Afghanistan at the End of the Line

News of Afghanistan that reaches the pages of the Western press is usually bad. Terror bombings in Kabul. The northern province of Kunduz, whose capital city was overrun briefly by the Taliban last autumn, remains largely under Taliban control. The same can be said for Helmand and Uruzgan provinces in the south. Obama reversed himself on U.S. troop levels and rules of engagement exposing the lie of his 2014 end of combat operations ceremony.

Another big 2014 Obama administration lie is about to be exposed. The Kerry-created unity government of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, cobbled together extra-legally to avoid a potential civil war due to questionable vote returns from the Afghan presidential election, is supposed to have passed certain mile markers by this October. Mujib Mashal explains this morning in "Hamid Karzai Is Still Running, but Where’s the Finish Line?"

The end of September is the deadline for the government to meet the commitments of a political deal brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry after the catastrophic 2014 election dispute. By then, Afghanistan is supposed to hold a parliamentary election, enact sweeping electoral reform, and amend the Constitution to create the position of prime minister for Mr. Ghani’s election rival and current governing partner, Abdullah Abdullah. But staying on schedule was already impossible many months ago, and Mr. Kerry has publicly insisted that Mr. Ghani’s government will remain through the end of its five-year term, regardless.

That is just the beginning. The country’s security situation is worsening, despite the American military’s increased involvement in the fighting. The Taliban have seized many districts, and they threaten to take many more.

Mr. Ghani, the constant technocrat, has been forced to focus on security, and his economic initiatives have stalled. And suddenly he has also been challenged by a street protest movement in which ethnic Hazaras are accusing his government of systematic discrimination.

The most recent of the demonstrations was struck by a suicide bombing, claimed by the Islamic State, that left at least 80 people dead. Now the demonstrators accuse the government of purposefully leaving them vulnerable to attack, and they have given Mr. Ghani an ultimatum to meet their demands — another September deadline, as it turns out.

On top of all that, a new protest movement, potentially more dangerous, is growing just north of Kabul, the capital, calling for the government to rebury with dignity a bandit northern king who has been dead for nearly a century, shot by a firing squad. Among the people calling for the reburial, and threatening protests, are northern militia commanders who have long been skeptical of Mr. Ghani, and they have also given him a September ultimatum.

Government officials accuse Mr. Karzai and his allies of having a hand in the recent protests. But he says he is after neither the collapse of the government nor a return to power. “I have absolutely no doubt about that,” he said.

He just wants the government’s legitimacy affirmed after the September deadline, he said, and the only way left is to call a traditional loya jirga — a grand assembly of tribal elders from across the country.

Mr. Karzai’s push for a loya jirga is the move most widely seen as a game plan for returning to power, or at least for negotiating more leverage. His strength is with the tribes and the power brokers he has maintained at his side, while Mr. Ghani has alienated many of them.

It helps to understand that Mr. Karzai represents an entire network of power — national as well as local — accumulated over 13 years and beyond. That network feels that it is slowly being uprooted under Mr. Ghani’s presidency, and that it could be vastly weakened if the current government survives the September deadline intact.

Kerry is on record saying that the U.S. plans on ignoring its own agreement, an agreement that was supposed to bestow legitimacy on the Afghan unity government. Ghani will rule absent parliamentary elections, election reform or a loya jirga. Clearly this is an occupation government, nothing more. How the United Nations and international donors will manage to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan is a democratic state is another matter. Mashal wrote back in April that

Western and Afghan officials say certain advisers to Mr. Ghani are envisioning a different outcome: using the deadline to force out Mr. Abdullah. They argue that while the position of chief executive expires, the president will still have a mandate, from an election that they say was cleansed by a United Nations audit.

Part of the price Abdullah Abdullah paid for his chief executive slot in the current government was to drop his challenge to the legitimacy of the 2014 election. Now, potentially, those scrubbed election results will be used to oust him.

And that is just the internal government feud between the Ghani and Abdullah factions. Then there is Karzai positioning himself as the leader of a post-U.S. Afghanistan:

Mr. Karzai reserves his sharpest criticism of the government for what he considers its biggest sin: cozying up, “immensely, sadly,” to the United States and relying on it for its survival. 

Mr. Karzai, who sent flowers to the American ambassador for the Fourth of July holiday and then signed a thank-you note to the ambassador for thanking him, said in an interview with The New York Times last week that “the Americans, whose primary slogan is democracy, are making a sham of democracy in Afghanistan.” 

He is not fundamentally against the American presence, he says: He just wants them to stop bombing his country and interfering in the political process, which he accused Mr. Kerry of doing in the spring when he insisted on a full-term Ghani government.

“This is a blatant interference to undermine the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” Mr. Karzai said in the interview. “Look at this country: What do we have other than our pride and sovereignty? Then someone comes — from a good place, America — stands here in our country to determine the duration of our government as he sees fit? That is an insult.”

Meanwhile, the streams of visitors continue, and Mr. Karzai regales them with parables that at times seem like bids for redemption, and at others like foresight.

During one lunch, he told a story of a group of tired travelers in a desert who see a fire in the distance and hear drums. Men are dancing the circle-dance called Attan. The travelers decide to spend the night there, and to make their hosts feel comfortable, they join in the dance.

But the dance stretches on and on. 

“One of the travelers is wise, he realizes it is the devil’s dance and it will go on all night,” Mr. Karzai told the guests. “When the morning comes, there would be no sign of a dance or the devils.”

He paused, then drove the point home: “We are stuck in the dance of the devil,” he said, to chuckles. “When the sun rises, the devils will be gone, but we will be left in this dry land.”

The U.S. and Afghanistan are linked. Afghanistan's destruction played a key role in the counterrevolution launched against social democracy in the United States. First, the big military buildup begun by Jimmy Carter and expanded by Reagan after the Soviet invasion; then, post-9/11, the U.S. invasion.

This fall both the U.S. and Afghanistan are coming to the end of the line of their counterrevolutions against social democracy.

Hillary Swings to the Right + Clock Running Out on Afghan Extra-Legal Government

There is a good piece this morning by Gaius Publius, "The Clinton Campaign Speaks to the New York Times," which combs through a Patrick Healy story, "Clinton Campaign Underestimated Sanders Strengths, Allies Say," that appeared in the Sunday edition of the paper. One of the interesting points sussed out is that the Hillary brain trust is fearful of a "wave election," which means that the Clinton campaign, contrary to its publicly stated position that it plans to win by returning the Obama coalition to the polls, is actually now running against the Obama coalition; hence the attacks on Sanders' "Medicare for All" from the right. According to Gaius Publius,

A “wave election” is one where a very large number of new voters attempt to make big changes. Very large numbers of new voters. Now go back up to the Healy comment gleaned from the Clinton campaign. Ms. Clinton is “unnerved by the possibility that Mr. Sanders will foment a large wave of first-time voters…” 

How would a “wave of first-time voters,” which would heavily drive Democratic base turnout, not be very good for the Democratic Party, as in, 2008-good. The Healy passage basically says that Hillary Clinton would trade away all of that to-the-party benefit to become the nominee, that she would be willing to seriously weaken the party so long as she could then lead it. This is almost the definition of destructive ambition. Is that a fair characterization? I think we’d have to ask Patrick Healy, as the quoted passage is his. 

Don’t forget that the quoted passage add the phrase “and liberals” to the “large wave of first-time voters” that Mrs. Clinton and her husband are “unnerved by.”Are Mr. and Ms. Clinton really “unnerved” by “liberals”? Again, the phrasing is Healy’s, but the sentiments are claimed to be those of the Clintons.

Just as the Republicans are struggling with a "wave election" of their own in the form of Donald Trump, so too are the Democrats. At this point the two hands of the duopoly are trying to beat down a democratic uprising. In the case of Hillary, her campaign team now regrets not resorting to fearmongering earlier ("A vote for Sanders is a vote to raise your taxes"; "Sanders is unelectable"). Amy Chozick outlines this in an illuminating piece that appeared yesterday, "Hillary Clinton Gets Set for a Long Slog Against Bernie Sanders," the most revealing passage of which I found to be the prediction of where the Clinton campaign's current rightward drift will end up:

Even if Mrs. Clinton wins in Iowa, where she maintains a slight lead in most polls, Mr. Sanders could receive an outpouring of small donations if the outcome is close that would help him compete in subsequent states. Mr. Sanders, a small-state senator who has never run for national office, has shown surprising fund-raising muscle. Many of his donors have yet to give him the maximum individual contribution of $2,700, meaning they could be tapped repeatedly if the contest remains close. [Good point.] His campaign raised $33 million in the final quarter of 2015, just $4 million less than Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides say they expect to win Iowa and New Hampshire [happy talk] and are ready for the grind. A giant whiteboard on the wall of the campaign’s headquarters maps out where staff members would be sent depending on the outcomes in the early states.

“We just game out a bunch of different scenarios,” Mr. Mook said. “It’s kind of like ‘choose your own adventure.’ ”

This is not the adventure the Clinton team would have chosen.

A prolonged primary campaign against an opponent widely popular with the party’s liberal base could exhaust donors who will also be asked to contribute to an expensive campaign to defeat the Republican nominee. A contentious race against Mr. Sanders could also weaken Mrs. Clinton’s standing among Democratic voters she would need in November.

The last sentence is the obvious one, the one that loomed large last year but has yet to be given the prominence it deserves. Now it is all the more prominent because Hillary is attacking from the right. After months of this, how are you going to drive turnout among the progressive Democratic base come November? You're not.

The pro-Hillary people are hoping that a defense of the Democratic status quo -- Obamacare, for instance (see Krugman's hopeless Monday column, "Health Reform Realities") -- will allow the Clinton campaign to muddle through. But while this might be a 50%+1 strategy to win the Democratic nomination, it basically guarantees a loss in the general election (unless the Republicans manage to concoct an even more perverse strategy to nominate an Establishment-friendly alternative to Trump).

One story that is worth taking a look at is Mujib Mashal's "Afghan Panel Sets Election Date, Drawing Government Criticism." Afghanistan and the United States are intimately linked. At the end of the 1970s when neoliberalism -- the eradication of social democracy -- was taking root in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, a robust militarist accompaniment was called for. Afghanistan provided it with Charlie Wilson's War, the U.S.-led, Saudi-funded proxy conflict against the Soviet Union. Then there was the post-9/11 occupation, which remains to this day despite many announcements of the end of combat operations.

 In 2014 the U.S./NATO puppet government was in danger of splitting apart because of the fraudulent election of Ashraf Ghani over his opponent Abdullah Abdullah. Secretary of State John Kerry jetted in and cobbled together an "extra-legal" agreement enshrining a unity government that made Ghani president and Abdullah chief executive.

That agreement had a sunset date, this October, and some caveats, two of which are that parliamentary elections be held before October and that a loya jirga be convened, none of which has happened. According to Mashal,

The Afghan unity government, brokered by the United States after the bitter election dispute between Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah in 2014 threatened to tear the country apart, is in a race against time to meet the requirements of the political agreement it was founded on, set to expire in October. 

That agreement requires the government to hold local elections, which are already months overdue, by the time it completes two years in office in October. It is also supposed to have convened a grand assembly of elders from across the country by October to amend the Constitution and create the position of prime minister for Mr. Abdullah to move into. 

Pressure from political opposition groups has been increasing on Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah in recent months. Some of the groups have warned that the government, severely pressed by Taliban offensives across the country, will lose its legitimacy if it does not hold the elections soon. Other groups have given up on the current government entirely, calling for early presidential elections to bring in a new administration.

The problem is even if there were a decision by all in government to hold elections immediately there would likely not be enough time, with war raging in Helmand Province and Islamic State on the rise in Nangarhar Province, to have elections by October.

The October surprise in the U.S. elections could be the collapse of the quisling government in Afghanistan.

Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan: The Promise of Elections Will Not Bring Peace

There is little reason to hope that anything will come of the UN-approved peace plan for Syria announced last Friday. Just look at how poorly peace talks on Yemen have gone; and with Yemen you don't have nearly the number of large-state actors with their fingers in the mix as is the case with Syria. In Yemen, like in Syria, a significant problem is how to contain the efflorescence of Salafi jihadists who are supported by Saudi Arabia. Kareem Fahim and Saleed al-Batati report in "Yemen Peace Talks End With No End to Conflict" that

In recent days, anti-Houthi fighters have mounted a broad offensive across several northern provinces, and captured new territory, including a provincial capital. [What about the ceasefire?] The anti-Houthi forces are backed by a Saudi-led military coalition that has been conducting an aerial campaign against the rebels since March. Human rights groups say that bombing by the coalition is responsible for the majority of civilian deaths during the war. 

The Saudi-led coalition carried out airstrikes in Sana and other areas on Saturday and Sunday. And the Houthis, who have been making increasingly bold military incursions across the border into Saudi Arabia, have fired ballistic missiles at the Saudi-backed forces in the past few days, according to Yemeni military officials.

It appears that the Houthis are flying the white flag, but to no avail:

Nasser Bagazgooz, who was part of the Houthi delegation, asserted that his side had made “big” concessions, including agreeing to withdraw Houthi forces from cities and from government institutions, and to hand over weapons.

The Houthis had asked for the formation of a new government “from across the political spectrum,” and elections within a year, he added.

The Houthis are basically mirroring the UN-outlined peace process for Syria. But the Saudis don't seem to find this acceptable, which should tell us how smoothly things will go in January.

Interestingly, elections are also on the mind of a nascent opposition movement within the quisling Afghan government. But first a few words on the dire military predicament in Afghanistan from this morning's "Situation Report" by Foreign Policy's Paul McLeary:

Taliban keeps pushing. NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan may have ended last December, but the deaths of six U.S. soldiers near Bagram airbase on Monday, and the rushed deployments of U.S. and British forces to Helmand province to hold back a resurgent Taliban, tell a very different story. 

The loss of six soldiers in one strike is the largest battlefield loss for the U.S. in Afghanistan in well over a year, and more than doubles American combat fatalities there in 2015, which stood at four before Monday.

Renewed Taliban offensives across the country call into question the effectiveness of the Afghan army, which continues to struggle despite years of training and billions spent on equipping the force. And now, American commandos are back in the fight in the southern province of Helmand to backstop Afghan forces, who are in danger of losing control of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah and the key town of Sangin, FP’s Paul McLeary reports.

British troops have also been sent to Helmand, though London insists they are only acting in an advisory role. It’s worth remembering that Sangin resonates deeply with the British public, “as more than 100 of their 456 fatalities in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001 took place in the district,” the AP notes.

Mujib Mashal reported in yesterday's paper, "Afghan Government Faces New Set of Rivals," that allies of former president Hamid Karzai are demanding that the Ghani-Abdullah government honor pledges to hold elections within nine months. There is a hardcore segment of this opposition who want a loya jirga convened immediately and a caretaker government put in place:

It was unlikely that the members of the opposition council would have much popular support, because many of them had controversial pasts, Mr. Safi said. [Wadir Safi, a lecturer of political science at Kabul University.] But the government’s abysmal record has given many of them hope that they can exercise some power anyway, he added.

“The problem is also that the government hasn’t delivered at all — the two men came together in an illegal agreement, they have talked a lot and delivered nothing, and they are trying to extend that,” Mr. Safi said.

Mr. Ghani’s government came to power through a power-sharing agreement brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry after an election stalemate last year threatened to throw the country into a civil war. The agreement’s two-year deadline expires next September, and it calls for a thorough overhaul of the election process, the holding of parliamentary and district elections, and a national assembly of elders to amend the Constitution and formalize Mr. Abdullah’s position as a prime minister.

But 15 months after coming to power, the government has struggled with even the most basic steps needed for holding the elections, including an agreement on the makeup of the commission to oversee the vote. A harsh winter, and a Taliban offensive that is expected to intensify in the spring, makes their task of holding the elections as scheduled even more difficult.

In all three battle zones -- Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan -- elections will not bring peace. In not one of the three countries does the U.S. and its Saudi ally want truly free and fair elections. The U.S. doesn't have free and fair elections in the homeland, and neither do the Saudis. So the wars will continue.

U.S. Project in Afghanistan Looking Very Wobbly

Two stories emanating from Afghanistan in the last two days -- "Afghans Protest After U.S. Forces Carry Out Raid on Strongman" by Mujib Mashal; and "In Afghanistan, Suicide Blast and Angry Crowd Target American Soldiers" by Joseph Goldstein and Ahmad Shakib -- highlight the duplicity of the Obama administration's public declaration that U.S. combat operations have ceased in that country.

The first story describes a raid by U.S. military on a local militia (non-Taliban) leader in Parwan Province, home to the U.S. mega-base Bagram Airfield, to destroy a weapons depot. The raid sparked a significant protest:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Protesters in the northern Afghan province of Parwan blocked the main highway there on Monday after American forces raided the village of a local strongman and blew up a weapons depot belonging to him, officials and residents said. 

The raid on Monday morning demonstrated that American troops in Afghanistan, months after President Obama declared their regular combat mission over, are engaged beyond their publicly stated role of advising the Afghan forces and carrying out targeted counterterrorism operations. 

It also highlighted how, despite a lengthy campaign to disarm illegal militias, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, armed groups that have no apparent ties to Al Qaeda or even the Taliban are still considered by American forces to be a significant threat.

The target of Monday’s raid was Jan Ahmad, a local commander who fought the Soviets and then the Taliban. Hours after the raid, shops in Charikar, the capital of Parwan Province, just north of Kabul, remained closed as Mr. Ahmad’s supporters shouted, “Death to America” and “Death to the enemies of Islam.” They expressed outrage at the manner of the raid, saying it was a matter that the Afghan authorities, not foreign forces, should have handled.

“The protesters burned a lot of tires to show their rage,” said Mahmood Hamidy, 20, who runs a private school in Charikar, “and that, if the issue is not taken seriously, they are ready for violence.”

While the American military described the raid as force protection, former commanders and local elders in the north leveled accusations that the raid had been politically motivated and possibly a settling of scores from last year’s election crisis.

Mr. Ahmad has supported Abdullah Abdullah, who was President Ashraf Ghani’s rival in the bitterly contested presidential runoff. At the height of the crisis, Mr. Ahmad was among a group of commanders who threatened to use force to support a breakaway government led by Mr. Abdullah.

Echoing his calls for restraint during the election crisis, Mr. Abdullah, who is now the chief executive in a power-sharing government with Mr. Ghani, called on the protesters Monday to remain calm as he appointed a fact-finding mission and asked Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, to provide further information on the raid.

The gist of the story is particularly troubling for the U.S.-backed Ghani-Adbullah government. Militias are stockpiling weapons and gearing up for battle in anticipation of a coming collapse of authority in Kabul, and Ghani is using American troops to beat them down.

The second story, filed yesterday by Goldstein and Shakib, describes a suicide attack on a U.S. military convoy moving through Kabul that ended up in an anti-American protest after it appears troops fired on people trying to come to the assistance of those injured by the blast:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A convoy of American troops survived a huge suicide bomb attack in Kabul on Tuesday afternoon, only to find themselves struggling against a gathering crowd of Afghans who were trying to tend to civilians wounded in the bombing. 

The confusing scene left one American soldier wounded, possibly by a knife, as Afghans shouted, “Death to Americans,” and accused the soldiers of opening fire on them in the frightening seconds after the suicide attack, witnesses said.

The episode hinted at a lingering wellspring of anger against American troops even as the United States’ military presence in Afghanistan is receding. Convoys of heavily armored troop carriers are still spotted routinely in Kabul making shuttle runs between bases and embassies and the airport.

Around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, in the hot midday hours, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb amid one such convoy, on Airport Road. The blast did not kill or seriously injure any of the soldiers, but it wounded at least 22 Afghans, including passing motorists and roadside shopkeepers, and killed at least one, officials said.

What happened next is still being pieced together. But at some point, a member of the crowd attacked and most likely stabbed an American soldier who had exited one of the vehicles to form a cordon, witnesses said. A soldier opened fire, although it was unclear whether the shots came before or after the crowd member’s attack. Some witnesses said the American soldiers, along with Afghan security officials who were nearby, had fired only warning shots.

These stories follow a week where there was a suicide attack on the Parliament in Kabul while Afghan lawmakers were trying to confirm a defense minister. The ministry has gone leaderless since the extra-legal Ghani-Abdullah coalition government assumed power from Hamid Karzai last September. Parliament's term has expired; it is in session based on presidential fiat. The Taliban is taking territory in the north.

Joseph Goldstein and Rod Nordland reported last week in "Taliban Strike Afghan Parliament as Lawmakers Meet" that things are dire for the U.S. project in Afghanistan:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban attacked the Afghan Parliament on Monday [June 22] just as lawmakers were convening for their third attempt to confirm a defense minister, while in northern Afghanistan a second district fell to Taliban insurgents. 

At least two bystanders died in the attack on Parliament and more than two dozen were injured, but government officials said that all members of Parliament had been taken to safety with at most only minor injuries. 

The seizure of the Archi district, which was confirmed by an Afghan Local Police commander, deepened concern that an attack on neighboring Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz Province, was imminent. Archi was the second neighboring district to fall in two days. On Sunday, the Ministry of Defense and other officials confirmed Taliban claims that the Chahar Dara district had fallen to the insurgents that morning.

The Parliament attack was an embarrassment to the government, apparently timed to coincide with the appearance of the acting defense minister, Masoom Stanekzai, in an effort to win confirmation. The attack was initiated just as Mr. Stanekzai and the country’s second vice president, Sarwar Danish, arrived at the hall in southwestern Kabul.

The country has been without a confirmed defense minister for nearly 10 months, since the coalition government of President Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated in September. Mr. Stanekzai was Mr. Ghani’s third choice for the post; his other candidates were rejected by Parliament.

The term of the Afghan Parliament expired Sunday, with no arrangements yet agreed upon between Mr. Ghani and his coalition partners for new elections. Mr. Ghani extended its term in office until new elections are held, although it is unclear whether such a move was constitutional.

As the Ghani-Abdullah government wobbles, the Taliban is softening its image, reaching out to women ("Taliban Are Talking Peace, Though Not With Afghan Government" by Mujib Mashal). One wonders how close the Kabul-based U.S.-dependent government of the former Johns Hopkins professor is to experiencing its own helicopter-on-the-U.S.-embassy-in-Saigon moment.

Afghanistan: This is the End

I'm heading out of town for the holidays. The page will be dormant for a day or two. Before I go I want to draw attention, once again, to the situation in Afghanistan, which is perilous for the Western-installed government of Ashraf Ghani. A story this morning by Rod Nordland describes the situation in Taliban stomping ground Helmand Province, "Taliban Push Into Afghan Districts That U.S. Had Secured":

Nationwide, Afghanistan has lost more than 5,000 police and soldiers in the fighting this year, more than any previous year, according to official Afghan data that has not been formally released, but that was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by Western officials familiar with the data. 

The year has also hit a new high for civilian deaths in the fighting, which the United Nations estimates will exceed 10,000 by the end of 2014. 

Helmand has been a particular rough spot — not just according to casualty figures, but also taking into account overall views of the government’s performance.

A recent report commissioned by the international community and carried out by an independent consultant, Coffey International Development, found that by almost every measure Afghans in Helmand saw a worsening in corruption, security, government services and delivery of justice since the departure of foreign forces.

If you go to The New York Times home page and you search "Rod Nordland" and sort by "Newest" and then you repeat the process for "Azam Ahmed" you'll see what I mean. These are the Gray Lady's two principal reporters for Afghanistan. Their reporting over the last several months documents an increasingly dire situation; meaning, the Afghan powering-sharing government of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah has a short half-life. As Azam Ahmed's interview ("Misgivings by U.S. General as Afghan Mission Ends") with outgoing U.S. combat commander Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson made clear, the number of casualties currently being sustained by Afghan security forces cannot be maintained:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Shortly after the speeches concluded, the flags were folded and the band silenced, the last American general to lead combat operations in Afghanistan offered his candid assessment of the war. 

“I don’t know if I’m pessimistic or optimistic,” said Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the departing commander, considering the United States military’s reduced role next year. “The fact that we are in less places, the fact that there are less of us as a coalition, is obviously concerning.” 

In an interview Monday in his office after the lowering of the flag that signaled the official end of the coalition’s war-fighting mission, General Anderson offered a nuanced take on the final year of America’s longest war. 

The record casualties of Afghan forces are not sustainable, and neither are their astounding desertion rates, he said. Political meddling, not intelligence, drives Afghan military missions. The police and the army do not work together.

It was a reflection on the mission that was in stark contrast to the unbridled renditions of success offered during the ceremony by commanders, including General Anderson.

Nordland's article in today's paper:

Wounded police officers at Emergency expressed concern at the increased scale of the fighting. “Only the asphalt road is under the control of the government in Sangin. Everything else is Taliban,” said Samiullah, a policeman in Sangin for the past four years who goes by just one name. He was shot in the leg during an ambush in a village near the district center. 

Like many of the wounded, he complained about both the Afghan National Army and his own commanders. “Our own commanders sell our bullets to the Taliban instead of giving them to us, and then they buy a nice house in Lashkar Gah and stay there, leaving the little guys out there to do the fighting,” Samiullah said. 

Now that the Americans are gone, the army rarely conducts joint operations with the police, leaving them to do most of the fighting, said Mohammad Saleh, a five-year veteran of the Afghan Local Police in Sangin, who was badly wounded in both legs when his checkpoint was overrun by the insurgents. 

Mr. Saleh remains patriotic and wants to return to the fight, but he conceded that corruption was as big an enemy as the Taliban. “Our commanders all buy their positions, so they have to make money to pay for them,” he said. “The Taliban do not do this with their commanders.”

This is the kind of security force the U.S. leaves in the wake of its occupations -- a venal one. Like Iraq's "ghost army" that disappeared, or, rather, was never really there to begin with, when ISIS captured Mosul this past summer, the numbers of Afghan security forces are fluffed up considerably by phantom conscripts who exist only on paper in order for some official to collect extra paychecks.

Then there is the issue of the Afghan National Army Vs. Afghan Local Police. They fight one another. So already there is a civil war within the Ghani government.

We need to start asking what the fall of Afghanistan portends. Afghanistan's descent into civil war, prompting the Soviet invasion, is an event that heralded the coming neoliberal age. The collapse of the Western occupation of Afghanistan augurs ill for the dominant neoliberal paradigm. I believe the war is coming home to the Western core.

Ferguson Protests + Afghan Government in Trouble + Oil Price War

Obama holds a PR event today (Julie Hirschfeld Davis, "Obama Plans Meetings on Ferguson Unrest at the White House") the goal of which is to put a lid on the public outrage over the police killing last August of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

[Obama] will gather his cabinet on Monday to discuss the results of a review of federal programs that provide military-style equipment to state and local law enforcement agencies. The initiatives were called into question in August, after the Ferguson police responded with riot gear and assault-style weapons to protests in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, the teenager, by Officer Darren Wilson.

“As the country has witnessed, disintegration of trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve can destabilize communities, undermine the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, undermine public safety, create resentment in local communities, and make the job of delivering police services less safe and more difficult,” a White House official said Sunday night, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the meetings.

Don't count on any significant changes in the federal policy of offloading surplus military hardware to local constabularies.

The faux-macho, Fortune 500 thinking prevalent in our "Land of the Free/Home of the Brave" encapsulated in spouted lines like "Money talks; bullshit walks" is actually a helpful guide here. As long as the protesters stay mobilized in significant numbers the state will have to take special measures to fund the deployment of the highway patrol and national guard. According to Jack Healy and Monica Davey, "Darren Wilson, Officer in Ferguson Shooting, Resigns From Police Dept.":

The peaceful daytime demonstrations came as Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri sent state lawmakers a letter outlining what he called an urgent need to cover the ballooning costs of maintaining hundreds of National Guard troops and state police officers who are deployed here on the streets, day and night. The governor has called a special legislative session.

One Ferguson resident interviewed last month prior to the grand jury decision thought some sort of indictment had to be forthcoming because a spike in protests that would follow an acquittal would bankrupt the community. Unfortunately, St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch was not so prescient.

At this point I think the protests have legs. There was encouraging evidence of crossover between anti-racist and economic justice activists in the form of coordinated Black Friday protests.

Many significant shifts are currently underway. In Afghanistan the unconstitutional power-sharing agreement between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah is near collapse. A helpful summary of recent events is found in this morning's Foreign Policy Situation Report by David Francis and Sabine Muscat:

Kabul is the focus of Taliban insurgents seeking to undermine the fledgling government of new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Afghan capital has been under siege in recent days with a dozen attacks in the last two weeks. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed the attacks were intended to scare foreigners out of the capital as well as to undermine Ghani. They follow the ratification of a bilateral security agreement between Kabul and Washington that will allow for 10,000 American troops to stay in the country in 2015. 

The Wall Street Journal's Nathan Hodge and Habib Khan Totakhil: "The past two weeks have seen a string of attacks on diplomatic and international targets in Kabul, including a deadly assault Saturday on a guest house belonging to a nongovernmental organization, Partnership in Academics and Development. This past Thursday a suicide attack hit Wazir Akbar Khan, the heart of the diplomatic quarter, and a car bombing struck a British diplomatic convoy." More here. 

The attacks, which targeted both Afghan officials and foreigners, have already forced the resignation of Kabul's Chief of Police Gen. Zahir Zahir. Ghani is scheduled to travel to London and Brussels this week to rally global support for his country. But political fallout in Kabul has already begun. 

Ghani has been unable to form a new government amid escalating violence and has dismissed most of the existing ministers in Afghanistan's government. The New York Times' Joseph Goldstein: "The underlying problem, which various factions in the government point to, is the power-sharing agreement that followed this year's disputed presidential election. It makes Mr. Ghani president and his election rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive. Since the deal was struck in September, Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have been unable to agree on a new cabinet, leaving the government in the lurch and raising questions about the long-term chances of the power-sharing deal." More here. 

Optimism had grown in recent weeks that Ghani and Abdullah would be able to find a way to work together. Their original agreement allowed the United States to finalize the bilateral security pact. Now, with the fate of Ghani's government uncertain, there are sure to be questions from Washington about whether the pact will hold.

My only quibble with the way Francis and Muscat frame the upswing in Taliban attacks is that they make it seem as if it directly followed Ghani's signing the bilateral security agreement as soon as he took office in September. I think the recent spate of attacks in Kabul come after reports in November that Ghani had lifted Karzai's ban on U.S.-led nighttime raids and airstrikes.

A developing story that has global ramifications not just for the power elite but for every single one of us who consume is the present oil-price war underway. OPEC met last week and decided against any production limits (Stanley Reed, "OPEC Holds Production Unchanged; Prices Fall"). This dropped the price of barrel of oil down around $70.

There is plenty of speculation as to why the Saudis, whose fiscal breakeven is reported to be around $90 a barrel, are opposed to production quotas and willing to let the price drop to $60 level. Some say it is to kill off the U.S. shale oil boom in Texas and North Dakota; some say it is to punish Iran and Russia. Whatever it is I think it is pretty safe to say the Saudis are practicing some form of predatory pricing; they want to maintain market share above all else because that is where their power comes from.

Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith has a helpful post this morning: "OPEC Fires First Shot In Global Oil Price War."

To get a sense of the type of new energy frontier we are in, check out last week's story by Diane Cardwell, "Solar and Wind Energy Start to Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels":

According to a study by the investment banking firm Lazard, the cost of utility-scale solar energy is as low as 5.6 cents a kilowatt-hour, and wind is as low as 1.4 cents. In comparison, natural gas comes at 6.1 cents a kilowatt-hour on the low end and coal at 6.6 cents. Without subsidies, the firm’s analysis shows, solar costs about 7.2 cents a kilowatt-hour at the low end, with wind at 3.7 cents. 

“It is really quite notable, when compared to where we were just five years ago, to see the decline in the cost of these technologies,” said Jonathan Mir, a managing director at Lazard, which has been comparing the economics of power generation technologies since 2008. 

Mr. Mir noted there were hidden costs that needed to be taken into account for both renewable energy and fossil fuels. Solar and wind farms, for example, produce power intermittently — when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing — and that requires utilities to have power available on call from other sources that can respond to fluctuations in demand. Alternately, conventional power sources produce pollution, like carbon emissions, which face increasing restrictions and costs. 

But in a straight comparison of the costs of generating power, Mr. Mir said that the amount solar and wind developers needed to earn from each kilowatt-hour they sell from new projects was often “essentially competitive with what would otherwise be had from newly constructed conventional generation.”

The Saudis and the Koch brothers will do everything they can to maintain their fossil-fueled hegemony.And at this point it is becoming apparent that it is going to be a very destructive effort.

Obama Feigns Ignorance + Kurds Battered by ISIS + Ghani Inaugurated + Hong Kong Occupied

Waking up this morning to a new chill in the air, it is clear that fall is upon us. Dark mornings are matched by news that promises more of the same dismal prospects we've been wallowing in for many years now.

Obama on "60 Minutes" last night apparently feigned ignorance and a lack of foresight in dealing with the meteoric rise of Islamic State. Invoking the name of the director of national intelligence, Obama threw James Clapper under the bus: “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” I guess with the billion-dollar budgets and super-computers at the myriad spy agencies they don't have time to read the newspaper; because if they did they would have learned all they needed to know about the rapid rise of ISIS over the last year.

No, USG knew exactly what was going on. The administration thought it could control the process; this sporadic bombing of select targets in Iraq and Syria is an attempt to assert that control. But it is not very compelling. ISIS is surging in Syrian Kurdish communities close to the Turkish border. Turkey has closed the border both to refugees wanting to escape the fighting and for Kurds hoping to enter Syria from Turkey to engage the jihadis and defend Kobani. As Karam Shoumali and Anne Barnard report in "Refugees Flood Turkish Border as Islamic State Steps Up Attacks on Syrian Kurds":

MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Shelling intensified Sunday on Kobani, the Syrian town at the center of a region of Kurdish farming villages that has been under a weeklong assault by Islamic State militants, setting fire to buildings and driving a stream of new refugees toward the fence here at the border with Turkey.

The extremist Sunni militants have been closing in on the town from the east and west after moving into villages with tanks and artillery, outgunning Kurdish fighters struggling to defend the area. The Kurds fear a massacre, especially after recent Islamic State attacks on Kurdish civilians in Iraq. More than 150,000 people have fled into Turkey over the past week. 

There were no sounds of jets overhead to indicate to the Kurds that help was coming from the American-led coalition, whose stated mission is to degrade and destroy the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Two airstrikes on the eastern front hit Islamic State armored vehicles on Saturday, but did not appear to halt the advance.

“Where’s Obama?” one Turkish Kurd demanded, watching in anguish near the border fence as the headlights of cars could be seen streaming out of Kobani toward the border, although there was no way to cross it. “Does he care about the Kurds?”

Obama is on television playing the part of the commander-in-chief. Does he care about Kurds? Some Kurds, like those in Iraq where the U.S. has a military base and a strategic interest. But more and more the slow response to deal with the ISIS offensive against Kobani makes it seem as if the rumors are true: The Turks cut a deal with Islamic State to zap the Syrian Kurds who are defended by P.K.K. fighters, a longtime foe of the Turkish state. So far the U.S. appears to be backing the play:

Even as it has accepted tens of thousands of refugees, Turkey has closed seven of nine crossing points in the area. Several times, the authorities have used tear gas to disperse crowds trying to cross, while also preventing Turkish and Syrian Kurds from crossing the border to fight the Islamic State. Kurds accuse Turkey, which has remained vague on how it will assist the American-led coalition, of tacitly supporting the Islamic State to weaken Kurdish efforts to gain more autonomy in northern Syria.

Ralph Nader's buddy Ashraf Ghani was sworn in today as president of Afghanistan, a peaceful transfer of power that is being publicly celebrated as a triumph of democracy, but, as Ahmed Rashid noted in a column on Friday, the power-sharing arrangement between Ghani and Adbullah Abdullah cobbled together by USG to prevent Kabul from collapsing in chaos, "[H]as no basis in Afghanistan’s election law."

Rod Nordland has the story today, "Ashraf Ghani Sworn In as Afghan President," which is noteworthy for its handy summary of events since April's presidential primary when Abdullah Abdullah established himself as the clear front runner:

Mr. Ghani won a June 14 runoff election against Mr. Abdullah, with 55 percent of the vote to Mr. Abdullah’s 45 percent, but Mr. Abdullah and his supporters cried foul. He had won the original April 6 election with 45 percent of the vote to Mr. Ghani’s 31 percent in a crowded field of contenders, and accused his opponent of fraud.

Nearly a million votes were discarded as fraudulent, twice as many for Mr. Ghani, but Mr. Abdullah’s supporters said the true number of fraudulent votes was two or three times higher than that. 

The dispute forced a full audit of the vote, supervised by the United Nations, but Mr. Abdullah’s supporters felt the audit was not fair and boycotted it. After two visits to the Afghan capital, Kabul, by Secretary of State John Kerry, and further negotiations by phone and video link with Mr. Kerry and other American officials, the two sides agreed to a national unity government in which Mr. Abdullah would have substantial powers. 

Under terms of the deal, it was agreed that the election commission would not publicly announce the vote totals until after the inauguration, a highly unusual procedure but one that the election commission agreed to, under United Nations’ pressure. 

Then on Friday, Mr. Ghani’s campaign posted those totals on its official Facebook page, leading Mr. Abdullah to nearly pull out of the inauguration ceremony. That was further aggravated by a scuffle at the presidential palace between Mr. Abdullah’s followers and those of Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mr. Ghani’s first vice president, over who would have offices that Mr. Abdullah had expected to get, according to a Western diplomat. 

Mr. Dostum, an Uzbek warlord whom Mr. Ghani described in 2009 as a “known killer,” brought a substantial block of votes to Mr. Ghani’s campaign. The presence of many of Mr. Dostum’s followers on the streets of Kabul, in civilian clothes but heavily armed, has been a cause of concern for many residents of the capital. The carrying of weapons is theoretically outlawed except by uniformed security forces or those with special licenses. The police, however, have been reluctant to challenge the gunmen.

The ceremony of primary importance for the United States comes tomorrow, the signing of the bilateral security agreement:

Both Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah support the signing of a bilateral security agreement with the United States, which Mr. Karzai had refused to sign. That was expected to happen on Tuesday, when a similar agreement with NATO is to be signed as well. The agreements call for a continued American and coalition military presence in Afghanistan after the end of 2014.

The the next installment of  the color revolution is right on schedule in Hong Kong where police overreacted this past weekend by using too much tear gas against peaceful protesters sitting-in in front of government buildings. This, as it always does, brings more people into the streets. Now the authorities have a dire situation on their hands, possibly Bangkok-type gridlock for months on end. Austin Ramzy and Alan Wong have the story, "Hong Kong Protesters Defy Officials’ Call to Disperse":

The protesters are calling for fully democratic elections for the city’s leader, the chief executive, in 2017. Hong Kong, a former British colony that was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, had been promised universal suffrage by that date. But under China’s plan for conducting those elections, only candidates vetted by a Beijing-friendly committee would be allowed to run. 

Alison Fung, a magazine editor who said she had been at the Admiralty sit-in since Sunday night, said that she and other demonstrators were angered by what she called the “wordplay” used to present China’s election proposal as a democratic advance. 

“Probably about 10 years ago, Hong Kong was not so concerned about politics,” Ms. Fung said Monday. “But we want a more fair election so we can decide our own future. People feel that our opinions aren’t listened to.” [Me too.]

The Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the organizations leading the protests, called Sunday night for an indefinite student strike. On Monday, images of students holding gatherings at their schools in lieu of classes, many of them wearing black in support of the protests, could be seen on social media and in local news reports. 

In another indication that the protests could broaden, the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union called Sunday for a general strike by teachers in the city. The organization, which has around 90,000 members, called the police “enemies of the people” and said they had used “ruthless force” against unarmed civilians.

New Government in Afghanistan + Climate March + Matt Bai on Gary Hart's Fall

On this last day of summer it seems as if events are finally settling down. Maybe not settling down so much as taking shape.

A third Gulf War is in the works for the United States. And while there are a lot of unknowns as to what this Gulf War III will end up looking like, for now at least the caliphate no longer appears to be inevitable. Islamic State is no longer making broad territorial gains. U.S. air power along with promises to reassert itself in Syria seems to have made an impact.

In the Donbass a nominal ceasefire is holding, giving the warring parties time to reflect. The lust for more violence has diminished greatly. The junta remains the critical player here. The fact that Poroshenko has maintained the ceasefire as long as he has tells me that Kiev is seriously in danger if the fighting continues.

Even Afghanistan, with Kabul a few weeks ago close to violence because of the contested presidential recount between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, now appears temporarily stable. Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah signed off yesterday on a new unity government. Adbullah Abdullah will be the prime minister, and he will apparently be more than a ceremonial official. Ashraf Ghani will be the president will all the powers granted to the presidency according to the Afghan Constitution. One wonders about the legitimacy of this agreement. Can the exiting president, Hamid Karzai, create by fiat these changes in the organization of government? Doesn't there have to be a constitutional or legislative process to implement the agreement? In any event, a big win for the United States. Now the Obama administration can get its bilateral security agreement signed and figure out its force structure for the next few years.

There was a big climate march publicity event yesterday. Counterpunch ran a story by Arun Gupta over the weekend that is worth reading, "Business as Usual in Manhattan: How the People’s Climate March Became a Corporate PR Campaign," the gist of which is that the large organizations behind the march, 350.org and Avaaz, billed it as an "Occupy"-type direct action while working assiduously behind the scene to make sure that it was nothing of the sort. The goal was to have a "family friendly" march that would provide pretty visuals but no real threat to business as usual.

There was an associated climate march here in the Emerald City. But, having spent all Saturday downtown among the tourists, I spent Sunday, after completing a run around Lake Union, in front of the television watching the NFL. I did manage to muddle my way through Matt Bai's lengthy feature in the New York Times Magazine, "How Gary Hart’s Downfall Forever Changed American Politics."

I was expecting more because I do think the 1988 presidential election campaign is something of a dividing line. Certainly Bush I's presidency is the last of the post-war (WWII) consensus-type administrations. But Bai spends most of his time rehashing all the ridiculous, sordid details of the stakeout of Hart's D.C. townhouse by Miami Herald reporters.

There is not a lot of big picture stuff. Bai does explore the shift in journalism following Watergate. But he doesn't explain why it took another 15 years for Fourth Estate to go after the sexual infidelities of politicians. What changed in that 15 years?

The Carter administration was treated to the first ersatz Watergate just a few years after Nixon resigned. That was the Bert Lance affair. The public has been treated to one -Gate scandal after the next ever since.

Europe on Brink of Trade War with Russia

I think we're headed for another significant shift in Ukraine. The present ceasefire was agreed to by the junta because of the success of the Novorrosiya Armed Forces (NAF) in creating a southern front and threatening the large industrial seaside city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko was yesterday proclaiming solidarity with residents and vowing that the city would never be yielded to the NAF.

The preliminary report on the crash of flight MH17 was released this morning, and it cautiously reaffirms conventional wisdom, namely, that shrapnel coming from NAF-controlled territory or western Russia was responsible for the midair breakup of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. While the report doesn't say a BUK missile was the source of that shrapnel, a.k.a., high-energy objects, it doesn't have to. Western reporters and government spokespersons will color in the missing parts based on what they already accept as fact. The Russians did it.

As the ceasefire disintegrates -- I don't see how it can hold for too much longer -- and the Dutch MH17 report gets spun according to the current Russophobia, Europe is going to be in for some pain. The EU has voted on a new round of Russian sanctions that target financing for Rosneft and Transneft and Russia has threatened to prohibit European commercial airlines from using its airspace. Andrew Higgins has an informative story this morning, "Brushing Off Threats, E.U. Votes to Toughen Its Sanctions on Russia," which offers the reader a glimpse of the mess Europe has got itself in by supporting the U.S.-backed coup-makers in Kiev:

The European Union has given strong support to the cease-fire but, skeptical about Russia’s intentions after the swift collapse of previous efforts at a settlement, decided on Monday to expand existing economic sanctions. Diplomats say the measures include tight restrictions on access to capital in Europe by the two state-controlled Russian energy giants, Rosneft and Gazprom’s oil affiliate, and the state pipeline operator, Transneft. 

“The sanctions aim at promoting a change of course in Russia’s actions destabilizing eastern Ukraine,” Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, which represents member states, said in a statement. He said the measures would go into effect “in the next few days.” 

There was no immediate reaction from Moscow, which responded to an earlier round of European sanctions by banning a broad range of dairy, meat, fruit and vegetable exports from Europe. 

Russia has worked hard to fan divisions within the European Union, and Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev warned in an interview published early on Monday in Moscow that his government would “have to respond asymmetrically” to any new sanctions, perhaps by banning Western airlines from flying through Russian airspace, as many do on long-haul flights to Asia. 

“If Western carriers have to bypass our airspace, this could drive many struggling airlines into bankruptcy,” Mr. Medvedev said in a lengthy interview in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. “This is not the way to go. We just hope our partners realize this at some point.”

Measures endorsed by leaders of the European Union’s 28 member states normally go into effect within hours. But Finland, hard hit by the Russian ban on food imports, and some other countries anxious to see whether the cease-fire holds in coming days, appealed for a slower schedule.

***

Some smaller European countries, notably Slovakia, had argued strongly against new sanctions, warning that they would only hurt Europe’s anemic economic recovery and were “meaningless.” But bigger countries, particularly Germany, which was itself initially hostile to sanctions, have increasingly lost faith in Russia’s trustworthiness and been exasperated by Moscow’s insistence, despite strong evidence to the contrary, that it has not sent soldiers or weapons into eastern Ukraine.

It was the downing of MH17 which buffaloed Merkel into accepting the U.S. position on sanctioning Russia. Up until that point I was under the impression that Merkel would not be bumrushed into a trade war with Russia. But that is where we are now.

I don't think that there is a way to avoid a trade war, absent a coup in Moscow by a U.S.-friendly oligarch. Medvedev is on record saying Western commercial air carriers are in the crosshairs. Russians believe more in honor and personal integrity and standing by what you say than Western politicians. When Russia responds, if the European Union doesn't publicly fray, then at least there will be those member nations who tacitly flout the trade restrictions, setting up secret bilateral agreements with Moscow.

And then the United States, losing the main weapon in its arsenal -- having the Europeans restrict economic relations with Russia -- will be left with increasing military support for an incompetent, mendacious junta as its remaining option (one that is sure to fail).

Before signing off this morning, there are a few good stories to inspect today. First, Rod Nordland reports on the acrimony at the annual ceremony honoring Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance whose assassination by Al Qaeda two days prior to 9/11 prefigured the attack on the U.S. homeland.  Abdullah Abdullah has said that he will not acknowledge the results of the Afghan presidential recount, which apparently will declare Ashraf Ghani the victor.

Next, check out Tim Arango's Q.&A.-session. Arango is the Baghdad bureau chief for the Gray Lady, and over the years I have found him to be the best reporter, along with David Kirkpatrick, that "the newspaper of record" has to offer. Here is an example:

Q. How do you rate the Obama administration’s actions in Iraq?— eragon38 

It’s not my job to rate the Obama administration’s actions in Iraq. But I will tell you that after 2011, the administration basically ignored the country. And when officials spoke about what was happening there, they were often ignorant of the reality. They did not want to see what was really happening because it conflicted with their narrative that they left Iraq in reasonably good shape. In 2012, as violence was escalating, I wrote a story, citing U.N. statistics, that showed how civilian deaths from attacks were rising. Tony Blinken, who was then Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s national security guy, pushed back, even wrote a letter to the editor saying that violence was near historic lows. That was not true. Even after Falluja fell to ISIS at the end of last year, the administration would push back on stories about Mr. Maliki’s sectarian tendencies, saying they didn’t see it that way. So there was a concerted effort by the administration to not acknowledge the obvious until it became so apparent — with the fall of Mosul — that Iraq was collapsing.

GWOT is Dead! Long Live GWOT!

The big story this morning is one by Mark Landler and Helene Cooper, "Obama Approves Air Surveillance of ISIS in Syria":

Defense officials said Monday evening that the Pentagon was sending in manned and unmanned reconnaissance flights over Syria, using a combination of aircraft, including drones and possibly U2 spy planes. Mr. Obama approved the flights over the weekend, a senior administration official said. 

The flights are a significant step toward direct American military action in Syria, an intervention that could alter the battlefield in the nation’s three-year civil war.

Most of this article and one by Ben Hubbard, "Syria Declares Its Readiness in Backing Efforts to Fight Jihadists," rehash the threadbare and discredited lines from what was once referred to as Syria's civil war: the brutal Assad government will not be aided and the Free Syrian Army will be armed and trained to take the fight to Islamic State in its northern stronghold of Raqqa province. According to Landler and Cooper:

Administration officials said the United States did not intend to notify the Assad government of the planned flights. Mr. Obama, who has repeatedly called for the ouster of Mr. Assad, is loath to be seen as aiding the Syrian government, even inadvertently.

As a result the Pentagon is drafting military options that would strike the militant Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, near the largely erased border between those two nations, as opposed to more deeply inside Syria. The administration is also moving to bolster American support for the moderate Syrian rebels who view Mr. Assad as their main foe. 

On Monday, Syria warned the White House that it needed to coordinate airstrikes against ISIS or it would view them as a breach of its sovereignty and an “act of aggression.” But it signaled its readiness to work with the United States in a coordinated campaign against the militants.

Ben Hubbard manages to repeat as gospel the canard (debunked by Seymour Hersh in two articles, "Whose Sarin?" and "The Red Line and the Rat Line") that the Syrian government gasses its own people:

Antigovernment activists have long accused the Syrian government of allowing ISIS to expand because its presence helped them in the civil war: ISIS was good at killing rebels and strengthened the government’s argument that it was facing a terrorist plot, not a popular uprising. 

But as ISIS has overshadowed the rebel movement, it has increasingly fought the government directly, often winning. 

Since mid-July, the group has seized three military bases in the northern province of Raqqa, including an air base it stormed on Sunday. 

But analysts said it was unlikely that the United States would change direction and publicly ally with Damascus against ISIS. Mr. Assad’s forces have not proved to be effective militarily against the group, and American officials are likely to find it hard to work with a government that has launched chemical attacks on its own people and destroyed residential areas in its quest to kill rebels.

The difficulty for the Obama administration, if chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey is to be believed and USG does indeed intend to knock out IS by hitting it in Raqqa, is how to do this without 1) alienating its chief regional allies -- Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan, and 2) ground troops to advance on jihadi turf in the wake of American air strikes. The Syrian Arab Army is the answer to number two, but it seems clear that the Obama administration will not partner with Damascus for fear of angering the sheikhs. Possibly a mercenary force is being assembled at this very moment.

In the near future there will be American air strikes in northern Syria. Iraq must have a government formed by September 11. Haider al-Abadi, the successor-to-be of Nouri al-Maliki, has signaled his willingness to arm Sunni militias, but only within the existing security structure. A key demand of the Sunnis to participate in any unity government has been to be given control of the defense ministry. I doubt Abadi's offer goes far enough to guarantee their support. Ben Hubbard notes in "Suicide Bomber Kills 13 in Baghdad as New Leader Calls for Unity":

To help combat ISIS, Mr. Abadi, the prime minister-designate, said he planned to increase support for groups of armed citizens who defend their areas, but he said they could operate only under the umbrella of the official security forces.

The status quo is about to get even more messy: No new government in Baghdad, unilateral U.S. air strikes in northern Syria, and now the imminent collapse of national government in Afghanistan. According to Rod Nordland and Jawad Sukhanyar in "Afghan Presidential Candidate Threatens to Withdraw From Election":

KABUL, Afghanistan — One of the two candidates for Afghan president will withdraw from a bitterly contested audit of the results unless election officials meet a series of technical demands made by his campaign, one of his top aides said Tuesday. 

Declaring the process a “joke,” Fazul Ahmad Manawi, the chief auditor for the candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, said Mr. Abdullah would stop cooperating with it and would withdraw from the election entirely unless the demands were met by Wednesday morning. 

As if to underscore the disarray into which the presidential election has descended, Mr. Manawi’s news conference, at the headquarters of the Independent Election Commission, was immediately followed by a melee, with representatives of Mr. Abdullah and his opponent, Ashraf Ghani, shouting and throwing punches until the riot police arrived and restored order, arresting at least two people.

Afghanistan, birthplace of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), is where GWOT dies. Yet GWOT lives on -- in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, Egypt, Xinjiang. Long live GWOT!

Coup Coming Shortly to Afghanistan + Europe Grows Tired of Kiev + Intifada in St. Louis County Continues

A particularly good story today from Matthew Rosenberg, "Amid Election Impasse, Calls in Afghanistan for an Interim Government," reminding us once again what poor prospects there are for peace and stability. Currently a whispering campaign is underway for an interim government, a.k.a., a putsch, to rule the country in absence of any hope that the Abdullah-Ghani recount will ever be concluded or unity government of the two candidates agreed upon:

That official and others interviewed in recent days spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing plans that could be considered seditious. The fact that they discussed the plans in advance suggests that they are using the threat of a coup to achieve political ends, not simply plotting in secret to execute one. 

The officials said they believed they would have the backing of Afghanistan’s army, police and intelligence corps. Though no concrete plans are in place, several officials said a committee would most likely be formed to run Afghanistan and that representatives of Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani would be asked to join. Both candidates have dismissed the idea of an interim government. 

Many Afghans are liable to view any step to an interim government as a power grab by the men who surrounded Mr. Karzai for the last 12 years who may be seeking an excuse to preserve their power.

The United States and European countries are loath to see Afghan officials make an end-run around Afghanistan’s Constitution, which would call into question the lives lost and billions spent by the West in Afghanistan. Yet, in the two months since the runoff, the Abdullah and Ghani campaigns have proved unable or unwilling to compromise.

At the same time, talks on creating a national unity government, which the candidates agreed to as part of an American-brokered deal to end the crisis, have made limited progress. A special audit of all 8.1 million votes under the supervision of the United Nations agreed to as part of the same deal has been mired by arguments over what constitutes a fraudulent vote.

Along with the threat of violence, the political fight has brought Afghanistan’s ethnic divides back to the surface, pitting the smaller Tajik and Hazara communities against the dominant Pashtuns. The economy is suffering as well. Two Afghan officials warned that the government would soon be unable to pay its civil servants because revenue from taxes and customs were down by nearly a third this year.

The primary motivation for a coup/interim government appears to be the signing of the stalled bilateral security agreement (BSA) with the United States. The Taliban is gaining ground, and the U.S. needs an agreement in place by the middle of next month in order to keep troops in country; otherwise, like the Russians did in 1989, the superpower promises to exit completely by the end of the year:

Signs of fraying within the Karzai government have already begun to emerge. With Taliban military advances threatening entire districts, for instance, some Afghan officials are now deploying army and police units and seeking help from the American-led military coalition in defiance of Mr. Karzai, who has tried to limit when and where foreign and Afghan forces can operate. 

A new government is needed soon if there is to be any chance of securing deals to keep American and European troops here after the end of the year, some Afghan officials said. They said it would be better to start laying the groundwork to justify an interim government now in case Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani cannot not find a solution.

Talk about plans for an interim government intensified after some of Mr. Abdullah’s most powerful backers — men who command well-armed militias — came within days of trying to seize power and declare their candidate the president after the release of preliminary results that gave Mr. Ghani a wide lead.

Three senior Afghan officials said they needed a government in place by mid-September to ensure security agreements needed to keep some United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan beyond the end of the year. They said a new presidential election could most likely be held next year, probably at the same time Afghanistan will elect a new parliament, which would help keep costs under control.

Karzai's refusal to sign a BSA, along with his wariness to engage Taliban advances, leads one to believe he is probably operating according to an understanding with the Taliban's sponsors in the Gulf, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The caliphate, though suffering some setbacks recently, could one day span Asia from the Mediterranean to the Pacific.

Turning to Eurasia, Angela Merkel has announced her first visit to Kiev since the February coup. Billed as a peace mission -- maybe, though I can point to no evidence, Merkel now realizes that left to its own proclivities the junta will indeed create a failed state (is there any doubt at this point?) on the eastern edge of Europe, a Kosovo on steroids that just happens to be where a significant amount of the fuel that powers Germany's economy transits -- anyhow, billed as a peace mission, possibly that is the reason the junta is blaming the rebels for the atrocity of blowing up a caravan of refugees.

Something is happening here -- what with the Russian aid convoy stilled stalled at the border, foreign ministers negotiating in Berlin, the Western prestige press going over the top with its front-loading of specious junta claims -- the destruction of Russian APCs that crossed the border into the Ukraine, the Ukie military capturing downtown Luhansk, and now the rebels, conjuring up images of MH17, knowingly slaughtered refugees -- but what it is ain't exactly clear. The junta appears to be throwing up as much dust, generating as much noise as possible.

It could be this: Europe has grown tired. The show cannot go on. A deal must be secured that grants the Donbass substantial autonomy within a federalized Ukraine. In other words, the deal Russia originally proposed last winter.

Quickly, a few words on the uprising in St. Louis County. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon's mustering of the National Guard did not the cow the protesters who took to the streets again last night. Monica Davey, John Eligon and Alan Blinder report in "National Guard Troops Fail to Quell Unrest in Ferguson":

As darkness set in along West Florissant Avenue, one of the city’s main thoroughfares and a center of the weeklong protests, demonstrators were required to keep moving. 

After more than an hour of peaceful protests, some in the crowd began to throw bottles at the police, who brought out armored vehicles and tactical units. But many peacekeepers in the crowd formed a human chain and got the agitators to back down.

At another point, as protesters gathered near a convenience store, some of them threw objects; the police responded with tear gas. 

And near midnight, the police began announcing over loudspeakers that people needed to leave the area or risk arrest after what the police said were repeated gunshots and a deteriorating situation. 

A few blocks away, at the police command post, National Guard members in Army fatigues, some with military police patches on their uniforms, stood ready but never entered the area where protesters were marching. State and local law enforcement authorities oversaw operations there. 

Residents seemed puzzled and frustrated by the continually changing approaches, suggesting that the moving set of rules only worsened longstanding tensions over policing and race in this town of 21,000. 

“It almost seems like they can’t decide what to do, and like law enforcement is fighting over who’s got the power,” said Antione Watson, 37, who stood near a middle-of-the-street memorial of candles and flowers for Mr. Brown, the 18-year-old killed on a winding block here. 

“First they do this, then there’s that, and now who can even tell what their plan is?” Mr. Watson said. “They can try all of this, but I don’t see an end to this until there are charges against the cop.”