Response to Accusations of Supposed Enemy Power

In the video above, it is quoted that "We have a weaker enemy now. They are using improvised attacks because they no longer have the capability to fight."


When they had the capability to fight. The first two years after 9/11, the enemy did not did even have the capability to plant an improvised bomb or conduct any attacks. But today they are everywhere, including northern Afghanistan that even at the peak of the Taliban power they were not able not to be.   

Can the American Government Pressure Pakistan?

We certainly can—and we must—pressure Pakistan to do much, much more in the war against the Taliban. How can we do that? We can use the Durand Line Agreement against them. In 1898, the British Indian colonial government foreign secretary William Durand signed a treaty with the Afghan ruler Amir Abdul Rahman to partition a significant amount of Afghan land and put it under British India control. 

Over the past century, that treaty has been questioned for several reasons. First, Amir Abdul Rahman was illiterate and unable to read even Farsi or Pashto, let alone English, which was the language used in the treaty. Also, Amir Abdul Rahman signed that treaty in exchange for weapons and money which were supposed to be paid every year. It is more than likely that Abdul Rahman's understanding was that British India control would exist only for an interim period; that is, during the time over which he accepted the payments. In other words, he probably considered this a temporary arrangement and did not know that it could—or would— become permanent. Nonetheless, after a while the yearly payments were stopped by British India, thus constituting a breach of the original treaty and agreement.

While all of these issues might have cast a shadow over the Durand Line Agreement, the real blow came in 1945, when the British government lost India, and Indians got their freedom, thus effectively invalidating any previous treaties signed by that colonial power. In point of fact, India itself gained its independence from Britain using this very same argument. What that meant later on however, was that when India formally declared its independence in 1947, Pakistan was created—partitioned by the now null-and-void Durand Line Agreement; in other words, with Afghan lands passed over through a defunct and repudiated treaty signed by a deposed colonial power. They did it anyway and the world- community took little notice of these critically important facts. 

Without those illegal treaties masterminded and signed by the colonial Indian British government, Pakistan itself could not be created, and might not even exist today as a sovereign state. Technically speaking, the entire Northwest frontier of Pakistan belongs to Afghanistan. Over half of Pakistan, all the way to the Arabian Sea, is Afghan land. In fact, Pakistan itself has never formally ratified the Durand Line Agreement through which it came into existence!

In February of 2009, when the Taliban marched perilously close to Pakistan's own capital of Islamabad, we in America became very nervous and our officials criticized Pakistan for not confronting and stopping the Taliban's approach on the city. We had no reason to be worried. In fact, instead of being worried, we should have seized this opportunity to gain a powerful position in our stance toward Pakistan. The march of the Taliban to Islamabad gave us all of the reason we needed to take control of a significant amount of land that is controlled by the Taliban. Thus the Taliban's march to Islamabad could have spelled the beginning of the end of the Taliban, because all of those areas that are currently off limits to our troops and military operations could have been restored to Afghanistan over night, thereby making it perfectly legal for us to go in and flush out the enemy from lands that now belonged to Afghanistan and no longer to Pakistan.

Furthermore, one would have hoped that the Taliban march to Islamabad—and the threat of losing a vast portion of it's geography—would have stirred up the Pakistani's sense of patriotism and thus forced a divorce between ISI and the Taliban. And that too could have been the beginning of the end for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. 

At this time, I still firmly believe that we can put Pakistan under tremendous pressure to listen to America and Europe simply by reminding them of the illegality of the Durand Line Agreement. We can obligate them to keep the territory clean of Taliban or risk the loss of the vast territories now under Pakistani control. This can be used as a wild card to pressure Pakistan to do much more to flush out and destroy the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Pakistan's ISI is Stepping Up

As you read these words, Al Qaeda and the Taliban—with orders from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)—are stepping up their terrorist activities in Afghanistan. They know that the Americans are confused and uncertain about both the short and long-term future of the war. They know that President Obama is reviewing America's policy in Afghanistan. They know that if they are able to successfully mount vicious attacks to kill Americans and Europeans in Afghanistan, they can pressure America to become discouraged and to forget about the war in Afghanistan. To this purpose, they are skillfully exploiting the American media for free and to their own advantage. That is why the month of October 2009 was one of the deadliest months since the beginning of the war. 

The war in Afghanistan is taking a toll on us. We are tired and confused and disillusioned, because we don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Statements such as "Afghanistan is the graveyard of superpowers," are made more often in the news lately, as an excuse for our problems in Afghanistan. As an Afghan, I can assure you that Afghanistan is not the graveyard of the superpowers. In the case of the Soviet Union, if Afghans were to accept that honor, make no mistake that it was only because we as a nation fought together with everything we had against the Soviets, and in point of fact, the whole world was helping us as well. 

By contrast, when the United States went to Afghanistan in 2001, perhaps 80% of the people in Afghanistan supported them. Within two and a half months, the US flag was waving even on the top of the Taliban compound. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers belonging to the Northern Alliance were poised to follow the Taliban and Bin Laden anywhere they had to in order to bring them to justice, free of charge. Unfortunately, and sadly, the United States, heavily influenced by Pakistan and General Musharraf, rejected their aid. When we had Bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora, even then we did not use the help of the Northern Alliance. Instead, we used the same local forces that previously were with the Taliban and ISI. That is exactly why Bin Laden escaped. Wasn't capturing Bin Laden the reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place? We are not losing the war in Afghanistan because the Taliban are making the biggest IEDs. We are losing because we made huge mistakes and we are paying the price for it now.

Can we turn this war around? Easily! To do so, we need to take action swiftly and pervasively. No, we don't need any more troop surges. We have already had too many. We need to change our policies. Here is what we need to do in order to win: (1) Pull American and NATO forces from the front line. (2) Allow the Afghans to take over. Re-enlist the same Afghans who were fighting against the Taliban before 9/11. Help them financially and with weapons. We need about 200,000 of them to replace American and NATO forces. Give them the privilege to clean their own country from the germ of the Taliban and Bin Laden. It is their country, and they will clean it. (3) We need to cut the poppies to the last plant. It is critical that we realize and understand that opium is the reason for this war. (4) We must absolutely stop talking about sharing the government with the Taliban. This is the biggest mistake we have made from day one of the war in Afghanistan. 

Instead of engaging the help of the Afghan people and pounding the Taliban out of existence, we coined the term "moderate Taliban" and started to share the government with them. We confused the Afghan people. Today, 90% of Afghans think that the US is in league with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Afghans also believe that if the US wants to capture Bin Laden, we can do it easily, and that the only reason that we have not done so is that Bin Laden is with us. The Afghan people believe that Americans will soon leave and then the Taliban will come back with a deadly vengeance. They fear for their lives—and rightly so—and therefore they will not dare to side against the Taliban. We need to regain their trust. If we fail to do all of the things I have listed in this article, we could send a million more troops and it would not do one bit of good. Soon the US will leave Afghanistan just like the Russians, broken and frustrated.

Taliban Leaders Arrested in Pakistan

March-15-2010

For several months, President Karzai has been bragging about making peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and through all of this time, secret negotiations were going on between parties. Suddenly, starting in February 2010, the Pakistani secret service started arresting some key Taliban leaders. The naive American media quickly got very excited - was this a bold new shift in Pakistani policy? But then as Pakistan made even more arrests of key Taliban members, the news broke that in fact these Taliban were the ones participating in those secret peace talks with the CIA or the Afghan government.

All those years, when these murderers were fighting in Afghanistan and were sending suicide bombers to target allied troops and innocent Afghans, they were living freely in Pakistan, and nobody was arresting them. Why now? Quite simply, the Pakistan government realized that the peace talks with Afghan government were inevitable, and that they might very well lead to a stabilized government in Afghanistan that would threaten their opium trade. So they came up with a diabolical plan. On the one hand they started arresting those Taliban leaders who were engaged in those secret talks with the Afghan government to prevent any American or Afghan intervention, and on the other hand they hand-picked their own representative to participate in those so-called peace talks. That person was Gulbuddin Hykmatyar! ISI has 30 years of experience with Hykmatyar. He was responsible for shelling Kabul in 1992 for several months to help ISI gain the control of Afghanistan. He was the one that, when ISI asked him to leave all of his arsenal and fighters to the Taliban, he obeyed and did so.

So, after all of these years that Hykmatyar and his guerrillas were busy targeting American and allied forces, as ISI wanted, when ISI needed someone to engage in those so-called peace talks (I would suggest that they needed someone to disrupt those peace talks), Hykmatyar was picked to trick the allied forces. ISI's calculation, perhaps accurate, was that the Americans by that time were tired of being in Afghanistan, and desperately were trying to create some kind of new unified government in Afghanistan so that they could leave, just like Gorbachev had done in the late 1980s. In other words, they wanted to exploit growing American sentiment against continued involvement in Afghanistan. Furthermore, at about the same time, Bin Laden boasted that he would spend 30 billion dollars to modernize the Afghan army.

Naturally, ISI would want to have their agents already in place within the Afghan government, so that as soon as the Americans leave, the Afghan army would simply fall into their hands, and then of course ISI would reap the benefits of this huge arm deal. That is the multi-billion dollar dream of ISI. As an expert, I can categorically state that these peace talks will not in any way help Afghanistan or bring peace to the region, nor will they help American and European long term interests.

A Ten Thousand Toilets Shrine for Osama

The fate and the future of America's war against terrorism depends on who will build Osama's grave monument and turn it into a shrine. Who will it be: the extremists, who would build a ten thousand stars shrine, or Americans, who would build a ten thousand toilets shrine. The more the US and the west insists on emphasizing Osama's 9/11 crimes, the more we unite Muslims around Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the ISI, and the more we help them to build that ten thousand stars shrine. It is human nature—if we were to see a silverback Gorilla fighting with a little monkey, deep inside we all sympathize with the monkey—especially if that monkey shows some courage and fights back.

To the Islamic world, Osama and Al Qaeda are a lot like that little monkey, and unfortunately the US and the west are, to many Muslims, seen to be just like that silverback Gorilla. And because we are supposedly the silverback bully, Osama and Al Qaeda are our little monkey. And Muslims will not sympathize with Americans, as much as they cry about 9/11. Deep inside they even push us toward praising Osama. But if we in the US and the west stop talking about and dwelling on 9/11, at least for a while, and if we instead start talking about the crimes that are Osama, his gang of Al Qaeda, his accomplices (the Taliban) and his bosses (the ISI) have all committed against Muslims, we will be able to turn the tide. Because then Osama becomes that silverback, against the poor, helpless, Afghan people. He and his accomplices are responsible for killing tens of thousands of poor Muslims in Afghanistan alone. What for? For drug money! That is what the war in Afghanistan is really about.

Afghanistan was turned into opium farms by Pakistan, as soon as the Russians left Afghanistan, and especially when their puppet regime fell apart (1992). Since then Osama and his resources were all used for that purpose. Yes, and when the Muslims realize this, then they will look at that face of Osama and Al Qaeda and Taliban and ISI, and they will not sympathize with him, or them, anymore. They will stand up against all of them. Isn't that what we want? Yes, and then the Muslims themselves will build a ten thousand toilets shrine for Osama, and they will bury Al Qaeda and the Taliban and the ISI in that same grave.

  Read my book Afghan Hearts and Minds. Go to my web site Afghan-expert.com. This is now at least 25 years that I am reciting this. Can some of you hear me finally?  

Revenge for Wali Karzai

President Karzai has been begging the Taliban for peace for the last ten years. In response, the Taliban have been performing suicide attacks, detonating roadside improvised bombs and firing missiles on fellow Afghans. The Taliban have killed tens of thousands of innocent Afghans and hundreds of American and NATO soldiers. Despite this, Karzai continues to give pleas for peace, initiating bribes to remove brutal Taliban leaders from the blacklist of the UN. The bribes release hundreds of their captured followers from prisons. 

So far, it has been the innocent Afghan people that have been victimized by the Taliban killing machine. President Karzai has not given concern to this issue. Instead, he has been committed to his so-called "peace talks." But as soon as he loses a brother to the Taliban, his mood changes a little, and for the first time, instead of peace speeches, he talks of revenge. 

On July 17, 2011, a Karzai spokesperson in a press conference quoted Karzai: "We are committed to fight against those who carry out this sort of cowardly actions, so that revenge of the death of elders and protectors of Afghanistan is taken," he said. "But again we want peace and stability in Afghanistan and we won't turn our back on the way to peace in our country."