Did U.S. Dept. of State try to prevent Members of Congress from meeting Northern Alliance leaders in Berlin?

That's the claim made by two of the congressionals in the delegation in their op-ed for the Big Government website -- and without going into detail they claim that State went to extraordinary lengths. They also pass along some very disturbing reports from Afghanistan. (See this for background on the Berlin meeting.)

As to whether there's any way to fix this situation, why yes there is: Relocate the White House to Riyadh, and State and Pentagon to Brussels (European Parliament and NATO headquarters, respectively). Once those institutions are in their rightful places, then we can get some real work done.

I'd also suggest that Tabatha Coffey and the group that bids for storage lockers on Storage Wars run defense and diplomacy for the United States even though Tabatha is an Aussie. Believe you me they could do better than the clowns Americans are now paying to do the jobs.

Obama’s Afghan Policy Is Empowering the Taliban
by Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
January 16, 2011
Big Government

In August 2011, after a conspiracy that lured in members of our Seal Team Six with other heroic Americans, the Taliban set up an ambush and murdered them.

Following those brutal attacks, President Obama’s strategy has been to hasten negotiations with the Taliban. Additionally, the Obama administration has now not only offered to release known Taliban terrorists from detention, but has already released some and additionally offered to legitimize our sworn enemy by furnishing them a princely office in Qatar.

In return, Obama’s agents defend that they are being tough on the Taliban by demanding that they not use the office to raise funds to support their terrorism. That is a bit reminiscent of the Clinton-Albright demand of North Korea that if we give them nuclear technology, they must promise to use it for electric generation and not weapons.

According to many Afghans, all of these and other Obama Administration actions give substantial credence to the Taliban claim, supported privately by some Pakistani leaders, that the U.S. has lost in Afghanistan and is now begging them for negotiations.

One Taliban leader who was released from detention by the Obama administration for medical and end of life purposes, is now back in command and recently demanded on Afghan TV that since the Americans have now lost and are begging for negotiations, Afghans disloyal to the Taliban must come ask forgiveness and for safety from the Taliban.

A Northern Alliance leader says that of the more than 800 Taliban detainees that have been released, he is now seeing many of them fighting, killing and terrorizing again. Yet, the Northern Alliance leaders are being effectively shut out of the plans for the way forward, while being demonized by the American government they helped.

The State Department even went to extraordinary lengths to attempt preventing the writers from meeting with the Northern Alliance leaders. We were able to meet, with some help from foreign friends, but clearly the Obama administration and its comrades mean for our allies to stay under the bus when they throw them there.

In late 2001-2002, the Taliban were defeated with less than 500 Americans embedded with the Northern Alliance, but now the Taliban is stronger while we have more than 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Though Vice-President Biden says the Taliban are not our enemies, American soldiers in Afghanistan say the Taliban are still creating IED’s, firing bullets, firing rockets and doing all they can to kill Americans, so it seemed to them that the Taliban certainly think they are our enemy. This points straight to the fact our military is not the problem; its their commander in chief who is the current weak link in our chain of command.

To date, the U.S. nation-building experiment in Afghanistan has produced instability, violence, skyrocketing drug production, widespread corruption, fraudulently rigged elections and the general disapproval of this new government by its own people. Under the U.S.-approved, Afghan Constitution, President Karzai appoints all governors for the provinces, all mayors, police chiefs, the slate for one third of the Senate candidates, and even a segment of the Class 1 teachers in the country. He even has power of the purse that the U.S. President does not have. Clearly this is a formula for heightened corruption, while isolating and ignoring many ethnic groups that make up the very essence of Afghan society.

Many with first-hand experience fighting the Taliban say they are dependent on Pakistan for their marching orders, strategy, and weaponry. In the meantime, President Karzai’s regime has dropped every pretense of appreciation for American sacrifice in blood and treasure as demonstrated by his recent threats to align with Pakistan, Iran and China even as we continue to prop up his government. From Karzai’s perspective, he may well see the Taliban and Pakistan as holding his fate in their hands once the U.S. pulls out.

At the same time, the U.S. is pouring billions of dollars into Afghanistan that comprises the largest portion of the Afghan government’s own budget. U.S.A.I.D. alone is pouring $3.6 billion a year into the country for aid and projects while the money often fails to get past corrupt government officials with 80 percent going to Taliban areas and a tiny fraction going to areas where our allies reside.

The Afghan leaders have become increasingly enriched as their contempt for us has continued to grow. At President Karzai’s encouragement, we have politically and militarily undermined the natural and historic barrier to the Taliban, which is the non-Pashtun peoples of the North, Central and Western parts of Afghanistan. As these non-Pashtun communities were weakened, their leaders were undermined by U.S. support for Karzai and his concentration of power.

The critical next step should be to insist on a new Constitutional Loya Jirga, or convention, that will draft a new constitution enshrining federalism as the new form of government. This would break the Taliban’s ability to dominate Afghanistan by strengthening those communities opposed to the return of the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies. It would give Afghans the kind of hope that our founders provided Americans 225 years ago with our Constitution.

We should insist on local elections of Afghan governors and mayors who may then select the police chiefs. Electing regional leaders would serve to eliminate the conduit of corruption built into the present system, while at the same time giving the governing authority back to the people who are now being disenfranchised.

This course would establish the basis for a political system that allows each of Afghanistan’s ethnic communities to retain their identity and protect them from the Taliban’s violent ethnic repression, brutality and regressive domination. The resulting political framework would also enable trust and goodwill to be built between Afghanistan’s diverse communities as each community would have a direct and important say in its own future.

Perhaps we should even consider support for a Balochistan carved out of Pakistan to diminish radical power there also. Surely, leaving Afghanistan to the same terrorist thugs who enabled the September 11th attacks is the very definition of insanity.The way forward should not include the current Obama plan of putting our future in Taliban hands that are covered with American blood.

"It is a bold challenge to the United States and Pakistan to live up to their pious homilies."

"This is the first time that the leadership of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities has come to a common line of thinking to oppose the US's peace strategy and to present an alternate blueprint of pan-Afghan settlement. In essence, the Northern Alliance is being resuscitated as a political entity."

"What may have incensed the Northern Alliance groups partly at least is that, despite the chill in US-Pakistan relations, Washington has kept the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the loop on the Qatar talks, while blithely ignoring them as protagonists."

"Karzai has sprung a surprise by insisting that peace talks should be "Afghan-led" - meaning, he expects a "hands-on" role for himself. He has said this before, but this time he means it. He knows that regional opinion strongly disfavors a US-led peace process, and he also anticipates the danger of being left behind as road kill unless he is in the driver's seat."

". . . On Monday, Karzai raised the stakes much higher by demanding that the Taliban must agree to a ceasefire before formal peace negotiations could begin."

- M.K. Bhadrakumar, January 12

On October 1 and again on December 29 I observed that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was being forced to stiffen his spine in his relations with Washington; Indian former Career Diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar makes the same observation and then some in his January 12 column for Asia Times Online, There's more to peace than Taliban . The column makes up for a lot of hot air he's blown from his perch at AToL; this time, he absolutely nails a situation. (Unless one also wants to see a discussion about which nations the U.S. regime is carrying water for in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but that topic would be outside the scope of writing, as it is for every news outlet that exists.)

Before I turn to Bhadrakumar's discussion I'll note a development that probably occurred after the column was put to bed; in any case his discussion of a meeting in Berlin between Afghan opposition leaders and U.S. members of Congress didn't mention that on January 11 the Afghan Foreign Ministry issued a statement "condemning" the meeting as a breach of Afghanistan's constitution and as interference with Afghan's internal affairs and national unity.

I am still waiting for the Foreign Ministry to issue a statement condeming NATO and specifically the United States of America for trying to sell Afghanistan to Pakistan but I'll let Amb. Bhadrakumar do the talking for me this time because he says it all quite wonderfully:

There's more to peace than Taliban
by M K Bhadrakumar
January 12, 2012
Asia Times Online

The hype over "secret discussions" between the United States and Taliban officials has subsided; the hot topic is vanishing from public view once again.

Nevertheless, Iranian media insist that three high-ranking Taliban leaders have been released - Mullah Khairkhawa, former interior minister; Mullah Noorullah Noori, a former governor; and Mullah Fazl Akhund, the Taliban's chief of army staff - in exchange for an American soldier held by the Taliban.

United States diplomats might have put the cart before the horse in their hurry to get a peace process going before North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders gather for their summit in Chicago in May. They may have made two cardinal mistakes. One, they underestimated Afghan President Hamid Karzai's political compulsions. Two, the US took it for granted that the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance groups would fall in line since many of them have been co-opted through the 10-year period of the war and their capacity to unite is in doubt.

Karzai has sprung a surprise by insisting that peace talks should be "Afghan-led" - meaning, he expects a "hands-on" role for himself. He has said this before, but this time he means it. He knows that regional opinion strongly disfavors a US-led peace process, and he also anticipates the danger of being left behind as road kill unless he is in driver's seat.

Besides, Karzai is demanding that the US should transfer any Taliban prisoners from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to his custody rather than to Qatar (as apparently sought by the Taliban). He is also raking up a related issue questioning US control of Bagram airbase near Kabul as a detention center.

On Monday, Karzai raised the stakes much higher by demanding that the Taliban must agree to a ceasefire before formal peace negotiations could begin. His spokesman, Emal Faizi, said, "When the talks start, there should be a ceasefire and the violence against the Afghan people should stop." Faizi also said it was too soon to send a delegation from Kabul to Qatar for talks. "The government has no immediate plans for such a trip."

The hardening of Karzai's stance also needs to be understood against the backdrop of growing restiveness on the part of the erstwhile Northern Alliance groups.

On Monday, the alliance stalwarts came out against the Barack Obama administration's secret discussions with the Taliban. These leaders - Ahmed Zia Massoud, brother of late Ahmad Shah Massoud and formerly vice president under Karzai; General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek leader who leads the Jumbish in northern Afghanistan; Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, the Hazara Shi'ite leader from Mazar-i-Sharif who heads the Hezb-e-Wahdat; Amrullah Saleh, former head of Afghan intelligence - held talks with a group of four US congress members - Dana Rohrabacher, Loretta Sanchez, Louie Gohmert and Steve King (all except Sanchez are Republicans) - in Berlin over the weekend and issued a joint statement on Monday.

This is the first time that the leadership of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities has come to a common line of thinking to oppose the US's peace strategy and to present an alternate blueprint of pan-Afghan settlement. In essence, the Northern Alliance is being resuscitated as a political entity.

Their statement attacked the power structure headed by Karzai as dysfunctional, far too centralized and rampantly corrupt and demanded that in the first instance what Afghanistan needed was an inclusive parliamentary form of government "instead of a personality-oriented presidential system", which could optimally represent all ethnic and regional interests.

They also sought a thorough revamping of the country's electoral system from the present single non-transferrable voting system to a "national-accepted variant of the proportional representative system" and the direct election of governors and provincial council leaderships with delegation of powers to create budgets, collect revenue and oversee local policing and administer social sectors.

But, most important, they frontally questioned the US's locus standi to initiate peace talks with the Taliban. Their statement said:

We firmly believe that any negotiation with the Taliban can be acceptable, and therefore effective, [only] if all parties to the conflict are involved in the process. The present form of discussions with the Taliban is flawed, as it excludes anti-Taliban Afghans. It must be recalled that the Taliban extremists and their al-Qaeda supporters were defeated [in 2011] by Afghans resisting extremism with minimal human-embedded support from the United States and international community. The present negotiations with the Taliban fail to take into account the risks, sacrifices and legitimate interests of the Afghans who ended the brutal oppression of all Afghans.

In order to speed the withdrawal of international forces, the participants believe it is essential to strengthen regional and national institutions that are inclusive and represent the concerns of all the communities of Afghanistan. [Emphasis added.]

A challenge to Obama

The Northern Alliance statement challenges the US's monopoly of conflict resolution and Washington's unilateralist estimation that the Taliban are the only group that matters as protagonists on the Afghan chessboard in a peace process.

Its entire approach is to take the "Afghan settlement" from the narrow path of a secretive US-Taliban-Pakistan compromise formula to a transparent, inclusive, broadly-participatory inclusive approach that would not ignore any Afghan interest group, which has genuine mass support, from participation, with strong, elected local leaderships that enjoy delegated powers of local governance.

In sum, it offers a vision for returning Afghanistan to its historical character of a federated system of government that allows a plural society to thrive, but with a representative form of government as a modern-day democracy. Indeed, the Northern Alliance statement implies readiness to reconcile politically with the Taliban, provided they "seize" power through the ballot box rather than the guns supplied from the Pakistani military inventory, among other places.

It is a bold challenge to the United States and Pakistan to live up to their pious homilies.

The alliance's strategy puts enormous pressure on Karzai. He is caught between two contending constituencies. The Northern Alliance leaders are critical of Karzai, but he finds no acceptability with the Taliban, too. Karzai's position becomes precarious if he antagonizes the Northern Alliance groups and turns them hostile. He won't want to put all his eggs in the American basket, either, since the US may find him expendable at some point. Karzai needs time to maneuver and create a new coalition that strengthens his standing.

What may have incensed the Northern Alliance groups partly at least is that, despite the chill in US-Pakistan relations, Washington has kept the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the loop on the Qatar talks, while blithely ignoring them as protagonists. Nonetheless, interestingly, they made no critical reference to Pakistan.

Unsurprisingly, Islamabad is sitting tight. It refrains from taking open stance on the proposed talks with the Taliban in Qatar. At the same time, the ISI is on the ball and its chief, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, even paid an overnight visit to Qatar.

Pakistan would draw satisfaction that Washington finally dropped its pre-conditions for talks with the Taliban. Equally, Pakistan would welcome any release of top Taliban figures from Guantanamo. And Pakistan didn't put roadblock when former mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who lives in Peshawar in Pakistan) deputed envoys to Kabul to sound out the US and NATO officials whether he too could be provided a seat at the conference table in Qatar.

However, Pakistan won't proffer an opinion on the prospects of the talks, rather pretending it is all a matter between Taliban leader Mullah Omar who is quartered in Quetta in Pakistan and American officials.

All this is being played against the backdrop of the troubled US-Pakistani relationship. Besides, the Taliban comprise hopelessly fragmented factions and neither Mullah Omar nor the Haqqani clan has yet commented on the proposed talks in Qatar.

Pakistan can rest on its oars that the ISI would be the only party capable of shepherding the Taliban factions to come on a united platform for talks, and the US ultimately has no choice but to knock on its doorstep seeking help.

As the Northern Alliance groups see it, Pakistani strategy is to wait out the period between now and 2014 - the date set for the US troop withdrawal - and then regroup the Taliban and make a bid to capture power in Kabul. Their strong show of unity in Berlin suggests that they will not roll over and give way to an exclusive US-Taliban-Pakistan settlement being imposed on their nation.

Their challenge to Barack Obama is to concede for the Afghan people the very minimum privilege of an Arab Spring so that Islamism can reconcile with democracy - quintessentially, expecting the US to be on the "right side of history". It is not too much to ask for, really.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Two bombshell reports on Afghan War within three days

The first report, filed on October 21 by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel for McClatchy Newspapers, is titled, U.S. officials, experts: No high-level Afghan peace talks under way. To hear the reporters' sources tell it, publicity about the Karzai administration's discussions with Taliban have been part of an elaborate strategic-communications ruse mounted by General Petraeus & Co., a clever psyops campaign.

The second report was filed on the 23rd by Dexter Filkins for the New York Times: Iran Is Said to Give Top Aide to Karzai Cash by the Bagful. Filkins reports that (anonymous) officials say that Umar Daudzai, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff, "serves as a conduit for Iranian cash into the Karzai government" and that Tehran is funneling millions to Karzai to help him shore his power and undercut the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

The Filkins report drops so many bombs that anyone who doesn't already know all the stuff in the report will be left shell-shocked. However, I'm having a problem with the timing of the two reports.

If there really was a clever ruse to sow dissent among the Taliban leaders, I can't understand why Petraeus friendlies would undercut him by blabbing about it to reporters at this delicate juncture. Surely Taliban leaders have been suspicious that the encouragement they've gotten to negotiate with Karzai's regime is a divide-and-conquer tactic. Now they have confirmation for their suspicion from a major news organization. (The Taliban leaders are fanatical news consumers, so there is no way they missed the McClatchy report.)

I'm going to take a flyer and speculate that there was no ruse -- that Petraeus, either following his Iraq playbook and/or acting under orders from Obama advisors, did genuinely reach out to the Taliban to get them to at least talk with Karzai. However, if the recent reports are true that the Northern Alliance has rearmed, I'd say Obama and the rest of the NATO leaders were caught off guard by the speed with which the alliance reacted to Karzai's negotiations with Taliban leaders.

If my line of reasoning is correct it makes sense that NATO would suddenly scramble to downplay talk that there are negotiations between Karzai and Taliban leaders, even if meant throwing a monkey wrench into the negotiations. The last thing NATO needs is a civil war on its hands in Afghanistan.(1)

As to the Filkins report, it states that Karzai had been taking money from Iran's government before Daudzai became his chief of staff in 2003. And while the extent of Iran's influence in Karzai's government is a revelation, from what the report says this is not news to American officials.

And I recall U.S. military brass making accusations, going back years, about Iran's machinations against ISAF troops. But all once Afghan officials have decided to unburden themselves to a New York Times reporter out of concern that Tehran is sabotaging ISAF efforts in Afghanistan. And all at once Richard Holbrooke has snapped out of his daze:

Obama administration officials have expressed alarm about Iranian intentions. Last week, Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, complained to Afghanistan’s finance minister, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, about Mr. Daudzai and Iran’s influence in the presidential palace, a former Afghan official said.

Let's see, what else was going on last week? Ah yes. The latest strategic dialogue between Pakistan and the United States.

So regarding the sudden decision by unnamed officials to dish the dirt about Iran's involvement with Afghanistan, here I'll take another flyer. I suspect the sudden airing of many details about Iran's machinations, including their continued support for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar "one of the most brutal of Afghan warlords," is in response to howls from Pakistani officials that they shouldn't be accused of all things bad in Afghanistan while the Iranians are running riot there.

As to how the Iranians came to run riot -- gee do you think it has anything to do with Richard Holbrooke making public remarks such as, "Pakistan is one of the most important countries in the world" and evidence that NATO has been pressuring Karzai to cut a deal with Pakistan-backed warlords the Pakistani military is on good terms with?

So I have to weigh Iranian bribes against the USA bribing Karzai into committing political suicide. As to how long this bribery tug-of-war can last between Tehran and Washington -- not long, if Obama doesn't get serious about routing the Taliban, and if American civilian and military leaders don't quit clowning around with their counterparts in Pakistan.

Is the latter possible as long as the 'Get Russia' crowd still has any power in Washington? The question needs to be answered. I don't envy Barack Obama's position if that crowd is still machinating to keep Pakistan as a strategic asset against Russia. But I don't know what to say except that Obama wanted the dirtiest job in the world, and he got it.

1) Oct. 25 Update: It's noteworthy in this context to mention that the Northern Alliance is a misnomer that's gotten entrenched in Western usage. It was originally a propaganda term devised by Pakistan's military and picked up by their news media at the time of the alliance's formation; this was in an effort to make it seem as if resistance to the Taliban came only from the north of Afghanistan. The actual name given to the resistance was the United Front, and it encompassed a wide range of Afghans from all over the country.