Haiti Crisis: Making an Ark out of many ships: a proposal to temporarily berth ill earthquake survivors on cruise liners.

REMINDER: This February HBO is re-broadcasting the documentary "Terror in Mumbai," which I discussed in the December 20, 2009 Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 2: Once upon a time in Saigon and Mumbai. See the HBO website for the airing dates.
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On Saturday I came across two claims:

Haiti has significant oil and natural gas reserves and that the U.S. and other foreign governments have been machinating with regards to these, going back years, and at the expense of Haiti's poor.

Orphanages and schools in Haiti run by foreign charities are taking care of children of well-off Haitians while the donors in the foreign countries are under the impression they're giving money to help Haiti's poorest. I don't think the claim extends to every such facility but the person who made the claim alleges he worked in Haiti's 'aid industry' for ten years and that from his experience the rackets are widespread.

With regard to the latter claim, according to a CNN TV report it is true that in Haiti the term "orphan" is used in a way that's understood differently in the USA and other Western countries. In Haiti it means a child who lives in an orphanage but is not necessarily orphaned. Evidently many Haitian families put their children in orphanages run by foreigners because the children get better food, education, etc., that way.

However, CNN made no mention of a racket and neither did the report suggest that donors were being misled, or that only children of well-off Haitian families were being served by these facilities.

Yet of course the opportunity for abusing such a system would be there. And the system explains why the Haitian government is adamant that children who are survivors of the earthquake not be taken out of the country until it can be determined whether they have family, even if they're connected with an orphanage.

I am not going to provide links to either claim at this time because I want to show them to a few colleagues and get their input before I start a riot. The only reason I'm mentioning the claims now is because I am sensing donor fatigue. Yet if only a fraction of the two claims are true, what can I say, except that Haiti's poor have certainly been run over from every direction you can think of.

So despite worries that with such vast amounts of aid money being poured into the country there's bound to be theft, waste, etc., this is not the time to close the checkbook. Not with the potential for a second catastrophe bearing down on the survivors, and which will hit the poorest and weakest the hardest. That catastrophe is the rainy season on top of the earthquake and aftershocks.

According to reports last week the rainy season will arrive in Haiti in four to six weeks (CNN) or in a couple weeks (PBS NewsHour). I assume the CNN estimate is more accurate; in any case, according to what Haiti's president said last week there are only 2,500 tents in Haiti, whereas at least 200,000 are needed. "More than exist in the world," he added

Whether or not his figures are strictly accurate, he's in the ballpark. And even if there are that many tents for sale and they're waterproofed to take heavy rains for weeks on end, donation money has to be split between water, food, medicine, supporting the army of aid workers now on the ground in Haiti, and a thousand other critical items.

That means aid agencies are now in a race against time before mudslides and water-borne disease threaten to escalate Haiti's present catastrophe into one of unimaginable proportions. Not to gross you out, but realize that the survivor encampments are generating virtual mountains of rotting garbage that are stacked on the outskirts of the camps, and that large amounts or human feces are deposited near those camps. Come the rains, all that stuff will start flooding into the living areas of the camps including the cooking areas.

Haiti's large shantytown, Cité Soleil, escaped mass deaths during the earthquake because most of the homes there had tin roofs, which meant that even if the cinder block walls collapsed, people who survived the quake could clamber out of the rubble. However, big mudslides could swallow up the town's shaky structures, which are built almost on top of each other.

As for present shelter arrangements, most Haitian survivors are living in 'tents' that are made from sheets and blankets. In recent days some Haitians have been scavenging wood and tin to make more permanent living structures but these are placed in camps that have no drainage, no running water, and no PortaPottys.

There are a certain number (exact number not known) of Haitians in those tent camps who have homes that are still standing. But they're afraid to return to the homes because they fear the next tremblor will collapse the structure. That's a viable worry, particularly when the rainy season will further erode foundations already weakened by the earthquake and aftershocks.

All of that is on top of other crises that have settled over the Haitian survivors. Readers who've been following the story don't need the laundry list. But just a few highlights:

It was not until this Saturday that a rational food distribution strategy was finally worked out by the World Food Program, with the help of the U.S. military. But the WFP is just delivering bags of rice -- no cooking oil, vegetables or high quality protein. Rice can sustain life but it's not enough to rebuild health. There are still huge logistical problems with getting food and water aid to the survivors. These have led to some near-riots that had to be dispersed with tear gas and shots fired overhead, and which meant no food was distributed.

The electricity grid is still down, and from a CNN television report last week it could be another month before it's up at least in part. Why is it taking so long? Because the grid was only operating at a fraction of capacity before the earthquake. That's because the country was hit by a series of devastating hurricanes last year, which took down the grid. Since it went back online it was only operating eight hours a day before the quake. That explains why gasoline was in such short supply when the quake hit. Everyone who could afford gas-powered generators -- government buildings, embassies, hospitals, hotels, etc. -- was using generators when the electricity was cut off daily to prevent the grid from crashing.

From a PBS NewsHour report yesterday, about 200,000 Haitians are suffering from earthquake-related injuries/illnesses. We can assume a large number of these are children. The airlifts of critically injured patients to Miami hospitals are being restarted after a five-day suspension, which happened because the hospitals were overwhelmed and caught in reimbursement red tape. The reimbursement issue has been settled but the Miami hospitals (and ones in Dominican Republic) are still filled to capacity with seriously injured Haitians.

And even if hospitals in other parts of the USA and the world can take in more of the seriously injured patients even a generous estimate of 50,000 hospitalizations would leave 150,000 injured and ill Haitians, many of them children, to face the rainy season while they are in bad shape. Meanwhile, cruise ships ply the Caribbean -- ships that could easily be converted into recuperation facilities.

So I propose an emergency plan, to be in effect during Haiti's rainy season and/or until sufficient tents and sanitation measures can be deployed. The plan is to sequester cruise ships that can, within a week, reach shores or near to shores in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, other Caribbean ports, and even Miami. Then airlift ill/injured Haitians to airports near the port cities and have them board the cruise ships there, or ferry them to the ships.

I asked RBO's Brenda J. Elliott to do preliminary research on major shipping lines that sail the Caribbean, and the number of passenger berths in each ship. She graciously put aside her own research for the project.

I was stunned by what she turned up; one cruise liner -- the world's largest -- has 5,400 berths. And she informed me that she'd only provided a sampling of the cruise lines, and that the other ships average 2,000 berths each.

Just among four of the largest cruise lines that sail the Caribbean, the total number of berths for 68 ships is 165,825 -- that's if you take 2,000 berths as an estimate for ships owned by those companies that are not on Brenda's list. (See below.)

If you could get half or even a quarter of that number of Haitians on board cruise ships over the next month to six weeks, and keep them there for several weeks until aid agencies/governments were able to build safe temporary encampments for them, you might end up saving many lives.

And while the airlift and preparations would be a massive project, it would be more do-able than the vague idea being floated by the UN of somehow relocating a million people to a mega-tent city -- if the tents can be found. Even so, there is no time before the rains to set up such an encampment, not one with toilets and a drainage system.

Brenda pointed out that the cruise-ship plan might be trading one set of problems for another. First, the shipping lines would have to be indemnified as well as reimbursed for lost business. Yes. The companies would also have to be supplied with the food and other items the survivors would need as well as guards, monitors, and medical staff, if the cruise line didn't want to use its own staff.

And she mentioned that the cruise ship generates its own set of communicable infections. That is a serious point. However, while I'm not the expert on this, I think most of those cruise-liner disease outbreaks amount to vomiting and or/diarrhea, and can be treated with antibiotics and other simple medical procedures.

And I assume that the biggest breeding grounds for the bacterial outbreaks on the ships are self-serve food bars, fresh vegetables and fruit, and water sport/relaxation areas -- pools, water slides, hot tubs, etc. The water areas could be shut while the Haiti survivors are on board. And the self-serve food bars could be shut except for holding box meals. And bottled fruit and vegetable juices could be largely substituted for fresh produce.

Also, the cruise ships could be much more liberal with disinfectants than they would for customers, who don't want their vacation smelling of Clorox. I doubt the survivors would complain on that score.

Another point is that hospitals are notorious breeding grounds for infectious outbreaks -- life-threatening ones. At least on a cruise ship the Haitians could get out of their cabins, and get fresh air. Most importantly they could be away from the horror of Haiti's present for a few weeks.

All that would give strength to fragile immune systems and help people, especially children, heal emotionally. And a bonus is that the big cruise ships are floating playgrounds; they have all kinds of toys, games, etc. for kids.

Also, there is plenty of clean drinking water on board these ships so people won't be dehydrated. And of course there are toilets and showers -- and laundries, so that clothes and bedclothes stay clean. There is also privacy in the sleeping quarters and round the clock protection so the people who have lived in terrible conditions for weeks can get some decent sleep. All that would put people who are injured or ill, but not critically so, quickly on the mend.

Another benefit of using the cruise ships is that up to this point, civilian volunteer medical, nursing, and aid workers who've been in Haiti since the quake have been going on adrenaline. They will soon start falling like flies. The volunteers are risking their health to work with people in the tent camps. And simply surviving the stress of working in the post-earthquake settings takes a huge toll because the volunteers have to keep functioning.

So, volunteers could be berthed on the cruise ships for three days so they could get sleep, rest, eat good food and de-stress, then be rotated out to make way for another group of volunteers in need of rest.

Brenda mentioned that alternative medicine practitioners and therapists who specialize in stress-relief techniques (e.g., massage, acupuncture, aromatherapy) treated rescue workers in New York after the 9/11 attack and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; the healers could visit the cruise ships to help the aid/health care workers working in Haiti and Haitian survivors. (She mentioned that Acupuncturists without Borders is requesting volunteers to go to Haiti.)

Another reason for transforming the cruise ships into a kind of networked Ark is that this finally makes manageable the Herculean task of sorting through survivors and getting personal data on them. There has to be a lot of sorting out, particularly with regard to the orphans -- matching up those who have families and identifying the ones who don't.

The cruise-ship plan addresses other problems, as well. The survivors who are injured or ill are a drain on the fragile health care system in Haiti. Removing the sick to ships that can function as recuperative facilities would reduce strain on the system.

Another benefit of using the cruise ships is that it takes a little pressure off Haiti's seaport and the airport runways, as well as overland distribution. The cruise ships could be berthed near coasts of neighboring countries and supplies airdropped onto the ships, or loaded from piers that are in better shape than Haiti's main port. In this situation "a little" pressure off translates to big savings in terms of manpower, gasoline, wear and tear on trucks, etc. And it disperses distribution points, cutting down on delivery bottlenecks.

All right, that's enough to sketch the proposal. What's needed next is for logistics specialists to tear into it. If the troops in Haiti are tied up -- what about Wal-Mart? Those people have geniuses working on the logistics of supply and distribution. Same for several giant corporations that must move around large numbers of people and goods.

Up to this point private industry has been confined to writing out checks to help Haiti's earthquake survivors. The checkbooks need to stay open but brainpower is also desperately needed right now. I would like to see private industry get involved in a hands-on way at this critical stage.

There are a couple questions and one final point I've saved until last. One question is deciding how to prioritize which groups among the injured and ill get onto the ships. Not to wimp out but this is getting into triage and triage is above my pay grade. However, if you could remove even 100,000 ill and injured people from Haiti's health care system for several weeks, that is thinning the forest, isn't it? In theory it would allow for more care of those left behind.

The other question is how the cruise companies would respond. Some months ago I saw a CNBC program that looked at the business angle of cruises. The cruise companies were hurting because of the economic downturn. So getting paid by governments for a full house would be great for them.

And I should think the great free publicity the shipping lines garnered from taking the Haitians on board would translate into more business than they knew what to do with, in the next year or two.

Brenda's list does not include the Disney cruise ship (there might be more than one) and I don't know if they sail the Caribbean. Yet if those ships, which are set up for children, took on board Haiti's earthquake survivor children -- I think Disney would almost be willing pay to take them because the company couldn't get that much good publicity at any price.

Finally, even in the tightest-run charities and government aid programs there is fraud, waste, price gouging by suppliers, accounting errors, etc.; it's unavoidable. This is particularly true in the early weeks of relief efforts, which are always chaotic.

But cruise line companies are very hard nosed about waste and graft, very sensitive to price gouging for supplies they purchase. And they are set up to handle huge supply purchases. Those cruise ships are floating towns. By removing anywhere between 100,000 and 200,00 Haitians from the chaotic situation on the ground in Haiti, and putting the cruise lines in charge of ordering the supplies for their Haitian passengers, you'd stretch the aid money.

Of course the cruise companies would bill extra for accounting services. Yet I believe it would work out cheaper. And the fun part is that it's really hard for supplies to sprout legs and walk off cruise ships.

Below is Brenda's list. (I did not add the last cruise line to my calculations because I'm not familiar with the company.) And again, for the ships that Brenda did not name, but which are also owned by the big four, I estimated 2,000 berths per ship.

I'm hoping that readers who think the proposal is worth exploring, and who've taken vacations on the ships Brenda lists, might call the cruise lines and suggest the proposal. And of course you could also contact your congressional representatives, the State Department, USAID, and even the White House, about the proposal.

And I hope readers in the military/National Guard who know someone who specializes in logistics will pass along the proposal for review and comments.

Oasis of the Seas (Largest Cruise Ship in the World) can carry 5,400 passengers
- Explorer of the Seas can carry 3,114 passengers
- Voyager of the Seas can carry 3,114 passengers
- Brilliance of the Seas can carry 2,501 passengers
- Enchantment of the Seas can carry 2,446 passengers
- Jewel of the Seas can carry 2,501 passengers

Carnival Cruises
- Carnival has 23 vessels
-- Conquest can carry 2,974 passengers
-- Destiny can carry 2,642 passengers
-- Dream (Superliner) can carry 3,646 passengers
-- Ecstasy can carry 2,616 passengers
-- Splendor can carry 3,006 passengers
-- Valor can carry 2,974 passengers

Norwegian Cruise Line
. owns 11 vessels
- Norwegian Gem can carry 2,394 passengers
- Norwegian Jewel can carry ? [figure 2,000 average]
- Norwegian Dawn can carry ? [figure 2,000 average ]
- Norwegian Epic can carry 4,200 passengers
- Norwegian Pride of America can carry 2,156 passengers
- Norwegian Sky can carry 2,400 passengers
- Norwegian Sun can carry 2,400 passengers

Celebrity Cruises
.owns 12 vessels
- Eclipse can carry 2,850 passengers
- Solstice can carry 2,850 passengers
- Summit can carry 2,046 passengers
- Mercury can carry 2,200 passengers
- Constellation can carry 3,450 passengers

Azamara Club Cruises
- Journey can carry 694 passengers
- Quest can carry 694 passengers

State of the Union: Obama's 'Sounds About Right to Me' doctrine jells

This notice will be at the top of every post for the next few weeks:
In February HBO is re-broadcasting the documentary "Terror in Mumbai," which I discussed in the December 20, 2009 Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 2: Once upon a time in Saigon and Mumbai. See the HBO website for the airing dates. If you haven't seen the documentary yet please steel yourself to watch it; I don't think it's possible to fully understand this phase of the war on terror without seeing it. And don't be fooled by the captured terrorist's Abused Village Boy performance. From what was shown on camera it looked as if he fooled even the police interrogator -- at least until his life story became known.
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Having campaigned on a personal history he rewrote until it suited him, Barack Obama as U.S. President has gone on to apply this winning formula to any facet of reality that doesn't sound quite right to him. Thus, for his speech in Cairo he rewrote part of Turkey's political history as well as Islam's.

In his State of the Union address last night Mr Obama tackled that pesky linchpin of fiscal responsibility, the concept of budgeting:

Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't. And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will. ... Now, I know that some in my own party will argue that we can't address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. And I agree, which is why this freeze won't take effect until next year, when the economy is stronger. That's how budgeting works.

All right; you have it from the President's mouth: a better-sounding definition of budgeting is that it's a fiscal discipline you practice once there's no longer a dire need to do so.

Other parts of the President's address to Congress also displayed his ability to file down the jagged edges of reality until they're as smooth as a baby's bottom. So Barack Obama turns out to be a perfect reflection of the American political system. He analyzed the system, saw it was stuffed with people as phony as the day is long, then gamed it according to its own rules.

If the leftists who glommed onto the Democratic party in the name of a fair shake for all and the anti-nationalists who took over the Republican party in the name of free trade aren't happy with the mirror Obama holds up to them, where is my Kleenex box?

Afghanistan War: McChrystal's Choice, and an updated version of "The Bridge on the River Kwai"

This notice will be at the top of every post for the next few weeks:
In February HBO is re-broadcasting the documentary "Terror in Mumbai," which I discussed in the December 20, 2009 Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 2: Once upon a time in Saigon and Mumbai. See the HBO website for the airing dates. If you haven't seen the documentary yet please steel yourself to watch it; I don't think it's possible to fully understand this phase of the war on terror without seeing it. And don't be fooled by the captured terrorist's Abused Village Boy performance. From what was shown on camera it looked as if he fooled even the police interrogator -- at least until his life story became known.
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Ever the optimist, on Monday I announced that between Mark Safranski's beauty and my brains we were gonna straighten out the Pentagon's thinking on Afghanistan. Alas, the cavalry arrived too late; the fort was holding a prayer breakfast with the barbarian hordes.....

January 25, 2009: Nato chief seeks political settlement with the Taliban:

As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting, and that what we need to do -- all of us -- is to do the fighting necessary to shape conditions where people can get on with their lives, and everybody can make a decision where fighting's not the direction that it needs to go in. I believe a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome -- and it's the right outcome."
-- General Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander, International Security Assistance Force; Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan

He was for victory in war before he was against it

It seems just a few months ago, in fact it was just this past September, that General Stanley McChrystal warned if President Obama didn't give him the troops he requested the ISAF mission in Afghanistan “will likely result in failure:"

“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes. [... ] In his five-page commander’s summary, General McChrystal ends on a cautiously optimistic note: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

Ditching the Blacklist

Four months later, before the additional 30,000 troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan in December have been deployed, what is General McChrystal's idea of success?

This week we find him once again in London, from whence he launched a very public criticism last September of the delay in acting on his request for additional troops. Now Gen. McChrystal finds success not in military victory but in Hamid Karzai's government negotiating with the Taliban:

In an interview with the Financial Times on Monday, McChrystal said that political negotiations with leaders of the Taliban could help foster security and stability in conflict-plagued Afghanistan. [...] When asked if senior Taliban leaders might eventually become government leaders in Kabul, McChrystal said, "I think that anybody who dedicates themselves to the future and not the past, and anybody whose future is focused on the right kinds of things for Afghanistan might participate in government."

The remarks come as UN special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide has also called on Afghan officials to seek the removal of at least some senior Taliban leaders from the United Nations' list of terrorists, as a first step toward opening direct negotiations with the militant group.

"If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority," Eide said, adding that he believes the time has come to do it.

The United Nations' so-called black list contains the names of 144 Taliban leaders, including the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Under United Nations Resolution 1267, governments are obliged to freeze the bank accounts of those on the list and prevent them from traveling.

Some Taliban leaders say the black list has prevented them from entering into negotiations because they would be arrested if they showed their faces.

The move to reconcile with Taliban after eight years of a bitter US-led conflict in the war-ravaged nation has been described as a defeat for Washington and the Afghan government.[...]

Eide's comments raise the question of whether Karzai is bowing to UN pressure to accept Taliban into his government. Karzai, however, claims it's the other way around:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is pressing for Taliban names to be removed from a United Nations blacklist imposing travel restrictions and asset freezes.

He says his Western allies back his plans for reconciliation with those Taliban members who are not allied with Al Qaeda and who renounce violence.

"[They should be] welcome to come back to their country, lay down arms and resume life as citizens of Afghanistan, enjoying the privileges and the rights and the guarantees given by the Afghan constitution," Mr Karzai said.

He will attend a major conference in London on Thursday at which he hopes to win Western support for his plan to offer money and jobs to cajole Taliban fighters into laying down arms.

Mr Karzai's plan had previously met resistance but he says "there is more willingness that this can be reconsidered".

He wants to bring low- and mid-level fighters into mainstream society to end the gruelling insurgency.[...]

The British Betrayal

One can hardly blame Karzai for wanting to snatch peace from the ashes of defeat; he watched how the USAF prosecution of the war turned a nearly-decisive victory in 2001 for American and British forces into a victory for Pakistan and the Taliban -- and al Qaeda.

(I say "nearly" decisive because of Operation Evil Airlift, which saw Vice President Dick Cheney deciding to allow several key Pakistan fighters and their Taliban and al Qaeda stooges to escape Afghanistan ahead of U.S. capture.)

Karzai also knows what the British, or at least the Labor government, are like. U.K. Independent; February 4, 2008:

Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

[...]

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. [...]

Karzai also accused the British ISAF of losing Helmund province to the Taliban. In short he learned the hard way what the U.S. command in Iraq learned about the mixed blessing of coordinating with the British in regions they still consider to be in their sphere of influence.

Last week, British Foreign Minister David Miliband told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan strategy that he hoped this Thursday's conference in London would provide "a boost for an Afghan plan to lure Taliban militants away from violence." Translation: Brown wants Karzai to negotiate a truce with the Taliban.

What's McChrystal's Game?

On Monday's John Batchelor Show Simon Constable summed the latest turn of events by noting the terrible human rights record of the Taliban and saying the offer to negotiate with them "was like the Allies offering to negotiate with the Nazis in 1944."

Why, yes. So why would McChrystal voice enthusiasm for the negotiation plan, and so soon after opining that additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan could bring victory? What's his game? Aside from angling to become United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom after he retires from military duty? (Just joking.)

Simon also asked Bill Roggio, one of the war's most reliable chroniclers, whether he thought McChrystal was simply voicing commands from above him. Bill replied that he didn't think so, that McChrystal seemed to like the role of the gentleman diplomat soldier. That would be a rather odd temperament for someone who commanded the JSOC for five years and excelled at black ops.

But whether McChrystal is speaking from his own brief or the Pentagon's his remarks comport with the history of ISAF 'negotiations' with Taliban. So the question is whether McChrystal is any good at herding cats, which is what commanding NATO troops amounts to.

The Italian Job

The scandal about the British plan to train Taliban fighters was followed by the Italian scandal, which possibly has an American component. The First Post; October 2009:

[...] The story involves 10 French troops who died at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2008 because the Italians, who had been on duty in the region before them, failed to pass on vital information. Namely, that they had been bribing the insurgents not to cause trouble and the region's reputation for being relatively safe was therefore false.

As a result, when the French moved into the Sarobi area near Kabul and the protection payments stopped, the Taliban struck.

As readers of The First Post may remember, the horrible ordeal of the French soldiers was fully exposed with the publication in Paris Match of a series of photos showing jubilant Taliban wearing the clothes and other trophies taken from the dead French soldiers.

The insurgents were pictured with men's weaponry, walkie-talkies and even personal effects like a wrist watch. The publication of the photos provoked outrage in France, which was only increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated.

Now, the actions of the Italian forces in the region have been revealed by the Times in a report today. The paper says the clandestine payments to local militia were not disclosed to the incoming French forces, but they have now been revealed by Western military officials.

The Times says that because they did not know of the payments the incoming French troops made "a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment".

The paper alleges that US intelligence officials found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had been buying off militants and in June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome even made a diplomatic protest to the Berlusconi Government over the tactic.

A fresh round of grieving has now begun in France in reaction to the news that their troops died needlessly.

It was not only the Taliban but also the Hezb-i-Islami faction which claimed responsibility for the attack -- meaning they also claimed responsibility for the murder and mutilation of the 10 French troops.

The Italian government hotly denied the charge, but the bribery was acknowledged by other officials. A question is why the U.S. government didn't directly inform the French about the phone intercepts -- or if it did, whether France's government passed along the warning to their ISAF command.

Taliban are not Viet Cong

The Italian bribery scandal folds into the story of widescale bribery payments to the Taliban so they won't attack ISAF supply routes. Shortly after The Nation published a jaw-dropping investigative piece on the bribery, Rufus Phillips told John Batchelor that the same thing happened during the Vietnam War, that U.S. troops paid Viet Cong not to attack U.S. supply convoys so "those people down in Washington" shouldn't work themselves into a lather about similar arrangements with the Taliban.

Beginning in 1954 Mr Phillips, who's a frequent guest on John's nightly Afghanistan War panel, "spent almost 10 years doing undercover and pacification work for the CIA and the U.S. Agency for International Development in South Vietnam," according to the publisher's review of his book about Vietnam, and he remained plugged into the Vietnam War throughout.(1) So I have no reason to dispute his contention.

However, I don't recall ever hearing that the Viet Cong shared proceeds from their moonlighting with people who plotted and carried off catastrophic attacks on the U.S. homeland. One problem with ISAF forces and their contractors bribing the Taliban to guard supply routes is that they never know whether they're inadvertently donating to Pakistan's military and al Qaeda. Yet evidentially the tack will be on the table during Thursday's summit in London. From yesterday's Q&A in the Financial Times about McChrystal's openness to negotiating with the Taliban:

Q: Can Taliban fighters simply be bribed?

A: Maybe. Western countries gathering in London for a conference on Thursday will pledge funds for a scheme outlined by Hamid Karzai, the president, to try to lure Taliban foot soldiers with job offers. Details remain sketchy. Insurgents may simply accept the incentives then return to the fight. The central problem remains: the Taliban may simply believe it can outlast the west.

Even assuming that the Taliban could be bribed, and that they'd stick to their agreement, this does not address the biggest issues. The overriding issue is how to prevent the Taliban from using force of arms to take over Kabul and launch a massacre of non-Taliban Afghanis if U.S. forces decamp.

The world's most hunted man warns America

During a 60 Minutes episode, which unfortunately got a small audience because it aired over the Christmas holiday weekend (December 27, 2009), Lara Logan got a rare chance to interview Afghan Intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh. From a partial transcript of the interview in the comment section of Small Wars Journal:

Asked what he thinks would happen in Afghanistan if the U.S. decided to withdraw, Saleh told Logan, "I am very clear on what will happen. First, a massacre campaign will start. The human cost in this country will easily be up to two million people killed, at least. It will not be a big news for Afghanistan. We are used to tragedies, throughout our history. But the cost for you will be bigger."

Since Saleh is the man responsible for Afghanistan's security, he has a more immediate concern: what's happening across the border in Pakistan.

"Al Qaeda and Taliban are now headquartered in Pakistan. The bulk of people we kill, neutralize or capture in Afghanistan are the expendable part of the terror network. The leadership is there, and they are not feeling the heat, apart from these occasional drone attacks," Saleh explained.

Although Pakistan's government would deny it, it is Saleh, not Osama bin Laden, who tops their 'Most Wanted' list. To listen to Amrullah Saleh and study his young face (in 2004, at the age of 32, he became what is surely the world's youngest intelligence chief) and thousand-year old eyes, is to understand why.

You've heard the expression, "A shadow passed over my grave?" That is what it's like to hear Saleh talk about the Taliban and Islamism, which he refers to as "the forces of darkness," in the interview. He has escaped death at the hands of those forces so many times there's a dryness in his voice when he estimates the number of Afghanis who will be murdered if the Taliban return to power. Yet Saleh is under no illusions that the majority of Taliban are anything more than puppets.

Controlled Chaos

From an August 12, 2008 interview he gave Susanne Koelbl for Germany's Spiegel Online:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Saleh, is it possible the Taliban could win with its insurgency in Afghanistan?

Saleh: We have a lot of security problems, there is a lot of violence. But this is a violence unleashed with the help of Pakistan. They want to pull the brakes on us in order to hinder the coming elections. Afghanistan itself is not the source of the problem.

SPIEGEL: Who are these fighters who are not only killing Afghan and Western security forces, but also predominantly innocent civilians? And who is deploying them?

Saleh: The tribal agencies of Pakistan, like Bajaur and North and South Waziristan, are kept by the government as a strategic pool of fighters. From there, fundamentalist warriors are sent to fight in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

SPIEGEL: So you're saying the government in Islamabad has absolutely no intention of putting a stop to this militant movement?

Saleh: The international community has often asked them to stop allowing fighters to infiltrate into (Afghanistan) from the tribal areas. The answer from Pakistan is that they do not control the situation. When the Americans offered to fight the fighters themselves, the Pakistanis rejected them, saying you can’t go in, we are a sovereign state. The true reason behind this is that Islamabad is providing the militant groups with ammunition and training.

SPIEGEL: What is Pakistan seeking to achieve?

Saleh: It has always tried to make sure that Afghanistan remains on the level of a backward country, as well as to isolate us and hinder any kind of contact with the West. In the 1980s, when the mujahedeen were fighting against the Soviet occupiers, Pakistan had considerable influence over large parts of Afghan politics and Islamic Pakistan sought to establish its hegemony in the region. But now we are back, we are building up our country, we are unified and we are working to strengthen our sense of national pride. That makes our neighbors nervous.

SPIEGEL: Pakistan has feared its ability to hold itself together as a nation since its very founding. And even today, Afghanistan refuses to recognize the disputed border, the Durand Line. Wouldn’t that step move Afghanistan closer to peace with Pakistan?

Saleh: We have never crossed that line.

SPIEGEL: What proof do you have that the government in Pakistan is behind the attacks in Afghanistan?

Saleh: In 2008 alone, according to our very conservative estimate, the Taliban have probably fired 30 million rounds from their Kalashnikovs. Where did they get their weapons and munitions? Can you go to Russia or China today and say, "Hey, I'm a member of the Taliban, please send hundreds of AK-47s and weapons to my village." Is that possible? No. It's the Pakistani army that is providing them.

SPIEGEL: Those are serious accusations.

Saleh: It is a fact. The Pakistani army is a very disciplined force, and I respect that. And there are no rogue elements in the army as is often claimed.

SPIEGEL: Who are the masterminds behind the scenes?

Saleh: How much patience do you have? The army leadership and the Pakistani establishment. We have piles and piles of evidence to support this.

SPIEGEL: Do you have details?

Saleh: For years we discreetly passed intelligence information about training camps, addresses, telephone numbers and names of terrorists groups on to Pakistan. But they didn’t act. There was no meaningful response. We have arrested many suicide bombers shortly before they could kill themselves and others. They frankly told us how they have been trained in Pakistan and by whom.

SPIEGEL: Can you cite some examples?

Saleh: In Khost we arrested a man just a few minutes before he was able complete his mission. He was trained by a commander named Nazir in Wana in the tribal areas. Just before, the Pakistani government had signed peace deal with the same commander and only short time later he sent a truckload of suicide bombers to kill international forces. The Pakistanis have always claimed they couldn't find Commander Nazir. But how did he sign the peace deal then? Did they e-mail him?

SPIEGEL: But that’s not proof that Islamabad is commanding the insurgency. Is it possible that Pakistan perhaps long ago lost control over the border areas?

Saleh: Nobody lost control. Pakistan is staging controlled chaos in order to undermine Afghanistan's development. The Pakistani army is very strong and when the government has achieved its aim, it will immediately take control again of the tribal areas.

SPIEGEL: In northern Afghanistan German soldiers are getting attacked increasingly often. Last week a suicide bomber blew himself up in an attack that took place between Kunduz and Pul-i-Khumri. How are these attacks that are taking place far from the border to Pakistan organized?

Saleh: Terrorist elements are ordering Afghans to attack our army units and ISAF convoys or to burn schools. The perpetrators make videos to prove what they have done and once they provide this proof, they are rewarded with money from Pakistan. In the Kunduz area, the plotters of these acts are the Taliban commanders Mullah Rustam and Mullah Salam. Both are Afghans, but they live with their families in Pakistan. If the two would be permanently in Afghanistan, we would have caught or killed them or brought them to justice. Here’s another example: Why is the Taliban commander of Ghormach --

SPIEGEL: A hard-fought district on the edge of the area under German command in the north --

Saleh: -- whose name is Abdul Rahman Haqqani, currently being given medical treatment at a hospital in Peshawar after he was heavily wounded in recent fighting? Why? It's because Pakistan is his base. [...]

I think Saleh got a voice in a German publication at that time because of the July 7, 2008 Taliban bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, which Indian and U.S. investigators traced to Pakistan's military. From The New York Times, August 1, 2008:

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.
The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.[...]

And how has this stunning revelation been processed in the United States? Well, there have been leaks to the press about secret meetings in which U.S. officials tell Pakistan's government to cut it out, and this zinger from Robert D. Kaplan in response to news that the ISI was behind the bombing of the Indian embassy:

"You would think that the Bush administration would be coaching the Karzai government not to antagonize Pakistan unnecessarily by cozying up to India."

Bad Karzai! Bad Dubya! Scaring Pakistan into naughty behavior!

The Bridge on the River Kwai, updated

David Lean's film is the tale of Colonel Nicholson, a British POW, who keeps his fellow prisoners' morale up by getting them to fully commit their energy and ingenuity to building a sturdy bridge for their Japanese captors, then gets so carried away with the project he warns the Japanese commander when he discovers the bridge has been wired with dynamite.

That, in a nutshell, is the story of the U.S. government's involvement with Pakistan. If thousands of Americans hadn't been killed and maimed because of this nuttiness it would be funny, if your taste in humor runs to black comedy.

At least Nicholson comes to his senses in the final moment of his life, crying, "What have I done?"

No such cry rises from the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress. Instead:

NATO has just rewarded the British for their duplicity in Afghanistan by handing Mark Sedwill, Britain's ambassador to Kabul, what will be one of the most powerful positions in Kabul: coordinating most of the reconstruction and development work across Afghanistan. (Someday, maybe a century from now, Americans will feel their way toward the discovery that there's no such thing as 'teamwork' to the imperialist mind.)

Karzai threw in the towel the other day and took himself to Istanbul, where Pakistan had conveyed a summit of eight nations to "foil Indian designs of gaining a foothold on Afghan soil." The other attendees were "China's foreign minister, Iran's vice-president, Russia's deputy foreign minister, Britain's foreign minister and the deputy to US special envoy Richard Holbrooke. Officials from Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Nato and the European Union were also in Istanbul."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Stanley McChrystal, and other American attendees at Thursday's London summit are bracing themselves for the possibility that Karzai's speech before the gathering will make a huge pitch to the Taliban by accusing the ISAF of being baby killers.

(The last item explains the timing of the 'leaked' publication on Monday of the entire contents of the two cables sent by the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, last November, which were also leaked. The abbreviated versions of the cables expressed serious concerns about Karzai's leadership. The decision to allow The New York Times to publish the complete cables, just a few days ahead of the London summit, is a preemptive strike -- in case Karzai says the same things at the summit that he did to al Jazeera several days ago. See the above link.)

Here I find myself recalling Major Clipton, the British medical officer POW who in the final scene of Lean's film comes upon the bodies of Nicholson, the Japanese POW camp commander, the American soldier killed trying to dynamite the bridge, the wreckage of the Japanese train and the matchsticks left from the dynamited bridge that Nicholson died trying to defend. All Clipton can say is, "Madness. Madness."

McChrystal's Choice

He can ruin a fine military career and risk facing courts martial by ordering his troops to stand down until Washington does something about Pakistan. Or he can muddle through in the face of madness: continue to send his troops to be slaughtered by Taliban under the direction of Pakistani intelligence officers who know the ISAF's every move in advance.

There is a third choice, provided McChrystal realizes he's not Sophie and SecDef Robert Gates remembers General Curtis LeMay's dictum that you shouldn't go to war unless you're prepared to use every means to win.

McChrystal could recommend to General David Petraeus and Gates that they supplement their COIN-centric approach to Afghanistan with one he's had tremendous experience with, and tremendous success. That would be the black ops approach former CIA officer Henry Crumpton suggested in his interview with Lara Logan for 60 Minutes, which took up the other part of the December 29 segment I mentioned above.

In 2001 Crumpton, along with other CIA operatives and a handful of Special Forces, led a rag-tag army of Afghan warriors to victory against al Qaeda and the Pak-military backed Taliban. If not for Operation Evil Airlift, just eight American men would have masterminded the decapitation of a monster.

And so I return to the beginning -- to Mark Safranski's discussion of the limits of counterinsurgency tactics. A close reading of his essay makes it clear that while counterinsurgency can include covert operations, black ops are not COIN -- and that COIN is not predicated on troop size. To say otherwise would be an attempt to portray the OSS as a COIN operation.

If the Pentagon can untangle their thinking about COIN, even at the Eleventh Hour it would be possible for the U.S. to turn around the military situation in Afghanistan and in spite of NATO.

The catch is that going through Door Number Three might mean that McChrystal would need to hand off much of the responsibility of his command to his deputy, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez (Deputy Commander, ISAF and U.S. forces in Afghanistan).

Or Bob Gates could bite the bullet and replace the top U.S. command in Afghanistan so that McChrystal would be completely free to do what he does best. McChrystal probably wouldn't get any credit until many years after his death when documents were declassified. But he'd go to his maker secure in the knowledge he'd done everything in his power to honor the sacrifices of Americans who fought and died in Afghanistan.

See also Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 1, in which I address how the U.S. made Pakistan into a client state, and the horrific consequences across decades.

1) The publisher's review also notes:

Phillips details how the legendary Edward G. Lansdale helped the South Vietnamese gain and consolidate their independence between 1954 and 1956, and how this later changed to a reliance on American conventional warfare with its highly destructive firepower:

Ah, but it's the adventures of the CIA in Indochina prior to 1954 that are of riveting interest, as I mentioned in Part 2 of Alden Pyle in Pakistan ....
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This entry is crossposted at RBO with some very evocative illustrations. Thank you, Brenda.

The cavalry has arrived: Mark Safranski takes on COIN; Pundita takes on Pakistan

"Unfortunately for the COINdinistas, as George Kennan discovered to his dismay, to father a doctrine does not mean that you can control how others interpret and make use of it." -- Mark Safranski

In The Post-COIN Era is Here, a new essay that is close to epochal, Mark Safranski argues that counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine has been abused and misapplied, and most notably in the course of the Obama administration's quest for a magic bullet in Afghanistan.

The essay couldn't come at a more important juncture in the Long War; it's a 'must read' for policy makers, and for every American who's trying to understand how the Pentagon is approaching the war. Readers who aren't steeped in defense issues will have no trouble following Mark's discussion because he begins with an overview of the phoenix-like rise of COIN from its Vietnam War ashes, which was given a big boost by U.S. successes against the insurgency in the Iraq theater of war.

Afghanistan is not Iraq, however. But because on paper COIN is cheaper and generally less bloody than traditional warfare, and because it has a smaller footprint than an 'overwhelming force' military approach, what is supposed to be an operational tool has been elevated to the status of war strategy. As such, it's appealed to the Obama administration and to Democrats trying the balancing act of supporting Obama's decisions on Afghanistan while maintaining an anti-war stance.

The problem is that COIN has not worked in Afghanistan; my view is that this is chiefly because there's not a classic insurgency in the country. Many of the insurgents are Pakistani soldiers in beards and baggy pants, as Rajeev Srinivasan succinctly put it.

Yet to confront COIN's limitations also means taking on its near-cultic following, both here and abroad. (After spending years smirking at America's COIN approach in Iraq, the British military flipped the other way and now has its own contingent of COIN worshippers.) So, along with praise, I advise Mark to dig a deep foxhole because he could get strafed by the Faithful. And yet, as he observes in closing, "We're all COINdinistas now." His intention is not to damn COIN but to save it from gross misapplications that will once again get it tossed in the Pentagon's dustbin.

All this leaves the question of what COIN should be replaced with in Afghanistan, or at least how it's to be augmented. Washington is not the bastion of intellectual foment, even in the best of economic times. So while the full solution to the problem of Afghanistan resides in a new 'grand strategy' that's yet to emerge, Mark argues that the bottom line will have much to do with shaping ongoing U.S. defense strategy, and that this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I agree to the extent that grim fiscal realities in the USA will greatly impact the U.S. prosecution of the war. Yet somewhere between grand strategy and budget-driven ad hoc decisions is common sense.

I believe the United States continues to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey in Afghanistan because the 'Get Russia' crowd wants to hold onto Pakistan as a U.S. ally; this, on the chance the Soviet Union will reconstitute someday. When this argument is cornered by logic, the Get Russia crowd hauls out the excuse that we can't let Pakistan's nukes fall into the hands of terrorists.

Does that crowd read the papers? The nukes are already in the hands of terrorists; the terrorists are Pakistan's military and its intelligence branch.

It's time to remove the blindfold and acknowledge the destructiveness of this silly game, which has hurt Pakistan's democratic reformers as much its neighbors and the ISAF troops. If Washington's political class -- the one that's still listening to the Get Russia crowd -- shows just that much common sense, the intractable problems the United States face in Afghanistan will vanish.

That's not to say every problem will be solved, but it will chop the remaining ones to human size. Right now the United States is trying to fight the weight of history in Afghanistan and just digging a deeper hole -- and making the hole even deeper by misapplying COIN tactics that were used in Iraq.

The centerpiece of COIN in Afghanistan is building up the Afghanistan National Army. But former British Army officer Bob Churcher minces this tactic. His solution to Afghanistan -- find a resolution to Indian Kashmir -- is off the beam (and a perennial affectation of the British government) but he's giving the straight goods when he analyzes the ANA:

[...] Made up from the recombined remnants of Northern Alliance militias, held together by British and American money and training, the army has nowhere near the numbers needed nor claimed. Drug addiction and demoralization are rampant among its soldiers.
Most importantly, the ANA is a largely Tajik army. Tajiks are the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and are based in the north of the country. The Pashtun are the largest group and dominate the south. The Taliban draws its support from the Pashtun. Tajik and Pashtuns are bitter rivals.

In the eyes of Tajik leaders, Karzai (a Pashtun) isn't "their" president, and this isn't "their" war, nor are Tajiks too keen on getting killed in it, as many US soldiers have noticed.

Even if Tajik forces were willing to fight and replace NATO soldiers, sending the Tajik dominated ANA into the south to control the Pashtun would not amount to a "national army" fighting "its own" war. The Pashtun would and do see these Tajiks as invaders.

In short, this is not the force that will beat the Taliban. [...]

There is more bad news, which Churcher doesn't address in his critique. Illiteracy is so widespread in Afghanistan that a recent nose count turned up only 200 Afghanis who were capable of running a modern government bureau.

Once again this is ignoring differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had a large literate bureaucracy (and large educated expat community eager to return to Iraq) that while needing modernization was capable of retooling in fairly quick time for the modern era.

The Pakistan military, through its Taliban proxies, made sure that Afghanistan couldn't produce a government in Kabul strong enough to stand against Islamabad in the wake of Russia's pullout. To accomplish this they deployed the same tactic they did against East Pakistanis many years earlier: they murdered off Afghanistan's educated class: the teachers, academics, civil servants.

So it's gong to take a generation of hand-holding before Afghanistan builds up an adequate pool of educated Afghani civil servants.

These are the realities, which call for the U.S. to shove Pakistan back across their side of the line. This requires a major change in the U.S. approach to Pakistan. How to distance the USA from Pakistan without setting off a shooting war?

Again, common sense applies. If you were foolish enough to break the cardinal rule never to become best friends with a co-worker, don't compound your error once you realize your bosom buddy is cutting you up behind your back. Don't stand on the conference room table and announce your former best friend is actually the devil's handmaiden. As you didn't become best friends in a day, don't try to scale Everest in one afternoon. Just stop attending the co-worker's backyard barbeques and don't invite him to yours. And in countless other ways signal if he keeps attacking you behind your back you'll reciprocate.

In the same manner, don't keep handing Pakistan's military a list of grievances. And stop trying to condition their behavior by leaking damaging information about them to the press. That is just making them lose face, and that's making them even angrier. Instead:

1. Call off the UAV attacks on the Pakistan side, which are only angering the Pakistani public.

2. Quietly roll up the CIA station in Islamabad; stop sharing intelligence with them and stop asking them for intelligence. I know this will be met with protests that the Pakistanis are the only U.S. recourse for HUMINT in that part of the world because few Western CIA officers can blend in. No they aren't the only recourse, and the CIA needs to take better advantage of another obvious recourse.

3. Behind closed doors, tell the truth. Explain to Pakistan's military command that since the discovery that Afghanistan is filthy rich in key natural resources, and given that every government on the planet will make a beeline for the resources once the global economy picks up, the United States plans to stay on in Afghanistan for the next thousand years to help play traffic cop.

A rhetorical flourish would be to add that given the long-term U.S. commitment to Afghanistan, there's no need for Pakistan's military to worry anymore that India will invade Afghanistan. That is not a real worry but it's one the Pak military has been trotting out to rationalize their continued support for tribes that attack ISAF troops.

As to what to tell the Americans who still believe the 2011 withdrawal date that Obama gave -- there's no need to tell them anything. Oil, natural gas, copper, iron, you name it; it's there, in Afghanistan, waiting to be developed. China's government is already mining a copper lode. So just start leaking reports to The New York Times and Washington Post that Afghanistan is the world's Cinderella nation. The American public will get the picture, which is already known to Islamabad, New Delhi, Moscow, Tehran, Riyadh -- and, of course, Kabul.

(If Afghanistan can rather quickly develop its natural resources, does this mean they could afford to buy themselves an off-the-shelf bureaucracy manned by foreign contractors? Yes, but that's getting ahead of things.)

4. Quietly 'delay' all aid to Pakistan. Don't say why, and don't lecture them. They're adults; they'll know why it's being done. After a few weeks of silence, mutter to a high-ranking officer in the Pakistan army that it would be nice if the ISAF and their contractors could get supplies through Pakistan without having to pay a toll to Taliban.

5. Yank Richard Holbrooke. I don't suppose he would strike most Americans as a bigot but my Sahib-0-Meter is set to hair trigger. There are subtle giveaways that Mr Holbrooke has contempt for people in that part of the world. Because of this he substitutes a patronizing attitude for real dialogue. One giveaway is his public use of the conflation, "Afpakia," and unnecessary insistence in public that he was the first to use the term -- even though that's not true.

6. As to a substitute for Mr Holbrooke -- If I could wave a wand, I would impose on (Ret.) General David D. McKiernan to act as special envoy to Pakistan. Yes, this is the same General McKiernan SecDef Bob Gates fired to make way for two COIN-oriented commanders in Afghanistan.

And find a career foreign service officer to act as special envoy to Afghanistan; the idea here is to build up a long-term relationship with Kabul that outlasts a couple U.S. presidential elections.

These moves would irritate the Pakistan military, which viewed McKiernan as too sympathetic to Hamid Karzai when McKiernan was in command in Afghanistan. That would be the point: another signal that the U.S. was writing a new chapter in relations with Pakistan.

In any event, disentangle from the ungainly position of having one envoy deal with both governments, which means the envoy has to expend too much effort trying to make a show of not playing favorites, and making too many opportunities for serious gaffes.

7. Never again send a high-ranking U.S. military figure, such as General David Petraeus, to Pakistan. Never again send the Secretary of Defense. This advice has to do with Pakistani society; believe me when I say that such visits are perceived as slavish.

8. Never again send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Pakistan. She showed extraordinary courage by going there, but her welcome to Pakistan was a horrific bombing of a market that was exclusively reserved for women and children. Only someone who is studiously naive would believe the ISI had no foreknowledge of the attack.

One must know some things about Pakistani society to understand why Clinton's visit was seen as a very deliberate insult by the U.S. government, particularly after her highly symbolic tribute in India to victims of the Mumbai massacre.

The same things explain why Benazir Bhutto's in-your-face politicking in Rawalpindi, the bastion of Pakistani masculinity, got her killed after she signaled that she and not the military would run things in Pakistan once she was in office.

The difference is that Benazir knew what she was risking and believed she could pull it off. President Obama did not know what he was risking by sending Clinton to Pakistan. If he didn't learn the lesson after studying photographs of the carnage at Mina Bazaar, he should be forcefully told to sit on his fantasies about Islamic culture in Pakistan, which is not Indonesia.

From here forward do let's try to get as few innocent Pakistanis slaughtered as possible, eh?

In all dealings with Pakistan, the U.S. military, intelligence, political and diplomatic establishments should be wise and bow to certain realities because the U.S. objective is to stabilize Afghanistan, not reform Pakistan's society. Any questions about the fine points of the realities -- ask India's Ambassador to the United States.

9. Send signals to Pakistani tribes that are furious at the United States for supporting Pakistan's regime that the support is being scaled back. Tell two tribal leaders who really want the U.S. to stay on in Afghanistan that we're there for the long haul and be sure to finish with, "Now please don't tell anyone."

10. Don't expect a miraculous turnaround by Pakistan's military within a couple weeks. Do expect rage and threats, and a spike in attacks on ISAF troops. But just keep repeating steps 1 through 9 and don't back down. If they get really nasty remind them that two can play at the beard and baggy pants pantomime, and start giving donations to tribes that want to overthrow Pakistan's government.

However, much of the current situation is Pakistan's military seeing how far they can push the envelope, then pushing more each time Washington pretends they're not already way over the line.

There are tactics that obviously follow from the above ones, but that's enough to get the ball rolling. As for al Qaeda: If you just keep falling back on common sense, they might be so stunned the Americans have wised up they'll head for somewhere else. If not, first things first: restructure the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Then see what's left of al Qaeda and the insurgency in Afghanistan.

And be sure to read Mark Safranski's essay.
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This entry is cross-posted at RBO.

Haiti Crisis: Attention Somali pirates! Put your money where your mouth is! Call toll-free 1-877-99-HAITI to donate!

Brenda Elliott at RBO linked this morning to an article in Australia's Green Left Weekly, which reports: "Spokespeople for the so-called Somali pirates have expressed willingness to part of their loot captured from transnational boats to Haiti," then goes on to note that the report is translated from its source, an organization called Aporea.

From the above quote my guess would be that English is not the translator's first language. But ever the optimist I refuse to buy into the notion that some hack for Hugo Chavez made up the story from whole cloth. Those who don't have quite my sunny disposition can read Brenda's interesting deconstruction of Aporea.

For my part I put out a challenge to Somalia's pirates, which I base on these quotes from the Aussie rag:

A Somali “pirate” spokesperson said: “The humanitarian aid to Haiti can not be controlled by the United States and European countries; they have no moral authority to do so.

“They are the ones pirating mankind for many years.”

Right on, brothers and sisters! It's about time a few of the world's downtrodden got sick and tired of the real pirates throwing around billions in aid! Best news I've had all year, if you're taking up the burden of donating to the neediest.

People of Somalia, YOU can make a difference NOW! Text, email, or phone your tax-free donation to the relief organizations now working in Haiti to save lives. They also accept checks and money orders. If you can't figure out which of the organizations to give to, go to the Hope for Haiti Now website for insight.

If Somalia's pirates prefer to donate supplies and personally ferry them to ports in Haiti or the Dominican Republic -- blankets, food, bottled water, solar-powered flashlights, medicine and surgical equipment are but a few of the things that are desperately needed.

And if you happen to come across a container ship loaded with rebar, well, I'm not going to tell you to hijack but rebar in large quantities is also on Haiti's 'Must Have' list.

I'll close with a plea to Green Left Weekly staff: Say, do you think you could pitch in and donate five dollars, in the name of your publication, to Haiti's earthquake victims? Thank you very much.

Glaciergate, and would you rather be blown up by al Qaeda or have lunch with a Hindu?

I interrupt my coverage of the Haiti crisis to bring news from my favorite Hindu Nationalist, the very smart and well-informed Rajeev Srinivasan, who is right 99 percent of the time (okay; sometimes only 97.5 percent) in his analyses of Pakistan and the present government in New Delhi, both of which he detests.

He's also not a fan of India's JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) so he was delighted when I sent him RBO's January 17 Glaciergate post, which I crossposted) because it makes unfavorable mention of the research of one Syed Hasnain, "a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi."

Rajeev has been avidly pursuing the story ever since. Now he's snapped up a U.K. Telegraph report by Christopher Booker, datelined yesterday, titled: Pachauri: the real story behind the Glaciergate scandal. Glaciergate, for those who are new to the story, is the first spinoff scandal of Climategate. Booker writes:

I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed "Glaciergate" – the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.

What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general. Furthermore, the claim – now disowned by Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC – has helped TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America's leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU. [...]

I don't know which is more fun to read, the rest of the report or Rajeev's comments about it -- although I suppose most of his observations would seem like hieroglyphs to Americans who know zilch about Indian matters. However, there's no better time for Washington to start paying a little more attention to what Indians think and a little less to what Pakistanis think. Even if this means official Washington sitting on its prejudice against Hindus.

Incidentally, sometimes I wonder if the U.S. Congress would rather be blown up by terrorists working with Pakistan's military than have lunch with a Hindu. If you think I'm taking it over the top, do you know anything about (Ret.) Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed, who was head of the intelligence branch of Pakistan's military at the time of 9/11? And the response of the 9/11 Commission to requests to investigate the financing of the 9/11 plot? If not, maybe you should find out.

Hope for Haiti Now music telethon: People around the world dig deep into their pockets and donate record $58 million

This is the first and probably last time I'll report on a telethon; I don't like them, particularly the ones in which lefty musicians who know nothing about the realities of trying to help the world's poorest get preachy. But George Clooney, who started the ball rolling for the Hope for Haiti Now telethon and has overseen it, is very hip. He was clearly aware of criticism of earlier aid concerts; last night's fundraiser, televised globally, reflected that.

No preaching, no grandstanding, no applause. Just two hours of mostly great music (okay, "great" depending on your taste in pop music) interspersed with brief, inspiring anecdotes about survivors of the Haiti earthquake and a few shots of Hollywood biggies at the phone banks chatting with donors.

In fact the telethon was maybe a little too low-key; a major 'selling point' for donating wasn't mentioned: 100 percent of the donations goes to aid agencies already working on the ground in Haiti. There are no 'back-end' fees being taken out of the proceeds; everyone connected with the effort waived them.

See the Hope for Haiti Now website for an extensive FAQ about how the fundraising was done and where funds are going; it's a top-drawer operation.

As to whether I actually watched the telethon, yes, and I even liked a few of the performances. However, I can't tell you the name of the performers I liked best; by a process of elimination I'm guessing it was Slash with a bunch of other musicians around him, although I've never seen Slash before -- if I heard him years ago with Guns 'N Roses, I wouldn't recognize him if I tripped over him.

They did their improvisation on New Orleans Creole-style funeral procession music. Just as with the street music it was heavy on brass instruments. I can't recall the lead singer's lyrics but the band had me on my feet dancing. To me it was the most authentic of all the musical tributes to Haiti, even the two done by Haitian performers, because it seemed so spontaneous. The performance reminded me of the joyful singing street processions in Port au Prince the day after the quake. Maybe that was the band's inspiration.

But the music mavens at The New York Times and Los Angeles Times didn't even mention the performance and I can't find discussion of it anywhere on the music blogosphere at this time, so what do I know?

CNN, 7:35 PM ET:

Los Angeles, California -- Friday night's [two hour] star-studded "Hope for Haiti" telethon has raised a record-breaking $58 million, with more donations continuing to pour in from around the world, the benefit's organizers announced Saturday.

The preliminary figure is a record for donations made by the public through a disaster relief telethon, according to a news release from telethon organizers.

Additionally, the "Hope for Haiti Now" album, a compilation of the night's musical performances made available on Apple's iTunes, was the No. 1 album in 18 countries Saturday. Sales figures for iTunes are still being calculated, and the preliminary figure of $58 million does not include donations from corporations or large private donors.

People will be able to make donations to "Hope for Haiti" via phone, Web, text messaging and regular mail for the next six months, according to the news release.[...]

Haiti Crisis: Reportedly only 10 percent of aid getting to Haitians

"Edmond Mulet, acting head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, said on Friday that coordination in delivering aid in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere had improved and was getting better every day."

The report about continued aid-delivery snafus was at 6:05 PM ET tonight, from Fox Cable News correspondent Rick Levanthal in Port au Prince. He told the Fox anchor that from what he had been hearing today only 10 percent of aid was getting through to Haitians.

He didn't elaborate on where the bottlenecks were -- whether inside Haiti or because of backlogs in delivery to the country. He only mentioned the many obstacles still on the roadways -- concrete rubble, and so on.

Over at CNN, at about the same time Levanthal was reporting, Wolf Blitzer was re-airing a report from late last night from Sanjay Gupta, who said there were still bottlenecks at the airport. So I assume the situation is basically unchanged from last night if Wolf decided to run with the same report.

I understand that the main seaport and airport are hobbled (although the airport is probably taking more flights since the U.S. military gussied it up than before the earthquake). And I understand about the road blockages. The roads were a mess even before the earthquake; many are just dirt tracks. And I understand about the normal snafus when so many aid agencies are trying to mesh gears. But 10 percent distribution of aid already on the ground in Haiti would be unacceptable.

A correspondent, who is very well informed, told me that the United Nations is to blame in this situation and that an agreement signed yesterday between the United Nations and the United States is "worthless." (See Reuters report below.)

The agreement came the day after Sanjay Gupta's investigative report for CNN about aid delivery delays.

I would not be surprised to learn that the UN is being obstructive or worse. However: If a man robs you, that's his fault. If he robs you a second time, you're both to blame. Third time, it's your fault.

In the same manner, I'm having trouble accepting that President Obama's administration can't arm-twist UN officials about this issue. If UN Ambassador Susan Rice doesn't want to get Ban-ki Moon upset, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or even President Obama has to do the job for her.

I am now on a very short fuse about the situation; this, after receiving a Bloomberg report that the UN has an "emergency" summit planned for January 25 "to coordinate aid for earthquake-stricken Haiti."

When you read further, this emergency summit is to discuss "long-term reconstruction and arrangements for a donor conference to be held in March, the UN said in a statement."

Uh, how about an emergency summit right now to discuss problems with the short-term aid?

With that off my chest here's the Reuters report:

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The United States and United Nations signed an agreement on Friday clarifying the world body's responsibility for coordinating the international relief efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

The agreement comes after U.N. officials, aid workers and diplomats had complained privately about tensions between the United Nations and U.S. military in the early days after the Jan. 12 earthquake, as governments scrambled to get urgently needed aid to the poor Caribbean nation.

"This agreement formalizes the working relationship between the United States and the United Nations on the ground in Haiti, and ensures that this cooperation will continue in the challenging days and weeks ahead," U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said in a statement.

With an enlarged maximum strength of 12,651 troops and police, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, is responsible for helping Haitian authorities maintain "a secure and stable environment," the agreement says.

"The United Nations is coordinating the international response to the Haitian earthquake," it says.

But it makes clear that the Haitian government has primary responsibility for the response to the earthquake, security and in leading the recovery and reconstruction process.

The agreement also says the U.S. military, which has over 13,000 military personnel on the ground or offshore in Haiti, will not don blue helmets but operate under U.S. command.

It says the U.S. government commits to supporting relief work the United Nations says should have priority.

[...]

Edmond Mulet, acting head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, said on Friday that coordination in delivering aid in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere had improved and was getting better every day.

Haiti Crisis: CDC, other health agencies gear up to avert feared 'second wave' disaster in Haiti

From the same Miami Herald report that broke the news today that the search and rescue effort was still on in Haiti, and which I thought important enough to merit its own post. I've added my commentary after the quotes:

On Saturday, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization and USAID established a public health surveillance system to begin tracking -- with the aim of preventing -- emerging health threats in some of the 600 camps that are now housing those without homes.

Public health experts said they fear an outbreak of disease such as measles could cut through the camps rapidly, causing more deaths.

``It's one thing to save someone immediately after the earthquake with surgery, but we don't want them to die two weeks later from bad water,'' said Lise Martel, a public health advisor for the CDC. ``It's not as dramatic as broken bones, but we've got to think long term what we can do to make sure nothing spreads.''

The team has designed assessment forms designed to alert them immediately to potential problems -- and provide information about emerging threats.

``The initial focus had been acute care, trauma and hospital care, but we have people living in settlements and we need to know the conditions,'' said CDC medical epidemiologist Muireann Brennan. ``The next step is an assessment of all those, how are the conditions, the shelter, the food and the water.''

Working with Haiti's Ministry of Health, the groups have identified 31 hospitals and large clinics which will collect and report the data to the CDC. Among the incidences of diseases the survelliance system will monitor is dengue fever, malaria, outbreaks of diarahea that could point to more serious diseases, pneumonia and tyhphoid fever.

Public health authorities would be alerted immediately to a single incident of a communicable disease like measles, but would also track spikes or clusters in ailments such as direha to identify patterns that could signal a problem with a water or food source.

``The bigger the numbers in some of these places, the more of an opportunity to spread disease with people living so close together,'' Brennan said. ``These 31 will serve as sentinel sites, alerting us to problems.''

Brennan said there had been a similar public health system in place in Haiti, but like most of the government, it took a hit in the earthquake.

You might roll your eyes at the bureaucratic delay of designing an assessment form but in this case a comprehensive form is important, given that volunteers who don't necessarily have medical or public health credentials will be tasked with the gigantic job of monitoring for disease outbreaks.

Dr Sanjay Gupta is not as concerned as some others about a 'second wave' hitting the survivors and I'll pass along his opinion in a later post. But it is a great relief to me (and I'm sure to Dr Gupta, as well) that public health officials are moving fast to get ahead of any infectious-disease outbreak in Haiti's overcrowded tent cities.

The Wall Street Journal's Betsy McKay reported on the issue in her January 22 article Disease, Malnutrition Risks Grow in Haiti and during her interview with John Batchelor on the same day. See the 77 WABC radio website podcast archives for the interview.

Haiti Crisis: Israeli Defense Force rocks; U.S. Senator Bill Frist, M.D. lists specific medical supplies urgently needed

Thanks to Brenda at RBO for both reports:

Please see Senator Frist's blog for the list of cricially-needed medical/ surgical supplies and where to send them.

I note the Israeli Defense Force, at least of the time of their update (23:09 today) is under the impression, along with a great many others, that Haiti's government called off the search and rescue effort. Boy oh boy. There is gonna be a flap about the UN announcement yesterday that the effort was called off. It's still on, according to the latest news.

Anyoo, the IDF is staying on Haiti and they have been doing very practical and urgent work in addition to medical relief and search and rescue. And trust the Israelis to zero in on the critical importance of clean water:

Update on IDF Activities in Haiti, 23 January 2010

The IDF aid delegation in Haiti will continue to provide assistance and support in various ways to the local population. Today, three water towers capable of holding up to 12 thousand liters of water each, were built by the delegation’s representatives in order to supply the residents with a water infrastructure.

Shelters and tents have also been constructed in order to provide refuge for those who have lost their homes. Civil engineers in The Israeli delegation in Haiti also opened central traffic routes that had been blocked in the aftermath of the earthquake.
These missions were enabled through the computer analysis of aerial photographs of the area of Port- Au-Prince, stricken by the earthquake, providing real time situation analysis.

Thus far, 720 people have been treated at the IDF field hospital, 233 life-saving surgeries were performed, 10 babies were delivered, two of which in Caesarean births. Most of the patients currently being cared for in the field hospital are considered to be in moderate condition.

Today, 15 patients from the Israeli field hospital in Haiti will be transferred to the U.S. Navy hospital ship “Comfort” in order to receive further medical treatment. This transfer was coordinated with the American delegation in Haiti. Additionally, two premature babies delivered in the Israeli field hospital will be transferred to a local hospital later today.

The Haitian government announced on Friday, January 22, 2010, that the rescue efforts in the country have officially ended. The IDF rescue teams have began to operate based on specific indications or calls for help.

Also on Friday, a 22-year-old Haitian man was saved by the Israeli Search and Rescue team from the ruins of a three-story building, near the presidential residence in the southern side of the city. The rescue was enabled due to information received by Population Management officers from the Home Front Command directed to the location of the trapped man by local residents. The man was transferred to the IDF field hospital in stable condition in order to receive further medical treatment.

On Sunday, the Home Front Command will conduct a status assessment regarding the IDF’s future activity in Haiti.

The Israeli field hospital was established in order to provide a first response to the citizens of Haiti until the arrival of additional medical forces capable of dealing with the magnitude of the situation.

Haiti Crisis Breaking News: Search for survivors still underway

UPDATE 4:08 PM Eastern Time
Brenda at RBO has been keeping me updated on Haiti news at Twitter; at 3:58 PM ET she reported this Tweet: "French official says man found in good condition under rubble of food shop 11 days after Haiti quake – AP." From the AP report via 9&10 News

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A French official says a 23-year-old survivor of Haiti's earthquake has been found in good condition. Rescuers have tunneled beneath the rubble of a fruit and vegetable shop to get water to him.[...]

And moments ago she sent this BBC report from today, time stamped 20:56 GMT:

"We have positive detection of a live victim in the building," US firefighter John Boyle told Reuters news agency.

The trapped man is thought to have said five others are also alive under the ruins of a hotel and supermarket in the capital, Port-au-Prince. [...]

From the rest of the report the Beeb was still under the impression that the search and rescue effort has been called off. The same for the AP report, although I don't know the exact time; by now at least AP knows the search is still on.
*************************
I'm not sure how to report this: Either someone at the Associated Press or the United Nations screwed up, or Haiti's government backtracked today after hearing howls of protest from around the world. Either way, this morning the Associated Press and the (U.K.) Times Online (and a few other news organizations) ran with an alleged confirmation from the UN that Haiti's government had called off the search for survivors:

"Today the United Nations confirmed the government in Haiti has declared the search and rescue over, 11 days after the earthquake hit."

Not so, according to breaking news from the Miami Herald (no time stamp on the report):

Breaking News: Haiti officials: Search and rescue efforts still on

By JACQUELINE CHARLES AND LESLEY CLARK
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Haitian government officials say they are still looking for earthquake survivors, despite earlier reports that they had called off search and rescue efforts.

"There has been a misinterpretation of the president's declaration," Haitian Minister of Communications Marie Laurence Lassegue told The Miami Herald.

Before making a final decision on future search and rescue efforts, Haitian officials are waiting for operators on the ground to give President René Préval their recommendation.

Earlier Saturday, the Associated Press, citing a United Nations statement released Friday, reported that Haiti's government had declared its search and rescue phase for survivors over.

But U.N. officials in Haiti told The Miami Herald the government did not tell them it was calling off search and rescue efforts.

Amid the confusion, other rescue teams are still looking for survivors would continue their searches, a U.N. spokeswoman told the Associated Press.

On Friday, rescue workers with Israeli Defense Forces freed a 22-year-old man entombed in the ruins of Port-au-Prince for 10 days. [Another team rescued an 84 year old woman from the rubble yesterday, as well.]

All together, 132 people were rescued from the rubble between Jan. 13 and 21, according to the U.N.

Some 49 international search and rescue teams -- down from 67, were still in Haiti as of Saturday, the U.N. said. [...]