KABUL, Nov 3 (IPS) - Western officials are increasingly turning to new strategies in an effort to stabilise Afghanistan and defeat the insurgency here, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. The various initiatives — from negotiating with the Taliban to arming tribal militias — have differing degrees of support from Afghans.

Violence has reached record levels this year and Afghanistan is now considered a deadlier battlefield than Iraq. Insurgents are able to operate openly in areas close to the capital and the central government’s popularity is at the lowest point in its history. The situation is prompting a number of strategy reviews in Washington as the U.S. prepares for possible strategic shifts after the next president takes office.

Some officials are quietly considering a plan to arm tribal groups, in a move reminiscent to the American strategy in Iraq that is credited with decreasing violence there. “We are seriously looking into using tribes and local communities to provide security,” says an American intelligence officer with the international forces.

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Thursday’s attack on an Afghan ministry was carried out by a team using multiple attack methods.

Kabul, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a government ministry Thursday, killing at least five and injuring dozens. The attack is the latest in a series this year showing insurgents’ ability to penetrate the capital using complicated and daring methods.

“Security in the capital is decreasing day by day,” says Ajmal Karimi, analyst with the Center for Peace and Conflict studies, a Kabul-based think tank.

He says that Thursday’s attack, which involved multiple insurgents and included small-arms fire, is an example of the sophisticated methods increasingly used.

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While the insurgents have singled out Christians, there’s also a rise in attacks on all aid workers

Kabul, Afghanistan - Taliban gunmen killed a foreign Christian aid worker in Kabul on Monday, sending a warning against proselytizing in this Muslim country.

While the Islamic insurgents have targeted a number of Christian foreigners working in Afghanistan, the attacks fit into a rise in violence against aid workers.

“This is part of the Taliban’s plan to make life difficult in Kabul,” says Haroun Mir, director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies. “Everyone is now a target, especially foreigners working for Christian organizations.”

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Afghan NGOs are teaching human rights and Islamic law along with calls to end the war with a national peace jirga

Kabul, Afghanistan - In a musty room near the edge of town, a group of bearded men sit on the floor and heatedly discuss strategy. The men are in the planning stages of an event that they hope will impact Afghan politics – a peace jirga, or assembly, that will agitate for the end of the war between the Taliban and Afghan government by asking the two sides to come to a settlement.

“People are growing tired of the fighting,” says Bakhtar Aminzai of the National Peace Jirga of Afghanistan, an association of students, professors, lawyers, clerics, and others. “We need to pressure the Afghan government and the international community to find a solution without using guns.”

Mr. Aminzai is not alone in his sentiments. As violence and insecurity grow in this war-ravaged nation, a broad network of peace activists have been quietly pushing for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban.

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In provinces just south of Kabul, the insurgents have a shadow government that polices roads and runs courts.

Porak, Afghanistan - After a gang of thieves had continually terrorized an Afghan neighborhood near here months ago, locals decided they’d had enough. “We complained several times to the government and even showed them where the thieves lived,” says Ahmad, who goes by one name.

But the bandits continued to operate freely. So the villagers turned to the Taliban.

The militants’ parallel government here in Logar Province – less than 40 miles from Kabul, the capital – tried and convicted the men, tarred their faces, paraded them around, and threatened to chop off their hands if they were caught stealing in the future. The thieves never bothered the locals again.

In several provinces close to Kabul, the government’s presence is vanishing or already nonexistent, residents say. In its place, a more effective – and brutal – Taliban shadow government is spreading and winning local support.

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By Tom Engelhardt

In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, spoke proudly of how, in July 1979, he had “signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul” and so helped draw a Russian interventionary force into Afghanistan. “On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border,” Brzezinski added, “I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’” And so they did — with the help of the CIA, Saudi money, the Pakistani intelligence services, and an influx of Arab jihadis, including Osama bin Laden. In fact, their Afghan War would prove far more disastrous for the Soviet Union than defeat in Vietnam had been for the United States. By the time the Soviets withdrew their last troops in February 1989, the economy of the Cold War’s weaker superpower was tottering on the brink. Less than three years later, the Soviet Union itself was no more, even as Washington, at first unbelieving, then celebratory, declared eternal victory.

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The Surge That Failed

Afghanistan under the Bombs

A bit past midnight on a balmy night in late August, Hedayatullah awoke to a deafening blast. He stumbled out of bed and heard angry voices drawing closer. Suddenly, his bedroom doors banged open and dozens of silhouetted figures burst in, some shouting in a strange language.

The intruders blindfolded Hedayatullah and, screaming with fury, forced him to the ground. An Afghan voice told him not to move or speak, or he would be killed. He listened for sounds from the next room, where his brother Noorullah slept with his family. He could hear his nephew, eight months old, crying hysterically. Then came the sound of an automatic rifle, after which his nephew fell silent.

The rest of the family — 18 people in all, including aunts, uncles, and cousins — was herded outside into the darkness. The Afghan voice explained to Hedayatullah’s terrified mother, “We are the Afghan National Army, here to accompany the American military. The Americans have killed one of your sons and his two children. They also shot his wife and they’re taking her to the hospital.”

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Kabul may have tried to reach out to current insurgents by meeting with former ones in Saudi Arabia last month.

Kabul, Afghanistan - The Taliban are not engaged in peace talks with the Afghan government, despite recent reports to the contrary, say sources close to the insurgents and the government.

Instead, meetings held last month in Saudi Arabia – which brought former Taliban officials together with members of the Afghan and Saudi governments – may be an attempt by Kabul to start negotiations with the current Taliban.

“The meetings signal that the Afghan government is weak and is desperate for a solution,” says Waheed Muzhda, a political analyst in Kabul and former official in the Taliban government.

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Aid trickles in, but locals struggle to find food before the winter’s harvest

Mya Sein Ken, Burma - The locals say things will never be the same in Mya Sein Ken, deep in the heart of the cyclone-savaged delta in southern Burma (Myanmar). Almost 300 people vanished when cyclone Nargis struck here in May. The torrent obliterated the rice crop, and locals worry they won’t have enough food to survive the fall. The storm swallowed scores of houses, leaving hundreds homeless.

“I awake every day remembering what happened,” says one villager from his temporary home, donated by aid agencies. “We are living on handouts, and I don’t know when we will stand on our own again.”

Everywhere across the delta, Burmese are still struggling to piece together their lives. While a modest but steady flow of aid has kept locals afloat, villagers warn that their troubles are far from over.

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From the GSI-IPS Subsidies Series.  Part 1, by Ashfaq Yusufzai, is here

KABUL, Sep 30 (IPS) - In a teeming petrol market on the outskirts of Kabul, black market traders sell fuel to everyone from individual customers to large business groups. Although much of this petrol comes from Iran or the Central Asian countries, a good amount also hails from Pakistan, where government subsidies have made the fuel much cheaper than in Afghanistan.

The Afghan government and private businesses generally avoid buying petrol from Pakistan because of the spiraling insecurity on the routes into Afghanistan, but still much petrol manages to get in. How it does so and where it goes illustrates the complicated world of smugglers, border patrol agents and foreign militaries.
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