NEWS SNIPPETS FROM AFGHANISTAN ON THIS DAY

CiVILIANS KILLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHAN TROOPS SHELLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHANS FEARFUL OF MORE US TROOPS, OBAMA'S MAN IN AFGHANISTAN MISSING IN ACTION, TWO US TROOPS LOST SOMEWHERE, SEARCHERS KILL AND MAIM 25 AFGHANISTANIS

Snippets of News on Afghanistan:November 7, 2009

The stories emanating from Afghanistan today give one pause.

1. From the NY Times: Title: Prospect of more US troops worries Afghans.
2. From the NY Times: Title: NATO Airstrike Reported to Kill 7 Afghan Soldiers (by accident, while searching for two missing US troops…reported dead by Taliban, while 25 others were reported hurt or injured.)
3. From the LA Times: Title: Nine Civilians Killed in Helmand Province by NATO rocket attack. Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces said today they were investigating reports that nine civilians were killed in a rocket strike aimed at insurgents in the volatile southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The incident came despite new efforts by international forces to avoid civilian casualties and make the Afghan population feel safe.

Dozens of angry villagers carried the bodies today through the streets of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, before they were dispersed by police firing guns in the air, witnesses said. ( Apparently civilians harvesters working in a field were mistaken for Taliban planting a bomb by NATO troops. )
Such incidents have fueled rising anger against international forces.

"I'm sure if the situation continues like this, one day everyone will declare holy war against the infidels," said Anwar Khan, who heads the Helmand provincial council, raising the specter of Afghans turning against the U.S.-led coalition.

Same article: In the east, a U.S. service member was killed when insurgents attacked a patrol Wednesday afternoon, military officials said. They provided no further details.

Afghanistan News Center: more troops may not be the answer, says Obama adviser
More troops may not be the answer to Nato's Afghanistan problems, a key adviser to President Barack Obama has said.

By Telegraph (UK) reporter 07 Nov 2009

National security adviser James Jones warned that extra troops could just be "swallowed up" in the deserts and mountains where troops are fighting. He was speaking as the president ponders a request to send 40,000 more soldiers to fight in the war, a decision which could prove one of the most crucial of his presidency.

Holbrook Missing in Action in Afghanistan?
Richard Holbrooke’s future unclear as fallout from Karzai rift reaches Washington
See "The Times" (UK) November 7, 2009, Giles Whittell in Washington

Richard Holbrooke has been called many things in his long career: diplomat, peacemaker, bruiser and, in the court of President Hamid Karzai, “the Devil”.

In Kabul a week after it became clear that President Karzai would win a second term without a second round of voting, the most conspicuous truth about President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is his absence.

The man who forced Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table and longed to be rewarded with the job of Secretary of State was instead handed the toughest regional portfolio on the planet at the start of President Obama’s term.

He has since hired dozens of advisers and set out goals on reforming everything from Afghanistan’s poppy fields to its notoriously porous prisons. But his critics say he has failed to broker a stable political settlement with President Karzai, largely because relations between the two have broken down. The result is whispering in Washington about how much longer he can retain his job.

“It is a typical Washington parlour game about who’s up, who’s down,” a disdainful State Department spokesman said last month. If the game had a name it would be “Where in the world is Holbrooke?”, and the answers are revealing.

When Senator John Kerry was immersed in ultimately successful negotiations with President Karzai in Kabul last month, Mr Holbrooke was in Washington. When Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan last week, Mr Holbrooke was with her. Then, instead of including Kabul in his itinerary, he flew home. Between those trips he held a rare open briefing widely regarded as intended to show that he had not been sidelined by Mr Kerry.

Asked about his personal relations with President Karzai, Mr Holbrooke called them “fine . . . correct . . . appropriate”, and said he was looking forward to seeing the Afghan leader “in a few days”. More than a few days — and a dramatic climb-down by President Karzai’s main opponent — have passed since, and Mr Holbrooke remains in Washington.

“The optics are not great surrounding him right now,” one fellow diplomat said yesterday. A close Washington confidant of Mr Holbrooke’s admitted: “It would be understandable if people thought he was somewhat missing in action.” His staff retort that during the most intense US foreign strategy review since Vietnam, he needs to be in Washington — advising his immediate boss, Mrs Clinton, but also briefing President Obama privately and without her knowledge.

Yet the case against Mr Holbrooke involves more than geography. He has “needlessly antagonised” the one man with whom he should have cultivated a rapport, aides to a former US Ambassador to Kabul say. He has also misused six months, from April to September, that should have been spent planning for the dire political contingencies that he knew were looming.

Mr Holbrooke confronted President Karzai over his failure to arrest the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum last year and encouraged opposition figures to run against him. In August he refused to join in President Karzai’s celebrations after his first-round election win, insisting that a second round would be required.

By some accounts this inadvertently sabotaged an opposition move to unite behind a single candidate, and it took Senator Kerry to make President Karzai accept the idea of a second ballot.
Team Holbrooke, meanwhile, is accused of having a confused decision-making apparatus with memos and analysis more notable for enthusiasm than acuity. Mr Holbrooke’s lack of knowledge of Afghanistan has also been noted in Kabul and Washington.

“Somehow the political element never got it together and said, ‘What is the Plan B and Plan C?’ an ally of the envoy told The Times. “‘What do we do if there’s a legitimacy crisis?’” Faced with just such a crisis, many in Washington now believe that Mr Holbrooke will have to take the blame.

Get the picture?


rjk