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.

Taliban Resurgent in Afghanistan + No Exit in Gaza

It is easy to tune out news coming from Afghanistan with all that is going on these days. World War Three, or, at the very least, a new Cold War, is being launched in southeastern Ukraine, what is known as the Donets Basin, or Donbass. The century-old Sykes-Picot Middle East is being remade with U.S. support, both tacit and manifest. And China is looking at protracted conflict with its many neighbors and the United States over access to the China Sea.

So it is easy to skip stories like Azam Ahmed's "Taliban Making Military Gains in Afghanistan, " which appeared in the Sunday paper yesterday, the gist of which is the Taliban is resurgent:

At a time when an election crisis is threatening the stability of the government, the Taliban’s increasingly aggressive campaign is threatening another crucial facet of the American withdrawal plan, full security by Afghan forces this year.

“They are running a series of tests right now at the military level, seeing how people respond,” one Western official said, describing a Taliban effort to gauge how quickly they could advance. “They are trying to figure out: Can they do it now, or will it have to wait” until after the American withdrawal, the official added, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the coalition has officially ceded security control. 

Interviews with local officials and residents in several strategic areas around the country suggest that, given the success of their attacks, the Taliban are growing bolder just two months into the fighting season, at great cost to Afghan military and police forces. 

In Kapisa, a verdant province just north of Kabul that includes a vital highway to northern Afghanistan, insurgents are openly challenging and even driving away the security forces in several districts. Security forces in Tagab District take fire daily from the Taliban, who control everything but the district center. Insurgents in Alasay District, northeast of Kabul, recently laid siege to an entire valley for more than a week, forcing hundreds of residents and 45 police officers to flee. At least some of the local police in a neighboring district have cut deals with the Taliban to save themselves.

To give you an idea of how dire the loss of authority in Kapisa is, Bagram Airfield, the seat of U.S. power in Afghanistan, lies just outside the boundaries of the province.

This morning Carlotta Gall and Taimoor Shah report in "After Losing Province in 2010, Afghan Taliban Strike Back" that the Taliban, in addition to bold moves north of Kabul, are simultaneously making an audacious move to assert control of Kandahar:

In an annual public statement over the weekend for the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, reiterated his determination to re-establish an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. The proof was borne out by a multifront offensive in Kandahar involving hundreds of Taliban fighters that was seemingly timed to take advantage of Eid al-Fitr, which closes the holy month of Ramadan.

The question is not if but when the Taliban returns to power. The situation is similar to when the Soviets pulled out. The contested presidential election pitting candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani against one another is likely to devolve into some form of armed conflict. The Taliban will sweep in with the promise of restored order. Then, very soon, we will have an Islamic State stretching from northern Syria up to the border of Iran before picking back up in Afghanistan and running all the way to the Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The pressure on Iran will be enormous.

This morning Jodi Rudoren and Ben Hubbard in "Despite Gains, Hamas Sees a Fight for Its Existence and Presses Ahead" have a useful synopsis of where we are with the war raging between Israel and Hamas in Gaza:

With large sections of Gaza devastated and the Palestinian death toll topping 1,000, Hamas waffled over the weekend on the United Nations’ calls for a “humanitarian pause” in hostilities. It said Saturday night that such a pause was unacceptable as long as Israeli troops maintained positions and limited operations inside Gaza, then hours later declared its own pause without conditions, a bewildering back-and-forth that made it difficult to glean a clear strategy.

Politically isolated after breaks with Syria, Iran and especially Egypt, and its effort at reconciling with the Palestinian factions that rule the West Bank having failed to bear fruit, Hamas has all but given up on governing Gaza to focus on the battlefield. Israelis have expressed outrage that thousands of tons of concrete built a vast network of tunnels rather than schools or hospitals, but that argument has little traction in Gaza, where many see violence as the only language that works.

Though weary of war, many Gazans see the so-called resistance as the only possible path to pressing Israel and Egypt to open border crossings, and to ending Israel’s “siege” on imports and exports and naval “blockade.” Hamas and its backers in Qatar and Turkey have also been calling for a seaport and airport in the coastal enclave.

“The only option left for us was to defend ourselves and to make Israel bleed the way that we have been bleeding all these years,” said Ahmed Yousef, a former Hamas official who remains close to its leaders. “It is not acceptable to go back to a situation where we are being squeezed to death and where the whole society is being paralyzed.”

Faraj al-Loul, a plumber shopping for vegetables on Sunday in a Gaza City market, echoed the opinions of many residents interviewed who said life had become so miserable that they were willing to suffer the high costs of war if it could bring change. 

“We want a cease-fire, of course, but it has to be based on the demands of the resistance,” he said. “If they refuse to open the crossings, then we’ll all become martyrs, God willing.”

Michael Gordon provides a summary, "Even Gaza Truce Is Hard to Win, Kerry Is Finding,"
of the U.S. Secretary of State's shuttle diplomacy last week to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. It does not look good. Israel reacted negatively to the tentative agreement that Kerry concocted, which would have locked in a week-long ceasefire during which negotiations over an "enduring solution" to Gaza's myriad crises would begin.

After five days of marathon diplomacy in Egypt and Israel, Mr. Kerry presented Mr. Netanyahu with a confidential draft, titled “Framework for Humanitarian Cease-Fire in Gaza.” 

A version of the document, which was presented on Friday, stated that a seven-day cease-fire was to be established by Sunday. 

Two days later, talks would begin in Cairo between Israel and the Palestinians on achieving an “enduring solution” to the crisis in Gaza, a phrase that Hamas could read as the lifting of the economic embargo and that Mr. Netanyahu could interpret as the neutralization of the group’s military threat to Israel. 

The draft, which was obtained by The New York Times, noted that the parties would “refrain from conducting any military or security targeting of each other.” But it did not explicitly call on Israel to stop sealing the tunnels during the humanitarian pause. Those operations have continued during recent cease-fire efforts, creating anger on the Palestinian side.

Clearly, this favored the Israelis because it gave them a way to stop their slaughter of innocents while maintaining the status quo ante. Everyone knows that Israel will never allow Gaza to open its borders. So they could have played the bargaining charade, deescalated the violence in Gaza and then when talks inevitably foundered and Hamas resumed its rocketry, Israel could have responded in a way that was not based on military overkill.

That Israel interpreted Kerry's proposal as pro-Hamas is a bad sign, a mark of a nation seriously out of whack. Netanyahu's government appears to be pushing for genocide in Gaza in order to stop the rockets. The political situation favors Israel. Hamas' siding with the Salafis in Syria isolated it from Iran and Hezbollah. Morsi's ouster by the military in Egypt eliminated the group's chief benefactor. In the United States, there is no politician who will stand up to Israel.

Expect the slaughter of Palestinians to continue.