I recently attended the Jaipur Literature Festival in India and moderated a session with three men who know something about war and conflict. Brit Rory Stewart, New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson and the Washington Post’s David Finkel.
The video of the event is now online (the sound and picture aren’t perfectly in sync but you’ll get the idea).
It’s called counter-insurgency but in many cases this is simply operations to train, capture and allow the subsequent torture (and/or murder) of supposed Afghan insurgents. A failed strategy that deserves exposure:
Counterinsurgency, also known as COIN, is the main focus in Afghanistan.
It is a partnered effort between Afghan government and coalition forces to bring peace to the nation by gaining the confidence of the people, and it will soon be fully led by Afghan National Security Forces.
Counterinsurgency, also known as COIN, is the main focus in Afghanistan. It is a partnered effort between Afghan government and coalition forces to bring peace to the nation by gaining the confidence of the people, and it will soon be fully led by Afghan National Security Forces.
On Feb. 16, a class of 20 ANSF members and their Australian mentors received training on COIN tactics as part of an ongoing effort to give the Afghan military the lead in upcoming operations.
The goal is to teach ANSF members the best way to defeat the insurgents, which is to build trust in the Afghan government, said Staff Sgt. Neil Frachiseur, COIN instructor from 2nd Battalion, 44th Air Defense Artillery Regiment.
“Everything we do is seen and interpreted – by ourselves, by the enemy and by the population,” said Al Bachus, an instructor for the COIN Training Center in Afghanistan. “Your actions continue to have an effect. Just like when you throw a pebble into the lake; the water will continue to ripple until it hits the shore.”
The key to counterinsurgency, he said, is to understand every ripple and its consequences – good or bad.
The class starts by teaching students how much they already know about COIN. An open discussion led by the instructor allows students to find the answers to common counterinsurgency problems.
From there the instructors build upon what the class already knows, said Frachiseur, a Tampa, Flla., native.
Every class taught at the COIN Training Center is tailored to fit the needs of the class and their level of understanding.
“This training has been very useful,” said Col. Hajji Fazal Ahmad Fahim, operations officer for the Operations Coordination Center – Uruzgan Province. “It helps us separate the enemy from the regular people.”
Ultimately, the plan is to have Afghans teaching COIN to other Afghans and have them learning from each other from the start.
Frachiseur said, the Afghan people know what their country needs, so it’s important for them to take control.
The COIN Training Center now has a permanent team dedicated to training Afghans in the Uruzgan province and plan to continue to offer counterinsurgency training to ANSF.
“Eventually, the Afghans will take control of the entire class,” said Frachiseur. “We’ll still be here in an advisory role, but the course will be theirs.”
There’s something morally and legally sick that in post 2003 Iraq (and to this day) privatised mercenaries are the way the Western states maintain their power in the country:
A former British soldier potentially facing the death penalty in Iraq insisted that he remained anxious but hopeful as his case was adjourned last night.
Danny Fitzsimons prepared himself yesterday morning to hear the verdict as he was brought into the dock at Karkh criminal court in west Baghdad. Nearby his father Eric, 62, and younger brother Michael, 27, waited nervously in a packed public gallery having travelled to the war torn nation to be by his side for the final day of his trial.
“It has been a very emotional day, very anxious,” his brother said. “But seeing him in court gave us a sense of unity as a family”
But their 18 month wait to hear his fate was frustrated once again as the judge announced that he was adjourning the case for eight days as they were seeking clarification from doctors about psychiatric reports on the defendants.
Last night, speaking exclusively to The Independent at his cell at the Karadt Mariam police station within Baghdad’s International Zone, Mr Fitzsimons said he was heartened by the fact the court was focusing on the health reports. The former soldier has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress stemming from the horrors he saw while serving in the army in Kosovo as well as his time working as a private security contractor in Iraq. He could face execution if convicted.
“I think it was a postive step,” said the 30-year-old. “Obviously I hope to be acquitted for self defence but even manslaughter would be a result. I do remain hopeful but it is 50/50. Seeing my family today and having them in court what great. If wish it could have happened every time I was in court. I have felt 100 per cent better than I did before since they turned up yesterday.”
In August 2009, Mr Fitzsimons arrived in Baghdad, having been employed by ArmorGroup, owned by G4S, despite his mental health problems, the fact he had been sacked from two other security firms and was awaiting trial for assault in Britain. Within 36 hours he had shot fellow ArmorGroup security contractors, former Royal Marine Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare, and wounded Iraqi Arkhan Mahdi after a whiskey-fuelled brawl.
The first westerner to stand trial at a time when the Iraqi government is clamping down on security contractors who operated almost unchecked during the early days of the war, he has been charged with murdering the two 37-year-olds and attempting to kill the Iraqi guard.
Denying the charge Mr Fitzsimons asked a three-judge panel last month to consider a plea agreement that would convict him on lesser manslaughter charges.
Nicholas Kristof, writing from Bahrain, is optimistic:
We were late to side with “people power” in Tunisia and Egypt, but Bahrainis are thrilled that President Obama called the king after he began shooting his people — and they note that the shooting subsequently stopped (at least for now). The upshot is real gratitude toward the United States.
…
In the 1700s, a similar kind of grit won independence for the United States from Britain. A democratic Arab world will be a flawed and messy place, just as a democratic America has been — but it’s still time to align ourselves with the democrats of the Arab world and not the George III’s.
But maintaining empire isn’t about justice; it’s about demanding what you believe is yours through force of arms and bullying.
Although it remains unclear exactly how paranoid the Chinese authorities remain over possible Egyptian-inspired, democratic protests, this insider view would suggest that Beijing isn’t taking too many chances:
On Saturday, February 12, the day after Hosni Mubarak resigned in Egypt, some of the members of the politburo of the Communist Party of China held a special meeting in Beijing to discuss the events in the Middle East. News of this meeting came via a democracy activist in Beijing, who said that a secretary who was present had leaked a summary of its contents. The democracy activist is a person who is well positioned to judge the authenticity of such a report.
On February 18, the summary of the Politburo meeting was also posted publicly on Boxun (“rich information”), an independent Chinese language news web site. It reads:
The agenda for the meeting was “to adjust foreign policy” and the main purpose was to decide on tactics to counter the current wave of democratization in the Middle East. The meeting set revised targets for the police and the military, but the primary emphasis was on propaganda. The meeting called upon the Propaganda Department and its subsidiary organs to do the following:
—Halt all independent reports, commentaries, and discussions (including Internet threads), whether in the print media or the Internet, on the situations in Egypt and similar places;
—Strengthen work in filtering and managing blogs, microblogs, and discussion forums;
—Assure that media in all locations uniformly adhere to the standard texts of the New China News Agency in any report or commentary on the Middle East.The meeting decided, as well, that all of the major newspapers under the Propaganda Department must strengthen their guidance of public opinion and stress the theme that the current turmoil “is plotted by the United States behind the scenes.” At the same time, efforts to criticize and control microblogs must be sharply increased, and advance measures should be taken to prepare for the possibility that part of the Internet will be shut down. Following the meeting, propaganda chiefs across the country were given an additional instruction to “reduce reporting on any sensitive incident that might occur in your locale.”
A key player in the recent revolution (so not just those on Facebook and Twitter) speaking in solidarity with workers in America:
Kamal Abbas is General Coordinator of the CTUWS, an umbrella advocacy organization for independent unions in Egypt. The CTUWS, which was awarded the 1999 French Republic’s Human Rights Prize, suffered repeated harassment and attack by the Mubarak regime, and played a leading role in its overthrow. Abbas, who witnessed friends killed by the regime during the 1989 Helwan steel strike and was himself arrested and threatened numerous times, has received extensive international recognition for his union and civil society leadership.
Yes, that may come as a shock to Israel and many Zionists alike but this interesting piece in McClatchy explains why so many of them in Egypt will be involved in the future of their country, as they should be:
In the midst of Egypt’s turmoil, the Brotherhood issued statements saying it wouldn’t field a presidential candidate and was committed to the country’s treaties, a reference to Egypt’s longtime peace agreement with Israel. Now, several young activists said, the Brotherhood should revisit its controversial stance that no women or non-Muslims will rule Egypt.
“Very soon, and it’s happening already, there will be no such thing as the Muslim Brotherhood anymore. The organization will be there, but it will have been transcended,” said Ibrahim el Houdaiby, 27, whose grandfather and great-grandfather were supreme leaders of the Brotherhood.
Perhaps it’s in the job contract when you want to be a senior Murdoch executive; dislike Muslims and defame them regularly.
The Herald Sun’s Alan Howe has form, seemingly finding democracy for Arabs a serious problem because it may affect Zionist occupation.
He’s back with a new column headlined: “Picking up where Adolf left off“, talking about Nazis and Muslims (because they’re really the same thing, haven’t you heard?)
The jostling for power in the vacuum created in Egypt by the ousting of the corrupt and brutal president Hosni Mubarak is throwing up some interesting and dangerous characters.
How this plays out might alter the balance of power and not just in the Middle East. I suspect the West has underestimated the strength and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, a social and political organisation that early on was inspired by Hitler’s Nazis and had links with them.
It is often overlooked now, but Hitler’s leadership made a key strategic alliance that would have reshaped the world had we not beaten Hitler.
The Middle East has spent decades in social and political “stability” because Washington and Israel have backed brutes to torture and demean the people.
Not to worry, writes Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, ignore all those deeply undemocratic states; the real issue is the Islamic Republic:
The regime in Tehran—aptly described by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday as “a military dictatorship with a kind of theocratic overlay”—feels zero compunction or shame about repressing political opponents. Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s military, dependent on U.S. aid and support, were susceptible to outside pressure to shun violence. Tehran scorns the West.
To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples. The comparison is akin to what happened in the 1980s when U.S. allies led by authoritarians fell peacefully in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, even as Communist regimes proved tougher.
Iran is certainly a brutal dictatorship. But the WSJ doesn’t care about that. What they can’t stand is independence from our bullying.
Gideon Levy in Haaretz on the Obama administration’s disastrous decision last week:
The first veto cast by the United States during Obama’s term, a veto he promised in vain not to use as his predecessors did, was a veto against the chance and promise of change, a veto against hope. This is a veto that is not friendly to Israel; it supports the settlers and the Israeli right, and them alone.
The excuses of the American ambassador to the UN won’t help, and neither will the words of thanks from the Prime Minister’s Office: This is a step that is nothing less than hostile to Israel. America, which Israel depends on more than ever, said yes to settlements. That is the one and only meaning of its decision, and in so doing, it supported the enterprise most damaging to Israel.
Moreover, it did so at a time when winds of change are blowing in the Middle East. A promise of change was heard from America, but instead, it continued with its automatic responses and its blind support of Israel’s settlement building. This is not an America that will be able to change its standing among the peoples of the region. And Israel, an international pariah, once again found itself supported only by America.
This is a truly remarkable film. Two film-makers received exclusive access to the Pyongyang University of Cinematic and Dramatic Arts and were able to follow the lives of some highly privileged North Koreans in service to the Dear Leader:
