We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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It seems I am getting my wish and I am not the least upset about it. The Mazar-e-Sharif prisoner uprising appears to be accomplishing the best we could hope for. According to an article in Fox News:
Alim Razim, an adviser to Gen. Dostum, said 40 Northern Alliance troops were killed in the fighting. He added that any prisoners still alive wouldn’t be for long.
“Those who are left over will be dead,” he said. “None of them can escape.”
This avoids the messy problem of sorting, trying and executing them: an exercise that would almost certainly lead to freedom for many trained villains. It is much to our advantage they have opted to let Allah do the sorting for us.
I’m still hoping for a futile last stand in Kunduz, followed by Marine Mayhem in Kandahar. I’ll hold judgement until there is confirmation of the Antonov. Even if true, there is nothing to say those aircraft aren’t piles of smouldering wreckage in various remote valleys. Our fighter jocks haven’t had near enough air-to-air practice this last month or two.
It’s only fair.
16:15 GMT. A SkyNews reporter was told by one of Northern Alliance General Doud’s forward battlegroup commanders that as his forces rolled into Konduz this morning, they were surprised by the lack of hardcore Al Qaeda fighters. They then discovered from locals that for the last two nights, large Antonov transport aircraft have been landing at the airstrip in the isolated Taliban pocket and airlifting out the trapped foreign Al Qaeda fighters, along with their weapons, flying them to safety under the very noses of the Northern Alliance and Americans.
If this report is true,and the hardcore of Al Qaeda personnel in Konduz have slipped away to points unknown, it is a major setback for the ‘war against terrorism’.
The new developments in the war against Taliban/Al Qaeda could well be the end game, not of the war against global terrorism, but of the first stage of that war. In some ways, the ‘Afghan Interlude’ might actually be the easiest part (a few weeks ago I never thought I would be writing that remark). At least we have a relatively clearly defined enemy in Al Qaeda and their Taliban patrons.
There is still some hard fighting and dirty politicking to be done before Afghanistan is ‘finished’ but I suspect that once the appetizer is well and truly digested, it will be time for the main course: Iraq
Hi Saddam, Condaleeza here. Did you think we had forgotten that Mohammed Atta met with the station chief of Iraqi Intelligence in Prague right before heading off to the USA?
A Christmas Song Since it is that time of the year, I thought to set my keyboard to bits to bring forth some cheering thoughts for the Holiday Season and the New Year. Cheerful that is, for those of us who are not living in caves…
al Qaeda roasting on a mountain road
Rangers shooting off their toes
Broadside blasts coming down through the air
And Taliban in body bags
Everybody knows a JDAM and a laser light
Help to make the bunker bright
Tiny bombs blowing shards all around
Will make it hard to sleep tonight
They know that Sam is on his way
He’s loaded lots of bombs and bullets
On his planes
And the al Qaeda boys
are gonna die and find out
Houris really think they were dumb
And so I’m offering this simple phrase
to all the ones who want us dead
Although it’s been said many times
Many ways: Dear Osama
Fuck You
03:15 in the morning GMT. First reports are coming in on satellite and cable channels of a major airmobile helicopter insertion at an airfield near Kandahar by over 1000 US Marines, followed by artillery and other heavy equipment being brought by C-130 Hercules transports. This is clearly not just a raid.
Semper Fi. Godspeed to you all, gentlemen.
An article in the Sunday Times today suggests that Tony Blair is exasperated that his wish to see a major deployment of ground troops to Afghanistan is being ignored by George Bush.
Meanwhile, Blair has had no support from America in his efforts to increase the coalition forces on the ground. He is said by military sources to have become “utterly frustrated” that the US “cannot see that it can achieve its tactical goals more quickly is the military, humanitarian and diplomatic strands of this operation run in tandem”. Washington is “myopically focused on Bin Laden and the Taliban”, the sources said.
Sorry Tony, but whilst you and your new best friend George make a fine couple at photo opportunities, there is no disguising that there are two fundamentally different world views at work here.
Tony Blair is the leader of a reformed socialist party who regards it as axiomatic that the role of the state is being ‘my brother’s keeper’. By extension Blair wants to take up ‘The White Man’s burden’ in Afghanistan. He wants stout and resolute British soldiers to prevent those messy Afghans from sliding into barbarism in the post-Taliban order. He presides over a nation which has a realistic view of the realities of war and has fought its last few rather well. As a result, the general British public has quite a high tolerance of combat casualties.
George Bush is the leader of a corporatist capitalist party with a significant anti-corporatist and anti-interventionist wing. He has support for a war of retaliation and the destruction of Al Qaeda and anyone who stands between the USA and Al Qaeda. Bush presides over a nation which has a rather squeamish view of war, at least with regard to American casualties, and very little interest in open ended military commitments. Whilst images of women in Kabul walking unmolested without burqas causes Americans entirely justified satisfaction, few seriously think that is why their airforces and special ops teams are killing people in their names.
Blair is not just wrong, he is dangerously wrong. An absolute prerequisite for coherent military operations is having clear and unambiguous goals. The Americans have set themselves exactly that: the destruction of Al Qaeda and any who give them succour. What Tony Blair is doing is applying his fuzzy socialist logic to a very simple strategic question and attempting to turn clarity into ambiguity. This is not a peacekeeping operation, it is not a nation building operation, it is not a humanitarian operation, it is a war against Taliban/Al Qaeda in reprisal for the mass murder of civilians in America: to think anything else is just a dangerous distraction. As I have been saying, we simply have no business trying to civilize Afghanistan at bayonet point, not only it is wrong, it simply will not work. Fortunately it seems that Bush and his advisors are able to see that too.
It seems the reporters in Afghanistan have decided to start a little war of their own. As in all wars, a very high proportion of the correspondents are British and they seem to be itching to take digs at each other. Has someone been denying these guys their early morning cup of tea or something?
John Simpson has naturally attracted more than his fair share of flak after claiming he and the BBC liberated Kabul ahead of the Northern Alliance. Of course Lara Logan from GMTV had actually been in Kabul for some time before Simpson’s portly frame rumbled into town.
And speaking of the truly delectable Lara Logan, ITN’s sour puss Julian Manyon accused her of “exploiting her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy” to get interviews with General Babajan.
But note he does not criticize her reporting, which has been just as sound and professional as Julian Manyon. Time for a reality check: if you were General Babajan, who would you rather chat with, Lara Logan or Julian Manyon? Sorry Julian, no contest.
Somehow I suspect that if it had been Lara skinny dipping in the Salang Gorge rather than Manyon, the locals would have taken a considerably less hostile stance.
And of course, the Guardian cannot resist a little sniping either:
Speaking of Kabul. Has Lara Logan, the GMTV correspondent stationed outside Kabul had her Clarins drop yet? Don’t know about the US airforce plans, but the French cosmetics company is on the case already.
Journalists are a bitchy lot.
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
– Rudyard Kipling (extract from ‘The Young British Soldier’)
For more Kipling verse, see everypoet.com.
The Americans have the right idea: get involved with the enemies of our enemies, and make it clear to them all we want to do is kill said mutual enemies, not mess in their internal affairs. Offer them money by all means but to even contemplate ‘peacekeeping’ or ‘stabilisation forces’ is utter madness.
The West, no, who are we kidding…the USA and to a lesser extent the UK, can play a constructive role by tying ongoing aid to more moderate behaviour by the future rulers in Kabul. But for goodness sake, realise that the victorious army we have backed hates Taliban/Al Qaeda because they allowed large numbers of armed foreigners into the country (Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens etc.). It is absurd to suggest large numbers of British troops are going to be any more acceptable.
It is obvious that the anti-Taliban/anti-Al Qaeda forces are more than happy to work with small scale deployment of special forces, but to suggest 6,000 regular British soldiers will be seen the same way is a grave misjudgement. A brigade sized British force would be there for only one reason: to act as a counter balance to the various local armies. From the perspective of the ‘Northern Alliance’, what possible good could that serve other than to dilute their hard won gains?
Let’s keep our eyes on the ball people. We are in this ghastly hell hole called Afghanistan for one purpose and one purpose only: to destroy Al Qaeda and just incidentally to destroy the Taliban because they stand in the way of that objective. Sure, lets help them form a stable society that suits not just their interests but also our own by removing a breeding ground for terrorist vipers… but leave the armed aspect of politics and the ‘peacekeeping’ to the locals. We can give wise counsel but to suggest we could forcibly keep this armed-to-the-teeth society from fighting amongst themselves if they are determined to do so is ridiculous.
Some habits are just too hard to break. It seems that the British government has more in mind for Afghanistan than the Americans. From Fox News we hear:
A cabinet minister said: “The Americans are interested only in trying to get bin Laden and push the Taliban further back. Tony’s view is that now is the moment to get in there, both in terms of humanitarian aid and the diplomatic front.”
He really should know better. England, like Rome before it and the Russians after it has already gotten its’ nose bloodied in Afghanistan. You simply cannot go into that place and tell them how to live their lives, even if they are making a total bollocks of it. They’ll stop killing each other long enough to run you out of their hills. Then they will get right back to their millennia old sport… of killing each other.
Every child should read Kipling as a part of their education just so they will understand and avoid remaking this mistake. Afghanistan has long been known for its’ quaint local ways of encouraging foriegn armies to go conquer someone else. I remember reading about the days in which the British took their turn learning the same harsh lesson.
Soldiers were told to keep the last bullet for themselves rather than be captured. In those days the Afghan tribeswomen went out after the battles to attend to the wounded. That attention is rumoured to have been rather unpleasant.
Now true, that is a century past and the world is much more civilized today. Would you believe a teensy bit nicer? How about…
What the Afghans do in their own country is absolutely none of our business so long as they don’t harbour those who would kill members of our tribes. The American’s have got it right. Vengeance against those who kill your own is something the Afghan tribesmen relate to and respect. Our lads will get along just fine riding with them and sharing kills of the al Qaeda foreign devils. However… if we start telling Afghans how to live it will just get us into trouble.
Let’s not go there.
Julian Manyon sees the devastation wrought by the B-52s, but says that the fall of Kabul is not the end of the struggle. He gives an excellent eyewitness report in The Spectator from the front line in Afghanistan.
I look forward to hearing from all those out there in ‘establishment pundit land’ who sneered at the effect of the US bombing.
I recommend that everyone immediately read this item from the Fletcher Conference, Remarks Prepared for Delivery by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. It is a brilliant piece in and of itself. On top of that it supplies text from several Special Forces dispatches. This is our first taste of the real story. And what a story it is.
From Wolfowitz’s words you will gain insight on what the war on the ground must be like. I cannot help but find myself liking and respecting these Northern Afghan people whose personality peaks through the dispatches. It is the stuff movies are made of. Our forces have not just been fighting side by side with the Afghans, they have been fighting side by side on horseback. Horses and sabers, tanks and satellites and batwinged black stealth bombers and lasers all mixed together like something out of a Space Opera. We are truly entering strange and interesting times.
Retief does not seem quite so fictional tonight.
After a nightmare of some three months duration, Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas (Australia), Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer (USA), Georg Taubmann, Katrin Jelinek, Margrit Stebner and Silke Durrkopf (Germany) are safe. Personally I did not have hope that any, let alone all of them would live through the war. I am ecstatic to be so absolutely and totally wrong.
Although it was American Special Forces who extracted them, according to CNN it was the Northern Alliance who rescued them:
Taubmann said the eight were freed from the prison by anti-Taliban forces. “The Massood people came, and others from the alliance, and broke into the prison and just opened the doors … We were really scared, and then the alliance people came in … and we were free and we got out of prison and we walked through the city and the people came out of their houses and hugged us and greeted us, and they were all clapping …
We should note that far from hating them for being citizens of western coalition nations, the people of Ghazni were happy to see them safe and out of the hands of the hated Taliban. Far from gaining the enmity of the people of Afghanistan as many in the media would lead you to believe, they see us a friends taking common cause with them. We have both suffered terribly from the Taliban and their al Qaeda friends. The Afghans even more so than us.
I think if Afghans are the least bit angry at us, it is over one question only:
“What took you guys so long?”
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