Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
First the good news from here in America - we still have at least one news organization that does that strange thing, what's it called, oh yeah, reporting:
PBS Interview with Gilles Dorronsoro writes:
Say WHAT? Is the bolded part true?
The interview goes on:
Wow. Tragedy and farce at the same time! Marvellous - as in, I marvel at how stupid people can be. What a deal for the West - bypass Karzai, and probably never see a workable Afghan state. Or bolster him, and get more of the same. Or oust him, and confirm in every Afghan mind that they can only have puppet leaders as long as the West is present. Or ... or what? Are there any sane alternatives left?
One small upside: the Taliban, at least in Pakistan, are being just as nutty, and probably condemning their movement (finally!) to serious butt-kicking by the Pakistani army. By murdering so many Pakistani citizens, obviously.
It's a race. Who can self-destruct first?
PBS Interview with Gilles Dorronsoro writes:
... Mullah Omar has made statements that he would never let Afghanistan become a launching pad for terror attacks in other countries. Could you ever take Mullah Omar at his word on something like that?
It's a difficult question. How you read the situation is quite open. But what we know historically is that Mullah Omar had no part in 9/11. He did not organize the 9/11 attacks; he was probably not aware of it. And he tried to control Al Qaeda between 1998, when the U.S. embassy in East Africa was bombed, and 2001. So no, I don't see the Taliban using Al Qaeda to destabilize Western countries.
Right now, I think a deal is possible. It may not happen. But it's possible. In 2001, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, wanted to send Al Qaeda leaders to a third country, a Muslim country, to get rid of them. There were two weeks after Sept. 11 when the Taliban was ready to negotiate something. But they didn't want to give bin Laden directly to the Americans. They wanted to give him to a Muslim country. So there is not this total support. It is more subtle than that.
Say WHAT? Is the bolded part true?
The interview goes on:
Now, just a few weeks ago, the Taliban were dealt a pretty serious setback. Mullah Omar's deputy, Cmdr. Mullah [Abdul Ghani] Baradar, was captured in Karachi. How significant a development was that?
First it is surprising. I mean, a few days before the capture of Baradar, I was asking my colleagues working in Pakistan if they thought something was going to move. And they said, "No, it is business as usual; the Pakistani generals are supporting the Taliban." And then we see the arrest of the number two of the Taliban. And actually, in operational terms, he is the number one -- the guy who knows everything about the organization.
So, yes, it's a huge development. But we don't know exactly what it means. ... Does this mean the start of a huge shift in Pakistani strategy? In that case, you're going to see all the major Taliban commanders being killed or captured in 2010, let's say. And then the Americans will give something to Pakistan. There must be a deal somewhere. Or the second hypothesis is, there is no deal, and that this was more of a random operation. In that case, it's not going to change things at all.
It is widely believed that Mullah Omar, and the shura, the leadership council, are in Quetta inside Pakistan.
It seems like it is in Karachi and Quetta. But I wasn't surprised by the fact that Baradar was arrested in Karachi since the Americans more and more are seen as [likely] to strike in Quetta. The big surprise is that they arrested the second-in-command. It could be that the CIA had very precise information because they have arrested Al Qaeda or people linked to the network in the Middle East. They received good information, and they put pressure on the Pakistanis, saying, "Come on, Baradar is in this house in Karachi; we know exactly where. And you are obliged to arrest him. Otherwise, this is a huge problem." That's one hypothesis.
If we were to see some activity in, say, Quetta, and it appeared there was a pattern going on, then is it fair to say there's a deal going on behind the scenes?
The real test will be the Haqqani network [controlled by Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani from Pakistan's tribal area in North Waziristan. U.S. commanders say the group has been the most effective in attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan.] If the Pakistanis are striking the Haqqani network -- Jalaluddin Haqqani and his major players in east of Afghanistan -- if these guys are out, then we can say that Islamabad has changed its mind about the war in Afghanistan. Until then, we have to be extremely careful.
We've seen in recent weeks that a deal was made with the Shinwari tribe in Jalalabad [Eastern Afghanistan] going over the top level of the central government. Buying them out, essentially, for however long, to fight the Taliban. That's not a vote of confidence for the government. What, if anything, can be done to make the government in Kabul more viable?
It's interesting. Last August, there was the so-called re-election of Karzai. It was a huge fraud and Karzai basically lost all his legitimacy. Then, instead of reinforcing Karzai, the U.S. government began working more directly with local powers. And remember that there's more than $1 billion in emergency aid, and the U.S. command can spend it as they want. They can pay local strongmen, heads of militia, whatever. That's what we're going to see more and more of in Afghanistan: local deals between the Americans and the guys the Americans think are OK. And it probably is going to work in terms of fighting the Taliban. But what is that? It's the end of the Afghan state, basically.
It is like we're rewinding the clock back to the circumstances that set the Taliban up.
Exactly, we're back to the '80s. And there are things that we are seeing that are much more to do with Karzai himself, not the coalition. He has made a lot of deals with people who are very strong locally but with no national perspective. Gen. [Abdul Rashid] Dostum [the Uzbek warlord], for example, supported Karzai in the 2009 election. He was offered return to Afghanistan from Turkey where he has been living for the past few years because he had been accused of kidnapping one of his rivals. He was accused of raping a woman. He was accused of war crimes in 2001, killing probably 2,000 or 3,000 Taliban prisoners. And Karzai is working with these kinds of people. So is this a reform of the state? I don't think so.
Wow. Tragedy and farce at the same time! Marvellous - as in, I marvel at how stupid people can be. What a deal for the West - bypass Karzai, and probably never see a workable Afghan state. Or bolster him, and get more of the same. Or oust him, and confirm in every Afghan mind that they can only have puppet leaders as long as the West is present. Or ... or what? Are there any sane alternatives left?
One small upside: the Taliban, at least in Pakistan, are being just as nutty, and probably condemning their movement (finally!) to serious butt-kicking by the Pakistani army. By murdering so many Pakistani citizens, obviously.
It's a race. Who can self-destruct first?