Taliban and al-Qaeda
Joshua Partlow for The Washington Post reports on various indications that Mullah Omar and his Taliban are looking to distance themselves from al-Qaeda:
The shift appears to reflect Omar’s growing confidence that his group can operate on its own, without al-Qaeda as its patron. “The Taliban have got the expertise, they have got the resources, they have got the momentum,” said Richard Barrett, coordinator of the U.N. Taliban and al-Qaeda Monitoring Team. [...]
“We assure all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others,” Omar said in a written statement in September.
The messages from the Taliban leadership since the spring amount to something of a “revolution,” said Wahid Mujda, a political analyst who was a Foreign Ministry official under the Taliban government. “Al-Qaeda’s path is now different from the Taliban’s path, and they are growing more separated.”
Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman says that Leah Farrell, former al-Qaeda specialist for the Australian National Police, has a blog that’s “attracting ever-more attention in U.S. defense circles.” That said, I think we can predict here and now that she’s going to stop attracting attention in U.S. defense circles since she thinks we should withdraw from Afghanistan and that al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. forces are a deliberate ploy “forcing a surge in American troop numbers” and creating a situation in which “Mullah Omar’s legitimacy would be jeopardised were he to publicly disassociate from al-Qa’ida and guarantee he would not again provide it sanctuary.”
She’ll stop attracting attention because, as Spencer writes in that very same post, there’s absolutely no constituency for withdrawal of American forces inside the Obama administration. Instead, the debate among civilians runs from “we should stick with the increase in troop levels that Obama has already executed” to “we should engage in large additional increases in troop levels.” And within the uniformed military it seems that everyone wants large additional increases.
I think we really saw this movie in Iraq already. Clearly, there’s a lot of uncertainty endemic to thinking about this kind of issue. What’s not uncertain, however, is that as long as U.S. troops remain in theater, we haven’t “lost”. It’s also clear that you don’t achieve “victory” by withdrawing under fire. Consequently, those considerations will predominate. As I’ve said before, it would be very different if military planners were expected to come up with deficit neutral proposals capable of attracting 60 votes in the Senate—that would end the war in the blink of an eye.
16 Responses to “Taliban and al-Qaeda”
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November 11th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I could have sworn that just a few weeks ago there was a widely-read report stating that the leadership of al Qaeda and the Taliban were now nearly indistinguishable. Ah, yes. Peter Bergen at the New Republic. http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-front
November 11th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
What good does Obama see coming out of Afghanistan? There’s an entire national security constituency in D.C. who make their livings through big defense budgets and playing up visions of successful wars abroad, and I understand why THEY want to keep sending troops into Afghanistan. But what does Obama get out of it? All he’s doing is taking one of Bush’s messes and making it his own.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I’m curious and have not seen the question asked or answered anywhere, how much money does the Taliban and/or Al Queda have and how much do they need; and where is the money coming from? Extorting money from the heroin industry is undoubtedly one revenue stream but what else? Where are the guns and RPG launchers coming from and how much do these weapons cost?
Also, we can’t leave Afghanistan until we’re sure we won’t be called pussys. That’s what’s at stake here. Simplistic and childish as that may seem, the US can’t have anyone associated with the 9-11 terrorist attacks calling us pussys.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I believe the Taliban get all the money they need from a combination of the opium and protection rackets. And yes, that means that “development aid” is funding to a certain extent the insurgency. I don’t know the whole answer to the weapons question, but Iran smuggles a great deal in through Herat.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Cristopher,
I know Iran hates our guts and loves seeing us tied down, but I also know they hate the Taliban and almost went to war with them themselves.
Boy, what a mess.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
So this means we can find some sort of negotiated agreement with the Taliban and get the fuck out of Afghanistan, right?
November 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I know Iran hates our guts and loves seeing us tied down, but I also know they hate the Taliban and almost went to war with them themselves.
If you were Iran, what would you do?
November 11th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Maybe what is going to happen is that Obama will give the 40,000 troops, but that will include the down payment he gave early this year, so an additional 25k, plus support troops.
Or maybe the total number will be 40k, including the downpayment and the support troops, maybe 20k or less.
One thing not clear (to me) about the 40k demand is if it came after the first downpayment, or before.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
But what does Obama get out of it?
Well he promised during the campaign to fight the “good war” in Afghanistan, and since he can’t keep his promises on Iraq, finance regulation, transparency, unions, NAFTA, rule of law, lobbying restrictions etc… he has to keep that one.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
MY “it would be very different if military planners were expected to come up with deficit neutral proposals capable of attracting 60 votes in the Senate—that would end the war in the blink of an eye.”
It would indeed. I would expect the military to call the Senate’s bluff and extract the majority of their forces immediately. Afghanistan is small potatoes. The Pentagon desires only to scratch out an hold enough territory in Afghanistan to safely install several Forward Based X-band Radar sites and to deploy multiple batteries of SM-3 and Patriot hunter/killer missile systems.*
The Pentagon is red hot. They are rolling up countries like soft dough. Turkey has agreed to allow the US to install and man X-band radar and SM-3 missile sites in the Caucasus. Camp Bondsteen, the largest military base the US has built since Vietnam, which resides in the dead zone of Kosovo, is being readied for heavy missile deployment. The Balkans will be covered. So too will Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, all of which have agreed to host X-band Radar and SM-3 missile sites.
The UK, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Norway, Italy, Germany, and Israel have all agreed to host US missile systems. From hard to believe places like Georgia, Ukraine, Albania, and even Serbia, overtures of interest in hosting US missile bases have been heard.
Negotiations are still underway with the Czech Republic and Poland for installing hunter/killer missiles on their soil. Apparently, the previously deployed missile systems were of the antiquated SM-2 variety, missiles that attempt to destroy Russian warheads after they had entered their descent phase -an almost impossible task. However, allowing for the deployment of state-of-the-art SM-3 and Patriot missile systems, which can knock out Russian missiles before they can even enter Russian subspace, seems to be much more agreeable proposition to the Czechs and the Poles. Expect them both to sign on the dotted line, sometime soon.
And don’t forget Iraq. Exxon-Mobile and British BP each just signed $50 billion deals with Iraq to develop the West Qurna and Romaila oil fields, respectively, and the US recently installed a Forward Based X-band Radar site in Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq, which means SM-3 and Patriot missile systems are sure to follow. It also means we are not leaving Iraq. Ever.
Our ground level missile ring is closing fast around Russia and China. So to is our dominance of the space above each. Neither country is willing or capable (in Russia’s case) of spending anywhere near the $50 billion annually that the US spends to launch and maintain military space hardware.
The United States has both the Russians and the Chinese virtually, three dimensionally, surrounded. Congress could possibly cut McChrystal’s war funding, but that wouldn’t distract the Pentagon from waging and winning what it feels is a much more important war.
*The Patriot missile of today bares no resemblance to the Scud buster of Gulf War I. The current version has 17 times the range of its predecessor. It no longer condescends to intercepting lumbering Scuds, as we have lesser missiles for that role now. The task of the modern Patriot is to hunt ballistic missiles in their ascent phase and kill them before they go ballistic.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:13 am
As I’ve said before, it would be very different if military planners were expected to come up with deficit neutral proposals capable of attracting 60 votes in the Senate—that would end the war in the blink of an eye.
And as the saying goes, if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.
It’s the job of the elected civilian leadership and the elected representive in congress to make the decisions of the type you say. It’s your erstwhile political allies that have control of both houses of congress and the presidency. It’s increasingly silly of you to blame insitutional pressures for stuff that isn’t to your liking.
And all the related decisions for many years prior to this summer, you basically either ignored or somewhat supported. Now, for whatever reason, you’re finally coming to the table with all kinds of doubts. *after* the current president has made some decisions, and the exact ones he promised he would make when he campaigned. And that you supported. You’re absolutely right, we *did* see this movie in Iraq already.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:27 am
How about a tax increase effective immediately to pay for the war and compensate the victims? That would kill it too.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:13 am
As MY has said before, the Taliban is pretty far removed from the people who carried out 9/11.
The contemporary insurgent Taliban is constituted of different people with a different motive than the ruling Taliban; the ruling Taliban was not Al Qaeda; the Al Qaeda leaders that lived in Afghanistan had very limited contact with the people that planned 9/11; the people that planned 9/11 are not the people who carried out 9/11.
Invading Afghanistan to prevent another 9/11 was always entirely a wild goose chase. Obviously, the Taliban in all forms consists of misogynistic totalitarian militias, but so does the American South.
What’s more, intransigence on the possible legitimacy of misogynistic totalitarian pricks in Afghanistan has empowered the downtrodden misogynistic totalitarian pricks in Pakistan (which is of huge strategic importance), just like removing the legitimacy of misogynistic totalitarian pricks in the American South has mobilized the pricks nationwide.
Afghanistan just isn’t the same country the Taliban grew up in! They need a Kandahar Poppy Party to set it all straight.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:09 am
The people known for ulterior motives hate Karzai because he wants to end all our air strikes, wants to make a peace deal with Mullah Omar, and even has requested a timeline for our departure. The neocons want to escalate instead. Peter Galbraith, finally infamous for helping push us into war with Iraq and then helping write the Iraq Constitution so that he stands to make $100 million in Kurdish oil revenues (see today’s New York Times), was fired by his UN boss in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, who explained that the UN should not appear to be taking sides in the election, ie favoring Karzai’s opponent. (see Wall Street Journal 9/16/09). Certainly there is corruption in Afghanistan just as there is in Iraq and in the area generally. There has been no proof that Karzai is corrupt. His name has been mud since he started pursuing peace.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I am opposed to an increased troop presence in Afghanistan. While I think the US Military is logistically capable of executing an effective counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, I do not believe there is strategic worth in doing it. Furthermore, I have very little confidence in Karzai as a means to advance the Afghan political process.
With this in mind, I want to illustrate how unimpressed I am with this post. Mullah Omar says lots of things, and the only thing we can be sure of is that they are certainly intended to advance his own agenda, which is completely separate from whether or not they are true or false.
If Mullah Omar had taunted us by saying if we pull out of Afghanistan, he will reinforce al Qaeda and attempt to attack the American homeland, is that a good reason for President Obama to support a troop surge? Of course not. In the same vein, just because Omar is telling us he isn’t working w/ al Qaeda doesn’t mean we suddenly are finished there.
Our strategic decision needs to be based on our considerations and concerns coupled with an intelligence assessment of what the enemy is actually doing. Not what he is saying he is doing.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Unless we develop a comprehensive South Asia strategy, the most we can hope for is a temporary peace in Afghanistan.
What would such a strategy look like? Well, at the very least it requires some moderation of the strategic competition between India and Pakistan.
Without attention to this aspect of the problem, we really are only playing around at the edges of the conflict.
For more, see http://bit.ly/3vYHPk