors were broken down, rooms vacated and searched, and four employees and two family members of patients tied up. After two hours, IMF soldiers left leaving orders to hospital staff to report any patient that could be a potential insurgent.
"This is simply not acceptable. It is not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement between NGOs and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force]," Anders Fange, SCA country director, said in a statement.
In response to a separate alleged security incident, Lt-Cmdr Christine Sidenstericker, a spokeswoman for the NATO-led international forces in Kabul, told IRIN: "When we are fired upon from a location it losses its protected status."
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Afghan Rights Group Says Mostly Civilians Killed in NATO Airstrike
By Ayaz Gul VOA News 07 September 2009
An independent Afghan rights group says most of those killed last week in a controversial NATO airstrike on two hijacked fuel trucks were "non-combatants." The deadly attack is now the subject of a NATO investigation.
The NATO air strike took place Friday in the northern Kunduz Province. The attack was directed at a group of Taliban insurgents who had seized two trucks carrying fuel for international forces.
As many as 90 people were reported killed in the air strike and initial reports from the local Afghan population described most of the victims as civilians. The allegations prompted U.S commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, to order a detailed investigation into the incident.
The NATO investigation has yet to be concluded, but a leading Afghan rights group says its findings reveal that most of those killed were civilians.
In a report issued Monday, the Kabul-based Afghanistan Rights Monitors (ARM) says that up 70 civilians were killed in the Kunduz attack while the rest were armed militants. The group's director, Ajmal Samadi, says that the report is based on some 15 interviews with villagers where the NATO strike occurred. He says provincial authorities are trying to play down the significance of the civilian deaths in order to influence the NATO probe.
"General McChrystal and the NATO investigators should bear this fact in mind that regardless of the support to the Taliban, those killed were non-combatants and their killing was a violation of the tactical order General McChrystal issued a few while ago in order to prevent such incidents," Samadi said.
This is the first incident in which NATO forces have been blamed for the deaths of large numbers of civilians since General McChrystal took command of foreign forces in Afghanistan two months ago. The U.S. commander made the prevention of civilian casualties and protection of Afghans the centerpiece of his new military strategy.
In an unprecedented televised appeal to the Afghan people after the Kunduz attack, General McChrystal said he took the loss of civilian life very seriously.
Samadi of the Afghan rights group says that Taliban insurgents are inflicting, as he puts it, systematic, deliberate and widespread harm to Afghan civilians. But he says that extensive losses and damage to non-combatants in aerial strikes by international forces have seriously undermined NATO's credibility among ordinary Afghans.
"Regardless of who is killing Afghan civilians, they will consider themselves as caught up among warring parties," Samadi said. "They will consider that NATO is not different from the Taliban when it comes to protecting civilians unless NATO will prove to them that it is an honest broker here that it cares about their protection that it acknowledges mistakes that it compensates where possible and that it does everything to reduce the recurrence of similar incidents in future."
Critics say that a growing Taliban insurgency across Afghanistan combined with an increase of thousands of new foreign troops has intensified fighting in Afghanistan leading to more civilian casualties.
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Taliban call for probe as fall-out from Afghan air raid reverberates
Mon Sep 7, 4:23 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban Monday called on the international community to shed full light on a NATO air raid that killed dozens of people in Afghanistan, as the fall-out from last week's incident reverberated worldwide.
Friday's air raid in northern Kunduz province killed at least 54 people, according to local officials, who say the dead were mostly Taliban militant fighters who had hijacked two fuel tankers.
But other sources put the death toll far higher and there are conflicting reports about the number of civilians killed in the strike.
The Taliban, waging an increasingly deadly insurgency since they were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in 2001, Monday sent a statement by email listing names and professions of 79 civilians it claimed died in the attack.
An earlier statement had put the number of killed civilians at 150.
"Without any doubt a big crime... has been committed in Kunduz province and civilians have been targeted," said the statement.
"International law, the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions are very clear on such crimes," the Taliban said.
"If the United Nations, Amnesty International and human rights organisations ... really recognize human rights or hold them important, then the truth and the lies will be known in this affair," the document added.
The controversy about the NATO strike comes as the taint of fraud deepened in Afghanistan's presidential election after thousands of votes were tossed out amid allegations of rampant ballot-stuffing and intimidation.
Incumbent Hamid Karzai is edging towards victory in the painstaking vote count, but Afghanistan's Western partners fear the mounting allegations against him could undermine his credibility should he eventually win.
In an interview with French daily Le Figaro published on Monday, Karzai said he hoped to hold peace talks with the Taliban within 100 days if he is confirmed in office for another five years.
Karzai is not the only world leader under pressure amid election concerns, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel coming under fire Monday over the NATO air strike, which was ordered by a German commander.
Anguished debate in Germany about civilian casualties comes only 20 days before the country goes to the polls and amid already meagre public support for the army's deployment in war-ravaged Afghanistan.
Germany, along with Britain and France, unveiled on Sunday their plans to hold an international conference later this year on the fate of Afghanistan, underlying growing concerns that the security situation is deteriorating.
At a joint press briefing with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Merkel urged Afghans to take more responsibility for their own country.
With the help of an upcoming review by the new US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, the conference will clarify for all nations "what job they have to do and what our common aim is", Merkel said.
The increasing death toll among its troops and fears for civilians has also sparked debate in Britain about the role and future of Western soldiers in Afghanistan, with Brown's popularity flagging badly according to opinion polls.
More than 300 foreign soldiers have died in Afghanistan so far this year, compared to 294 in all of 2008.
And in Washington, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged in an interview with Al-Jazeera that civilian casualties have become "a real problem" for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
"I think it's a real problem, and General McChrystal thinks it's a real problem, too," Gates said in an interview with the Qatar-based Arabic satellite news channel.
According to a transcript of the interview posted on Al-Jazeera's website, Gates said the Taliban actively targeted civilians or put them at risk in other ways.
"But we are trying to figure out new tactics that minimize this. But it is a challenge," he added.
"Central to the success of the 42 nations that are trying to help the Afghan people and government at this point is that the Afghan people continue to believe that we are their friends, their partners and here to help them.
"So civilian casualties are a problem for us and we are doing everything conceivable to try and avoid that," he said.
The NATO strike also has added fuel to a debate in the United States over the size and scope of the US military commitment in Afghanistan, with commanders nevertheless expected to ask for more troops.
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Afghan illegal migrants flee from Indonesian shelter house
JAKARTA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Eleven Afghan illegal migrants fled from a shelter house in the capital city of Indonesia's Riau province, Pekanbaru, the Antara news agency reported on Tuesday.
They sawed the window's iron bars and used sarong fabric to slide down from the window and fled from the shelter house at around 23:00 local time on Monday, it reported.
"This is the second escape of Afghan illegal migrants from our shelter house. The first one occurred on June 28, involving 37 immigrants," Yanizur, the head of the shelter house said on Tuesday.
He said that as of this morning, police were able to capture four of the escaped illegal immigrants.
Some of the migrants wanted to return to their home country, Yanizur said.
"The last repatriation program was conducted by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) on July 27. It repatriated 40 illegal immigrants to Afghanistan," he said.
According to the head of the shelter house, the remaining Afghan illegal immigrants in the house were 41 people at the moment.
Besides the capital city of Aceh province, Banda Aceh, Pekanbaru has been appointed as the place to shelter illegal migrants that sailed from their origin countries and were trapped in Aceh and North Sumatra waters during their way to reach Australia.
Hundreds of Afghan and Rohingya boat people were saved from their sunken and stranded boats off Aceh waters early this year.
Indonesia and the UNHCR had initiated an ad hoc commission tasked to deal with the repatriation of the boat people to their origin countries. The efforts to repatriate those illegal migrants were underway at the moment.
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The Afghan Stakes
Wall Street Journal By Bret Stephens 09/08/2009
A U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would have terrible consequences in the war on terror.
So George Will has noticed that Afghanistan is a backward place ill-suited to nation-building, and Nicholas Kristof thinks that war is a tricky, dirty business, and Tom Friedman is hedging his bets on yet another conflict he once supported but which now disturbs his moral equilibrium. Thus do three paladins of the right, left and center combine to erode support for a war that, if lost, would be to the United States roughly what the battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D. —you can look it up—was to the Roman Empire. Things did not go well for Western civilization for 1,100 or so years thereafter.
Overstated? I don't think so.
The simplistic case for NATO's mission in Afghanistan is that it's the country that harbored al Qaeda when the plans for 9/11 were hatched. The simplistic rebuttal is that nothing prevents al Qaeda from planning another attack from another country, if not in the Pakistan hinterland then perhaps in Somalia or Yemen—and the U.S. has no plans to physically occupy any of these places. Ergo, goes the argument, we should "offshore" our military and intelligence capabilities so we can strike at will while leaving Afghans to their own incompetent and tragic devices.
But Afghanistan matters not because that's where 9/11 was conceived. It matters because that's where it was imagined.
In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A little less than a decade later, the Soviets left, humiliated and defeated. Within months the Berlin Wall fell and two years later the USSR was no more. Westerners may debate whether credit for these events belongs chiefly to Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Charlie Wilson or any number of people who stuck a needle in the Soviet balloon. But in Islamist mythology, it was Afghan and Arab mujahedeen who brought down the godless superpower. And if one superpower could be brought down, why not the other?
Put simply, it was the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan that laid much of the imaginative groundwork for 9/11. So imagine the sorts of notions that would take root in the minds of jihadists—and the possibilities that would open up to them—if the U.S. was to withdraw from Afghanistan in its own turn.
Notion One: Attacks on the scale of 9/11 are by no means fatal to the cause of radical Islam. On the contrary, despite the huge losses the movement has suffered over the past eight years, it would emerge from a U.S. defeat in Afghanistan with something it was denied in Iraq: a monumental political and ideological victory from which it could recruit a new field of avid jihadists. Ergo, further attacks on the U.S. homeland could yield similar long-term benefits.
Notion Two: The U.S. has no stomach for long-term counterinsurgency. Ergo, surrender or political accommodation to apparent U.S. military success is pointless; if you hold out long enough, they leave and you win.
Notion Three: The U.S. is not prepared to stand by its clients in the Third World if it believes those clients are morally tainted. That happened to South Vietnam's Nguyen Van Thieu, it happened to the Shah of Iran and, if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, it will happen to the lamentable Hamid Karzai. Ergo, other shaky or dubious U.S. allies in the Muslim world—Algeria, for instance, or, yes, Saudi Arabia—are prime targets for renewed assault.
Notion Four: A U.S. that doesn't have the stomach for a relatively easy fight like Afghanistan, where even now casualties are a fraction of what they were in Iraq during the worst of the fighting, will have even less stomach for much tougher fights. Ergo, maximum efforts should go into destabilizing and, not implausibly, taking over Pakistan, a country that, as Mr. Will says, "actually matters."
And from here the possibilities flow. Withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a Taliban takeover in Kandahar and perhaps Kabul, would plunge Afghanistan into another civil war infinitely bloodier than what we have now. Withdrawal would force Islamabad to abandon its war on terror and again come to terms with its own militants, as it did in the 1990s. Only this time, it wouldn't be clear who is patron and who is client. Withdrawal would give Pakistan's jihadists the freedom to shift fronts to India, with all the nightmare scenarios that entails. Withdrawal would invite the al Qaeda remnant in Iraq—already on an upswing—to redouble its efforts, and do so with the confidence that the U.S. has permanently soured on Middle Eastern interventions.
This is a partial list. The alternative is a winding and bloody struggle to defend and improve a hapless and often corrupt government in a godforsaken land of often (though by no means pervasively) ungrateful people. This is not the noblest fight, and no sane nation would wage it by choice. But we did not choose it and, if we keep our nerve, we can win it. Otherwise, the consequence will be ashes flying again in our own streets, something to remember on the eve of another 9/11 anniversary.
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