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.