Final reaction paper.

Nicholas Laferriere
reaction paper 8
Rashid Chapter 16-19
The War Briefing
Ahmed Rashid and Dexter Filkins on Charlie Rose
The Triple Agent
John Meacham on Memorial Day
Coming Apart, from The New Yorker
This week we covered a lot of material and had our last class of the semester.  A lot of the material summarized what we have talked about in class.  The issue with Pakistan and other countries in the area was the main focal point of the material for this week along with the growing unrest inside of Afghanistan.  We watched one documentary, read the last 4 chapters of Rashid and watched a few news clips.  
Chapter 16 of Rashid’s book talks about the problems in Central Asia, following the USSR leaving the area.  Some countries in the area tried to reduce the chances of being taken over by extremist by having more of a hard-line policy similar to that of the Taliban, while still trying to be slightly moderate, like Kyrgyzstan.  The resulting problem was an overall lack of human rights that were on par with the western world.  After 911 the US was more willing to negotiate with moderate countries in the area.  The US wanted to use Uzbekistan as a place to launch attacks into Afghanistan, but Uzbekistan was playing both sides of the coin with Russia and the US and ended up kicking the US out.  
In chapter 17 Rashid talks brings up Pakistan again, and their involvement with the resurgence in Afghanistan in and around 2006.  From this reading it was quiet clear that the US and her allies knew that Pakistan was either highly supported of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and that these groups actually had control inside of the Pakistan government. The border issue was again brought up in this chapter.  The problem was the same old issue that the NATO forces would fight the Taliban fighters and than they would cross the border into Pakistan, which was basically a safe haven for them.  NATO was very limited in what they could do to combat these issues.  The other issue is that the US and NATO forces were often scared in combat of taking loses.  That mixed in with the fact that Rumsfeld cut troops at one of the worst possible times that he could.  
The second to last chapter in Rashid’s book chapter 18 is about Pakistan and how it is falling apart.  It highlights the fact that Pakistan as a whole isn’t unite and under one central leader.  There courts and the government are separated from the ISI and military and their own separate entities, inside of Pakistan.  This has lead to the fact that Pakistan as a country can’t control what happens inside of their borders and why it is a safe haven for terrorist.  When Musharraf would feel like the terrorist inside of the borders were starting to get a little out of hand he would employ the military to try and stop them.  They would than strike back with suicide bombings and other brutal attacks.  This led to further instability inside of Pakistan.  To try and gain some support back he started to work a little with Benazir Bhutto.  While Bhutto was campaign against Musharraf he was shot.  He became a martyr for his political part and they dominated the following elections and took control of the government.  
The last chapter of the book covers what has happened after the 2008 elections in Pakistan and some problems that the US was facing at the current time.  Pakistan still had a lot of the problems that were spelled in the previous chapter.  Now they also faced economic collapse along with the rest of the world, bad relations with the UN, and human rights violations.  When Gilani, the new president of Pakistan started a new military offensive but could control the what the military did.  The Military ended up making their own deal with the people that they were fighting.  And it appears that it didn’t even stop terrorist attacks against NATO.  It clearly showed that the Military inside of Pakistan is much stronger than the government and that they had their own agenda to follow.  At the same time the US like everyone else in the world was being devastated with by the global recession.  The war was starting to become vastly unpopular at the time and Obama still went ahead with the much needed troop surge in Afghanistan.  But it was too little too late in the war.  Their is still a lot of different that could play out in Afghanistan which could change everything that has been done there.  
Another reading that we did was an article from the New Yorker.  it was an interesting piece that had a few stories wrapped up into one article.  It bounced around the stories of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  I talks about how a few of them died and also a story about one who came back and faced hard times when he got back home.  He wasn’t able to get a job but everyone was proud of him serving and doing his part.  It also talked about a man Chris Berman who was trying to improve Humvees for the soldiers.  But like most things that involve the government he ran into a lot of political red-tape and seemed to be doomed before he could even start.  Another major part of the article was talking about how inflated the events around the war where.  Although he attack on 91 was bad it was portrayed as the beginning of world war 3.  It also says that the reason for this was because the current generation didn’t have any prior experience with war, so they made things in the wars seem way worse than they were.
John Meacham on Memorial Day was an interesting sort clip on how Americans have forgotten the meaning of memorial day.  A lot of this is due to the fact that fewer than 1% of people in the US are in the military so they don’t understand what it is like to not be at peace and actually be in combat.  He really emphasised the point that we need to give more respect to the soldiers that are currently serving.  
The second small clip that we watched was a story of a triple agent that bombed CIA agents.  He was originally an Al Qaeda agent that was recruited to the work for the Jordanian intelligence.  As a result he was also in contact with the CIA.  But in reality we was still working with Al Qaeda as a triple agent against the CIA.  He blew himself and took a few CIA agents out with him. The informant gave a lot of information to the Jordan security services that seemed valid.  The CIA was so interested in talking with the person that they allowed him to get through a few security systems and do devastating damage.  
We also watched an interview with Ahmed Rashid and Dexter Filkin about Afghanistan, hosted by Charlie Rose.  The two talk a lot about things that Rashid talked about in his book that I have already covered.  The US is having great military success against the insurgents and has killed over 10,000 fighters.  But at the same they are also losing respect with the local people for doing night raids and running kill/capture missions.  Their is also an increase in violence following these missions led by the US.  Both guest agreed that the the Taliban are just waiting for the US forces to leave and take back the areas just after the US forces have left.  Part of this is due to a lack inferstucture to control the area after the US left.  Also it is hard to get people to step up into leadership positions to grow the government because the Taliban are assassinating public figures.  Rashid also brings up a point that the Taliban are more going towards a semi legitimate government in Afghanistan, where they make a deal to get some power and try and get some public support from the common people.  Both said that their is a chance for a nightmare scenario where Pakistan government might get into a war with Indian government and lead to a possible world war.  
The one documentary that we watched this week was The War Briefing.  It covers a lot of information that was covered in the two books we read in this class.  It was a good summary of the issues that are going on currently in Afghanistan.  It highlights the points that their is an increase in violence in the area and the situation has gotten progressively worse.  One of the phrases that was constantly brought up was “the forgotten war”, as the American government seemed to care more about Iraq most of the time instead of focusing on Afghanistan.  The documentary than goes on to explain that because the US forgot about this war is why the Taliban were able to mount a resurgence.  Again in this documentary like most things that we have read or watched in this class a finger is pointed to the ISI and Pakistan government for supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  The last thing the documentary covers is the possibility that Pakistan might become a failed state that is a nuclear power.  This is a huge problem due to the fact that most likely an exterminist group would take power and than have control over the weapons.
The last class we talked about a few different things.  One of them was the poor reporting on the war by the American press.  Everyone agreed right off the start so it wasn’t much of a discussion.  Next we talked about the whether the US should go into Pakistan and other countries in the area to bring stability to the region in hopes that it will help Afghanistan and will hopefully eliminate any safe havens for both Al Queda and the Taliban.  The class was split on the subject pretty evenly.  The main concerns were the nuclear weapons in Pakistan and were would all the soldiers and money that would be needed come from to support the new war.  Personally I think that we need to do it in order to bring stability to the area but I don’t it is feasible to do it at the moment.  The only way I can think of that would have allowed us to achieve this, we would have had to accept all the help that was offered to us following 911.  We could have gotten every country in NATO to go to war with us and provide the man power and money to fix the region and solve a lot of the problems that came up.  We were to focused on doing it for the glory of America that we got in over our heads way to fast.  

reaction paper 7

Nicholas Laferriere
Reaction Paper 7
The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan
Bitter Harvest
Rashid Chapters 14 and 15

This week we watched The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, a documentary about young boys that have forced to please older men.  The second documentary we watched was Bitter Harvest which went into detail about the drug trade in Afghanistan.  In class we went off on a little tangent about monopolies and big business versus small business.  The two chapters of Rashid covers the American treatment of prisoners of war and the drug trade in Afghanistan.  
In class we talked about the power of large corporations and how they drive out small chains and local businesses.  It was an interesting class discussion and centered around how because of the fact stores like Walmart could by in such large numbers local stores didn’t stand a chance of keeping up with them.  A large distributor would be in bulk at a discount and then sell it with a smaller profit than a local family store.  This makes it next to impossible for a lcoal business to make a profit.
The First documentary explores the “bacha bazi” in Afghanistan.  The practice involves dacing kids entertain the older men that are there.  They also do what ever entertains the older man.  The reasons that children get involved in “bacha bazi” is usually to earn money for their family.  Often they keep doing the practice until they have earned enough money to make their families financially stable according to the presenter.  They often have no other choice but to do this in order to have enough money to survive.  It is thought that the practice was brought to Afghanistan by Alexander the Great.  It is now part of the culture of the area and why older men participate in the practice.  
Chapter 14 of Rashid’s book goes into details about the what might be considered war crimes on the behalf of the US, by ignoring certain things in the Geneva Conventions.  The main point of the chapter is the treatment of prisoners of war by the US.  One of examples used was President Bush’s reclassification of people they captured so that they weren’t considered POW’s.   This was a loop hole around the Geneva Conventions and allowed the US to do what they wanted to people that they captured.  Some other countries as a result started to also neglect or dance around the laws in place against torture.  The results ended with widespread violations in the area by other countries.  The US opened the door to this with the CIA network of prisons, Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of captured enemies at these places.  Rashid talks about the horrible things that happened to people in these facilities.  Their was also a huge lack of punishment by the perpetrators of these crimes.  Hardly anyone got blamed for it and even few got punished for it.
The second documentary goes along with chapter 15 in Rashid’s book.  Both talked about the drug trade in Afghanistan.  In the book Rashid talks about the British plan to try and eradicate the drug trade.  Like most plans that involve money that Rashid brings up in the book it failed horribly.  The plan was to pay the farmers to destroy their fields.  In most cases the money either never went to the farmers or they got it and just didn’t destroy their crops.  The drug trade was making so money for the people in the area that wasn’t possible to eradicate it.  The drug cartels and the local warlords were also involved in the trade and Afghanistan lacked a strong enough central government to be able to fight it.  The documentary Bitter Harvest followed a family that grew drugs to support the family.  The documentary was focused on the area around the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.  With extremely high unemployment rates in the area, their are plenty of willing people to risk to possible consequences to being involved with the drug trade.  The documentary also showed the effects of the drugs on people and how addictive it is.  Another big point in the documentary was the American policy towards the farmers and fields.  At first the Americans were burning and destroying all the fields that they came across.  This however was alienating the population and growing anti western sentiment.  This was giving more power to the opposition forces in the area.  In an effort to win the hearts and minds of the people, the American forces stopped destroying the fields and just ignored them.  

Reaction Paper 6

Nicholas Laferriere
Reaction Paper 6
Rashid 10-13
Afghanistan the Forgotten War
Behind Taliban Lines
Fighting for Bin Laden

This week covers a lot of material, chapters 10-13 from  Rashid’s Descent into Chaos and a few documentaries.  The chapters covered a wide range of topics.  Starting with the failed attemps of the US and her allies to build security in Afghanistan, to the double dealings of the Pakistan government.  The last two talk about the resurgence of the Taliban in 2003 and 2004 and Al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Pakistan.  The first documentary was Afghanistan the Forgotten War, which was about a group of troops deployed into Afghanistan.  The second was Behind Taliban Lines, a documentary about a reporter spending ten days as the guest of a Taliban fighting group.  The third documentary was about a group of fighters in the norther region of Afghanistan that were still fighting in Bin Laden’s honor.  In class we talked about some of the traditions of the groups in the area.

The Forgotten War was an interesting documentary about Marines in Afghanistan that were both trying to fighting off the Taliban while trying to win the hearts and minds of the people in the area.   One example of trying to win the hearts and minds was paying for a land owner to rebuild house after the fighting between the Taliban and US forces left it destroyed.  The most shocking thing to me was that their was fields upon fields of poppy fields.  As part of the new strategy the soldiers were just ignoring it because they didn’t wan to alienate the farmers of the region.  Coming from a culture that treats drugs as taboo, it took me back.  Towards the end of the short documentary it seemed that the commanders were starting to understand the traditions of the local tribes and trying to not offend them and to give them as much respect as possible.

The second documentary was, Behind Taliban Lines, and about a reporter that was embedded into a group of Taliban fighters for 10 days.  It was interesting to see that the people in the group were from all over central Asia and all came to be apart of a Jihad.  They were all firm believers and devoted to their cause.  It was surprising in the this documentary how the leader of the group was actually very kind to his guest and looked out for him.  He was hesitant on letting him go up to the front because he was worried he might get hurt and also got him into a van.  He also got the reporter out of the area when people were starting to wonder if he was a spy and were demanding that he be killed.  Another small interesting detail in it was how unorganized the fighters were in battle and how much the exaggerated their results.  The fighters and bomb technician clearly didn’t set up and place the bombs right and were having trouble detonating it.  But when they reported to their leader they claimed that the remote was broken.  They also claimed that they blew up a jeep, filled with Afghan police, with a rocket launcher.  They actually missed the jeep completely and it drove away.  During this time the group was also very unorganized and completely incompetent.  It showed an interesting perspective on the fighting that taking place in Afghanistan.  

The last documentary brings up some questions about Pakistan’s involvement in the area and follows a reporter who is following a group of Al-Qaeda in northern Afghanistan.  The same old story that has been told from multiple different people throughout this class about Pakistan’s double dealings continued in this documentary yet again.  Their was new twist though.  It discovered that their was a team of specially trained Afghan soldiers that would do special forces missions along the border.  It was interesting is somewhat mysteries in how the documentary described this group.  They seemed to be highly trained, well paid and well equipped all by American forces.  The second part of the documentary was a reporter joining with a group of Al-Qaeda fighters in northern Afghanistan.  These fighters were somewhat organized and collected taxes from local farmers.  The leader of the group also in one instance convinced a Taliban judge to beat up a person in public because he didn’t pray on Fridays and told other people too.  This same leader also was very controlling over one interview he allowed of one of his commanders.  He made the reporter turn off his camera and ask the question.  Than told the man being interviewed what to say and than finally allowed the reporter to ask the question.  This group was also teaching very young children how to use guns at a local school.  Another thing I found interesting was that the fighters in the group claimed that Iran was supporting them by giving weapons and the motorcycles they used to ride around.  But the reporters said that when they allowed specialist to look at the footage they said that the weapons came from Bulgaria or China.  The surprising thing is that even with this most of the people in the area seemed to prefer this form of ruling over the central government.  

Chapter 10 is about rebuilding security in Afghanistan and goes right along with chapter 9 that I covered in the last blog.  This chapter is more focused on the issues regarding security during the rebuilding period after the initial surge when the war started.  The is clear in the book from the very opening that when the US went into Afghanistan right after 911 they didn’t have any real plans for what would happen after they defeated the Taliban.  This led to issues like the US being pressured into, and than reluctantly rebuilding some of the areas that were destroyed and building the Afghan National Army.  The US and the UN forces in the area lacked the man power to do this right off the bat.  Even when they did commit to rebuilding the nation often they did a pour job at it or didn’t spend enough money to do it right.  Sometimes they even contracted out the jobs to third parties and military contractors.  The chapter ended with the formation of a new Constitution.  It was fairly liberal for a Muslim nation.  The interesting thing to me was that in the Constitution women are suppose to have equal rights but in practice, from the videos we have watched this is far from true.  

The next chapter was about Pakistan and some of their double dealings and problems that happened as a result of getting into bed with the Taliban and other radical Muslims.  The ISI helped the Taliban behind the backs of the US forces and their promises to the US government.  The US and her allies had suspicions that the ISI and Pakistan government were double dealing behind their backs.  At first they couldn’t prove anything do to the fact that the ISI used former agents to carry out the support and to fund the Taliban.  Eventually the US caught on and to what was happening.  At the same time Pakistan was letting the radical Taliban grow unchecked in the area and letting them also spread propaganda supporting Jihad.  This led a rise in radical or highly conservative Muslims in the country.  This led to a divide between the general population and the government which was promoting an enlightened modern Islam.  The extremist that were being supported by the ISI and given haven in the country by the ISI were starting to claim that Musharraf wasn’t completely dedicated to the cause and was a pawn of the US. The radical extremist called for change in the government and death to Musharraf.  This resulted in numerous attacks and according to Rashid, “ISI no longer controlled the monster of extremism it had created.”  Pakistan had bitten off more than it could chew and led to a huge problems inside of the country.  

Chapter 12 is about the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003 - 2004 time frame.  This happened to be at the same time that the US forces were gearing up and going to war with Iraq.  It was enough of a distraction for the Taliban to get into the country and grow again.  The growth was also do partly to the failing of the US of rebuilding Afghanistan, right after they invaded and defeated the Taliban.  And again the US forces failed in stopping to the revival of the Taliban when they started to come back in 2003 or 2004.  When the Taliban did come back this time they went after Afghan officials and almost any foreigner that was trying to help rebuild Afghanistan.  The US soon after put pressure on the Pakistan government to put troops on the border to prevent more Taliban fighters from coming up into Afghanistan.  The presidential elections in late 2004 made Karzai the first elected president of the new Afghanistan.  

The last chapter is this weeks readings talks about what happened to Al-Qaeda after they were forced from the country.  They fled to an area called FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). This lands came into existence after they had been declared autonomous from Pakistan and were not part of Afghanistan.  The area lacked any type of politic government and didn’t have to follow international law.  This was a perfect area for Al-Qaeda to go to, to regroup after losing control of Afghanistan.  Their was no border control at all and they could come and go as they please.  They tribes in the area were the only form of government and didn’t have to answer to international courts or law so they could do as they please.  And a lot of the Al-Qaeda fighters had some form of family in the area that they could get help from.  This led to a strong hold of Al-Qaeda inside of Pakistan borders that couldn’t be controlled by anyone.  Pakistan tried to engage Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that joined them in open combat but due to Al-Qaeda having such an influence in the Army it didn’t work very well.  In addition with the US being busy fighting in Iraq they didn’t put as much pressure on Pakistan to do anything more at the time and as a result they just left Al-Qaeda alone and allowed them to grow.  

Reaction paper 5

Nicholas Laferriere
Rashid chapters 7-9
Return of the Taliban
Kill Capture

This blog covers a chapters 7-9 of Rashid’s book and the two documentaries Return of the Taliban and Kill Capture.  I am going to write most of this blog through the idea that in order to build a western styled state, with a strong central government that you need to have a sense of nationalism.  Throughout the readings their is case after case of where Afghanistan could have built a strong sense of nationalism following the fall of the Taliban just after 911.  

Chapter seven of Rashid’s book talks about the rise of the Afghan warlords and tribal leaders following the Taliban’s fall.  After the Taliban fell to the American and NA forces the American and UN forces occupied the major cities and used warlords to country the country side.  The problem was that they often just as bad as the Taliban to the people in the area they controlled.  Most of the warlords were also involved in black market trading of guns and drugs.  The large amounts of money and aid the US gave to the warlords helped them do this and also made it next to impossible for the new central government to have control of the country.  The official US support of the warlords made it impossible for Karzai as the new president to Afghanistan to actually do anything to limit the warlords power.  This also made any notion of unifying the nation under sort nationalism impossible.  Without a strong central government it wasn’t a feasible anymore.

Chapter 8 of the book starts to talk about some of the problems in Pakistan and the fact they lost their chance to transformer their country into more of western style democracy.  Instead of taking the aid of the US an reforming their country during a time when the Islamist community in the country had a huge lack of support, the ISI decided to still help the Taliban.  They provided a safe haven for the Taliban leaders and helped some of the fighters escape over the border to Pakistan.  The biggest example of this was during Tora Bora when Al-Qaeda fighters and leaders escaped into Pakistan during the battle.  Instead of unifying Pakistan around a sense of Nationalism they tried to unify the country under Islam.  The rest of the chapter talks about how the countries in central Asia benefited from the US wanting to put bases in the area in order to support their forces in the Afghanistan.  This resulted in the US allying itself with nations that have less than ideal governments.  Some even of which had dictatorships.  

The last chapter in this weeks reads covered the efforts of the US to rebuild Afghanistan after the the fall of the Taliban.  In this chapter Rashid talks about the varies programs that were started with foreign aid to Afghanistan to try and help rebuild the nation.  Some of the projects were very successful but the majority of them and the effort as whole failed horribly.  For a variety of reason from lack of coordination between agencies and corruption in the area.  These problems led to a divided Afghanistan.  If the projects were properly handled and succeeded in the way that they were intended to them there was a much higher chance that Afghanistan would have been able to build nationalism around the central government instead of reallying on warlords or local tribal leadership.

Kill capture is a documentary about the raids the US forces have been doing against suspected Taliban targets.  Over the course of the war their have been more and more raids where the US forces break into houses and search form Taliban fighters and commanders.  The problem is that a significant amount of times the intelligence is wrong and they end up invading a innocent person’s house.  One of the raids that was in the documentary involved an instance where they broke down the door to an elders house to find out that he didn’t support the Taliban at all.  The Afghan soldiers knew this and were very reluctant to help search the house.  It was considered an insult to search the house but the American troops still did.  Afterwards the elder said that before he would not support the Taliban but afterwords he said that he would allow Taliban into his house.  This is one the example of how things are starting to go badly for the US forces.  They are losing support from the people in Afghanistan.  Although the US is trying to unite Afghanistan together but from the point of view of this documentary the US might be uniting Afghanistan under hatred of the west.  Some of the interviewed people in the documentary even said that if they die as a result of the US raids than there kids and kids will take up their fight.  This one of the problems with fighting a truly dedicated force.  

The documentary Return of the Taliban is about of the Taliban forces after 911 and how they continued to exists in the tribal areas of Pakistan, around the border of Afghanistan and the Peshawar lands.  It also keeps bringing up the point that the ISI has a huge influence over Pakistan policy and more examples of double dealings inside of the Pakistan government.  After being driven out of Afghanistan following 911 the Taliban fled to Pakistan and received support from the ISI inside of Pakistan and outside support from Arabs.  This has led to the Taliban having a strong foothold inside of Pakistan and as a result easy access into Afghanistan and able to launch attacks and support fighters inside of Afganistan.  This is one of the problems with the current war and the US can’t solve the problem without the help of Pakistan.  Without Pakistan having a strong enough central government that isn’t controlled by Islamist Extremist it impossible to eliminate the Taliban from the area.  If the general people of Pakistan could unite together and say enough is enough to the rule of the ISI and Taliban than they could drive them out the area with the help of the international community and the help of the US.   It is impossible for the US to rebuild Afghanistan without the help of Pakistan.  

Reaction Paper 4

Reaction Paper 4
Rashid Chapters 4-6
Top Secret America

Top Secret America is about the huge intelligence programs in the United States
following 911.  The Rashid chapters from this weeks material cover the initial reactions of the US towards an Afghanistan War, the initial fighting in Afghanistan and the Pakistan, India conflict.  A theme that has started to pock in class is that people, in this case countries, do things that are going to benefit themselves at the time, instead of what is best for the long term.  As highlighted in previous material such as Bush’s war and the currently in the Rashid book the US looks out for itself and what is best for the present.  Pakistan and Afghanistan both do the same thing.  
From Rashid’s book it is clear that the US and its allies in the western world weren’t very educated about Afghanistan and the problems within the country.  They had no real concerns about the area after the soviets withdrew from there.  So as a result they didn’t have plans to go to war with Afghanistan because they didn’t think it would be necessary at the time, before 911.  Rashid did seem to want the readers believe that he was deeply connected to leaders of the world and was a little better them, from some of the comments that he made about his meeting with Tony Blair.  One thing that I did find interesting in this chapter was the fact that the US turned down wide support from NATO which agreed to go to war with the US.  This showed the egos of the politicians like Rumsfeld that wanted to make themselves look like dominate figures in the world and to boost their egos.  They didn’t really care about whether they were going to need help later from these allies they just wanted to go to war and unprepared at that.  
The fifth chapter of the book talks about the US relations to Pakistan and the ISI.  The US and most western powers lifted sanctions on Pakistan and gave large amounts of aid in order to get some help from Pakistan.  The western powers needed to as they were unprepared to go to war in the area and needed intelligence from people that were heavily involved in the area.  The problem with trusting the Pakistan government was,  they were more concerned about themselves.  They were trying to milk the US, NATO, and the UN for all the money and political power they could get out of their situation.  They also tried to hide the fact that the forces in Afghanistan after 911 that were still helping the Taliban.  They were trying to prevent themselves from being declared a terrorist state and at the same time trying to get some influence over the new Afghanistan.  
Another part of the chapter was that the US military made a lot of mistakes during the early stages of the war.  The prime example of this is the incidents at Tora Bora, were General Franks didn’t send in troops that were on stand by in bases to secure the Pakistan border from the Afghanistan side.  It was later found out that Bin Laden escaped from the bombing at Tora Bora due to the lack of border controll.  Other issues included, tribal leaders and commanders getting the US to take out some enemies by giving the US wrong intelligence.  This has caused a large amount of deaths from US bombs in Afghanistan.  
The sixth chapter goes into details of the relations between Pakistan and India, going from the history to the current political problems between the two countries.  Both are trying to have an influence in the area in particular Afghanistan.  Who ever can land Afghanistan on their side of the argument would gain a powerful ally in the region.  The fighting between these two countries was initially started over whether Kashmir should be part of Pakistan or India.  In 947 when both countries were starting, independent areas around the border where allowed to pick which country to join.  The ruler of Kashmir went with India despite the fact a large part of the population was Muslim and wanted to join with Pakistan.  Since than both sides have been sponsoring attacks against each other and have been at ends.  Both are currently afraid of the US picking one side over the other.  That is a major part of the reason why Pakistan has tried to help the US, in Afghanistan.  Kashmir is also a possible powder keg for the area and needs to be watched carefully by everyone in the international community.
Top Secret America is a documentary about the rapidly growing intelligence agencies in the US.  The agencies have grown to the point where they are unmanageable and in massive buildings that are underground.  They came to rise after 911 in to solve the problem of not having enough intelligence.  Their was also a director of intelligence that started.  The problem with this job is that their isn’t enough power to manage everything and more offices and companies started getting into the intelligence business.  Everyone decided so quickly that we needed more intelligence officers and people to go through all of it but no one considered the long term that we would be dealing with too many people doing it.  Anyone who says that we should cut back will be told that it works because we haven’t been attacked since 911.  So these agency keep growing.  The problem is that all this is too much and isn’t sustainable for the long term.  Politicians acted to rashly to 911 and didn’t think everything threw.

reaction paper 3

Blog 3
Bush’s War
Obama’s War
Rashid intro - 3

This blog covers the material’s of the past week.  First is Bush’s War, a frontline documentary that goes into the behind close doors fighting the occurred in Bush’s cabinet after 911 and how we ended up going to war with Iraq.  The second documentary was Obama’s War which is on the some of issues in Afghanistan and how they are now starting to pop up in Pakistan, like the Taliban.  The third piece of material is the intro through chapter 3 of Descent into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid.  In all of these it is clear that the US went into Afganistan with a plan to rebuild the nation other than that they wanted to do so.  Part of the problem they ran into in rebuilding the nation after the war was that the US used a lot of their resources to invade Iraq and rebuild that country too.  Afghanistan took the second seat to the War in Iraq and still is having issues being rebuilt to date.  
The introduction Descent into Chaos talks a lot about some of the themes we have talked about in class so far.  From the influence from imperialism, western bureaucracy, the tribal nature of Afghanistan, and how the US wasn’t fully prepared to rebuild the country after it had defeated the Taliban.  All of these appear to be the main ideas of the book and will defiantly be talked about more later on in the book in more detail.  The introduction lays the foundation for the rest of the book.
In the first chapter Rashid talks about his friend’s Karzai story, the president of Afghanistan, and a little about the history of the country.  Karzai is depicted as a very intelligent figure and a true believer in Afghanistan by Rashid in this chapter.  Part of this can be chalked up to the fact that they are close friends and Rashid openly says this in the beginning of the chapter.  Everything that he says about Karzia has to be taken with a grain of salt.  Rashid probably isn’t going to publicly critique his friend that is also very powerful right now. The rest of the chapter gives a brief history of Afghanistan from Daud all the way to the Taliban and end at 911.
The second chapter was about Pakistan and its relationship to the US just after 911.  It focused on how Pakistan had ties to the Taliban and weren’t fully supportive of the US.  Most of the people in Pakistan were Islamic and had anti-American feelings that led to problems done the road.  The main reason Pakistan helped the US at all was to try and get some sanctions lifted and to avoid being Invade like Afghanistan was and Iraq would be later.  The problem was that it seemed like Pakistan wasn’t trying to help the US much at all.  They were doing the minimum required to still get aid from the US and not be declared a terrorist state.  After all Pakistan was a firm supporter of jihad and the US was attacking their allies.  
In the third chapter, Rashid talks about the personally history and Musharraf and how unstable he mad Pakistan and the whole region around it.  He had an western education, but was heavily influenced by the military.  He was the person that tried to get aid from the US by just supporting them on paper, and not actually doing much to help the US.  Along with the issues he had with the US, he didn’t have good relationships with other countries.  He was viewed badly by the Afghan people as he supported the Taliban heavily and suppressed his people’s freedoms heavily.  A lot of the problems in Pakistan including the leadership of Musharraf could have possibly been dealt with if the US didn’t use a lot of their resources in Iraq.  If the US had a plan to deal with Pakistan along with Afghanistan before going to war and didn’t get side tracked with Iraq it would have been a lot easier to rebuild Afghanistan and maybe the region wouldn’t still be in so much turmoil.

In Bush’s War it was clear that the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq were very different.  They had some things in common like they were both ideas that came up shortly after the attacks on 911.  The War in Afghanistan was intended to strike back at Al Qaeda and to kill Bin Laden.  The second was not directly related to the attacks but came up as a result of it.  From some of the first meetings of the joint chiefs right after the attacks the idea to attack Iraq came up.  It was clear that the idea had been in the back of the minds of some people from the time of the first gulf war.  They seemed to think that it was left unfinished.  From then on it was almost guaranteed that we were going to eventually got to war with Iraq solely based on a few powerful peoples personal opinions.  

Bush’s staff had internal conflicts between staff members on whether Iraq had weapons and was a threat to the US.  Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were bent on going to war and listened to certain facts that the CIA gave to them.  They would like a few facts to the press outside of context that were at best dubious, and than cite the news stories as evidence.  One of the shocking things was that the press never bothered to check the facts and just went strait to publishing the article.  The CIA came to the conclusion that Iraq wasn’t making wmds but Dick Cheney thought the CIA was wrong just like they were about the economic collapse of the soviet union.  Rumsfeld held the same position as Cheney, both were at odds with Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell who didn’t think it was right to go to war with Iraq.  At the end of the day he had the last word with Bush and was most likely the person the had the most influence in getting him to go to war with Iraq.  

In Obama’s War the documentary followed some politicians that were trying to help keep the Afghanistan government growing and stable and a few deployed soldiers that were trying to reopen a market in southern Afghanistan.  From the documentary it was clear that country still wasn’t fully under US control and never really has been since the start of the war.  Some of the farmers were still being threatened by the Taliban and were afraid to talk and help the US forces.  It also highlighted the fact that a lot of the Taliban have gone over the border into Pakistan and are operating there now.  It left the audience wondering what was going on inside of Pakistan and made me at least wonder if we were going to have to end up going to war with them too.  The documentary was geared towards an American audience and trying to show some of the problems that US forces were running into in Afghanistan.  It wasn’t showing a lot of fighting and tried to portray the Army in a positive light.  It also emphasized economics of the array a lot, and talking about some of the problems in southern Afghanistan.  Some of these issuese can be explain in what Rashid has written in his book, “The billions spent in Iraq were the billions that were not spent in Afghanistan”.  This is part of the reason why there is so many issues in the area and we are still there currently.  

War in Afghanistan reaction paper 2

Reaction Paper 2
Rasanayagam chapter 9 - end of the book
The man who knew

The main theme of the Rasanayagam book, is fusion followed by fission.  This is a key point that was brought up early in the book.  I think the main way this is illustrated is how every few years a great leader comes to power through the help of a western power.  The leader puts in a bunch of western bureaucracies.  The leader either than gets power hungry and tries to destroy his enemies through the bureaucracies or by crushing them under it.  This splits up the country and causes fission.  The other thing that happens is that in trying to create a western bureaucracy the country is divide amongst parties.  The book covers the history of Afghanistan from the time of the colonial imperialism up to the current war there. The history of Afghanistan is plagued with power struggles within government bureaucracy.  This isn’t just a problem with the government in Afghanistan it is something that was also highlight in the documentary “The Man Who Knew”.  The documentary is about the FBI agent John O’Neil and his problems within FBI in getting support to go after terrorist.

The first implementation of bureaucracy not working in this sections readings were during the Karmal regime after the Saur revolution.  In order to try and keep power the regime tried to instill a number of checks and balances that would prevent their political enemies from having any type of serous power in the government and military.  This move both weakened their army by removing high ranking officers and replacing them with less qualified and under prepared officers loyal to the party.  Their was also wide spread dissertation among the lower ranks of the army that led to at best a dis-functioning army.  Karmal’s game of trying to keep his enemies from gaining any power instead of working with them to improve the country left the country without a working army and in chaos.

After years of war and millions of refugees fleeing the country in 1985 their nationwide elections which brought Dr Najibullah into power.  He was a well respected by the people and had a background that marked him for leadership (119).  Better yet he was liked by Moscow, which allowed him some room to try and fix Afghanistan and reunite the country.  He was what seemed to be a lead figure in the Geneva Accords which forced the USSR to start with drawing the troops from Afghanistan and prevent Pakistan from having any influence over the new Afghanistan.  Although General Zia had no intentions of this being true at all (123).  He died in a plain crash before the Soviet Union fully pulled out of Afghanistan.  Shortly after the Soviet Union left Najibullah was able to keep control and fight off resistance from the Afghan Interim Government.  At the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Najibullah’a regime also collapsed due to no more aid coming from the USSR.

The next form of government was via the Peshwar Agreement.  It was quickly useless due to fighting between parties and tribes inside of Afghanistan again.  One of the emerging parties in this fighting was the Taliban which was a group founded in refugee camps in Pakistan.  They gained control of the country through violent fighting, better military tactics, and funding from Pakistan.  The Taliban were religious hardliners and had the support of religious leaders inside the country that allowed them to gain some control.  They were also funded by corporations that payed for the right to get oil or gas.  Under their rule terrorist like Bin Laden were allowed into the country because of their hard-line religious views against infidels.

In the documentary “the man who knew” by frontline, John O’Neill appeared to be someone in the government that knew about the structure of Al-Qaeda and that Bin Laden was more than just a fancier of terrorism.  He was a major player that grew the network of Al-Qaeda into a global threat to America and her allies.  The FBI had a major bureaucracy in it which in itself didn’t like people that were “mavericks” in the agency.  The prevented agent O’Neill from following all of his leads and going after some possible leads that could have possibly prevented 911.  This was due again to people wanting to have power and trying to keep it from others.  He was not allowed to go to Africa after the embassy bombings due to personality differences with other members of the FBI.  It because he wasn’t entirely like them and had nothing to do with possible results or being the best for a job.  It is kinda like how Karmal only kept people that were on his side in positions of power.

With all that being said about John O’Neill and what might have been different if he hadn’t been stopped by the government bureaucracy.  The documentary seemed to favor him a lot, their weren’t any interviews or news clips from people that weren’t friends with him.  All the people on the show him in a very positive light.  Even as smart as he was their had to be others going on behind close doors that prevented him from getting everything he needed to do his job after the series of attacks that led up to 911.  I think the documentary was suppose to make you think about how our government works and how it needed to change to fight terrorism at the time.  It was geared towards an American audience that still very angry over what happened on 911.  All in all, I would say that the documentary was good, it brought up a lot of good points and made me think.  The one thing that I didn’t like about it was the repeated emergency responder dispatcher audio loop in the background.  But that is more of something that just distracted me while watching it.