Top Afghan Leader Assassinated

By Gabrielle Pffaflin

In Kabul, Tuesday, Former Afghanistan President, Burhanuddin Rabbani died after a suspected Taliban suicide bomber insisted on a face-to-face meeting to broker peace between the Afghan Government and the insurgents.

According to the Associate Press, the bomber claimed to be a top Taliban official and pursued a direct meeting with Rabbani for several days. On Tuesday, the head of the High Peace Council consented to a face-to-face meeting in his home to discuss the possibility of peace with Taliban insurgents.

The bomber, identified as Esmutullah detonated a bomb hidden in his turban when he bowed his head toward Rabbani’s chest during introductions.

Kabul Police Chief, General Mohammad Ayub Salangi suspects the Taliban organized the assassination, however Taliban Spokeman, Zabiullah Mujahid refused to comment.

Mujahid posted on the Taliban website Wednesday, “We are still gathering information on this. Right now our position is that we cannot say anything about this incident.”

U.S. led security forces said another attacker may have been involved, according to the Associated Press. This could not be confirmed by Afghan officials, however the assassin’s driver remains in custody.

Recent chaos, coupled with the diplomat’s death encourages international doubt whether the Afghan Government can secure the country and make peace with the insurgents.

We're Going to Have to Kill A Lot of Taliban, Says Expert

Philip Bunnell - Talk Radio News Service

Dr. David Kilcullen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday that in order to reach the point of reconciliation with insurgents in Afghanistan “we’re going to have to kill a lot of Taliban to get them to negotiate.”

Kilcullen , non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said bluntly that “when governments fight insurgents, they win 80% of the time, however, when governments fight insurgents in other countries, they are victorious 20% of the time.” 

Kilcullen said a government that is fighting insurgents at home has a political need to negotiate. Therefore, Kilcullen asserted that the United States will need to “negotiate from a position of strength,” and that the Taliban must believe that “they will have more to gain from talking to us than continuing to fight.”

Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Iraq, agreed with Kilcullen saying that “reconciliation is only possible when insurgents are unsure if they are winning.”

Crocker also criticized the deadline for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and the effects of publicizing will have on the attitudes of insurgents. While it is very complicated and nuanced, Crocker said he was concerned as to how the Taliban viewed the deadline, stating that they see it “as a date they need to hold out to, then they’ll be ok.”

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, briefly touched on the 90,000 leaked documents regarding the war in Afghanistan from the public whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

“It’s important not to overhype or get excessively excited about the meaning of those documents,” said Kerry. “To those of us who have lived through the Pentagon Papers… there is no relationship whatsoever between that event and these documents.”

Pence: Leaked War Documents an Outrage

Philip Bunnell - Talk Radio News Service

Chairman of the House Republican Conference Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) expressed outrage Monday over the 90,000 leaked Afghanistan war documents.

The documents, Pence said, were “leaked in a clear violation of the law, it was an outrage and ought to be an outrage to every American.” 

The New York Times, Britain’s The Guardian, and Der Spiegel of Germany all agreed to publish a select number of the war documents which were made public on Wikileaks, a public whistleblower website. Pence criticized the news syndications for publishing the documents, saying that the “publication of those documents was wrong.”

“When we are dealing with national security some things need to stay classified,” Pence said. “I am a champion of reporters’ privileges, but leaking information that compromises national security should not be protected.”

Pence criticized the deadline that President Obama set on troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. “The Taliban are using the president’s deadline as a recruiting tool,” Pence said. “We need to finish the job.”

Former CIA Officer Jack Rice Analyzes Afghanistan Leaks

This Just In: The War In Afghanistan Is Going Poorly

WikiLeaks has released some 91,000 documents to the New York Times, Germany’s Der Spiegel and Great Britain’s The Guardian. What they highlight is an almost blow-by-blow look at the war in Afghanistan from the beginning of 2004 through the end of 2009. In my mind, there are basically three significant issues raised by these documents. Two of them have to do with what’s going on in Afghanistan, and the third is the interesting response they’ve garnered from the U.S. Government.

First, the issue of Afghanistan and what it means:

One of the major issues highlighted in these documents is the number of civilians that have been targeted, occasionally inadvertently, inside of Afghanistan. This is one of the big issues that since-resigned Gen. Stanley McChrystal tried to deal with. The problem is that dealing with an insurgency, particularly in a place like Afghanistan, is extremely challenging. What makes it far worse, and far more complicated, is that the more civilians you kill, the further you drive other civilians to side with and embrace the insurgency. Simply put, if success is defined by bodies killed, the more successful you are, the less successful you’ll be in the long-run.

These documents also highlight what comes next for U.S. and NATO troops. As the Taliban and what’s left of al-Qaeda continue to insert themselves inside of society in Afghanistan, the more our troops must leverage their way in and push those insurgents out. But to distinguish between an insurgent and a civilian is almost impossible at this point.

A second issue exposed within these documents, an issue which I think is far more troubling, and something that neither NATO nor U.S. troops have been willing to acknowledge, is the corruption and close association between the Taliban and the Pakistani ISI. According to these documents, the ISI is working almost hand-in-glove with the Taliban, not only targeting Afghan officials, but also aiding insurgents who are targeting U.S. troops. This is an extraordinary situation when you consider that the third greatest ally of ours in the war against terror, in terms of money, is Pakistan. Thus, our closest ally in the region is also the most sophisticated ally of the very same people that we’re fighting. This variable highlights almost the impossibility of success in Afghanistan.

Now, let me turn to the issue of the United States’ response to the leaked documents. Late last night, the White House released a statement from National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones condemning the release of these documents. Jones focused specifically on how the leaks pose grave threats to U.S. troops. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have since been echoing Jones’ sentiment. But here’s the interesting aspect; what Jones and others in Congress are doing is ignoring the content of all of the leaks themselves. It’s much easier to explain what happens when a leak actually finds its way to the press. Conversely, it’s much more complicated to explain what happens when your closest ally in the region is working with your enemies, or to explain the inability of your own troops to distinguish between the bad guys and unarmed civilians who are being killed by the hundreds across Afghanistan.

As we look back over the nine years that U.S. and NATO forces have spent in the region, the difficulty now is trying to figure out how to extricate oneself; that’s what the White House is hoping to accomplish at this point. But the problem that this administration also faces is how to do that without creating even more instability. In some ways, I think this issue is being pushed to the side; they’re far more interested in finding a political solution to Afghanistan. What these leaks are doing is making that political situation much more difficult to achieve. I, along with millions of other Americans, am hoping for the best. But sadly, it appears that the worst is coming.

Jack Rice is an International Correspondent for the Talk Radio News Service. He is also a former CIA officer, prosecutor and talk show host. He appears frequently on MSNBC and CNN.

Petraeus, Eikenberry Testify Before Senate Foreign Relations Committee

By Ravi Bhatia - Talk Radio News Service

A day after U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Eikenberry joined General David H. Petraeus and Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew to discuss the civilian efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The three testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Aside from reiterating U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s acknowledgment that U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan would be difficult “but possible,” the three witnesses asserted that the United States would not abandon civilian efforts to stabilize the region, if and when U.S. troops remove the threat of al-Qaeda and the various Taliban networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Many Pakistanis believe that America will once again abandon the region,” Kerry said in his opening statements. “Let me be clear: It would be a mistake for anyone in Pakistan or elsewhere to believe that the President’s words about drawing down troops from Afghanistan mean an end to our involvement in the region.”

President Barack Obama committed 30,000 additional troops to the region, in response to McChrystal’s request for 40,000. Unlike the McChrystal hearings, war protestors were not present in the Dirksen building hallways during Eikenberry, Patraeus and Lew’s testimonies.

None of the three witnesses could confirm Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s estimation that the country would not be able to pay for its own security until 2024. Nor could they provide an estimate to the cost of training and deporting civilian troops to the region for another 15 years. However, Eikenberry said there will be almost 1,000 civilians from “numerous government departments and agencies on the ground in Afghanistan” by early 2010, tripling the total number of civilians from early 2009.

“The integration of civilian and military effort has greatly improved over the last year, a process that will deepen as additional troops arrive and our civilian effort expands,” he said.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a member of the committee, suggested that the witnesses’ testimonies made him believe that after $13 billion dollars given to Afghanistan for development and infrastructure efforts, “we are basically starting from scratch as it relates to development efforts.”

“We hope that Karzai will do everything right,” he said. “But, you know, we may prod and poke but at the end of the day, this depends on an Afghan government that can ultimately sustain itself.

“At some point we need to get the price tag here,” Menendez continued.

Lew disagreed with Menendez’s notion.

“Before the development assistance that you're describing, there was virtually no access to health care in Afghanistan,” Lew said. “[Now] there’s very substantial access to health care, in the 80-percent range. There were virtually no girls in schools, there are a lot of girls enrolled in schools - more every day, every week, every month. It’s fair to say we have an awful lot of work ahead of us. [But] I don’t think it’s quite the same as starting from scratch.”