BREAKING NEWS: Pundita finds the bunny

March 15, The New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Prospects for an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan suffered two blows on Thursday as President Hamid Karzai demanded that the United States confine troops to major bases by next year, and the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans.

March 16, the Scotsman:

A two-month operation to clear poppy fields in Helmand province -- the world’s largest opium-producing region -- has begun.

Now just see what patiently hunkering down in the duck blind can net you while editorialists, salaried opinion experts, members of Congress and national leaders hold forth on the meaning of the latest two-step from Karzai and Taliban.

But let us return to the news from Helmand; to continue with the report from the Scotsman:

Afghan enforcement teams have a 60-day window between early March and late April, dictated by growing patterns, in which to take action to eradicate crops in the war-torn province of Afghanistan.

The aim is to eliminate harvesting of the illegal crop from at least 2,000 hectares in the food zone around the Helmand valley.

The drive is being led by the province’s governor Gulab Mangal, aided by the work of Afghan security forces following years of fighting by coalition troops to secure swathes of land.

Major Ross Brown, head of eradication for the Provincial Reconstruction Team’s (PRT) counter-narcotics department, said Afghan teams from each district would use tractors and ploughs, provided by international funding, to target farms ranging from small holdings to large, organised crime operations.

They will face constant danger as many poppy producers use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - more commonly associated with the insurgency - to protect their crops.

Maj Brown said a carrot and stick approach was being used - almost literally.

Farmers who have been offered the opportunity and support to switch to growing carrots and wheat, but who have refused to take up the offer, will be targeted first.

Maj Brown said: “The long-term aim is to create a secure and stable food zone in the heart of Helmand.”

Any questions about Karzai's recent spate of seemingly irrational demands and Taliban's latest hissy fit?

As to where I found the bunny -- oh, the same place I always find him.

Berlin Mandate: With Obama out to lunch, some members of Congress come up with their own plan for Afghanistan

Jumpin' Jehosaphat, gentlemen, couldn't you have come up with an easier plan? Like trying to impeach Obama or raising Patton from the dead?

March 3, Washington, DC, al Jazeera:

Over the last few months, a small faction of congressmen, minority Afghan groups, Baloch nationalists, and their supporters have laid out the framework for an alternative US policy approach for Southwest Asia. This alternative policy centres on backing remnants of the Northern Alliance and Baloch insurgents, who seek to carve out semi-autonomous territories or independent states from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

While supporters of this new approach are motivated by a variety of interests, they appear unified in their rejection of what they see as three cornerstones of the Obama administration's current regional policy approach:

1) Normalising relations with Pakistan's government and military;
2) Incorporating the Taliban into the current Afghan political system;
3) Overly accommodating an emerging Iran.

In one broad stroke, this new approach would attempt to advance US national interests by redrawing the political borders of Southwest Asia - contrary to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of three existing states.
[...]

Regarding the summary of Obama's current policy -- true, true, all true, but that's one whale of a complex plan the congressmen have in mind. Granted, if their actions prompted Obama and the U.S. military command to feel their way to the concept of war that could redeem the American people, and boy do we need redeeming. I mean, how many people in history have paid another military to murder their own troops? Come to think of it, that would be all the people who pay for the NATO enterprise in Afghanistan and who saw their soldiers killed by proxies for Pakistan's military.

Speaking of Pakistan's military, they're already a few steps ahead of the congressmen. They got Hamid Karzai to agree to shut down Baloch nationalist training camps in Afghanistan; the Afghan Minister announced that just this past Sunday.

Not only that, the Pakistani military has launched a charm offensive to head off international outcries about ethnic cleansing in Balochistan. One result, according to the report I link to above, is that Balochistan's Chief Minister has suddenly discovered that only 800 activists are missing, not the 6,000 they'd originally estimated.

And looking through the al Jazeera report, written by Eddie Walsh, "a senior foreign correspondent who covers Africa and Asia-Pacific" who also serves as a nonresident fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS, I see that the congressmen think they can outfox Pakistan's military by depriving them of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan. They're a little behind the times. Why, just the other day the Dragon Lady aka Pakistan's Foreign Minister cooed that it was time for Pakistan to get over its "strategic depth hangover." Not only that:

Hina Rabbani Khar has said she hopes for a relationship with Afghanistan based on trust and called for leaving behind the past associated with interference in that country and support for Taliban.

Yes indeed; Pakistan's military is launching charm offensives on all fronts. Even on the Indian front.

And while I don't like playing wet blanket, there are a few problems with the congressmen's plan as described by Mr Walsh. One problem, from geologic maps I've seen, is that Afghanistan's fabulous but largely untapped natural resources are not exclusive to the region the congressman see as becoming independent; the resources, different types, are distributed throughout the country.

The bigger problem is that balkanizing Afghanistan won't stop international terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba from continuing their expansion in areas in Afghanistan not controlled by a 'Northern Alliance.' Nor will it prevent the Arabization or to be more precise Saudification of such areas.

Another problem is found in the congressmen themselves, or at least in Dana Rohrabacher's terming of criticism about one part of the plan as, "a bunch of leftist garbage from liberal professors," as Walsh reported. If they're going to get past square one with their plan the congressmen need all the friends they can get, so go light on the insults. I think there are plenty of genuine liberals here and abroad and right next door in Canada who would support the basic plan -- and there could be many more supporters by the time liberals absorb this news from Afghanistan, datelined yesterday:

Afghan clerics' guidelines 'a green light for Talibanisation'
By Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
The Guardian

Edicts released by Hamid Karzai issue repressive rules for women who, they declare, are subordinate to men

Women are subordinate to men, should not mix in work or education and must always have a male guardian when they travel, according to new guidelines from Afghanistan's top clerics which critics say are dangerously reminiscent of the Taliban era.

The edicts appeared in a statement that also encouraged insurgents to join peace talks, fuelling fears that efforts to negotiate an end to a decade of war, now gathering pace after years of false starts and dead ends, will come at a high cost to women.

"There is a link with what is happening all over the country with peace talks and the restrictions they want to put on women's rights," said Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi, who warned that the new rules were a "green light for Talibanisation".

The points agreed at a regular meeting of the Ulema Council of top clerics are not legally binding. But the statement detailing them was published by the president's office with no further comment, a move that has been taken as a tacit seal of approval.

"Ultimately, I don't see a way you can read it as not coming from (Hamid) Karzai," said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. "It's probably not an extreme position for the Ulema Council, but it's an extreme position for Karzai, and not compatible with the constitution, or Afghanistan's obligations under international law."

The clerics renounced the equality of men and women enshrined in the Afghan constitution, suggesting they consider the document that forms the basis of the Afghan state to be flawed from a religious perspective.

"Men are fundamental and women are secondary," the statement says, according to a translation by Afghan analyst Ahmad Shuja. "Also, lineage is derived from the man. Therefore, the use of words and expressions that contradict the sacred verses must be strictly avoided."

The statement drew criticism in parliament, where some politicians took it as a direct assault on the constitution and the wider government. If a ban on men and women working and studying together were implemented, it would in effect dissolve the legislature.

"The statement is against the constitution, against human rights and against women's rights," said Ahmad Shah Behzad, a member of parliament from western Herat province, who warned that Karzai risked being in dereliction of his duty to protect the constitution.

The clerics also appeared to condone violence against women in some circumstances.[...]

So. The plight of Afghanistan's more fair-minded citizens is a big-tent situation; it attracts interest from all parts of the Western political spectrum.

I see a few additional problems with the plan, but for now I'll return to Eddie Walsh's report:

[...] While its advocates clearly do not yet have broad support for their initiative, the campaign for an alternative Southwest Asian policy approach is maturing and garnering increased attention in Congress and beyond, especially as a result of three recent high-profile events: a Balochistan National Front strategy session in Berlin, a US congressional hearing on Balochistan, and the introduction of a Baloch self-determination bill before the US Congress.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree, it's nevertheless critical to understand how this alternative policy approach framework has evolved over the past few months.

The 'Berlin Mandate' as a loose framework

In early January, a bipartisan congressional delegation, led by Representative Dana Rohrabacher (Republican-California), held a "strategy session" in Berlin with Afghan opposition leaders, including the country's former intelligence chief. The meeting addressed constitutional reforms that would make Afghanistan a federal system.

Meeting participants argued that vesting political and economic power in the provinces, instead of centralising power in Kabul, would protect the US' Northern Alliance allies from retribution at the hands of Pashtuns once the Taliban is fully reincorporated into the Afghan political system.

By advancing these policies, the attendees portrayed the Taliban's incorporation into Afghanistan's political system as a greater risk than the threat posed to Afghanistan's territorial integrity by their alternative - which would risk the partition of "Afghanistan between the minority-dominated north and the Pashtun south". This clearly runs counter to the the interests of Hamid Karzai's government.

A few weeks later, Representative Louie Gohmert (Republican-Texas), a Berlin meeting attendee, added fuel to the fire by arguing in a video interview that the US should not just push for a new political system in Afghanistan but go further by rearming the Northern Alliance.

In the same breath, Gohmert provided one of the first definitive links between support for the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and Baloch nationalists in Pakistan: "Let's talk about creating a Balochistan in the southern part of Pakistan. They'll stop the IEDs and all of the weaponry coming into Afghanistan, and we got a shot to win over there."

With these remarks, the two pillars of an alternative Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) policy approach were now set: To advance its interests, the US should support the carving out of an independent Baloch state and semi-autonomous Afghan territories - even if it undermined existing US partnerships with the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In early February, Rohrabacher convened a public congressional hearing on Balochistan. While human rights violations in Pakistan's Balochistan province were discussed (per the agenda), the hearing also provided a forum to start a larger (and arguably off-topic) national dialogue on the viability of Southwest Asia's state borders.

As a result of the hearing, witnesses - including Ralph Peters and M Hossein Bor - were able to argue that the dismemberment of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan would serve the United States' long-term strategic interests. But, even more importantly, the hearing allowed the witnesses to inject their views into the larger debate on US foreign policy in Southwest Asia. This included Bor's controversial assertion (which was later censored in Pakistan) that supporting an independent Balochistan stretching from "the Strait of Hormuz to Karachi" would be a better policy approach than ongoing US efforts to counter the Iranian and Pakistani regimes.

Rohrabacher, Gohmert, and Representative Steve King (Republican-Iowa) followed up the hearing by introducing a new bill in Congress stating that the Baloch nation has a historic right to self-determination. With this action, the congressmen went from "familiarising themselves" with Balochistan to calling for Congress to recognise the Baloch nation's right to sovereign independence in roughly a week.

In many ways, this brought the "Berlin Mandate" full circle. In less than two months, a small group of congressmen, minority Afghan groups, Baloch nationalists, and their supporters had gone from voicing displeasure with the current Obama Administration's Af-Pak policy approach to advancing a revolutionary alternative policy approach that called for supporting the minority interests of the Northern Alliance and Baloch against the sovereign interests of Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan.

Reflecting upon this effort a few days after the bill was introduced, Rohrabacher confided to me in an on-the-record interview:

"There is a natural extension from the Berlin meeting with the Northern Alliance to the Balochistan bill. I have always stood for self-determination, but there are certain things that activate me to start pushing more on that philosophy. Clearly, the whole issue of the Taliban being reintegrated in Afghanistan and Pakistan, providing safe haven to terrorists like Bin Laden, are major factors.

"There is also my support for immediately withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. To do so, we need to have a major policy dialogue on what our policy is in Southwest Asia, how we properly transition out of Afghanistan, and what will be our ongoing relationship with Pakistan. Balochistan is clearly part of that debate."

Cross-linking with other congressional causes

While the introduction of the Baloch self-determination bill marks an important milestone for their cause, it is important to point out that there has been an equally big change in how "Berlin Mandate" supporters have advocated their cause. Over the last month, these supporters - particularly Baloch nationalists in the US diaspora - have increasingly sought to extend their cause beyond US foreign policy in the Af-Pak region. They appear to recognise the need to latch onto larger foreign policy issues as part of their efforts to garner mainstream support for their cause. Four of the most important include:

I. Punishing Pakistan for supporting terrorism and nuclear proliferation

Rohrabacher, Gohmert, and other key supporters of the alternative policy approach for Southwest Asia have been unabashed in overtly linking the need for policy alternatives to Pakistan's "betrayal of America's trust". It is even alleged that the Balochistan hearing was called specifically to "stick it to the Pakistanis" for their arrest of a reported key informant in the bin Laden operation. Even after widespread criticism for his past remarks against Pakistan, Rohrabacher does not shy away from his criticism: "Quite frankly, the Pakistani military and leaders that give safe haven to the mass murderer of Americans should not expect to be treated with respect."

Such rhetoric almost certainly will find a receptive audience in Congress - even among the many members who have never heard of Balochistan or know little about the Northern Alliance's struggles over the last year. For this reason, Peters pointed out to me recently as part of a yet unpublished post-hearing interview that the current high levels of anti-Pakistani sentiment in Congress probably provide the best opportunity that the Baloch may see to advance their cause.

II. Containing a rising China and an emerging Iran, and preventing Pakistan from achieving strategic depth

According to supporters, an independent Balochistan, "extending from Karachi to the Strait of Hormuz", would help to contain a rising China and an emerging Iran, provide a long-term security guarantee against China, Iran, and Pakistan emerging as maritime powers, and undermine the strengthening of strategic relationships between these three potential adversaries.

In an interview after the congressional hearing, Bor made this case:

"There are many interrelated issues at play. When one discusses Balochistan, you are discussing a way to contain China. You are also discussing economic relationships between Iran and Pakistan If (the Chinese) build their port in Gwadar, they will have a land route from Western China to the Indian Ocean.

This is of strategic interest to the United States because Chinese ships would have a direct route to China and no longer have to transit past the Indian and American navies. It therefore is logical that Balochistan should be concerned as part of the larger shift to the Pacific announced by the Obama Administration. (Separately,) Iran is an empire and they are using Baloch lands to try to become the dominant regional player. The Iranians are using the Strait of Hormuz as a choke-point for a huge percentage of the world's oil. They also are building a pipeline to Pakistan which violates UN sanctions. Such growing Iran-Pakistan cooperation is a major concern."

Other supporters have advanced similar arguments with respect to Afghan minority groups against the Pashtun-dominated central government. They assert that support for the autonomy or independence of the Northern Alliance serves as an insurance policy against Pakistan's military achieving strategic depth once the Taliban is fully integrated into Afghanistan's political system.

III. Providing the West with an opportunity to profit from Southwest Asia's natural resources

Recognising "the tremendous deposits of oil, gas, and minerals" found within or made accessible through the Baloch and Northern Alliance territories, some supporters have argued that the West should advance the "Berlin Mandate" if for no other reason than self-serving economic interests.

They have asserted that an independent Balochistan and autonomous Northern Alliance territories would provide Western companies with valuable new economic opportunities, which could help offset the costs of two failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and spur economic growth following the global economic downturn. They have also said that the West should do so to prevent potential strategic adversaries, including China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia, from profiting off the natural resources of Central and Southwest Asia at their expense.

While Rohrabacher has called this "a bunch of leftist garbage from liberal professors", it must be said that his committee purposely selected a witness whose expertise lies in forging such partnerships in the Middle East region and who remains a vocal advocate for their consideration in the context of an independent Balochistan. Baloch nationalists clearly have started to reach out more aggressively to Western commercial interests on these grounds in recent months as well.

IV. Preventing gross human rights violations and providing post-colonial nations their right to self-determination

While members of Congress have long condemned the Taliban and the Pakistani government for human rights violations, supporters - particularly Baloch nationalists - have used novel approaches in recent months to win over members of Congress. They have increasingly restrained themselves from leading with the genocide argument. Recognising that this argument has failed to win over Congress in the past, they have instead turned to a more complex argument: that the Baloch, like the South Sudanese and numerous minority groups in the former Yugoslavia, have won their right to self-determination because Pakistan and Iran have failed to provide basic human rights protections. Pakistan and Iran have, they argue, thereby forgone their sovereignty over Baloch territories - regardless of historical precedent.

While few in Congress will support their cause on these grounds alone, Baloch nationalists acknowledge the moral power of the argument for members of Congress who may be seeking to justify their support for an oppressed group on other grounds. This argument could become a powerful advocacy tool for Baloch and Afghan minority interest supporters, especially when reaching out to congressmen serving on other minority group interest caucuses with their own claims to self-determination.

Afghan Koran Burning incident: Here ye! Here ye! Kangaroo courts now in session!

Afghan-US military inquiry may lead to review of at least five personnel despite concluding burning of texts unintentional ... But a different panel appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to investigate the incident, has concluded that the burning of the holy books was deliberate. ... "What the Afghan president has requested from US officials and the US military is a trial and punishment."

The NATO panel is still investigating.

US troops could face disciplinary action over Qur'an burning in Afghanistan

March 3, 2012
The Guardian (U.K.)
Staff and agencies

At least five US military personnel could face a disciplinary review following the burning of copies of the Qur'an by American soldiers in Afghanistan.

A joint investigation by senior Afghan and US military officials has concluded that although mistakes were made when troops at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, had burned copies of the Qur'an and other religious literature along with piles of waste paper, there was no intent to desecrate the Islamic religious texts.

A western official said the investigation could lead to a disciplinary review of at least five US military personnel involved.

But a different panel appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to investigate the incident, has concluded that the burning of the holy books was deliberate.

Maulvi Khaliq Dad, a senior Afghan religious leader on the panel, said US troops told Afghans at the base that the religious materials pulled from a detention centre library were to be stored, but were then sent for incineration.

"They are claiming that it was not intentional. Our investigative team says it was intentional," Dad said.

After the panel presented its findings, Afghanistan's top religious leaders demanded on Friday that those involved be put on public trial and be punished, a position that Karzai backs.

Barack Obama and other US officials have apologised for the incident on 20 February, which triggered six days of riots across Afghanistan. The apologies, which described the incineration as accident, have failed to quell the anger in the country, although the violent protests that killed more than 30 Afghans and six US troops have subsided.

Karzai's office said on Saturday it had only seen the report drafted by the religious leaders and had not yet been given the joint report, so could not comment on it.

"We are waiting for the result of the investigation by Nato, which will probably show who is involved in this and how many people are involved. After studying it we will announce our stance," said a presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizi. "What the Afghan president has requested from US officials and the US military is a trial and punishment."

What's the biggest reason for the spike in fratricidal Afghan attacks on ISAF troops?

Take special note of the dates of the following two reports. (The Wall Street Journal one was probably filed just hours before the Koran burning incident, and in any event before the rioting that broke out in response to the incident.)

February 21, 2012:

Afghanistan to Spy on Its Soldiers
by Dion Nissenbaum
The Wall Street Journal

Effort Seeks to Curtail Attacks by Local Uniformed Troops on Coalition Forces, Say Afghan and U.S. Military Leaders

WSJ's Dion Nissenbaum has exclusive details of a plan by Afghanistan to spy on its own soldiers in the aftermath of more than 70 coalition troops killed by Afghan soldiers since 2007.

KABUL - Afghanistan is rolling out an ambitious plan to spy on its own soldiers, the most serious attempt so far to halt a string of attacks by Afghan troops on their Western comrades-in-arms, according to Afghan and American military leaders.

As part of the effort, agents of the National Directorate of Security, the country's spy agency, will be deployed to army units across the country to monitor Afghan soldiers at every step, from recruitment and training to deployment and home leave, these people said.

The intent is to identify and weed out any potential troublemakers before problems turn deadly, Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak said in an interview. "Every soldier has to become an informer," he said.

So-called green-on-blue attacks by Afghan servicemen on coalition personnel claimed at least 77 lives in the past five years, with three-quarters occurring since early 2010. Last year, an analyst for the U.S. military warned that the attacks were turning into a "growing systemic threat" to the mission, in a study that has since become classified.
[...]

May 24, 2011:

Afghan Secret Police to Weed Out Insurgents From Military
Institute for War and Peace Reporting via UNHCR

Worried about Afghan soldiers and police who turn their guns on their own side, Kabul has assigned the intelligence service to keep a close eye on the armed forces.

The government ascribes a spate of attacks on NATO troops and Afghan officials to the Taleban infiltrating the Afghan National Army, ANA, and Afghan National Police, ANP, or masquerading as members by obtaining uniforms. Analysts say this has been going on for some years, but a spate of high profile deadly attacks has prodded the government into action.

Lotfullah Mashal, spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, NDS, said the agency would for the first time place units within recruitment centres and other facilities of both the defence and interior ministries, which control the ANA and ANP, respectively.

“Recent incidents have forced the NDS to work in close coordination with the defence ministry and the interior ministry,” he said, without detailing how this scrutiny would work.
[...]

So, almost a year before Nissenbaum's report with "exclusive" details on a new plan to seed the ANSF with NDS spies, the plan had been announced.

So why was the plan re-announced as new, little more than a week ago? From the wording of the rest of the 2011 report, there were 'turf' battles going on between agencies and also within agencies. And the army and police forces were waiting on equipment, including computers, before the plan could become fully operational.

And although the report doesn't mention this, once all the equipment was in place, the soldiers and police would have to be trained in the proper use of equipment for processing biometric data, proper methods for questioning new recruits and profiling them, and so on. But from the following two reports it seems the agencies are finally getting all their ducks in a row:

February 23, 2012:

Attacks on US embassy, palace thwarted, Afghan spy agency says
Deutsche Presse Agentur

Kabul - Afghanistan's intelligence agency on Thursday said it has thwarted planned attacks on the presidential palace and US facilities in Kabul.

Officers with the National Directorate of Security (NDS) arrested three people in Kabul who had been trained in Pakistan's tribal areas, spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told reporters in Kabul.

"They intended to carry out suicide bombing and terrorist attacks against the US embassy in Kabul, the presidential palace and Ariana Hotel but the NDS arrested them" before they could carry out their attacks, Mashal said.

The Ariana Hotel is believed to be occupied by the US Central Intelligence Agency. US officials have told DPA that it has been converted into one of their facilities, without providing details.

The building is next to the president's office and the US embassy.
[...]

Regarding the second report, note that while it was filed just a few days ago, the arrests it refers to occurred in January of this year.

February 28, 2012:

Four Afghan Officials Arrested On Spying Charges
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

KABUL - Information has emerged about the arrests of four Afghan officials for allegedly spying on behalf of neighboring Iran and Pakistan.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, Lutfullah Mashal, said the arrests had been made on the basis of "concrete evidence."

He declined to provide further details.

Sources at the Afghan spy agency told reporters on condition of anonymity that a high-ranking diplomat at the Foreign Ministry's Asia section has been accused of providing information to Pakistan's military intelligence agency.

The three other suspects are described as government employees in the eastern Nangarhar, western Farah, and Herat provinces.

The Afghan Foreign Ministry has not yet commented about the arrests, which were reportedly made one month ago.

The NDS was hit with a double whammy in June 2010 when Amrullah Saleh, under pressure from President Hamid Karzai, resigned as head of the agency; that's because the cream of the agency walked out in solidarity with him. I can't recall offhand how many left -- maybe 12 or 18, something in that range -- but it wasn't only a couple people and they didn't resign over a period of weeks or months; they all left at once.

Imagine something like that happening at the CIA -- the best at the agency standing up and saying in one voice, "Bye." No one is indispensable but it takes time, particularly for a spy agency, to recover from such a blow.

But I digress. The point is that the large increase in attacks on NATO soldiers by ANSF personnel began in 2010.

In addition to the walkout at the NDS there were three other pivotal events in June 2010 that feed into the present crisis in Afghanisan, and which together signaled a new phase in the war. I'll pick up on that discussion on Monday.

I'll close with some observations for readers who've interpreted every fratricidal killing of six U.S. soldiers in little more than a week as a direct consequence of the Koran burning incident, and who believe that ISAF is now hamstrung because of fallout from the incident.

There's not enough publicly available information at this early stage to nail down every motive in the killings. But in light of the reports I've featured in this post, I'd leave room for the speculation that the fratricidal attacks (one of which, the one yesterday, was also aimed at ANA soldiers) were to take advantage of the rioting, in an all-out attempt to sway public opinion before the NDS/ANSF coordinated onslaught on infiltrators got up to full speed.

One thing Amrullah Saleh was never able to accomplish in his years at the NDS was getting the military and police forces on the same page with the NDS. Turf battles. (Read the entire 2011 report.) Now, clearly, the agencies at least understand the urgent necessity of working together. So now all the players that have been having a walk in the park at the expense of the ANSF and NATO know the game is going to get a lot harder for them.

In an uncertain world, you can be certain the players haven't taken the knowledge in the spirit of fair play -- particularly since they learned that the centerpiece of the new ISAF war strategy is to 'surge' U.S. military trainers to Afghanistan to train and support Afghan soldiers and police.

As to when the U.S. military announced the centerpiece -- on February 15. A week later came the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield.

Mystery of the Burned Bagram Korans, Part 2: The riots

Hekmatyar is responsible for deliberately slaughtering roughly 50,000 Kabuli civilians during his bombardments of the city during the extermination campaign westerners still quaintly refer to as the “Afghan civil war,” that hellish ISI-wrought, Khomeinist-contested and Saudi-funded interregnum between the Red Army’s massacres and the Taliban despotism.

Terry Glavin tries to see behind the dust kicked up by the Koran burning riots in Afghanistan, and with help from Amrullah Saleh spies a pattern that first manifested clearly in the deadly Mazar-i-Sharif riots last year:

An Equal Opportunity Butcher Returns to Afghanistan
by Terry Glavin
The National Post [Canada]
February 27, 2012

In a column in the Ottawa Citizen I examined the shadowy and overlooked forces at work behind the latest bloodcurdling eruptions of what we’re all expected to believe are the offended religious sensibilities of those inscrutable Afghans. I relied mainly on some key observations the legendary Afghan spy chief Amrullah Saleh shared with me during a telephone conversation in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The script that’s playing out in the latest riots in Afghanistan is an almost play-by-play reenactment of last April’s berserking, which everyone was also expected to apprehend as eruptions of religious outrage, but which was also no such thing. For an elaboration of what was really going on last April, you can look it up in an essay I wrote for Dissent while the ashes in Mazar were still smouldering.

In my column, there is mention of the psychopathic mass-murderer Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency also gets honourable mention, and I am not hesitant to reiterate here that no adequate remedy for the ISI may exist except to get rid of everyone above the rank of major.

To appreciate what follows, you’ll want to know straight away that Hekmatyar heads up the original faction of Hezb-e-Islami, an offshoot of which is well represented in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga, and even in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet, in the person of Economy Minister Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal.

You will also need to know that the ISI has declared that it is most pleased that the United States is setting up Mullah Omar’s Taliban in a fancy district of Qatar to begin the final forced “reconciliation” of the Afghan people with the genocidal Taliban high command. The ISI is seeing to it that Omar’s Haqqani wing will have Qatari office space of their own so that they won’t feel left out of the bargain.

And here’s Hekmatyar’s mouthpiece, immediately prior to the Koran riots: “If any groups are ignored in the peace talks, it would change to resistance force against the government and could be a major threat to Afghanistan,” Mr Baheer said. “Destabilizing Afghanistan is not a difficult task, it’s too easy.”

In other words, nice filthy little disgrace of a capitulation you’ve got going here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it, we want our piece. And with the right people in the right places, “destabilizing Afghanistan” is a very easy thing to do indeed.

I now introduce Afghan analyst Abdul Ali Faiq, who these days works in London with the European Campaign for Human Rights in Afghanistan. Abdul has closely tracked the trajectory of this past week’s protests and their locales, and he’s also closely monitored the local buzz and the factional polemics in Dari/Farsi and Pashto media. His findings stand in sharp contradiction to the story that most westerners are hearing about what’s going on. But they are perfectly consistent with Amrullah Saleh’s assessment.

The whole thing’s got Hekmatyar’s signatures all over it.

“What happened at Baghram, this is not a concern for the 29 million people of Afghanistan,” Faiq told me. Some soldiers mistakenly burned a Koran, it was a sad and regrettable mistake, even President Barack Obama is falling all over himself issuing groveling apologies. Most Afghans have their minds on other things. “They say, why should we care?”

One of Faiq’s key findings is that even in the Tajik and Hazara areas of the north – Kabul, Parwan, and so on – and in the Persian west – Herat, for instance – the specific locales of the violence and the slogans being shouted are associated with ethnic pockets of Pashtuns, but more importantly, with centres of Hezb-e-Islami.

“It’s a manipulation of the masses,” Faiq says. “It is Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami. This is a milking cow for them. They have made this drama. They made this scenario.”

Many Afghans are legitimately aggrieved by the sacrilegious aspect of the Bagram incident. But what most Afghans are more likely to notice is that it’s almost poetically emblematic of what a growing number of people across the country’s political, ethnic and religious divides now cannot help but conclude: the Obama administration holds them and their sorry little country in utter contempt, and he never did mean it when he said he was going to be the president who would take Afghanistan seriously for once.

The American surrender crept up so subtly, and was couched in such syrupy lies — of course all wars end in negotiations, of course all negotiations must be Afghan-led — that it was accomplished before most Afghans had even an inkling that they were being sold out.

You think it’s hard to figure out who’s who around the presidential palace in Kabul? Most North Americans and Europeans couldn’t tell you the first thing about who’s who around the Obama White House these days. Cut the Afghans some slack here. It’s taken them a while, but they’ve finally figured out that as far as the whole “Af-Pak” thing goes, it’s all Joe Biden, all the time, and he’s the dumbest American vice-president to come along since Dan Quayle.

My friend Sanjar Sohail, editor of the liberal Kabul daily Hasht-e Sohb, put it this way: “This is good for the Khomeinists, the ISI, and for Hezb-e Islami. If there was no Koran burning at the Bagram base, it would have been something else, and of course Hezb-e-Islami is benefiting from it.”

No serious person in Afghanistan has any doubt that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, if not living in a mansion in Rawalpindi within a short limousine ride from ISI HQ, is living in swank digs known to the ISI, somewhere, instead of spending his days at the International Criminal Court at the Hague on charges of crimes against humanity, which is where he belongs.

It should tell you something that the reason the ISI generals invented the Taliban in the first place was that they thought Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami were a bit too harsh. Hekmatyar had been the ISI’s most lavishly-funded war-criminal proxy all through the 1980s. The ISI wanted something a little less bloodthirsty, so in around 1994 they replaced him and Hezb with Mullah Omar and his Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar’s been ostensibly freelance ever since.

Hekmatyar is responsible for deliberately slaughtering roughly 50,000 Kabuli civilians during his bombardments of the city during the extermination campaign westerners still quaintly refer to as the “Afghan civil war,” that hellish ISI-wrought, Khomeinist-contested and Saudi-funded interregnum between the Red Army’s massacres and the Taliban despotism.

A Pashtun supremacist turned Stalinist, then drug-trafficker and drooling Islamist fanatic, Hekmatyar ran his Hezb faction in Leninist style, a habit he picked up from his days as a student at Kabul University, where he’d been jailed for two years for his part the murder of a Maoist rival. Hekmatyar is an equal-opportunity butcher. He was the gangster the ISI spent most of its American money on during the anti-Soviet jihad (although they say he never won a battle against the Soviets and that all his victims were Afghans) and was also the Saudis’ anointed proxy for a while, and has also been a frequent guest of Khomeinist Iran.

Hekmatyar rushed to Osama bin Laden’s aid after September 11. He brags about having helped Al Qaida forces escape through the Tora Bora mountains into Pakistan, and he brought Al Qaida fugitives back with him to Iran, where he wore out his welcome after a year or so. Dozens of the more deadly attacks carelessly attributed to the Taliban in recent years were Hekmatyar jobs. His Hezb gangsters have even carried off some spectacular whacks of Talib columns, just to prove they can do it. It was a Hekmatyar rocket that came close to killing Karzai at a military parade in Kabul in 2008.

We are supposed to believe the ISI doesn’t know his whereabouts, and we are supposed to believe the Americans will scruple about cutting Hekmatyar in on Obama’s new reconciliation and power-sharing action in Qatar. Believe what you like, but believe this: the vampire’s back in town.

Terry Glavin is a journalist and cofounder of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee.

"Afghanistan surges as still America's number one hot spot, overshadowing Syria and Iran"

The above observation from retired Indian career diplomat M K Bhadrakumar, writing for the Feb. 28 edition of Asia Times Online about Kabul on razor's edge. Yuppers, that it is. My favorite line from his analysis: "Obama was wrong to have left Afghanistan to the State Department and the late Richard Holbrooke's cronies to handle."

Thanks for letting us know LOL

Oh gosh. [wiping away tears of laughter] Now where are we in space and time? From today's Washington Post: Suicide attack outside NATO base kills 9 Afghans in fresh reprisals to Koran burnings.

Here's my favorite headline from this weekend, from Fox News Cable: After riots give way to murder, US restates commitment to Afghanistan

Gee, maybe the patient ones among the Afghans are finally learning from the Pakistanis: Screw being patient. Act out, and get the attention of the US news media. Why, CNN even took time from its saturation coverage of the downtrodden Syrians to interview Ryan Crocker about the crisis in Afghanistan. What next? A whole 30 seconds of news from Afghanistan every night on the telly? I'm not sure I could stand the shock.

Can Ryan Crocker pull a rabbit out of the hat? If he can find where President Obama hid the bunny, maybe. We'll just have to stay tuned. And please don't miss my Sunday essay, Not Since Mazar-i-Sharif, or why the story of the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield is improbable. I worked really hard on it, in between plowing through 204 reports on Afghanistan LOL don't mind me; I'm giddy from lack of sleep. Over and out.

Afghan War: all eyes on the secret cable

Secret U.S. cable warned about Pakistani havens. That information about the cable was leaked suggests a bare-knuckle brawl underway in Washington ....

[...] The cable, which was described by several officials familiar with its contents, could be used as ammunition by senior military officials who favor more aggressive action by the United States against the Haqqani havens in Pakistan. It also could buttress calls from senior military officials for a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as the 2014 deadline for ending combat operations approaches.

These military officials have maintained for months that the strategy of targeting raids against Taliban leadership and building local Afghan governance is showing impressive results. But they warn that worsening conditions in Pakistan and the ability of insurgent groups to find haven there necessitates a larger American force than many in the Obama administration are advocating.
[...]

Not Since Mazar-i-Sharif, or why the story of the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield is improbable

I'll preface this post with a question to American readers: Do you think there's anyone in U.S. law enforcement, from the Department of Justice and FBI all the way down to the local police forces, who doesn't know about the incident Americans refer to simply as "Waco?"(1)

The answer, of course, is "Of course not." Even if police memories about details of the siege and disastrous storming of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco got a little hazy over the years, the bombing in Oklahoma City -- the worst terrorist incident in American history up to that time -- done in part to avenge Waco, refreshed them.

The fallout from Waco arguably changed the entire American culture and very definitely changed the culture of U.S. law enforcement. One consequence is that even the most stupid American law enforcement official knows one thing about Waco: Never do that again.

Agreed?

All right. Now I'll proceed to the February 22, 2012 Koran burning incident at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Prior to the incident, if there was one thing even the most stupid ISAF officer in Afghanistan knew, it was never burn a Koran within sight or earshot of a Muslim. This knowledge reached all the way down to the grunt level, and in particular the American grunt level.

Why?

Because before and after deployment to Afghanistan, everyone in the NATO forces is given 'sensitivity' training about the handling of Islamic religious materials -- training that was stepped up last year.

Why last year?

Because on April 1, 2011 a mob of thousands of Afghans overwhelmed guards at a lightly guarded United Nations compound in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif and murdered seven UN workers -- four Nepali guards and three Europeans -- and according to UN officials beheaded two of the victims, although the Afghan government later denied that the beheadings had occurred. (2)

The mob was particularly enraged because it couldn't find any Americans to kill; at that time Mazar-i-Sharif was the 'safest' city in Afghanistan, so safe that U.S. troops no longer patrolled there in any significant number.

The Afghan rioters didn't stop with murder; they tried to destroy the compound, burning down part of it and trying to dismantle the rest, cement block by cement block, with their bare hands.

Now why did thousands of Afghans in a city that was probably less anti-American than other in Afghanistan suddenly set out to kill Americans?

Because they'd been whipped up by three conservative Muslim clerics in the pay of the Afghan government, who called in sermons at a large mosque to avenge the burning of a Koran in the USA by American pastor named Terry Jones.(3)

How did the clerics learn about the Koran burning incident in the USA?

Because Afghan President Hamid Karzai told them. To be sure that as many Afghans as possible knew about the Koran burning incident, on March 31 -- the day before the UN compound was stormed -- he made a public declaration about it and denounced it as an affront to Islam. Prior to that very few Afghans knew about the incident, which had occurred on March 20, 2011.(2)

There's a reason very few Afghans knew of the incident but I'm telling you just enough at this point to get across that the NATO command in Afghanistan was traumatized by the incidents that those who closely follow the war refer to simply as "Mazar-i-Sharif" even though the rioting spread to another city, Kandahar.

If my memory serves, in all 24 people across Afghanistan were killed in the rioting over the burned Koran. If the number doesn't sound very alarming, Mazar-i-Sharif was the first time that rioting on that scale against the United States was carried out in an urban setting in Afghanistan and in an area where the Taliban didn't have sway. According to one Afghan official the mob in Mazar-i-Sharif was as large as 20,000. If the number wasn't quite that large, it was definitely several thousand.

The rioting in Kandahar, where the riots were nowhere near as large as in Mazar-i-Sharif, wasn't so alarming because the Taliban there had clearly decided to make hay from the storming of the UN compound. For more than a year prior Taliban had been making inroads in the city, traditionally the stronghold of the 'Northern Alliance,' but the attack on the UN compound was not instigated by Taliban.

The Mazar-i-Sharif incident and its implications were so serious that General David Petraeus, at that time commander of ISAF, made a rather extraordinary public appeal to Americans, which the Wall Street Journal discussed in an April 4, 2011 report headlined, Petraeus says Quran burning endangers war effort.(4) He said in part:

"Every security force leader's worst nightmare is being confronted by essentially a mob, if you will, especially one that can be influenced by individuals that want to incite violence, who want to try to hijack passions ...

Yes. That was the nightmare, and that is why NATO stepped up its sensitivity training last year.

I've touched on incidents surrounding the Mazar-i-Sharif attack to focus on the fact that the Koran burning incident at Bagram was highly improbable. This is particularly the case given how the incident was described to a Reuters correspondent by alleged eyewitnesses. This doesn't mean the eyewitnesses were lying or wholly or in part mistaken about what they saw; it means that it's almost outside the bounds of possibility that three U.S. soldiers at Bagram would burn copies of the Koran within sight of Muslims. Yet according to the eyewitnesses, that's what happened:

BAGRAM - In a small room near NATO's sprawling Bagram Airbase, Sayed Jamil fumes as he remembers how three U.S. soldiers ignored the pleas of fellow laborers not to burn dozens of copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

Jamil, 22, was with other workers at a disposal centre inside the base when a woman and two men, wearing U.S. military uniforms, arrived on Monday in a truck piled with religious material and books.

While the vehicle was stopped at the centre gate, another laborer named Wali glanced in the back and saw the Korans, which the Americans dumped into an oven.
[...]
"I was ready to shed my blood and kill them or be killed," Jamil told Reuters, sitting in a heavy winter jacket, a checked scarf tied tight around his neck.

The laborers, after learning from Wali what was in the truck, rushed to the oven to stop what NATO has called a tragic blunder. Their account could not be independently verified, but was backed by local Afghan police and officials.

"We told the driver they were all religious materials and asked why they were burning them. The Americans said they were materials from prisons and they had orders to dispose of them," Jamil said.

The men plunged their hands into the oven to try to save the texts, some burning their fingers and hands as they pulled eight Koran copies from the fire, he said.

"The boys gathered and started shouting 'Allah u Akbar' (God is Greatest), clutching fragments of burning text to their chests," he said. "The truck fled the site with almost half the books still inside."
[...]

At the end of this writing I'm posting the entire Reuters report, which contains several interesting details. For now, the fallout from Mazar-i-Sharif virtually rules out that the Koran burning incident at Bagram was a "blunder." Even at a small, remote base in Afghanistan the incident is improbable but at Bagram, which houses not only U.S. troops but also NATO/ISAF command posts as well as civilian U.S. government personnel and a prison, the incident verges on the impossible.(5)

Even if a certifiably insane officer had signed off on the order, or even if the soldiers had somehow misunderstood the order, are we expected to assume that no less than three U.S. soldiers at Bagram -- Gossip Central for the U.S. command in Afghanistan -- were unaware of Mazar-i-Sharif and Gen. Petraeus's plea?

Even if the soldiers were at first unaware that the material loaded into the truck was copies of the Koran, from the laborer's account they were made aware by the Afghans who were party to the incident. So the soldiers would have known they were burning Korans within eyesight of Muslims -- again, a highly improbable act.

In fact, the act as described to the Reuters correspondent, was so improbable that from his report, the Afghans who spoke with him clearly didn't believe it was a blunder; they believed American soldiers were always trying to test the faith of Afghan Muslims. In consideration of Mazar-i-Sharif and the fact that at the time all of Afghanistan was bone-dry tinder just waiting for a match, the soldiers wouldn't have chosen that particular means to test the Afghan laborers' faith.

Bagram and every U.S. base in Afghanistan would have been on high alert at that time because the video of U.S. soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses had been widely circulated in the country. And Afghans who hadn't actually seen the video knew about it. The ensuing uproar hadn't even settled down by the time U.S. soldiers pulled up to an incineration facility at Bagram with copies of the Koran in tow.

The sprawling complex at Bagram has been the site of many terrorist incidents and rocket attacks since the U.S. invasion, few of which receive much if any press. So even if the soldiers weren't up on all the details of Mazar-i-Sharif and General Petraeus's public plea, and even if they'd dozed off during sensitivity training and skipped the part in the manual that read NEVER BURN A KORAN IN FRONT OF AFGHANS, they would have thought of the video after being confronted by hysterical Afghans and told each other, 'Maybe we better clarify our orders.'

But the video incident wasn't why Afghanistan was set to explode at that time. In the cities the rush to the exits, which had started when President Obama announced 2014 as the pullout date for U.S. combat troops and increased in pace after news of secret U.S. negotiations with Taliban in Qatar circulated in the country, had morphed into a stampede in the wake of SecDef Leon Panetta's February 1 announcement that the pullout date had been moved up by a year.

Any Afghan who had big money to protect was shipping it out of the country, officials in the Karzai were making frantic preparations to relocate to Dubai or other destinations, and a nation that depended for most its GDP on business generated by the NATO presence was facing the now very real prospect of imminent mass starvation and a civil war.

As for the American assurance that the USA would hang out in Afghanistan beyond 2014 -- Americans and their other NATO buddies had already stabbed Afghans in the back, and more than once. To assume they wouldn't do it again -- well, by the middle of this February Afghans had given up on assumptions other than one: Assume Americans are lying in their teeth about staying on in Afghanistan beyond next week.

On top of this was layered the consternation that once again Karzai had been circumvented in Western forces' secret negotiations with the Taliban; this time first in Germany then in Qatar.

No matter how many Afghans dislike Karzai and his regime, the lack of transparency about the negotiations told Afghans that they would have no decision about how far down the river NATO was going to sell them to Pakistan. And Karzai's attempt to persuade the public that he'd been a party to the negotiations had, by the eve of his departure for a trilateral summit in Pakistan, fizzled.

Worse, Karzai's attempt to save face by publicly confronting Pakistan's leaders at the summit about their support for the Taliban was treated with the diplomatic version of snickering in Washington and Islamabad. Karzai was considered so powerless that the officials who deigned to comment on his outburst could afford to be patronizing.

Layered on top of this was the 'urination video' uproar.

Layered on top of it all was the dressing down that Karzai received from a delegation of U.S. members of Congress because he was blocking finalization of the U.S.-Afghanistan strategic partnership over the issues of NATO night raids and U.S. control of prisons in Afghanistan. Doubtful the congress members would have perceived their little talk with Karzai as a dressing down, but that's how he would have seen it.

That brings us up to three days before the Koran burning incident at Bagram.

That was the situation in Afghanistan, a situation well known at Bagram, as it existed on the day of the Koran burning incident.

In light of the situation, I find it next to impossible that no less than three U.S. soldiers at Bagram would have ignored the pleas of Afghan laborers not to burn the Koran copies. Maybe a year earlier it could have happened, although even that would have been improbable, but not since Mazar-i-Sharif.

True, incidents considered impossible or near the edge of impossibility do happen. But as we know from The Hound of the Baskervilles, when faced with the highly improbable we need to attempt to rule out more probable explanations before we accept the seemingly impossible to be true.

In this case ruling out more probable explanations might prove to be extremely difficult even though two and possibly three official investigations of the Koran burning incident are underway. NATO launched an investigation; according to the Reuters report Karzai's government has launched one, and according to a televised news report I saw Friday, the U.S. military has "offered" to launch its own investigation.

One possible problem with these investigations is that key forensic evidence was given to the Karzai regime for its investigation before ISAF could examine it. See the Reuters report, below.

Another problem, if I read the Reuters report correctly, is that much of the evidence was removed from the scene before any investigator or even the three U.S. soldiers had a chance to examine it. The report doesn't specifically say but the wording suggests that the Afghan driver of the truck containing the bulk of the burn materials sped off when he saw the uproar, leaving the U.S. soldiers to radio for backup, including translators; the driver, it seems, being the only party to the incident who could translate for the laborers.

Then there is the problem with examining the accounts of the laborers. From the Reuters report, if looks as if the Karzai administration got to them first. And they are ostensibly so frightened of what ISAF or Afghan Army investigators might do to them that it would be unlikely anyone from the NATO investigation team could talk to them without a gaggle of "local officials," clerics, and a few people from the Interior Ministry present -- not the ideal circumstances for questioning a witness.

Here I interject that if my readers in Kabul are irritated that I seem to be casting unnecessary aspersions on the word of Afghans, I'm not letting anyone off the hook.

Right now, who controls Afghanistan is the highest-stakes poker game on the planet. That's even without the opium factor. There are several players at the table who want the USA out of the country right away, and who would pay any amount of money to see this happen.

So there's the possibility that one or more of the three American soldiers took a bribe to set off a firestorm, or that their commanding officer did -- or that someone or more than one person at ISAF who's connected with the disposal of sensitive materials did; if so, it wouldn't be the first bribery scandal to hit Bagram.(5) But the emphasis in the Reuters report is on the account given by the Afghan parties to the incident, so that is where I'm focusing questions in my little foray as armchair detective.

Another question may be nothing more than an inconsequential detail that could be dismissed with knowledge of garbage-disposal procedures at the Bagram complex. I referred to the burn site as a 'burn pit' when I first wrote about the incident; in this I was following how news reports referred to the site; even today I saw a report in a British paper that referred to the site as a burn pit. But from the Reuters report, the Korans were placed in an "incinerator oven."

I'd assume there are burn pits at Bagram, given the large amount of garbage the complex generates. But it would make sense if classified or other highly sensitive materials are disposed of in an incinerator, where it can be assured that scraps of paper don't escape the flames of a burn pit.

In that case, I'd assume that papers prepared for the incinerator had covers or in some other way the materials were hidden so that civilians, such as Afghan trash disposal experts, shall we call them, couldn't see the material they loaded into the ovens. I'd assume the same could apply to even to U.S. soldiers tasked with burning sensitive material. But from the Reuters account, the nature of the materials on the truck was plainly visible -- no covers on the Korans, nothing.

Also, I note that Jamil referred in the plural to prisons; if the translator didn't hear wrong, that could suggest Bagram is a site for disposal of sensitive material taken from all U.S.-controlled prisons in Afghanistan. I'd assume in that case that an order for disposal of such material is subject to closer scrutiny than one signing off on disposal of regular garbage.

Then I have questions about the incinerator oven itself. I am not the expert on incinerators but I think they work on a different principle than a burn pit, and that you wouldn't have a hand left to suffer burns if you stuck one in an incinerator after its process had started -- if you could even open the incinerator door at that point. Don't they come outfitted with safety locks that prevent the door from being opened once the incinerator has started? At least, the modern ones?

I'm just asking; I haven't had time to research incinerators and don't know the year and model of the one at Bagram. Maybe it was left over from the Soviet occupation and works on the bellows principle.

Again, such questions might easily be answered by a knowledge of procedures at the airfield, but I broach them to illustrate how fine the tooth comb must be when examining an incident that on the surface is improbable. Before turning over the platform to Reuters, one more quote from the report:

German Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for coalition forces, said on Wednesday that after 10 years of NATO experience in Afghanistan, soldiers should have known to check with cultural advisers attached to their units on how to properly dispose of religious material.

I'm betting they did know; i.e., given the reasons I've laid out in this post I think Jacobson is right -- they should have known and followed proper procedure. Of course this doesn't make it definite that they did know and follow; "tragic blunders" can happen. But I've brought up for review information that I think should raise a reasonable doubt about the Koran burning story, as it's been described to the press by officialdom and the Afghan laborers who spoke to Reuters.

I've done this because I'm concerned that NATO (and/or the Karzai administration) might be so eager to put the issue to bed that they won't dwell on inconsistencies in the evidence or testimony that could drag out an inquiry, on the theory this could further inflame Afghan passions.

Yet at least 30 people have already died because of the Koran burning story, including four U.S. soldiers, and many more have been wounded, including seven Special Forces troops. And right now America's name is mud in Afghanistan, and many Afghans are calling for the trial and hanging of the American soldiers alleged to have burned copies of the Koran.

So what I've tried to do in this post is make a case for a transparent forensic investigation of an incident that as described is very unlikely. Both the Afghans and Americans are entitled to such an investigation.

Afghan laborer recalls rage as he tried to save charred Korans

By Hamid Shalizi
February 23, 2012
Reuters

BAGRAM - In a small room near NATO's sprawling Bagram Airbase, Sayed Jamil fumes as he remembers how three U.S. soldiers ignored the pleas of fellow laborers not to burn dozens of copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

Jamil, 22, was with other workers at a disposal centre inside the base when a woman and two men, wearing U.S. military uniforms, arrived on Monday in a truck piled with religious material and books.

While the vehicle was stopped at the centre gate, another laborer named Wali glanced in the back and saw the Korans, which the Americans dumped into an oven.

The burning of the holy books lasted just five minutes, but that short action could complicate U.S.-led efforts to pacify Afghanistan before NATO combat troops leave at the end of 2014.

"I was ready to shed my blood and kill them or be killed," Jamil told Reuters, sitting in a heavy winter jacket, a checked scarf tied tight around his neck.

The laborers, after learning from Wali what was in the truck, rushed to the oven to stop what NATO has called a tragic blunder. Their account could not be independently verified, but was backed by local Afghan police and officials.

"We told the driver they were all religious materials and asked why they were burning them. The Americans said they were materials from prisons and they had orders to dispose of them," Jamil said.

The men plunged their hands into the oven to try to save the texts, some burning their fingers and hands as they pulled eight Koran copies from the fire, he said.

"The boys gathered and started shouting 'Allah u Akbar' (God is Greatest), clutching fragments of burning text to their chests," he said. "The truck fled the site with almost half the books still inside."

VIOLENT PROTESTS

Thousands of Afghans have staged violent protests for three days over an incident that highlights the deep cultural divide that still exists ten years after U.S. troops invaded to oust the Taliban.

Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has launched an investigation into the incident, for which U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO commanders have offered apologies, blaming a lack of religious and cultural understanding.

NATO's top commander in the country, U.S. Marine General John Allen, ordered his troops to complete additional training by March 3 on the identification, significance and proper handling of religious materials.

Jamil said U.S. soldiers were at first willing to allow them to take away the charred remains of the Korans, explaining how some parts made their way outside the base, but said arriving Afghan interpreters immediately realized the material could incite rage on the streets.

"The Americans first told us through the translators 'we don't want your Korans, take them away'. The Afghan "dog washers" intervened and told the Americans, 'If you let them take these books out, there will be a disaster'," he said.

Eventually freed with the material, the men ran out into the streets, waking people up and shouting about the transgression, which added fresh fuel to widespread anger that already exists over civilian deaths and intrusive NATO night raids.

Now sitting under a picture of one of Afghanistan's most famous heroes, the anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Masood, Jamil said he and the other laborers were afraid of retaliation by NATO or Afghan security forces.

"We have done a heroic job of saving and serving our religion. But we are also afraid of being taken and disappearing," he said. Others nearby offered support, including Afghan local officials and police, and a mullah who said they were heroes "whose faces should be famous."

"No one can touch you guys. All the people of Afghanistan stand by you. Don't be afraid," one government official said. Their material was handed to Afghan government officials for evidence, while their actions were praised by Karzai.

CULTURAL, RELIGIOUS SENSITIVITIES

German Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for coalition forces, said on Wednesday that after 10 years of NATO experience in Afghanistan, soldiers should have known to check with cultural advisers attached to their units on how to properly dispose of religious material.

All members of 50-nation coalition provided cultural and religious sensitivity training to troops before and after they deployed to the country, Jacobson said.

He declined to confirm comments to Reuters by a senior U.S. official that the material had been removed from a library at Parwan detention center at the base because of concerns that some was extremist in nature and being used to pass messages among prisoners.

Jamil said he believed the actions of the soldiers had been "intentional and stupid," while the Taliban urged Afghans to kill and beat Western soldiers.

Bagram Police Chief Abdul Hafiz Mutawakkil said the Americans in the country had little awareness of Afghanistan's complex tribal and religious currents.

"Otherwise no one would do such stupidity," he said, watching over elite Afghan police securing deserted shops and streets where thousands rioted on Tuesday, as NATO helicopters fired flares in a bid to halt the quickly-spreading violence.

"Those who are aware and committed to religious values never commit such actions, but those not aware of other religions ... do such things out of ignorance," Mutawakkil said.

Jawad, one of the laborers, said he no longer wanted to work at the base, despite relatively good wages of $650 a month in a country where more than a third live under the poverty line.

"The Americans always do such blasphemy to test how strong our Muslim faith is. It is best for us that the government provide us with another job," Jawad said.

(Writing by Rob Taylor, editing by Michael Georgy)

1) Waco Siege, Wikipedia

2) Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning, Killing 12; April 1, 2011, The New York Times

3) Dove World Quran burning controversy, Wikipedia

4) Petraeus says Quran burning endangers war effort; April 4, 2011, The Wall Street Journal

5) Bagram Airfield, Wikipedia

Koran burning riots, Day 5: Two US officers murdered at Afghan ministry; Allen recalls all Nato staff from ministries

Qur'an burning protests: Nato recalls staff after two officers are shot dead
Damien Pearse and agencies
February 25, 2012, 8:53 AM EST
The Guardian

Two American officers are killed at Afghanistan interior ministry as death toll in riots reaches at least 28

Nato has recalled all staff from government ministries in Afghanistan after two officers were shot dead in Kabul amid riots over the burning of Qur'ans at a US military base.

Two Americans – believed to be a major and a colonel – were killed at the heavily guarded interior ministry in the capital, where they worked.

General John Allen, the commander of Nato and US forces in Afghanistan, said he was recalling Nato personnel from the ministries in the capital Kabul "for obvious force protection reasons".

He said Nato was investigating the latest shooting and would pursue all leads to find the person responsible.

"The perpetrator of this attack is a coward whose actions will not go unanswered," the general added.

The shootings came as the death toll in anti-western riots across the east of Afghanistan rose to at least 28.

A spokeswoman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force confirmed two of its servicemen had been shot dead but declined to say if the killer was a member of the Afghan military or police.

Afghanistan's Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the shootings, which it said were in retaliation for the desecration of the Qur'ans at Bagram airfield, north of Kabul.

In a statement, the Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the gunman was an insurgent named Abdul Rahman. He said that an accomplice in the ministry helped the gunman to get inside the compound.

The interior ministry is responsible for Afghanistan's police and security forces.

Early reports suggested that the two officers were shot in the ministry's command and control centre.

The British embassy in Kabul has withdrawn civilian mentors and advisers from the 20 government ministries and other institutions in the city as a temporary measure, the Foreign Office said on Saturday.

Elsewhere, protesters threw rocks at police, government buildings and a UN office following news that Qur'ans had been thrown into a fire pit used to burn rubbish at the Bagram base.

Four Afghans were killed in Kunduz province on Saturday and three in Logar, police said.

The US president, Barack Obama, said the burning was a terrible mistake, but the incident has sent thousands into the streets in this deeply religious country.

Hundreds of demonstrators staged peaceful protests in Nangarhar and Paktia provinces, but ones in Laghman, Kunduz and Logar provinces turned violent.

Laghman's police chief, Abdul Rahman Sarjang, said about 1,000 protesters threw stones at Afghan security forces, smashed windows of government buildings and tried to attack the governor's house in the provincial capital of Mehterlam. He said gunmen were among the protesters, but police did not fire their weapons into the crowd or the air because they did not want to incite the crowd further.

Mohammad Jawad, a university student who helped transport injured protesters to the hospital, said at least 20 people were wounded, mostly by bullets.

"Security forces opened fire on the crowd," he said.

In Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz province in north-east Afghanistan, more than 1,000 people protested, throwing stones at government buildings and a UN office, said the police spokesman Sarwer Hussaini. Officers fired guns into the air to try to disperse the crowd, he said.

Dr Saad Mukhtar, the health department director in Kunduz, said a number of protesters had died and 50 were injured during the demonstration.

Koran burning at Bagram: Um, is some government trying to sabotage Obama's plans for US combat operations in Afghanistan beyond 2014?

UPDATE
See my February 26 post, Not Since Mazar-i-Sharif, or why the story of the Koran burning incident at Bagram Airfield is improbable

**************
I might regret publishing my thoughts on this matter but my intuition seems to have been running my show for more than 24 hours. I just hope it doesn't leave me with egg on my face because I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories; over the years on this blog I've done my share to quash false news stories and rumor-mongering.

Besides, I've already taken one flyer this month by guessing that someone in the German Nato command had leaked a secret Nato report (The State of the Taliban) to the press. Then I learned that the only two press outlets that had seen the report were British. That doesn't rule out Germany and it doesn't necessarily mean someone in the British command leaked the report; he could have showed it to MI6 and said, 'Don't breathe a word of this to anyone.' (As to whether anyone in the Afghan government had seen the Nato report, dunno.)

But if I'm going to choose this month to make a fool of myself I might as well go the whole hog. To pick up from where I left off yesterday morning. You may recall I as much accused my brain of laziness because it balked at finishing an essay, which was written to answer the rest of B. Doran's questions and comments about the Afghan War. Doran's main point was that the United States should bail on the war, simply walk away -- a sentiment shared I think by many Americans. Even the editorial staff at Bloomberg asked on February 21 whether the USA should consider leaving Afghanistan much earlier than President Obama has mapped out.

My view is that the United States should stay in Afghanistan as long as possible but with a different policy toward Pakistan. But just before I could present my view, my brain suddenly wanted a blanket and a drink of water. Then after my business meeting it wanted to go outside and play. So it was too tired to finish the essay but not too tired to cavort in 62 degree weather. (It was a beautiful day yesterday in Washington.)

At 7:19 in the evening I finally walk into the house. I turn on the TV looking for news and there's Shepard Smith intoning, "The U.S. embassy in Kabul is on lockdown."

This is Fox News Cable we're talking about so I immediately seek verification from the wire services; I can't find it although McClatchy and Bloomberg had just broken reports that the embassy was taking precautions and had recalled staff. But even without a technical lockdown the news reports were grim. All hell had broken loose in Afghanistan earlier in the day, Afghan time.

What had started on Tuesday as protests outside Bagram air base about some copies of the Koran that had been found burned or charred at Bagram air base had by Wednesday exploded into galloping riots across Afghanistan. NATO and the U.S. government had been kept busy on Wednesday giving apologies to any Afghan official who would listen and promising a full investigation of the burning incident.

Of course the Afghan Taliban were having a field day with the story and doing whatever they could to help stoke outrage against the U.S. for what U.S. and NATO plaintively insisted was a mistake.

My first reaction was that the crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for the Obama administration. Obama and Hamid Karzai are just about to finalize a security partnership agreement. The sticking points are Nato night raids and whether the U.S. should transfer prisons it runs in Afghanistan to the Afghan government. And dang! that's where the burned copies of the Koran supposedly came from -- a U.S.-run prison at Bagram.

How did the Korans get in the position to be burned? The question is still under investigation but from Bloomberg's report (filed 7:39 PM ET February 22):

The Korans were damaged after soldiers culled them, with other books, from a library at a prison for alleged Taliban and allied Islamic militant fighters, ISAF said in a statement. The volumes were thrown into a pile of debris for burning and pulled out by Afghan employees at the base.

My second reaction was to cook shrimp and rice and watch Survivor. (I try to stay with fish and rice on Survivor nights; I always feel guilty eating steak while I watch half-starved contestants stagger through the challenges the show's sadistic game coordinators think up.) I'd had my fill of Afghan War news for the day.

But before turning in I checked on the internet for news from Pakistan, and saw the following report; it's undated but it must have been published within the past 24-48 hours; before then I think I would have seen it. The report is unconfirmed but if it's true it takes the prize as the strangest news of the month:

US presses Pakistan to allow bases near Iran: Report
Online News (Pakistan)

New Delhi: The United States is reportedly putting pressure on Pakistan to allow Washington to establish intelligence bases in the country’s Balochistan province to gather intelligence on Iran, Indian media reported on Wednesday.

According to a report published by The Times of India, the US Congress has been discussing a resolution to recognize the right of Baloch people to self-determination as a means of putting pressure on Islamabad to give in to the US demands.

The move elicited angry reactions from Pakistan’s top leaders including Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani who described it as an attack on the country’s sovereignty. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, also said though the resolution was an isolated move by a few individuals, it “is contrary to the principles of the UN Charter and international law.”

The report said that three officials, two from the security agencies and one from diplomatic circles, confirmed that American diplomats and military leaders have been requesting for permission to allow their agents to operate near the Iranian border in Balochistan.

Now the Obama administration would hotly deny that it's playing the Balochistan independence card to pressure Islamabad about anything; in fact, Obama has distanced himself from the resolution, as has almost everyone in official Washington. Although I think in light of news from Reuters that his administration protested a little too much when it officially announced, in response to the Balochistan resolution flap, that the US respected Pakistan’s sovereignty. As to how much the US respects it, Reuters India reported this morning:

US pushed ahead with drone strikes despite Pakistani resistance
by Missy Ryan and Mark Hosenball
February 23, 2012 5:04am IST

Washington (Reuters): Shortly before the United States ended a two-month pause in missile strikes on militants in Pakistan last month, senior US officials telephoned their Pakistani counterparts and told them Washington would be resuming its covert drone program despite mounting objections in Islamabad.

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were among those who spoke with Pakistani officials shortly before the eight-week pause in the drone program ended, sources familiar with the issue said.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to his Pakistani counterpart General Ashfaq Kayani around the same time, the sources said, but a US defense official said the two men did not discuss drone strikes.

The strike that followed on 10 January, when US aircraft fired missiles at a home in the North Waziristan tribal area, was the first such attack since US aircraft, in a mishap that plunged bilateral ties into a tailspin, killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along remote border with Afghanistan.

The 26 November border incident infuriated a vulnerable government in Islamabad and prompted Pakistani officials to signal that they would no longer accept US drone strikes.

So if you've been wondering how it was that the drone strikes resumed even though Islamabad was still blocking NATO supply shipments to Afghanistan, now you know.

But there you have it; a strange claim hanging out there, like a hanging chad, that the U.S. wants to set up an Iran monitoring base in Balochistan.

So my last thought before I fell asleep was, 'What a strange month this has been.'

I awakened this morning with the same thought. I guess my intuition noticed that coincidences have been piling up since February 1, when it just so happened that the secret Nato report was leaked on the eve of an important meeting in Brussels about the Afghan War.

By the way have you ever read any of the statements that the British press pulled from that report? They're dynamite -- although after the leak the U.S., Nato and Pakistan tried to downplay the statements as merely anecdotal. Yes they are anecdotal but together the thousands of statements are the first exhaustively detailed compilation of claims that Pakistan's military/ISI controls the Taliban -- the same Taliban who've been killing Nato troops. And when that small mountain of claims is taken with all the evidence and intell that's surfaced since 2006 about the Pakistani military's ongoing involvement with the Taliban and al Qaeda, the implications are damning -- damning of Nato.

When was the Nato report made available to Nato commanders? January of this year, from a news report; it didn't give the day so I don't know whether that was before or after the assassination of four French troops on January 20 (or reported on that date), which provoked Nicolas Sarkozy to threaten to pull all French troops out of Afghanistan.

Allegedly the Afghan soldier who opened fire on the troops wasn't a Taliban operative; the claim was that he was a nutter who was simply angry about a video of U.S. soldiers urinating on corpses of alleged Taliban.

Whatever the truth of the matter on the heels of the fallout came the leaked Nato report, on the morning (U.K. time) of February 1.

By the afternoon of the same day, SecDef Leon Panetta had announced to reporters on a plane flight to the Brussels meeting that the U.S. was moving up by a year its plan to draw down U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan. The surprise announcement and the uproar that followed it took the media's mind off the leaked Nato report.

On February 3 a British military journal attempted to tamp down news reports that the British Nato command was now following the new U.S. plan. I don't have the link at my fingertips but paraphrasing the spokesperson said that the 'new' plan was actually one that the British command had intended to follow all along. Not true, commented a British newspaper (Daily Mail or Telegraph); it dug up a quote from an earlier date showing that the command had agreed at the time to stay with the 2014 drawdown timeframe.

In the days that followed, the media reported that the Obama administration was engaged in 'frantic' behind-the-scenes efforts to mend fences with Pakistan's government/military. I wonder how frantic the efforts were, if Obama restarted the drone strikes by informing the Pakistanis to suck it up if they had objections -- and, if that strange report is true, by telling Islamabad that he wanted to set up an Iran monitoring post in Balochistan, of all places. The report is strange because the province is engaged in a veritable insurgency against Islamabad, which is trying like heck to stay on the good side of Tehran.

Then, when Karzai balked over two points in the strategic partnership agreement (Nato night raids and Afghan control of U.S.-run prisons) a delegation from the U.S. Congress, led by Senator John McCain went to Afghanistan to talk turkey with him. That was on Sunday, February 19.

Let me see; what happened next? Oh yes -- on Tuesday, February 21, burned Korans were found at Bagram air base. Which placed the strategic pact in jeopardy, which brings us to today:

Taliban urge Afghans to kill "invaders" amid new Koran burning protests

By Mirwais Harooni
February 23, 2012 12:58pm IST

KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban urged Afghans on Thursday to target foreign military bases and kill Westerners in retaliation for burnings of copies of the Koran at NATO's main base in the country as a third day of violent protests began.

Thousands of demonstrators rallied across the country, some chanting "Death to America!", Reuters witnesses and officials said. In eastern Kabul, hundreds of youths threw rocks at police, who fired shots into the air to try disperse the crowds.

"Our brave people must target the military bases of invader forces, their military convoys and their invader bases," read an e-mailed Taliban statement released by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

"They have to kill them (Westerners), beat them and capture them to give them a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Koran again."

The Koran burnings could make it even more difficult for U.S.-led NATO forces to win the hearts and minds of Afghans and bring the Taliban to the negotiating table ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.

Large protests erupted in eastern Laghman province and the eastern city of Jalalabad, despite an appeal by President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday for calm after officials said six people were shot dead and dozens wounded in demonstrations.

Protests also kicked off in the relatively stable northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar on the border with Tajikistan, as well as nearby Baghlan province.

The fury could complicate efforts by U.S. and NATO forces to reach agreement on a strategic pact currently under consideration with the Afghan government that would allow a sharply reduced number of western troops in the country well beyond their combat exit deadline of end-2014.

Underscoring these concerns, hundreds of students in Jalalabad rejected any strategic pact with the United States, saying they would "take up jihad" if one were sealed.

The U.S. government and the American commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan apologised for "unintentional" burnings after Afghan labourers found charred copies of the Koran while collecting rubbish at the huge Bagram Airbase, about an hour's drive north of Kabul.

There were quite a number of other events in February relating to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nato that I haven't listed, such as the uproar that was set off when an Afghan ministry (I forget which one) plopped out with a plan to remove from the Afghan military any soldiers with family in Pakistan. This, in an effort to flummox soldiers who were working under orders from 'Taliban' (read, 'ISI'). This move is long overdue, if the army is to cut down on infiltrators.

As to what the NDS -- Afghanistan's version of MI5 -- is going to do to eject infiltrators, gee maybe rehire Amrullah Saleh and the team that walked out of NDS with him when he resigned? According to one analyst, the NDS is now rife with ISI spies and spies from other governments. I will find the link to the report but right now I'm beginning to worry that if I don't get this post out the door fast, my brain is going to start asking for a blankey and glass of water. I'm already hearing,'The radio is saying it's gonna be 70 degrees today.'

Okay; so what's on the burner today, besides a lot of hopping mad Afghans, and an expected announcement from Nato about the results of their investigation into the burned Korans? From the Express Tribune (Pakistan)

US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner confirmed that the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday on the sidelines of the 2012 London Somalia Conference.

Speaking to reporters at the daily press briefing, Toner said that both leaders had many things to discuss. “Our goal remains to put this relationship back on track, you know, to try to put some of the problems that we have had in the relationship, some of the challenges behind us and move productively forward.”

In response to a story by Reuters on Afghan officials meeting with members of the Taliban in Quetta, Toner said that he did not have any information about these meetings.

When asked if President Karzai was taking an active role in response to being reportedly bypassed on earlier reconciliation talks between the Taliban and the US, Toner denied it and said that the meetings between US Special Representative for Af-Pak Marc Grossman and Afghan President Hamid Karzai were an indication that the US was consulting with him.

He added that President Karzai was supportive of the process, and said that at some point the US would like to step away and “have it be an Afghan-to-Afghan reconciliation process.”

The State Department spokesperson was also asked about Secretary Clinton’s earlier statements about Pakistan taking action against certain groups present in Pakistan, to which he said, “We’ve been very clear about our red lines and, indeed, the Afghan government’s red lines for those Taliban who would participate in any reconciliation process.
[...]

Nice to know a little clarity is emerging, isn't it? This way we don't have to read 'deny deny deny' all the time. Maybe Khar will give Clinton a head's up on how the Pakistani Parliament is getting along with its review of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. The results of the review were expected last week. (See update below for summary of the Clinton-Khar meeting.)

As to whether I really think my intuition has seized on anything -- if it has then I might owe my brain an apology if it wasn't being lazy yesterday, only trying to delay my publishing an opinion before I'd mulled over more facts.

Probably there is no conspiracy; probably it's a bunch of officials and brass going off in 20 different directions as they scramble to get out of the Afghan War yesterday. Just so long as they aren't scrambling to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan before it's ready to go.

*****************
UPDATE 1:15 PM ET
Associated Press via WSJ has a short report on the Clinton-Khar meeting in London:

LONDON—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Thursday for the resumption of a full range of formal contacts with Pakistan after its parliament completes a review of strained ties between the two countries.

At a meeting on the sidelines of an international conference on Somalia in London, Mrs. Clinton outlined to Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar a series of steps the U.S. would like to see once the review has been completed.

A senior U.S. official said those steps include visits by top American diplomats, including the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides and the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah, along with a return to three-way talks between the U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan declined a visit by Mr. Grossman earlier this year.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting, said the U.S. would respect the parliamentary review but wanted to prepare for a return to "structured conversations" once the review is complete. Mrs. Clinton, the official said, wanted "to get ready to get back into business with Pakistan." A vote on the review is expected in mid-March.

U.S.-Pakistan ties have been troubled for some time, mainly over alleged Pakistani support for Islamist extremists, but deteriorated badly in November when U.S. airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts, fueling an already pervasive anti-American sentiment throughout the country.

That incident sparked the parliamentary review, which is aimed at producing a new set of guidelines for the bilateral relationship that could pave the way for repairing relations.