NATO's Superduper Top Secret You Mustn't Read This leaked report: "ISI supporting Afghan Taliban" or what NATO and waterbugs have in common

Once I was chasing a waterbug around the house to kill it when it made an executive decision to hide instead of run.

"You do realize I can see you, you nitwit," I said peevishly.

It didn't realize; it thought that because it could no longer see me, I couldn't see the back of its body sticking out from the hiding place.

I couldn't bring myself to kill a creature that meant me no harm and couldn't comprehend that its attempts at subterfuge were completely transparent.

So, in the manner of the samurai who sheathed his sword and walked away when the thief he'd cornered spat in his face, I lowered the swatter then made enough noise to scare the waterbug into running again. The chase resumed until the waterbug lucked into a cranny big enough to hide its entire body from my eyes.

At least as far back as 2005, when the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan became evident, the British government has wanted a 'political' settlement with them, and other NATO nations that haven't wanted to confront Pakistan's regime have wanted the same settlement. And hang the facts that most Afghans hate the Taliban and don't want any settlement that puts Pakistan and its Taliban proxies in control of their country. The following report, which has set off another predictable cascade of denials from Pakistan's regime, is best understood with those facts in mind:

Pakistan helping Afghan Taliban - Nato
February 1, 2012

"The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.
[...]
The report alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

"We have long been concerned about ties between elements of the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence service] and some extremist networks," said US Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby, adding that the US Defence Department had not yet seen the report.
[...]
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.

The report notes: "Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly".

It also says that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them knowing. The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."

Pakistan is finding it harder to convince outsiders it is not helping the Afghan Taliban and giving safe haven to its leaders.

In effect, the accusation is that Pakistan is betting on the insurgents being the strongest power in Afghanistan and most likely ally once Nato leaves - something Islamabad of course strenuously denies.

The leak of this report comes at a particularly sensitive time. Pakistan is already blocking the supply route to coalition forces in Afghanistan, following a Nato attack in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed.

With increasing pressure being heaped on Pakistan, public support here for formally ending co-operation with the West simply grows.

Our correspondent says the report seems to suggest that the Taliban feel trapped by ISI control and fear they will never escape its influence.

However, it states: "As this document is derived directly from insurgents it should be considered informational and not necessarily analytical."

Adm Mike Mullen, former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has explained Pakistan's closeness to the Afghan Taliban by pointing to infiltration of its army by the religious right, but he also says it is part of a grand strategy to increase leverage in the region via "proxies".

Despite Nato's strategy to secure the country with Afghan forces, the secret document details widespread collaboration between the insurgents and Afghan police and military.

Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan, said the document was "a classified internal document that is not meant to be released to the public".

"It is a matter of policy that documents that are classified are not discussed under any circumstances," he said.

The report also depicts the depth of continuing support among the Afghan population for the Taliban, our correspondent says.

It paints a picture of al-Qaeda's influence diminishing but the Taliban's influence increasing, he adds.

Taliban influence

In a damning conclusion, the document says that in the last year there has been unprecedented interest, even from members of the Afghan government, in joining the Taliban cause.

It adds: "Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government, usually as a result of government corruption."

The report has evidence that the Taliban are purposely hastening Nato's withdrawal by deliberately reducing their attacks in some areas and then initiating a comprehensive hearts-and-minds campaign.

It says that in areas where Isaf has withdrawn, Taliban influence has increased, often with little or no resistance from government security forces. And in many cases, with the active help of the Afghan police and army.

When foreign soldiers leave, Afghan security forces are expected to take control.
The report says that surrender is far from their collective mindset.

"For the moment, they believe that continuing the fight and expanding Taliban governance are their only viable courses of action," it adds.

According to the report, rifles, pistols and heavy weapons have been sold by Afghan security forces in bazaars in Pakistan.

The report adds that Taliban members "do not receive salaries or other financial incentives for their work", but their operations are funded by the narcotics trade and they frequently take a cut from the trade.

Their main revenue, though, is from donations, and they travel around the country from door to door making no secret of their affliation, it says.

What's wrong with the following sentence?

January 24, 2012:

The opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf Arab nation of Qatar is contingent on the renunciation of international terror and the backing of a peace process to end the Afghan conflict, an American diplomat said Tuesday.

From a January 12, 2012 al Jazeera report (remember that Doha, Qatar, is AJ's home base and that the media organization was the brainchild of the Emir of Qatar); watch carefully don't blink:

US officials are believed to have held a series of secret meetings with the Taliban in Germany and Qatar since 2010, but those talks had to be suspended last December after Karzai objected to the process.

Karzai has been less enthusiastic towards any arrangement that would lead to the Taliban sharing power and last month recalled Afghanistan's ambassador to Qatar over reports that the group had opened an office in Doha.

In other words the office is open; it's just that there hasn't been a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Now to a report, dated January 26, 2012 from the Islamabad-based Pakistan Observer:

Three “moderate” Taliban leaders are proceeding ahead to open a “Liaison Office” in Doha, Qatar within next few days but the move is yet to be backed by Taliban top Leader Mullah Omar and his close associates.

Although the new “Embassy” will be named as Political Office for the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” but it was not clear if the top Afghan Taliban leadership will endorse the mission’s objectives.

According to reliable sources two former Taliban officials, Agha Tayeb and Mullah Muhammad Zaeef is being backed by two Afghan diplomats Shahabuddin Dilawar and Suhail Shaheen are behind the new move seen as an attempt to pave the way for a negotiated deal.

Hard-line Taliban leaders have opposed the idea to open an office in Qatar where U.S. Central Command is also headquartered and had tacitly backed the move to open such a Liaison Office in Ankara. Turkey had already offered to play a role of mediation to ease confrontation in Afghanistan.

Turkey would be a logical choice but Obama is not interested in any logic that pertains to the Afghan War, as Brahma Chellaney's discussion made clear. But the point is that the "moderate" Taliban involved with setting up the Doha office are not involved with international terrorism and never have been. So it's kind of silly for the Obama administration to claim they're demanding that the Taliban they've been clowning around with since 2010 must renounce international terrorism before they can serve cucumber sandwiches at the office.

Brahma Chellaney learns U.S. Afghan War exit strategy is literally full of gas

Geostrategist Brahma Chellaney's January 21 article for the Japan Times presents such troubling news that perhaps the first reaction from readers who aren't familiar with his career would be to ask how good he is as a source. So you might want to turn to the Wikipedia article on Chellaney before reading the report. No source is infallible but Chellaney is very good. I think every sentence in his report requires study by Washington -- and the American public and journalism establishment. However, I'll start by pulling from the report the passages I found most troubling (emphasis mine):

In fact, the choice of Doha, Qatar, as the seat of U.S.-Taliban negotiations has been made with the intent to cut out the still-skeptical Afghan government and to insulate the Taliban negotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressures. The choice also meshes with U.S. efforts to build Qatar as a major promoter of Western interests in the Arab world, on the lines of Saudi Arabia.

Just as oil wealth has propelled the Saudi role, gas wealth is driving the Qatari role — best illustrated by Qatar's military and financial contributions to regime change in Libya and its current involvement in fomenting a Sunni insurrection in Alawite-ruled Syria, the last remaining beacon of secularism in an increasingly Islamist-oriented Arab world.

Now I'll quote in greater detail from the December 5, 2010 (U.K.) Telegraph report I linked to on Sunday in the attempt to emphasize to Rick Santorum that the Saudis are not America's friends. The report discussed a classified U.S. Department of State cable that had just been published by Wikileaks. I quoted only a couple passages about Saudi Arabia, which I'll repeat here, but it discussed other countries including Qatar:

[...] "It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority," read a cable from Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, dated Dec 30, 2009.

"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," added the document.
[...]
There was no accusation of official Saudi government support of militants. The Clinton memo credited the Saudis with "significant progress" under US pressure to deal with the issue, especially disrupting al-Qaeda's finance channels.

However, it claimed that "Riyadh has taken only limited action" to interrupt the flow of money to Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and associated groups which have launched attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It believed that private funds from Arab states were the Taliban's greatest source of income, above revenues from the opium-poppy trade.

The tiny kingdom of Qatar, which was last week granted the right to stage the 2022 World Cup, was singled out as the "worst in the region" in terms of its co-operation with the US. Qatar's approach on militant financing is "largely passive," and its security services "have been hesitant to act against known terrorists" because they fear being seen too close to the United States, the memo said.

Kuwait, which was saved from Saddam Hussein's invasion by US-led forces in 1991, was a "key transit point" for funds that were threatening stability in Pakistan and Afghanistan and targeting coalition [forces].
[...]

Qatar had not cleaned up its act by the time it was approached by the Obama administration to serve as the headquarters for the Afghan Taliban and negotiation site. And the country's emir -- an absolute monarch -- has no intention of cleaning up. With some understatement the emir is not America friendly despite gestures made from expediency; worse, as Clinton's classified statements reveal, the government is studiously looking the other way when it comes to funding for deadly enemies of the United States.

Yet Chellaney brings out that once again, an American administration has leaped from the frying pan into the fire. Granted, it's open knowledge in Washington that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and President Obama don't get along; reportedly Abdullah was furious with Obama's handling of Egypt's crisis and not happy about other matters, some of them relating to Iran. But to attempt to make the Emir of Qatar the American government's new two-faced best friend in the Arab world is -- well, it's the foreign relations equivalent of Russian Roulette.

Not to mention that the American public has complained for decades that we have to extricate our government from its entanglement with the Saudis. Then, just when we thought we might get free in a few years, now we're getting tangled up with another potentate -- because of gas!

More to the immediate point, it is very dangerous for the United States to plunk the Taliban into Doha in an official Afghan government capacity, which is exactly what has been proposed without naming it.

I haven't even gotten to the part about Lashkar-e-Taiba and their actions in Afghanistan but now I'm going to let Chellaney get in a few more words (the emphasis is mine throughout):

Escaping Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
January 21, 2012
Japan Times

NEW DELHI — Since coming to office, President Barack Obama has pursued an Afghan war strategy summed up in just four words: "surge, bribe and run." The U.S.-led military mission has now entered the "run" part, or what euphemistically is being called the "transition to 2014" — the year Obama arbitrarily chose as the deadline to wind down all NATO combat operations.

The central aim is to cut a deal with the Taliban — even if Afghanistan and the region pay a heavy price — so that the United States and its NATO partners exit the "Graveyard of Empires" without losing face. This effort to withdraw as part of a political settlement without admitting defeat is being dressed up as a "reconciliation" process, with Qatar, Germany and Britain getting lead roles to help facilitate a U.S.-Taliban deal.

Yet what stands out is how little the U.S. has learned from past mistakes. In some critical respects, it is actually beginning to repeat past mistakes, whether by creating or funding new local militias in Afghanistan or striving to cut a deal with the Taliban. As in the covert war it waged against the nearly nine-year Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, so too in the current overt war, U.S. policy has been driven by short-term considerations, without much regard for the interests of friends in the wider region.

To be sure, Obama was right to seek an end to this protracted war. But he blundered by laying out his cards in public and emboldening the enemy.

Within weeks of assuming office, Obama publicly declared his intent to exit Afghanistan, before he even asked his team to work out a strategy. He quickly moved from the Bush-initiated counterinsurgency strategy to limited war objectives centered on finding a face-saving exit. A troop surge that lasted up to 2010 was designed not to militarily rout the Taliban but to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. But even before a deal could be negotiated, rising U.S. casualties and war fatigue prompted him to publicly unveil a troop draw down, stretching from 2011 to 2014. If the surge failed to militarily contain the Taliban, it was largely because its purpose had been undermined by Obama at the very outset.

A withdrawing power that first announces a phased exit and then pursues deal-making with the enemy undermines its regional leverage. It speaks for itself that the sharp deterioration in U.S. ties with the Pakistani military has occurred in the period after the draw-down timetable was unveiled. The phased exit has encouraged the Pakistani generals to play hardball.

Worse, there is still no clear U.S. strategy on how to ensure that the endgame does not undermine the interests of the free world or further destabilize the region. It is also unclear whether the U.S. after 2014 will be willing to rely on its air power and special forces to keep Afghanistan in the hands of a friendly government and army — or whether it will do what it has just done in Iraq: pull out completely and wash its hands off the country.

Think of a scenario where Obama had not played his cards in public. Immediately after coming to office, Obama could have used his predecessor's diversion of resources to the Iraq war to justify a troop surge in Afghanistan while exerting full pressure on the Pakistani generals to tear down insurgent sanctuaries. Had that happened without the intent to exit being made public, not only would many Afghan and American lives have been saved, but also the side desperate for a deal today would have been the Taliban, not the U.S.

The outcome of the current effort to clinch a deal with a resurgent Taliban is uncertain. Even if a deal materializes and is honored by the Taliban on the ground, it cannot by itself pacify Afghanistan.

Although Afghanistan historically was designed as a buffer state, it does not today separate empires and conflicts. Rather, it is the center of not one but multiple conflicts with cross-border dimensions. Given Afghanistan's major ethnic and political divides, genuine national reintegration and reconciliation would make a lot of sense.

However, instead of opening parallel negotiating tracks with all key actors, with the aim of eventually bringing them together at the same table, the U.S. is pursuing a single-track approach focused on achieving a deal with the Taliban. Such is its single-mindedness that a conscious effort is under way to keep out representatives of the National Front (formerly Northern Alliance) from even international conferences on Afghanistan.

In fact, the choice of Doha, Qatar, as the seat of U.S.-Taliban negotiations has been made with the intent to cut out the still-skeptical Afghan government and to insulate the Taliban negotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressures. The choice also meshes with U.S. efforts to build Qatar as a major promoter of Western interests in the Arab world, on the lines of Saudi Arabia.

Just as oil wealth has propelled the Saudi role, gas wealth is driving the Qatari role -— best illustrated by Qatar's military and financial contributions to regime change in Libya and its current involvement in fomenting a Sunni insurrection in Alawite-ruled Syria, the last remaining beacon of secularism in an increasingly Islamist-oriented Arab world.

Meanwhile, the new U.S. containment push against Iran threatens to compound the internal situation in Afghanistan. Iran's nuclear program is a factor behind the new containment drive. But a bigger factor is the intent not to allow Iran to be the main beneficiary of the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq and the planned NATO exit from Afghanistan. Yet, without getting Iran on board, building a stable Iraq or Afghanistan will be difficult.

In truth, U.S. policy is coming full circle again on the Pakistan-fathered Afghan Taliban, in whose birth the CIA had played midwife. President Bill Clinton's administration acquiesced in the Taliban's ascension to power in Kabul in 1996 and turned a blind eye as that thuggish militia, in league with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, fostered narco-terrorism and swelled the ranks of the Afghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With 9/11, however, the chickens came home to roost. In declaring war on the Taliban in October 2001, U.S. policy came full circle.

Now, U.S. policy is coming another full circle on the Taliban in its frantic search for a deal. This has been underscored by a series of secret U.S. meetings with the Taliban last year and the current moves to restart talks in Qatar by meeting the Taliban's demand for the release of five of its officials who are held at Guantánamo Bay. Mohammed Tayeb al-Agha, an aide to the one-eyed Taliban chief Mohammad Omar, has emerged as the Taliban's chief negotiator with Marc Grossman, America's Afghanistan-Pakistan (Afpak) envoy.

The Qatar-based negotiations serve as another reminder why the U.S. political leadership has refrained from decapitating the Taliban's top command-and-control. The U.S. military has had ample opportunities to eliminate the Taliban's Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, often called the Quetta Shura because it relocated to the Pakistani city in 2002.

Yet, tellingly, the U.S. military has not carried out a single drone, air or ground strike against the shura. All the U.S. strikes have occurred farther north in Pakistan's tribal Waziristan region, although the leadership of the Afghan Taliban or its allied groups like the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar band is not holed up there.

The sanctity of existing borders has become a powerful norm in world politics. Border fixity is seen as essential for peace and stability. Yet, paradoxically, the norm has allowed the emergence of weak states, whose internal wars spill over and create wider regional tensions and insecurities. In other words, a norm intended to build peace and stability may be creating conditions for greater regional conflict and instability. This norm is likely to come under challenge in the Afpak belt, where the dangers of political fragmentation cannot be lightly dismissed.

When history is written, the legacy of the NATO war in Afghanistan will mirror the legacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq — to leave an ethnically fractured nation. Just as Iraq today stands ethnically partitioned in a de facto sense, it will be difficult to establish a government in Kabul post-2014 whose writ runs across Afghanistan.

More important, Afghanistan is not Vietnam. An end to NATO combat operations will not mean the end of the war because the enemy will target Western interests wherever they may be. The U.S. hope to regionally contain terrorism is nothing more than self-delusion. If anything, this objective promises to keep the Afpak belt as a festering threat to regional and global security.

Taliban claim attack on InterContinental Hotel in Kabul (UPDATED 6X)

UPDATE 5:00 PM EDT, June 29
Posted about a half hour ago AFP's report on the current death toll from the attack. Adds information that attackers avoided the road to the hotel compound and approached it by climbing wooded hillside.

This is the last update for this post; any other information I'll be passing along I'll place in a new post.

UPDATE 3:49 PM EDT, June 29
When I'd first posted about the attack on the InterContinental Hotel, which was while it was still in progress (see first entry below), I'd written that it seemed to be a 'swarm' attack. I was incorrect, but a discussion about the swarm tactic led me to review John Arquilla's advice on developing counter-swarm tactics, which I did in this Pundita post this afternoon, and which also quotes from B. Raman's informative analysis of the attack on the InterContinental.

And earlier today I posted a report from a New Zealand news site about the important role that New Zealand special forces played in securing the hotel. I found the report very interesting.

UPDATE 8:50 PM EDT
I'm not sure the reason cited in the Bloomberg report for the attack is the only one because reportedly there were high-value Afghan targets -- governors -- staying at the hotel ahead of the next day's conference. But here's the Bloomberg report, which contains details not mentioned in other reports I've included in the updates.

This will be my last update for the night.

Taliban Raid on Kabul Hotel Misses Targeted U.S. Diplomats

by Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul and Flavia Krause-Jackson in Washington
June 28, 2011, 7:45 PM EDT
Bloomberg wire service

Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers stormed the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, seeking to find and kill visiting American and Pakistani diplomats.

No U.S. diplomats were caught in the attack, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in an e-mailed statement. The U.S. government had no immediate information about private American citizens, she said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was briefed on the attack as he returned to Washington from an event in Iowa.

The attack began at 10 p.m. yesterday and gunfire continued at the darkened hotel five hours later, as Afghan army units clashed with the Taliban gunmen. Two NATO helicopters killed three gunmen on the roof, the Associated Press reported, citing coalition spokesman Jason Waggoner.

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said four suicide bombers either blew themselves up or were killed in the fighting, according to the AP.

Zabihullah Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban movement, said a “big group” of Taliban gunmen killed or wounded 50 people, mostly foreigners, at the landmark hotel in the capital. The attack was timed for a meeting of U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officials with the intent of killing them, he said.

One bomber blew himself up at the start of the raid and a guard at the entrance of the hotel was killed, Mujahed said in a telephone interview. Once inside, the gunmen dispersed inside the hotel to seek foreigners on different floors, he said.

A U.S. delegation led by Ambassador Marc Grossman, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had left Kabul earlier and was en route to Washington during the attack, Nuland said.

“The United States strongly condemns the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which once again demonstrates the terrorists’ complete disregard for human life,” Nuland said.

UPDATE 6:45 PM EDT
Wolf Blitzer reports on CNN TV at around 6:33 PM EDT (3:33 PM Kabul time) on Reuters report that NATO helicopters have just fired on and killed 3 terrorists on the hotel roof.

> Foreign jornalist Erin Cunningham on Skype to Wolf Blitzer CNN 3:30 AM Kabul -- she told Wolf:
> Right now, helicopters arriving to shoot at terrorists on hotel roof. [These must be the NATO
> She is now back at her home but about 15 minutes before she first spoke with Wolf she recounted that she and another reporter were standing about 500 meters from the hotel (as close as police would allow onlookers) and they were nearly knocked off their feet by three large explosions; the police didn't know the source of the explosions.
> Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon reporter - 6:36 PM EDT:
ISAF spokesperson confirms just now that 2 NATO helicopters did fire on terrorists on roof, killing an estimated 3 of them.
> Hotel, located on a hilltop, is 9 miles from Kabul international airport, about 2 miles from city center. Hotel has 5 stories, 300 rooms.

From FNC live report around 6:00 PM EDT from their Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin:
> Unconfirmed reports that there have been hostages taken in the hotel
> All State dept. personnel accounted for but State can't say whether there are any Americans in the hotel.
> Kabul police and/or commandos did not intially request help from ISAF.
**************
In these updates I'm simply passing along entire reports from different news agencies because each report has different details. Still a fog of war situation at the hotel but I do have one question. An Afghan police official says in the CNN report that they've had no contact with people in the hotel because the phone lines are down. Blackberry, anyone?

Bombers attack luxury hotel in Kabul
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 28, 2011 -- Updated 2125 GMT (0525 HKT)

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Fighters armed with bombs and small arms attacked Kabul's InterContinental Hotel, where they fought Tuesday with Afghan security forces, Chief of Criminal Investigation Mohammed Zahir told CNN.

Suicide bombers were among the attackers, he said.

Taliban bombers were responsible for the 10 p.m. attack on the hotel, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.

The hotel is popular among international guests.

Initial reports indicate that multiple suicide bombers, mostly likely wearing explosive vests, carried out the attack, a U.S. military official told CNN. There were no indications that U.S. military or diplomatic personnel were at the hotel, the official said.

Police Chief Lt. Gen. Ayoub Salangi said Kabul police were on the grounds of the hotel, but had not been able to communicate with anyone inside, since the phone lines were down. He could not confirm any casualties.

A news conference had been scheduled to take place Wednesday in the hotel to discuss the planned transition of security from international to Afghan forces announced last week by U.S. President Barack Obama.

The hotel is on a hill on the outskirts of Kabul and is typically protected by heavy security. Three Taliban penetrated that security, and one of them detonated an explosion on the second floor, said Erin Cunningham, a journalist in Kabul for The National.

"We're continuing to hear small-arms fire right now," she told CNN from a vantage about 500 meters (a third of a mile) from the hotel. Several snipers were on the roof firing at Afghan security forces.

A few minutes beforehand, she said, rocket-propelled grenades were launched from the roof of the hotel toward the area of the first vice president's house. "Everyone is pretty nervous," she said. "A lot of people are fleeing the scene."

A few moments later, she said the hotel was rocked by three explosions, one of which knocked her off her feet. U.S. forces were on the scene, she said.

Members of the Afghan National Security Forces were on the scene, but the city police had the lead, International Security Assistance Force Maj. Jason Waggoner said in a statement.

He said ISAF forces were providing "some limited assistance."

Electricity around the hotel was shut off, said Jerome Starkey, a reporter for The Times.

The hotel was developed by the InterContinental Hotels Group and opened in 1969. But it has had no association with the group since the Soviet invasion in 1979, though it continues to use the name and logo without connection to the parent company.

The incident came on the same day that Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell announced that NATO and other members of the international community involved in Afghanistan have decided to increase the number of security forces in the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police to 352,000.

The current number of Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police is about 300,000, the commander of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan and commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command told the Atlanta Press Club.

The increased number will be sufficient to give the Afghans security without coalition forces having to do it, he said.

CNN's Reza Sayah in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tom Watkins in Atlanta, Barbara Starr and Elise Labott in Washington and journalist Jonathan Boone [for the Guardian] in Kabul contributed to this story.

UPDATE 5:35 PM EDT

Kabul Bombing: Hotel Under Attack By Suicide Bombers in Afghanistan
By NICK SCHIFRIN (@nickschifrin) reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
ABC News [USA]
June 28, 2011

In one of the most significant attacks in Afghanistan in the past few years, insurgents have hit a landmark Kabul hotel where Afghan officials had gathered for a conference with as many as 6 suicide bombers and gunmen, according to police.

At least one suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the Intercontinental Hotel, and the attack is still ongoing. At least four explosions have been heard and gunfire continues. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.

A police official says there are at least 3 attackers, but the number could be double that. An Afghan news agency is reporting that at least 10 people have died, but that figure has not been independently confirmed.

Afghan officials, including provincial governors, were staying at the Intercontinental because of a conference on transition that begins tomorrow. Afghan forces are scheduled to take charge of security in some areas of the country starting in July.

According to a State Dept. official, no American officials have been affected by the attack. It's not yet known if any other Americans have been killed or injured.

It's not known if there was a particular target staying at the hotel, which sits on a hill above the city, or if the target was the hotel itself. The attack occurred while guests were having dinner and power to the hotel and the entire surrounding neighborhood has now been cut. Police have cordoned off streets leading to the hotel. The U.S.-led international military force in Afghanistan says it has offered assistance to Afghan authorities.

The Intercontinental Hotel is the most famous hotel in Afghanistan and one of the icons of Kabul, where many Westerners and Afghan officials stay and hold meetings.

UPDATE 5:20 PM EDT

Afghanistan: Kabul's Intercontinental hotel attacked by Taliban militants
By Jon Boone in Kabul
The Guardian
Tuesday 28 June 2011 21.15 BST [British Summer Time 5 hours ahead of EDT]

Taliban militants with at least one suicide bomb attack popular Kabul hotel, with Afghan police reportedly locked in gun battles

A famous hotel in Kabul is under attack from a commando squad of Taliban militants armed with small arms, at least one suicide bomb and rocket propelled grenades.

The assault on the old Intercontinental, which is popular with Afghan politicians and foreign visitors, began late on Tuesday night when it is thought at least two receptions were taking place.

Although details about the ongoing assault are still unclear, a Taliban spokesman, contacted on the phone by journalists, was quick to claim credit for the assault.

A Kabul police chief, Mohammad Zahir, said the assault involved "several gunmen shooting", and that a "number" of police had been wounded.

According to a tweet by Bette Dam, a Dutch journalist at the scene, the attackers also appeared to be armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Dam reported seeing at least four RPGs being launched from the hotel into the nearby house belonging to Mohammad Qasim Fahim, one of Afghanistan's vice-presidents.

Reuters reported that a wedding party was in progress at the 1960s hotel, which is no longer part of the Intercontinental chain, at the time of the assault.

The attack on such a well-defended hotel, which is impossible to approach without going through at least two security checkpoints, is embarrassing for the Afghan government as it prepares to take responsibility for security in Kabul province, as part of much-vaunted "transition" strategy. Afghan authorities have already been nominally in charge of the capital city for some time.

Attacks in Kabul have been relatively rare, although violence has increased since the 2 May killing of Osama bin Laden in a US raid in Pakistan, and since the start of the Taliban's annual spring offensive.

On 18 June, insurgents wearing Afghan army uniforms stormed a police station near the presidential palace and opened fire on officers, killing nine.

**********

This seems to be a 'swarm' attack, of the kind launched against two major hotels in the seige of Mumbai in 2008 that also had a large foreign clientele. A Taliban spokesman claims that the attackers are going by floor by floor and room by in the hotel. No time stamp on the New York Times report, which appeared on Google News about a half hour ago; in any case the situation was unresolved at the time the report was filed. I'll try to see what I can find by way of updates to the situation:

Group of Attackers Storms Hotel in Afghan Capital
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: June 28, 2011
The New York Times

KABUL — Several attackers stormed the Intercontinental Hotel in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Tuesday night, and witnesses said shooting and a loud explosion were heard as Afghan security forces rushed to the scene. Afghan security forces were still struggling to bring the situation under control, and the number of casualties was not immediately clear. But a Western security official said that early reports indicated that there were as many as six attackers — armed and believed to be wearing suicide vests — and that 10 people had been killed in the attack.

A police general, Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department, said at least three suicide bombers armed with light and heavy weapons had entered the Intercontinental Hotel.

“All the Afghan forces are near and around the hotel and the fighting is still going on and we are trying to kill them,” he said.

The Taliban took responsibility for the attack saying they were targeting foreigners and Afghans, Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for the north and east, said in a statement.

“Our muj entered the hotel,” he said, referring to Taliban fighters, “and they’ve gone through several stories of the building and they are breaking into each room and they are targeting the 300 Afghans and foreigners who are staying.”

His claims could not be immediately confirmed.

The attack appeared to be in the style of previous assaults carried out by armed men in suicide vests in Afghanistan in recent years by the Taliban and its allies in the Haqqani network, a militant group based in Pakistan.

In October 2009 several suicide bombers and gunmen stormed a United Nations guest house in Kabul. By the end of the siege, at least five United Nations employees, two Afghan security officials and the brother-in-law of a prominent Afghan politician were dead, along with three attackers.

Similarly, in the summer of 2010 in the northern city of Kunduz six suicide bombers entered a guest house used by Development Alternatives Inc., a global development company under contract to the United States Agency for International Development. Four people were killed in that attack.

In January 2008 a suicide bombing at the Serena Hotel in Kabul killed at least six people.

For six years Amrullah Saleh was in the best position to understand the Taliban. It's time NATO began listening to his advice about dealing with them.

This is an example of U.S. sending mixed signals to Pakistan

Many Afghans believe that to get to a negotiated settlement, the Taliban leaders involved in talks should be relocated to Afghanistan from their current locations in Pakistan, where they are protected by Pakistan’s intelligence service.
-- Amrullah Saleh

Today Bloomberg news service has published an op-ed by Amrullah Saleh, which I republish in full below. But before turning over the floor to Saleh, I want to dispute a part of his advice that pertains to dealing with Pakistan. I think Pakistan's military and civilian leaders read the "carrot and stick" approach he advocates as deliberately mixed signals, which convey acceptance for their continued prosecution of what is in effect a proxy war in Afghanistan; this on the theory that the USA finds Pakistan so valuable as a client state/strategic asset it will tolerate its aggression toward Afghanistan and even NATO troops.

In other words, what NATO leaders consider inducements (carrots) the Pakistanis read as tacit acceptance of their course of action no matter how much NATO says it dislikes the course. This situation is mirrored in the way substance abusers read continued material support from family members as sympathy for their predicament, no matter how much the family members yell and scream at them to give up dope, and no matter how many times they threaten to throw the addict out of the house or turn him into the police.

Western psychologists have a term for that kind of family member: enabler; i.e., someone who enables a person who can't on his own continue a self-destructive course of action.

Psychologists know that often the greatest obstacle to an addict confronting his dire predicament is the enabler in his life, which can be a lover or friend or even employer in addition to family members. No matter the type of relationship, the enabler always provides just enough support -- material and/or emotional -- to allow the addict to continue his self-destructive behavior with the sense that he's able to manage the addiction.

I read the very same situation in the NATO-Pakistan relationship, and in particular the British and U.S. government's relations with Pakistan's government. This is an old story that goes back to Pakistan's inception and it's created a very sick, very toxic relationship that Western psychology terms co-dependent; i.e., a need developed on both sides for a relationship that's destructive to both parties, and often those nearest them as well.

However, the difference between a co-dependent relationship between individuals and between governments is that the latter can lead to the most horrific situations involving many thousands or even millions of people. And thus, the way the Afghan War has been prosecuted by ISAF since Operation Airlift of Evil, which set the course for the rest of the war and led to a situation whereby NATO and in particular the USA is in effect paying Pakistan's military to help murder NATO troops.

But when called out on this atrocity, U.S./NATO government officials engage in rationalizations that are textbook examples of the kind of excuses that enablers deploy to rationalize their continued support for a substance abuser! Textbook. Here are the top four excuses with the U.S. variation in parentheses:

If I stop helping him:

> He'll die (Pakistan will collapse)
> He'll kill himself (Pakistan will be overrun by extremists)
> He'll turn to crime (Pakistan will start a nuclear war)
> It will break up the family (Pakistan won't give any help to NATO)

Indeed, the rationalizations voiced by NATO officials are so similar to those used by enablers that I've often wondered if the war could have been successfully concluded years ago, if psychologists who specialize in helping families stop being enablers had been brought in by CENTCOM to analyze the relationships between officials in major NATO governments and their counterparts in Pakistan's government.

Well, I've discussed this angle several times over the years on this blog, and once I went to some trouble to detail how it's possible to stop the enabling without breaking off the relationship. (See Stay out of the bazaar.) So I'll end here, with a final observation that I like Saleh's method of dealing with the Taliban because it helps distinguish those Talibs who are genuine insurgents from ones being used as proxies by Pakistan's military.

June 16, 2011, Bloomberg:

Afghan Role for Taliban, if They Play by Rules
By Amrullah Saleh

As the U.S. prepares to reduce its troop presence in Afghanistan next month, Afghans are seriously considering what will come next for our country. As Hamid Karzai’s government steers reconciliation talks with the Taliban aimed at creating enough quiet for the Americans and the rest of NATO to justify departing, Afghans like me increasingly worry that we will wind up in a situation worse than the civil war of past years.

This is avoidable. The opposition to Karzai isn’t just a rejection of the current government, as the media have emphasized. We provide an alternative vision to Karzai’s way out of the status quo. It entails a complete disarming of the Taliban, an end to Pakistan’s practice of giving sanctuary to Taliban militants and a truth-and-reconciliation process for Afghanistan.

As things are going, the future looks grim.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization expects that a negotiated settlement, eventually, will end the fighting between Afghan government forces, on one side, and the Taliban and its allies on the other. Before extending an olive branch to the Taliban leadership, however, NATO is pursuing a military strategy to weaken the enemy. This involves brilliant special operations inside Afghanistan that have killed perhaps many hundreds of Taliban mid-level commanders. The idea is to break the leadership of the Taliban in order to get the group’s second and third tier to come in from the cold. Whether this plan works will depend on whether NATO succeeds in pressuring Pakistan, which supports the Taliban, to go along. Insurgencies don’t end when they are given sanctuary in a neighboring country.

Taliban Wants Arms

But the Pakistan-Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance wants a deal that would allow the Taliban to remain armed and mobilized so that it could again have the capacity to dominate Afghanistan, as both a political and military force.

In such a scenario, real political competition in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strongest, would be either difficult or impossible. The Taliban would gain access to major funds through illegal taxation, narcotics trafficking, extortion, the sale of natural resources and the black market. These funds would enable them to sustain their organization and provide some services to their constituents. Pakistan would feel safe having its proxy control the border areas, limiting or blocking India’s access, and would use its influence with the Taliban to gain maximum concessions from the government in Kabul.

Abuse of Power

That government, today, is a conglomerate of small and big interest groups surviving through manipulation, abuse of power and criminal commerce. Its overt outreach wing for the reconciliation talks is the so-called High Peace Council. The council is largely a platform to keep the big names within the Karzai government under one tent and to give the outreach an artificial multi-ethnic face.

The council’s chief spokesman is Karzai, who has caused deep division within Afghan society by his constant, unconditional offer of alliance to the Taliban. For those who have fought for a vision of a pluralistic Afghanistan, a Karzai-Taliban alliance is a recipe for disaster. The Taliban’s return to positions of authority would raise the horrific specter of their previous time in power.

It is for fear of that outcome that voices for justice and permanent peace have been raised in Afghanistan. Many Afghans believe that to get to a negotiated settlement, the Taliban leaders involved in talks should be relocated to Afghanistan from their current locations in Pakistan, where they are protected by Pakistan’s intelligence service.

Monopoly of Force

In any agreement, the Taliban must be disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated into society. The Taliban should be allowed to become a political force and be given every chance to play according to the script of democracy. But the Afghan state alone must have a monopoly on force. It isn’t permissible to allow the Taliban to become a Hezbollah-type entity within Afghanistan -- an armed state within a state. If they agree to just a cease-fire with Karzai or his replacement, it will only bring a deceptive stability that will prove short-lived.

Many years of war have wounded the psyche of the Afghan nation. Burying the facts will not help us heal those wounds. An internationally funded truth-finding commission should investigate human-rights violations, massacres and major crimes of the past 20 years. Knowing the facts would help the Afghan people reconcile with themselves. A full report may take years to compile, but the process would create hope.

In this scenario, Pakistan must stop its support of the Taliban. The U.S., which supplied Pakistan with $4.5 billion in economic and security aid last fiscal year, would need to offer carrots and sticks to ensure that country’s compliance. Pakistan and Afghanistan would sign an agreement guaranteeing the cessation of interference in each other’s affairs, both directly and indirectly.

This is the way out for Afghanistan, the Taliban, Pakistan, as well as U.S. and other NATO forces. A settlement that falls short of these minimums will only prolong Afghanistan’s agony.

(Amrullah Saleh was the head of the National Directorate of Security in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Er - sorry to correct The Sun but the talks began when Gordon Brown was PM. Has The Sun forgotten about the Secret Taliban Training Camp Affair?

(For information on the Secret Taliban Training Camp Affair, see May 11 Pundita post, An Irish Shaggy Dog Story, or one of the two reasons the Afghan War has dragged on forever.)

May 23, 2011

UK intel: Taliban won’t make a deal
by Tom Newton Dunn, Political Editor
The Sun (U.K.)

Spy bosses have warned Barack Obama and David Cameron that their secret plan to cut a peace deal with the Taliban is failing.

The PM ordered MI6 to start talks with the fanatics weeks after coming to power a year ago, The Sun can reveal.

He and the US President believe a horse trade with their hated enemy is the only way to end the ten-year war.

But so far, all efforts to bring Taliban chief Mullah Omar and his senior lieutenants to the table have failed - because the Taliban DON'T want to talk.

The highly sensitive issue was thrust back into the limelight by Mr Obama yesterday.

Ahead of his first State visit to Britain tomorrow, the American leader admitted that peace in Afghanistan "ultimately means talking to the Taliban".

Mr Cameron will hold urgent talks with the President on the faltering Afghan exit strategy when they meet at No 10 on Wednesday.

A senior Whitehall official said last night: "MI6 are trying very hard but they are not getting a good response.

"It is very tough. They move one step forward and then two steps back. It's the same with the other countries that are trying."

The official added: "There is a growing consensus that the PM will have to lower our demands significantly before we get anywhere with the Taliban."

A senior US source said: "We are creating the military conditions for talks to happen but we can't find anyone senior enough to talk to.

"It has to be someone with the blessing of Mullah Omar and his cronies. But the message keeps coming back that they are not interested."

President Obama learns the hard way about Pakistani military mindset

"It was always understood within the Obama administration that any public recognition that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban could be politically dangerous to the war effort. As a result, Obama’s national security team decided early on to deny the complicity of Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and director of the ISI intelligence agency Shuja Pasha, despite the knowledge that they were fully behind the policy."

Over the years I've had differences with investigative journalist/historian Gareth Porter's opinions on U.S. national security policy, but when he decides to pull together a summary of a situation he can leave many other journalists in the dust. So it is with his review of how President Barack Obama came to realize the folly of attempting to placate Pakistan's military on the matter of its support for the Taliban:

Obama Troop Surge Decision Ignored Pak-Taliban Ties
Inter Press Service
05/23/2011
By Gareth Porter

The unilateral U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden created a spike in mutual recriminations between U.S. and Pakistani politicians, but their fundamental conflict of interest over Afghanistan was already driving the two countries toward serious confrontation.

The pivotal event in relations between the Barack Obama administration and Pakistan was the decision by Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, despite the knowledge that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban insurgents as a strategic policy in its conflict with India.

Obama launched a desperate, last-minute effort to get some kind of commitment from the Pakistanis to reduce their support for the Taliban before the decision to escalate the war. But he did not reconsider the decision after that effort had clearly failed.

It was always understood within the Obama administration that any public recognition that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban could be politically dangerous to the war effort. As a result, Obama’s national security team decided early on to deny the complicity of Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and director of the ISI intelligence agency Shuja Pasha, despite the knowledge that they were fully behind the policy.

On March 26, 2009, a story in the New York Times provided the most detailed news media account up to that date of Pakistani assistance to the Taliban. But the story quoted anonymous U.S. officials as blaming “mid-level ISI operatives” and expressing doubt that top Pakistani officials in Islamabad were directly coordinating the clandestine efforts by ISI operatives to assist the Taliban.

That did not reflect the briefing Obama had gotten from George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, after his election. McConnell had learned from communications intercepts that Kayani considered the Haqqani network, which was being targeted as the most serious threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as a “strategic asset.”

As Obama approached a decision on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for another troop increase of as much as 40,000 troops, the Pakistani military’s determination to use the Taliban and the Haqqani network to advance Pakistani interests in Afghanistan was a major issue in the policy debate.

Opponents of the troop surge request, including Vice President Joe Biden, deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon and Afghanistan War coordinator Douglas Lute, argued that the Pakistanis were not going to change their policy toward Afghanistan, according to Bob Woodward’s account in Obama’s Wars.

Biden argued in a meeting on Sept. 13, 2009, that Pakistan was determined to avoid an Afghan government “led by a Pashtun sympathetic to India”—i.e., Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The conclusion was that the Pakistanis would continue to aid the insurgency the U.S. was trying to defeat.

Despite that argument, as the policy-making process was entering its final weeks, Obama tried to exert high-level pressure on Pakistan.

In a Nov. 11, 2009, letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Obama said Pakistan’s use of such “proxy groups” as Haqqani and the Taliban would no longer be tolerated, as Woodward recounts. National Security Adviser James Jones and Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan were sent to Islamabad to deliver the message.

Obama wanted Pakistan to understand that he would take unilateral action against the Taliban and Haqqani safe havens in Pakistan, including accelerated drone strikes and commando raids, unless Pakistani forces attacked them.

That message was clearly received. A Pakistani official told the New York Times, “Jones’s message was if that Pakistani help wasn’t forthcoming, the United States would have to do it themselves.”

The week of Nov. 17, CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Pasha and other top Pakistani officials, and complained about the presence of the Taliban leadership headquarters in Quetta, Baluchistan, according to Woodward’s account. He cited intelligence that bombs were being made there, then “taken across the border and blowing up Americans.”

Panetta proposed joint U.S.-Pakistani operations on the ground aimed at the Quetta Shura, but Kayani refused.

In a response to Obama’s letter late in November, Zardari voiced the Pakistani military’s rationale for Pakistan’s use of Afghan insurgents to protect its interests in Pakistan. He charged that “neighboring intelligence agencies”—meaning India—”are using Afghan soil to perpetuate violence in Pakistan.”

And Zardari did not give a clear response to Obama’s invitation to plan joint operations against those forces.

When Obama met with his national security team for the final time on Nov. 29, he knew that the pressure tactic had failed. Lute, Obama’s Afghanistan coordinator, warned that Pakistani policy was one of four major, interacting risks of a troop surge policy.

But Obama approved a plan for 30,000 additional troops anyway, suggesting that the decision was driven by the political-bureaucratic momentum of the war rather than by a rational assessment of cost, risk, and benefit.

Throughout 2010, the Pakistani military continued to make clear its refusal to compromise on its interests in Afghanistan. In late January, U.S. and Pakistani authorities picked up Mullah Ghani Baradar, the second-ranking official in the Taliban Quetta Shura, in a raid in Karachi—apparently without realizing in advance that Baradar was present.

But when the United States sought to extradite Baradar to Afghanistan, the Pakistanis refused. And Baradar and several other members of the Quetta Shura who had been detained by the Pakistanis were reported in October 2010 to have been released.

In a January 2011 interview with Public Broadcasting System’s Frontline, Gen. David Petraeus, by then the commander in Afghanistan, was asked about Pakistan’s release of top Taliban leaders. “We’ve actually had a conversation on this very recently,” said Petraeus blandly, “and in fact there has been a request for information.”

Two National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2010 pointed once again to the centrality of Pakistani policy to the outcome of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

The NIE on Afghanistan concluded that the United States was unlikely to succeed in Afghanistan unless Pakistan changed its policy to take military action against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan. But the estimate on Pakistan made it clear that no such change in Pakistani policy could be expected.

In mid-December, the Obama administration issued a five-page summary of its December 2010 review of the Afghanistan War, which concluded that the “gains” were “fragile and reversible” and that consolidating those gains “will require that we make more progress with Pakistan to eliminate sanctuaries for violent extremist networks.”

Immediately after that review, the New York Times reported a military proposal for cross-border raids into Pakistan aimed at capturing Taliban commanders for interrogation back in Afghanistan.

Beginning in late 2010, moreover, the U.S. infiltrated hundreds of unilateral intelligence agents into Pakistan, suggesting an intention to carry out further cross-border raids.

Those moves had already alarmed Pakistan’s military leaders well before the U.S. raid against bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

And in a classified report sent to Congress in early April, the Obama administration strongly criticized Pakistan’s failure to attack insurgent safe havens in Mohmand in northwest Pakistan for three straight years, as reported by the New York Times April 5.

Moeed Yusuf, director of the South Asia program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, who has been leading a study of Pakistani elite opinion on relations with the United States, believes the crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations can be blamed on a failure of both governments to acknowledge explicitly the existence of a fundamental conflict of interests.

“If there is a strategic divergence of interests, I think Pakistan needs to put it on the table,” said Yusuf. Pakistani leaders “need to be very candid about why it’s not in their interests” to do what Washington wants, he said.

If the interests at stake are not brought into the open, Yusuf suggested, “A rupture is possible.”

British report exposes Pakistani regime's support for Taliban terrorism (UPDATED 2 X)

10:50 AM EDT UPDATE
A huge thanks to reader Akash for finding the link to the "London School of Economics" paper mentioned in the following Reuters report and the London Sunday Times report. Many people, including this blogger, had been trying without success to find the link when the story first broke.

The paper, by Matt Waldman of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, is titled THE SUN IN THE SKY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAKISTAN’S ISI AND AFGHAN INSURGENTS.

Akash found the link at al Jazeera. The paper is in PDF format. I'm trying to understand how the LSE got involved in the paper but right now I'm just happy to have the link. Thanks, again, Akash!

3:35 PM EDT UPDATE
Huh. I still can't find anything beyond the early news reports on the Waldman paper (Reuters, Times Online) that connects it to the London School of Economics. All I can see so far is that it's from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which is notoriously a U.S. government propaganda outlet. Well, maybe the LSE connection will emerge in the next few hours or days.

However, after I finally got to read Waldman's paper I noticed that his conclusion repeats the canard that if only the Indian Kashmir problem could be solved, this would go a long way to tamping down the Pakistan regime's murderous rampages. In other words, he's saying that India bears a big responsibility for the Pakistani regime's murder and mayhem against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Readers may recall the New York Times reporting in 2008 that the CIA station chief in Kabul accused his counterpart in Islamabad of Going Native; i.e., sympathizing far too much with the Pakistani regime's view of things.

Even Hamid Karzai's brother noted recently that the CIA had a strange habit of trusting no one but America's enemies; he was speaking of Pakistan.

So -- and pardon my thinking aloud -- I'm wondering whether Waldman's stressing of the Kashmir issue indicates that certain factions in the CIA and/or at State are still hell bent on placating Pakistan's military/ISI.

But that's just me and my deeply suspicious nature, which developed after decades of watching my dear government in action.

For the record, Kashmir is not a factor, much less a significant one, in the ISI-instigated murder of NATO troops in Afghanistan -- and it is outright murder, not warfare, because the U.S. military and the CIA extended way too much trust to Pakistan's military and ISI.
**************************************
From Reuters:

Report slams Pakistan for meddling in Afghanistan

by Jonathon Burch
Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:20pm EDT

(Kabul) Pakistani military intelligence not only funds and trains Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but is officially represented on the movement's leadership council, giving in significant influence over operations, a report said.

The report, published by the London School of Economics, a leading British institution, on Sunday, said research strongly suggested support for the Taliban was the "official policy" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

Although links between the ISI and Islamist militants have been widely suspected for a long time, the report's findings, which it said were corroborated by two senior Western security officials, could raise more concerns in the West over Pakistan's commitment to help end the war in Afghanistan.

The report also said Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was reported to have visited senior Taliban prisoners in Pakistan earlier this year, where he is believed to have promised their release and help for militant operations, suggesting support for the Taliban "is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government."

A Pakistani diplomatic source described that report as "naive," and also said any talks with the Taliban were up to the Afghan government.

Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," said the report, based on interviews with Taliban commanders and former senior Taliban ministers as well as Western and Afghan security officials.

"DUPLICITY"

In March 2009, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said they had indications elements in the ISI supported the Taliban and al Qaeda and said the agency must end such activities.

Nevertheless, senior Western officials have been reluctant to talk publicly on the subject for fear of damaging possible cooperation from Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state Washington has propped up with billions of dollars in military and economic aid.

"The Pakistan government's apparent duplicity -- and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment -- could have enormous geo-political implications," said the report's author, Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.

"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," Waldman said in the report.

The report comes at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks for foreign troops in Afghanistan -- more than 21 have been killed this week -- and at a time when the insurgency is at its most violent.

More than 1,800 foreign troops, including some 1,100 Americans, have died in Afghanistan since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. The war has already cost the United States around $300 billion and now costs more than $70 billion a year, the report said, citing 2009 U.S. Congressional research figures.

VIOLENT REGIONS

The report said interviews with Taliban commanders in some of the most violent regions in Afghanistan "suggest that Pakistan continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies."

"These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior U.N. official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries," the report said.

Almost all of the Taliban commanders interviewed in the report also believed the ISI was represented on the Quetta Shura, the Taliban's supreme leadership council based in Pakistan.

"Interviews strongly suggest that the ISI has representatives on the (Quetta) Shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest level of the movement," the report said.

The report also stated that Pakistani President Zardari, along with a senior ISI official, allegedly visited some 50 senior Taliban prisoners at a secret location in Pakistan where he told them they had been arrested only because he was under pressure from the United States.

"(This) suggests that the policy is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government," the report said.

Afghanistan has also been highly critical of Pakistan's ISI involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Last week, the former director of Afghanistan's intelligence service, Amrullah Saleh, resigned saying he had become an obstacle to President Hamid Karzai's plans to negotiate with the insurgents.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters at his home a day after he resigned, Saleh said the ISI was "part of the landscape of destruction in this country."

"It will be a waste of time to provide evidence of ISI involvement. They are a part of it. The Pakistani army of which ISI is a part, they know where the Taliban leaders are -- in their safe houses," he told Reuters.

(Editing by David Fox and Alex Richardson)

I'm trying to scare up the link to the London School of Economics report, which I can't find at their website. The link provided by the Times Online in their article on the LSE only loops back to the Times.

This entry is linked to with comments at Riehl World View, The Jawa Report, and Zenpundit.

Regarding Rusty's quoting from Long War Journal's Bill Roggio, the issue isn't why "a bear shits in the woods" but that the bear shit on the highway twice in one weekend. Twice this weekend, news that was really an old story (ISI's involvement in Taliban terrorism in Afghanistan and Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth) suddenly burst into the mainstream media. See my post today about the latter story.

Speaking of The Jawa Report, Rusty and the other counter-jihadis at his blog have done it again with their investigation of Ohio Homeland Security official Omar Alomari, which brought Alomari's activities to the attention of U.S. authorities. My joke is that this endless war would have an end if Rusty ran homeland security but it's not entirely a joke.