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Kerry calls threats of swapped Taliban prisoners to resume jihad “a lot of baloney”

Robert Spencer Jun 9, 2014 at 12:07pm




“No one should doubt the capacity of America to protect Americans,” said Kerry. Oh, really? What about all the many Americans murdered by their Afghan allies over the past few years? What happened to our capacity to protect them? It was sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, specifically to the refusal of our government and military to face the fact that there is no way to protect the Afghan army and police from jihadist infiltrators.

“Kerry calls threats of swapped Taliban prisoners to resume war ‘a lot of baloney,’” by David Lerman and Greg Giroux, Bloomberg, June 9, 2014 (thanks to Samantha):


WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said threats by the five freed Taliban prisoners swapped for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl to return to war and kill Americans are “a lot of baloney.”

Defending the swap that secured the release of the last American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, Kerry said the movements of the five Taliban prisoners released to Qatar will be closely monitored.

“No one should doubt the capacity of America to protect Americans,” Kerry said from France in a taped interview for CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday.

Bergdahl, held captive for almost five years, was released May 31 in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held by the U.S. at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. The deal requires that the five men remain in Qatar for at least a year.

“They’re not the only ones keeping an eye on them,” Kerry said of the Qataris, while declining to elaborate.

“We have proven what we are capable of doing with al-Qaida,” he said.

The threats by the Taliban prisoners to resume fighting in Afghanistan and kill Americans amount to propaganda, Kerry said. “They’ll say whatever they want to stir the waters,” he said.

With the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan coming to an end and most troops to be withdrawn by the end of 2016, opportunities for Taliban to kidnap Americans will dwindle, Kerry said.

Whether or not Bergdahl deserted his post in eastern Afghanistan, as some of his former fellow soldiers claim, “it would have been offensive and incomprehensible to consciously leave an American behind,” Kerry said….

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Did Bowe Bergdahl go AWOL in Afghanistan?

After five years as a POW, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is headed home. But the circumstances of his capture by the Taliban in Afghanistan remain unclear, indicating he may have walked away from his base.

By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / June 1, 2014





Jani and Bob Bergdahl speak during a news conference at the White House Saturday about the release of their son, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, held prisoner by the Taliban since 2009. He was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban in exchange for the release of five Afghan detainees held by the United States.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

For now, the story for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is one of physical and mental recovery and reunion with his family.

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The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

But very soon it will involve debriefings about the nearly five years of his captivity by Taliban fighters, who apparently held him in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, where his infantry unit had been engaged in combat.

Military and intelligence experts will want to know how he was treated, anything he can tell them about his captors, and what he learned about insurgent capabilities.

But for the young soldier – 23 when he became a prisoner of war, now 28 – those debriefings also will include difficult questions about how and why he happened to be in a position where he fell into the hands of Taliban fighters.

RECOMMENDED: Far from home: US soldiers serving in Afghanistan

There have been no reports that he was captured during direct combat, that the “fog of war” had put him involuntarily in a vulnerable location.

At this point in the developing narrative, Sgt. Bergdahl seems to have grown disillusioned with the mission, bitter about the Army and especially higher ranking enlisted men and officers, and simply walked off – gone “outside the wire” or protective base limits – and disappeared.

That could indicate that he had gone AWOL (Absence Without Leave), also referred to as “Unauthorized Absence” (UA), which could bring charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

This scenario – it’s important to note that it has not been confirmed – is based on detailed reporting in 2012 by Rolling Stone magazine, which included interviews with Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers as well as apparently lengthy conversations with his parents in Idaho, who shared e-mails they had exchanged with him up until his disappearance.

“The US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at,” he wrote from Afghanistan. “It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good SGTs are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same."

"I am sorry for everything here," Bergdahl wrote at another point "These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live."

In his final message, Bergdahl refers to having mailed home boxes with his uniforms and books.

“Feel free to open them, and use them,” he wrote.

Later that night, Bowe Bergdahl’s father Bob Bergdahl, a UPS truck driver, sent his son an email from their home in Hailey, Idaho, with the subject line: OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!

"Dear Bowe," he wrote. "In matters of life and death, and especially at war, it is never safe to ignore ones' conscience. Ethics demands obedience to our conscience. It is best to also have a systematic oral defense of what our conscience demands. Stand with like minded men when possible. dad."

“Ordinary soldiers, especially raw recruits facing combat for the first time, respond to the horror of war in all sorts of ways,” Rolling Stone observed. Bowe Bergdahl “decided to walk away.”

“In the early-morning hours of June 30th, according to soldiers in the unit, Bowe approached his team leader not long after he got off guard duty and asked his superior a simple question: If I were to leave the base, would it cause problems if I took my sensitive equipment?

“Yes, his team leader responded – if you took your rifle and night-vision goggles, that would cause problems.

“Bowe returned to his barracks, a roughly built bunker of plywood and sandbags. He gathered up water, a knife, his digital camera and his diary. Then he slipped off the outpost.”

When his absence was discovered, Bergdahl was listed as “DUSTWUN” – Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown.

Search parties were sent out. The search included drone aircraft as well as F-18 and F-15 fighter jets.

Reports from Afghan intelligence sources indicated that Bergdahl had been captured by the Taliban, later confirmed by intercepted radio conversations and the first videos of him being held.

Speaking at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan Sunday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the US had to move quickly to rescue Bergdahl as part of a prisoner transfer involving five mid- to high- level Taliban being sent to Qatar from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bergdahl's "safety and health were both in jeopardy, and in particular his health was deteriorating,” Secretary Hagel said.

"Our first priority is assuring his well-being and his health and getting him reunited with his family," Hagel said. "Other circumstances that may develop and questions — those will be dealt with later."

Those “other circumstances” and “questions” involve how the young and apparently disillusioned soldier came to be taken a prisoner of war.

Not surprisingly, the issue has stirred considerable discussion and debate.

“Though Americans may be celebrating the release of the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the reaction of the military community has been mixed at best,” Army Times reports.

“Within an hour of the announcement that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban Saturday evening, Army Times’ Facebook page lit up with hundreds of comments reacting to the news,” the publication reported. “Most centered on the circumstances surrounding Bergdahl's capture, which remain something of a mystery. There has been some speculation that he willingly walked away from his unit, raising the question of whether he could be charged with being absent without leave (AWOL) or desertion.”

“I'm happy for the Bergdahl family and friends to have their loved one home, but I am angered deeply at Bowe…. It disgusts me greatly that a man that turned his back on his brothers, unit, and country is going to be hailed as a hero/saint,” wrote one Army Times Facebook visitor.

But another post summed up the situation this way:

“This guy may have made a tremendously bad decision, but I'm willing to bet that what he's endured since then has been far worse than anything the US or military judicial system would have imposed. Have some heart.”


RECOMMENDED: Far from home: US soldiers serving in Afghanistan

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Bowe Bergdahl's first hours of freedom: Now the questions begin (+video)
Five years a POW, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl released by Afghan Taliban (+video)


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Al Qaeda kingpin Abu Anas al-Libi belongs at Guantanamo, not in New York

By J.D. Gordon

Published October 14, 2013

FoxNews.com

The interior of an unoccupied communal cellblock is seen at Camp VI, a prison used to house detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. (rEUTERS)


U.S. Commandos scored a tactical victory against Al Qaeda by swooping into Libya and capturing Abu Anas al-Libi earlier this month, a former Bin Laden confidant and terror kingpin. Now President Obama must follow through with a strategic win.

That means extracting valuable intelligence from al-Libi, whose name literally means “the Libyan,” about his two decades of terror insider experience as an Al Qaeda computer expert and co-conspirator of plots against U.S. interests. Al-Libi is believed to have been involved in plots across Africa and the Middle East, including against our Kenya and Tanzania Embassies in 1998 which killed 224 people.

But getting that treasure trove of information depends on our strategy to pry it from a hardened warrior.

And so far, the Obama administration is failing us.

Here’s why:

Instead of whisking al-Libi to Guantanamo where he could be interrogated by the military and CIA for as long as it takes to get actionable intelligence – and then try him by military commission as an enemy combatant, Mr. Obama first decided to hold him aboard the amphibious transport ship USS San Antonio, and later try him in a New York federal courtroom.

Mr. Obama’s resistance is entirely based on politics, which he is putting above national security. Again.

First, let's look at the move to put him on the Navy ship.

While holding key terror suspects captured overseas on a Navy ship makes sense temporarily, therein lies the long term problem -- everybody knows it’s just a temporary landing place, including the detainee. Al-Libi has likely been inclined to bide his time and wait till he arrived in the United States to speak with a civilian lawyer.

Second, about justice.

Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy often resembles a hybrid of police work and war. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a leader of Somalia’s Al Qaeda ally, Al Shabaab was captured in 2011 and held aboard a Navy ship for two months. But then Obama ordered his transfer to federal court in New York where he would be afforded a full range of Constitutional Rights.

Ironically, Obama champions a concept that gives foreign enemy combatants trying to kill Americans, with generous legal protections designed by our Founding Fathers to protect Americans.

What would George Washington would say?

Third, on the interrogations.

Let’s face it, al-Libi’s time on a ship likely didn't require much toughness. Mr. Obama banned coercive interrogation techniques within 48 hours of his January 2009 inauguration. -- Al-Libi could face rougher treatment from police departments across the country for robbing a liquor store.

Sure, he may decide to cooperate with investigators over a hamburger and fries. Some FBI agents have the knack of getting guys to reveal meaningful information via polite conversations, but that strategy can take considerable time as the interrogator-detainee form a tight bond. While that’s great to help prosecutors secure convictions in court, it could take years, and won't stop imminent attacks.

So what’s wrong with sending al-Libi to Guantanamo?

Actually, nothing.

Mr. Obama’s resistance is entirely based on politics, which he is putting above national security.

Again.

Let’s understand that although Gitmo had a rocky start in 2002, it remains in the crosshairs of history’s largest propaganda campaign.

Left-leaning defense lawyers, so-called human rights activists, key media and politicians, both in the U.S. and overseas, worked tirelessly to convince the world that Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists at Gitmo were actually the victims.

They conveniently ignore the fact that detainees collectively killed countless thousands of civilians worldwide, including on Sept. 11, 2001, in the mass-casualty bombings at our East African Embassies, at a Bali nightclub, and the Jakarta Marriott, and during Afghanistan’s civil war.

And with the exception of isolated incidents impacting a grand total of 1% of the total detainee population, the rest have been treated with kid gloves.

Gitmo and military commissions have played a vital role in defending America as we remain at war.

Just as we held Nazis as enemy combatants in 1943, we should continue holding Al Qaeda terrorists and affiliates in the same status.

Al-Libi should join them at Gitmo -- starting today.

J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander who served as a Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-09. He serves as senior adviser to several Washingtonbased think tanks.


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Afghanistan Rejects Talks With Taliban and the U.S.

BREAKING NEWS 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 9:18 AM EDT



Less than 24 hours after the Taliban opened an office for peace talks in the Gulf emirate of Qatar, the Afghan government backed away on Wednesdayfrom even starting discussions with its adversaries and broke off talks on future military cooperation with the United States.

In one statement, signaling his anger at how the Americans had negotiated the opening of the Taliban office, President Hamid Karzai suspended talks on a bilateral security agreement with the United States which would allow American troops to stay after 2014.

It was at best a rocky prelude to peace talks with the Taliban, which have collapsed repeatedly in the past. American officials have long pushed for such negotiations, believing that they are crucial to stabilizing Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Western forces next year.


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Families of slain SEAL Team 6 to blame government for deaths of servicemen

GOVERNMENT TOPICS
MAY 9, 2013

BY: JOE NEWBY

A Pakistani shepherd in Abbottabad walks past the hideout of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S.-led ground operation.
Credits: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images


Republican newsletter

Three families of Navy SEAL Team Six servicemen, along with the family of an Army National Guardsman, plan to appear at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 9, to "disclose never before revealed information about how and why their sons along with 26 others died in a fatal helicopter crash in Afghanistan" on August 6, 2011, a few months after the raid on the compound that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, The Blaze reported.

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Government Topics
SEAL Team 6
Barack Obama
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Osama bin Laden


Thirty-eight people, including seven Afghans and an interpreter, died when the helicopter carrying 25 members of SEAL Team Six and five other Americans, crashed.

According to a press release put out by the families, retired military experts will also appear to explain "how and why the government is as much responsible for the deaths of their sons as is the Taliban."

Out of touch -- Rebuke of Clinton and Obama from the heart of a mother



The press release says that areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:

How President Obama and Vice President Biden, having disclosed on May 4, 2011, that Navy SEAL Team VI carried out the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in the master terrorist’s death, put a retaliatory target on the backs of the fallen heroes.

How and why high-level military officials sent these Navy SEAL Team VI heroes into battle without special operations aviation and proper air support.

How and why middle-level military brass carries out too many ill-prepared missions to boost their standing with top-level military brass and the Commander-in-Chief in order that they can be promoted.

How the military restricts special operations servicemen and others from engaging in timely return fire when fired upon by the Taliban and other terrorist groups and interests, thus jeopardizing the servicemen’s lives.
How and why the denial of requested pre-assault fire may have contributed to the shoot down of the Navy SEAL Team VI helicopter and the death of these special operations servicemen.

How Afghani forces accompanying the Navy SEAL Team VI servicemen on the helicopter were not properly vetted and how they possibly disclosed classified information to the Taliban about the mission, resulting in the shoot down of the helicopter.

How military brass, while prohibiting any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah. A video of the Muslim cleric’s “prayer” will be shown with a certified translation.

According to Jason Howerton, the press conference "has not been highly publicized."

“This press conference takes on special significance given that our government has over the last twelve years since September 11th committed brave American servicemen to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that, in large part as a result of politics, were poorly conceived of and implemented, resulting in the deaths of thousands and the maiming of tens of thousands of our brave heroes. To make matters even worse, America has effectively lost these wars,” said Larry Klayman, legal counsel for the families.

The press conference also comes on the heels of a House hearing on the Benghazi terror attack that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Video of one mother's reaction to Obama's campaign ad "One Chance" can be seen here.

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Pakistani girl shot over activism in Swat valley, claims Taliban

Malala Yousafzai, 14, attacked for championing education for girls and highlighting Taliban atrocities, says group

Jon Boone in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 October 2012 09.25 EDT


Malala Yousafzai receives the National Youth Peace Prize from Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani. Photograph: EPA


A 14-year old Pakistani activist who championed education for girls has been shot in the head by a Taliban gunman.

The attack on Malala Yousafzai, who became famous for highlighting Taliban atrocities, happened as she sat in a bus preparing to leave the school grounds in Mingora, the main city in the Swat valley which was the scene of intense fighting between the army and the Taliban in 2009.

At least one other girl was also hurt in the attack on Tuesday that a Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, quickly claimed the group was responsible for.

He said the teenager's work had been an "obscenity" that needed to be stopped: "This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter."

Doctors said the gunshot wounds to her head and neck were serious and that she might have to be moved to a larger hospital in Islamabad or Peshawar.

Fazal Maula Zahid, a member of Swat Qaumi Jirga, a local anti-Taliban group working for peace in the valley, said the gunman had asked which of the girls was Malala.

One of the girls pointed to Malala, but the activist denied it was her. The gunman shot both of the girls.

"An attack on Malala in a highly secured area has sent a shiver down the spine of Swati people," Zahid said.

"It has also created doubts about the claims of the authorities that militants have been flushed out from Swat."

Malala won fame in 2009 during the Pakistani army operations to crush a Taliban insurgency that had taken hold in the Swat valley, an area popular among Pakistani tourists three hours drive from Islamabad.

As part of her campaign for girls' education she wrote an anonymous blog for the BBC about the chaos at the time, including the burning of girls' schools.

Her efforts were recognised by Pakistan's prime minister who awarded her the country's first National Peace award and a reward of around £3,300 after she missed out on winning the International Children's Peace Prize for which she was nominated in 2011.

She had also spoken of her desire to set up her own political party and a vocational institute for marginalised girls in her area.

But all the publicity displeased the Pakistani Taliban, which had put her and her family on its "hit list" for backing "the imposition of secular" government in Swat.

The attack in the army-dominated Mingora has led some to question government claims that the military has dismantled the militants' operation in Swat.

"We are holding urgent meeting of our Jirga to chalk out a future strategy," said Zahid. "We demand of the government to arrest the attackers [otherwise] the confidence of the people in the government will greatly be shaken."

Zahid Khan, another Quami Jirga activist who was attacked earlier in the year, said the authorities were not doing enough.

"More than 20 people have been killed in militant attacks after the army finished its operations but all the army does is protect itself and government buildings," he said. "It seems that innocent civilians are once again are at the mercy of miscreants."

Also on Tuesday a case before the supreme court highlighted other problems faced by women when justices ordered an investigation into the alleged barter of seven girls to settle a blood feud in a remote district in south west Pakistan.

Chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry began proceedings into the allegations, which were first reported in the local media. The alleged trade happened in the Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan province between two groups within the Bugti tribe.

A tribal council ordered the barter in early September, the district deputy commissioner, Saeed Faisal, told the court. He did not know the girls' ages but local media reported they were between four and 13.

Chaudhry ordered Faisal to make sure that all members of the tribal council appear in court on Wednesday, as well as a local lawmaker who belongs to one of the two subtribes believed involved in the incident.

The tradition of families exchanging unmarried girls to settle feuds is banned under Pakistani law but still practiced in the country's more conservative, tribal areas.

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Obama’s Double-Speak at the DNC

Weekend Edition September 14-16, 2012


The Smell of Mendacity



by DANIEL KOVALIK



“You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan.’ Even if the plan is horrifying!”

– The Joker

Sounding very much like his predecessor, George W. Bush, President Obama engaged in a very calculated act of misdirection and obfuscation at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to continue justifying his unprovoked acts of war abroad.

One of the key lines of his acceptance speech, brief as it was, wreaked with what Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof referred to as “the smell of mendacity.”

Thus, Obama stated: “I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. And we have. We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama Bin Laden is dead.”

In this well-crafted, though wholly misleading statement, Obama strongly suggests that the Taliban attacked us on 9/11. This is, of course, not true. The Taliban never attacked us. Their only crime was to insist upon proof of Osama bin Laden’s culpability for the 9/11 attacks before handing him over to the U.S. (And, the Taliban’s request in this regard was not purely academic. Thus, as explained in a little-known article in the Ithaca Journal by Ed Haas — so unknown that it won the Project Censored Award — the FBI admitted that it never included the 9/11 attacks in Bin Laden’s “Ten Most Wanted” rap sheet because the FBI had “no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”).

Still, it was the Taliban’s insistence on such due process niceties (niceties the U.S. once claimed to hold dear) which led to the U.S. war in Afghanistan which continues now 11 years later – “our longest war” as Obama, in a moment of candor, correctly pointed out. Yet, despite the Taliban’s undeniable lack of responsibility for 9/11, Obama reserves the lion’s share of his drone attacks for ostensible Taliban targets, rather than Al Qaeda. Thus, as Peter Bergen from CNN noted in a September 6 article, entitled, “Drone is Obama’s Weapon of Choice,” only 8% of Obama’s drone targets are al Qaeda as compared to just over 50% being Taliban targets. No wonder then that Obama must try to make the American people (in the words of W) “misremember” who really was responsible for 9/11 – otherwise, his ongoing war in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, complete with the drone campaign, would appear needlessly cruel; and indeed, it is.

Obama also stated in his acceptance that “Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat.” Whether that is true or not in general is uncertain. However, what is certain is that Al Qaeda is doing quite well in Syria where, as the Council on Foreign Relations recently noted, Al Qaeda is actually the critical fighting force in the Free Syrian Army – an army the U.S. is actively supporting, both directly and through its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But again, such inconvenient facts must be buried.

In the end, Obama’s untruths are revealing of a foreign policy which is as incoherent as it is cruel – at least assuming that this foreign policy is indeed aimed at rooting out terrorists who threaten the security of U.S. citizens as Obama would have us belief. Of course, given that the U.S. is barely targeting Al Qaeda at all in our main theater of conflict (Afghanistan/Pakistan), and given that it is actually aiding and abetting Al Qaeda in places like Syria, one must ask the question which our leaders hope we will never ask – is our over-bloated military and our endless wars really aimed at keeping us secure? The facts suggest that the answer is a resounding no.

Indeed, far from promoting security anywhere, U.S. war aims abroad appear intent upon creating instability and chaos; of dismantling states (such as Syria, Libya, Iraq, Somalia and of course Afghanistan) which our leaders view as impediments to the ability of multi-nationals to plunder world resources with impunity. However, such chaos, while good for the business of a few, decidedly makes all of us much less secure.

The most notable example of this phenomenon, of course, lies in our long-time involvement in Afghanistan since 1979. As we know now, through the admissions, and indeed bragging of Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the U.S. began aiding the anti-government rebels in Afghanistan (rebels which included Osama bin Laden) with the intention of provoking a Soviet invasion. That is, contrary to popular (and carefully manufactured) belief, the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan was not in fact the reaction to the Soviet invasion; it was the cause of the invasion. The ultimate goal, as Brzezinski has explained with glee, was to give the USSR its own Vietnam-like quagmire which would fatally wound the Soviet Union. In other words, the U.S. consciously set into motion a war with the intention of destroying one country (the Soviet Union) while sacrificing another (Afghanistan), and with the unintentional consequence of empowering terrorists such as Osama bin Laden who would later go on to attack us.

This, my friends, is an illustration of the chaos theory of U.S. foreign policy.

And, it is the realization of this frightening reality which Obama’s lies are designed to prevent. Given the lack of virtually any opposition to this narrative, I would say that these lies are working according to plan.

Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh. He is currently teaching International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.


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Report condemns US funding of Taliban

Scandal

08/10 18:01 CET


The Taliban in Afghanistan are receiving money from the US government because recruitment of private security personnel is not being vetted enough.

A report by America’s Senate Armed Services Committee has revealed that some contractors are funnelling money to Afghan warlords.

The Chair of the committee, Carl Levin, said “failures to adequately vet, train and supervise armed security personnel have been wide spread.”

He added that “posed grave risks to US and coalition troops as well as Afghan civilians.”

The report found some contractors were linked to “murder, kidnapping, bribery and anti-coalition activities.”

Others gave money directly to the Taliban to buy weapons to use against US troops.

It recommended immediate steps be taken to improve the vetting of security personnel.

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Karzai aide in corruption probe linked to CIA: report

AFP/POOL/File – Afghan leader Hamid Karzai speaks during a summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on August 18. Karzai …

Wed Aug 25, 11:25 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the center of a corruption probe is on the CIA payroll, The New York Times reported, citing Afghan and U.S. officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, an Afghan National Security Council official, appears to have been paid by the U.S. spy agency for many years, officials in Kabul and Washington told the Times.

The Times said it was unclear whether Salehi was being paid for information, or to advance U.S. views inside the Karzai administration, or both.

Salehi was arrested by Afghan police in July but released after Karzai intervened.

Salehi's relationship with the CIA underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration's policy in Afghanistan, the newspaper said.

Karzai is under pressure from the Obama administration to do more to root out corruption in his government to shore up the legitimacy of his government.

Washington believes a successful counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan hinges on winning Afghan public support for the government in Kabul and sidelining the Taliban.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Todd Eastham)
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100826/ts_nm/us_afghan_corruption

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Taliban Assault on Kabul

Red Alert Update: Taliban Assault on Kabul

January 18, 2010
The Taliban attack in the Afghan capital of Kabul is reportedly winding down. The assault began around 9:35 a.m. local time Jan. 18 (the day the new cabinet was being sworn in) when reports of rocket fire and explosions were heard in the Afghan capital near several government buildings.

Just 23 minutes later, reports emerged that the Taliban had claimed the attack in a message to Afghan Islamic Press. In the claim, Taliban spokesman Zabihollah Mojahed has said 20 suicide assailants were attacking the Presidential Palace, the Central Bank and the Ministries of Finance, Justice and Mines and Industries. The Serena Hotel, Defense Ministry and Afghan Telecom had also reportedly come under attack.

A little after noon local time, militants began to lay siege on two major shopping centers, including a mall called the Grand Afghan Shopping Center near the Justice Ministry. Eyewitness reported militants carrying rocket-propelled grenades entered the second and third floors of the mall. A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) reportedly detonated outside one of the shopping centers, killing several security forces.
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Read more: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20100118_red_alert_kabul_attack_update?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091221&utm_content=Readmore
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Taliban Still Working for the CIA?

Taliban Still Working for the CIA?

November 6, 2009

by Henry Makow Ph.D.

As President Obama ponders whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, there is mounting evidence the Taliban is supported by the CIA. If correct, the Afghan war is a charade with a hidden agenda.

First, we have many reports that unmarked helicopters are ferrying the Taliban to targets, and relieving them when cornered.

"Just when the police and army managed to surround the Taliban in a village of Qala-e-Zaal district, we saw helicopters land with support teams," an Afghan soldier said. "They managed to rescue their friends from our encirclement, and even to inflict defeat on the Afghan National Army.

"This story, in one form or another, is being repeated throughout northern Afghanistan. Dozens of people claim to have seen Taliban fighters disembark from foreign helicopters in several provinces. "I saw the helicopters with my own eyes," said Sayed Rafiq from Baghlan-e-Markazi.

"They landed near the foothills and offloaded dozens of Taliban with turbans, and wrapped in patus (a blanket-type shawl)."

"Our fight against the Taliban is nonsense," said the first soldier. "Our foreigner 'friends' are friendlier to the opposition."

CIA AIR BASES IN PAKISTAN

Last February, there were reports of CIA airbases within Pakistan used for drones. If this is true, Pakistanis are being attacked by drones based in their own country. Obviously, the Taliban helicopters could also come from these CIA bases.

In May, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, told NBC News that the CIA and the (U.S.-Funded) Pakistani ISI intelligence service "has created the Taliban."

Zardari said that the CIA and the ISI are still supporting the Taliban.

On Oct 29, 2009, Hillary Clinton infuriated Pakistani officials by saying she found it "hard to believe" the ISI didn't know where Al Qaeda leaders were hiding. Her role is to maintain the fiction that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not CIA creations.

Just the day before, (Oct. 18) four American citizens were caught photographing sensitive buildings in Islamabad. All four were dressed in traditional Afghan outfits and were found to be in possession of illegal weapons and explosives.

Their vehicles contained 2 M-16A1 rifles, 2 handguns and 2 hand-grenades. The police held the American citizens in custody for an hour before the Interior Ministry interfered and had them released without charge even as preliminary investigation was being carried out.

The CIA could be involved in the recent "Taliban" attacks on Pakistani institutions. Who knows? In some cases, the Afghan "Taliban" could be CIA mercenaries.

In Feb. 2008, the British were caught planning a training camp for the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan supposedly to make them "change sides." Karzai expelled two top British "diplomats."

THE HIDDEN AGENDA

All wars are charades. This is true of the world wars, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, 9-11 and the current war on terror. The human race is caught in a hologram controlled by the Illuminati Rothschild central bankers.

Wars are necessary to divide, distract and dehumanize us. Otherwise, we might focus on the small network of Masonic families, based in London, who control government credit. Therefore, the central banking cartel uses pawns like Bush and Obama, and intelligence agencies like the CIA, Mossad, MI-6 and ISI to foment war. They finance these wars by issuing debt repayable to them by the taxpayer.

As I have said, the ultimate goal is to translate their monopoly over government credit into a worldwide monopoly over power, wealth and culture; in other words, to disinherit and enslave the human race. This is called world government.

I'm not an expert on the politics of the Asian subcontinent. But it appears that the Afghanistan war should be seen in a larger regional context. Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated a "global-zone of percolating violence," that included Central Asia, Turkey, southern Russia, and the western borders of China. It also included the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf (Iran), Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The plan to destabilize this vast area was outlined in Brzezinski's book, "The Grand Chessboard" (1997) . Ostensibly, the purpose was to prevent Russia from becoming an imperial power again. But that doesn't make sense.

What do these countries have in common? They are Muslim. Islam is the last redoubt of faith in God. The Illuminati are Satanists. Put two and two together.

The Afghan war has some immediate "benefits" to the bankers: perpetual war, arms spending, drugs, pipelines etc. But it is part of a larger "war of civilizations" designed to degrade and destroy Islam. Look for it to expand and go on forever. -----------------------

On a related note, citing current and former U.S. officials, The New York Times reported Oct. 28, 2009 that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been getting regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency.

"Ahmed Wali Karzai is a suspected player in Afghanistan's opium trade and has been paid by the CIA over the past eight years for services that included helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA's direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar," the newspaper reported. ----

ALSO-- Related- "American Taxpayer Finances Taliban"

Even the BBC Recognizes "Cynical" Nature of Western Intervention

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8348796.stm

Afghanistan War-History

Source: http://www.henrymakow.com/taliban_still_working_for_the.html

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Car Bomb Kills Scores in Pakistan

The scene of a powerful bomb blast in Peshawar on Wednesday.

By ISMAIL KHAN
Published: October 28, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A huge car bomb tore through a congested market of narrow alleys and crowded stalls in Peshawar’s old town on Wednesday, killing more than 80 people, many of them women, while 160 more were injured, many of them seriously, local authorities said.

The explosion came about three hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, a 90 minute drive away, underscoring the challenges facing American policy in a nation that has become skeptical of Washington’s long-term commitment.
Mrs. Clinton was in closed-door meetings with senior government officials in Islamabad at the time of the explosion in Peshawar. “These attacks on innocent people are cowardly; they are not courageous; they are cowardly,” she declared later.

“If the people behind these attacks were so sure of their beliefs, let them join the political process,” she told reporters. “They know they are on the losing side of history. But they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort it is.”

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the bombing was likely to be seen as a response by Pakistani militants to a campaign against them by the Pakistani military in their stronghold of South Waziristan along the Afghan border.

The offensive has already triggered a wave of militant attacks, but Wednesday’s was the deadliest so far.

“The militants want to destabilize the government and intimidate the public,” Mehmood Shah, a retired brigadier and defense analyst based in Peshawar, told GEO news network. As long as the military operation continues, he said, “we can expect such attacks to carry on.”

The blast seemed to represent an escalation in the militant response, because the bombers chose a more congested area than in previous attacks. Many of those killed and wounded were women, a doctor at Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital said.

Mian Iftikhar Hussein, the provincial information minister of North-West Frontier Province, of which Peshawar is the capital, said the death toll, which climbed rapidly as the full extent of the carnage emerged, was in excess of 80. Hospital officials said 87 bodies had been brought in from the scene of the explosion, where, according to witnesses, as many as three clusters of shops on narrow lanes and passageways collapsed and fires raged out of control.

Three hours after the explosion, people were still trying to dig bodies and survivors out of the rubble, witnesses said, and white smoke wreathed the wrecked buildings.

Sahib Zada Anees, an official in the city, who estimated the death toll at 84, said Peshawar was unable to cope with such a large-scale attack because it did not have enough trained firefighters and could not move excavators into the narrow streets to rescue those buried alive.

Government officials also acknowledged that Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, was not equipped to deal with a barrage of terror attacks.

The city has been increasingly a target of the Taliban in the past year, in part because of its proximity to the tribal areas.

Azam Khan, the senior most civil servant in the city, said there were inadequate numbers of police.

“The police strength of Peshawar cannot secure everything,” he said. The militants had penetrated a three-ring police cordon around the city, he said.

Earlier this month, a blast in Peshawar killed at least 48 people in what was described at the time as the biggest attack of its kind in Pakistan in months.

The explosion Wednesday was in the same general area. Filled with small stores selling fabric and general merchandize, the old market is always congested with shoppers and traders and presents an easy target for the militants.

The Bomb Disposal Squad said more than 300 pounds of explosives had been packed into the car used in Wednesday’s attack — three times the amount used earlier this month. According to intelligence officials, speaking in return for customary anonymity, Peshawar had been gripped with rumors on Tuesday that two cars laden with explosives were in the city.

Television images Wednesday showed debris scattered on the site of the attack. Plumes of smoke billowed out of old buildings with destroyed storefronts. Security forces fired in the air to disperse crowds of onlookers who were apparently hampering relief efforts.

In the immediate aftermath, survivors scrambled to look for relatives at the apparent epicenter of the blast in Pipal Mandi — a narrow lane filled with shops selling food, grains and other groceries and adjoining a fabric market frequented mostly by women. Police immediately closed down all markets in the city, and police reinforcements took up positions.

“I rushed out of my shop immediately after the blast. There was a huge explosion. I saw bodies laying around and wounded crying for help. I had never seen a situation like this in my whole life,” Noor Muhammad, a shopkeeper from a nearby market, said.

At the colonial-era Lady Reading Hospital, an official said medics were overwhelmed by the casualties.

“A state of emergency has been declared at the hospital. We don’t even have time to count the bodies. Its absolutely mayhem here. We have called for blood donation to meet with the crisis,” the official said. Many officials spoke in return for anonymity under government rules.

A local government official said some people were still trapped under the rubble. “People have thronged the scene; they have made it difficult for us to remove the rubble and retrieve bodies and those still alive,” he said.

The explosion coincided with renewed unrest just across Pakistan’s border in Afghanistan, where an attack claimed by the Taliban killed nine people — including six United Nations employees — at a villa in the capital, Kabul, early on Wednesday while, separately, a rocket slammed into the city’s main luxury hotel, the Serena.

Mrs. Clinton landed in Pakistan Wednesday for a three-day visit, saying she was determined to broaden America’s relationship with Pakistan beyond the security and antiterrorism concerns that have dominated ties and sowed mutual suspicion.

“It is unfortunate that there are those who question our motives, who perhaps are skeptical that we are going to commit to a long-term relationship,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters traveling with her to Pakistan. “I want to try to clear the air on that while I’m in the country.”

Salman Masood, Pir Zubair Shah, Jane Perlez and Mark Landler contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan. Alan Cowell contributed from London.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/world/asia/29pstan.html?hp

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Eight years after 9/11, Taliban roils 80 percent of Afghanistan

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/data/upimages/map_taliban_80_percent.jpg

The hijacking of a NATO supply truck and Stephen Farrell’s kidnapping have focused attention on rising insecurity in Afghanistan’s north, strikingly illustrated on a new map.

By Aunohita Mojumdar Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the September 11, 2009 edition

Kabul, Afghanistan - A retaliatory NATO airstrike that killed scores of civilians. The kidnapping of New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell. The deadly shooting of his Afghan translator and the death of a British soldier in a violent and controversial rescue operation days later.

The events of this week have drawn attention to the unraveling security in northern Afghanistan in a way months of the creeping insurgency had not.

Long considered one of the most stable and peaceful parts of the country, the northern provinces have seen rising violence as heavy insurgent activity has spread to 80 percent of the country – up from 54 percent two years ago. (See map.) Under increasing pressure in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, militants who have long sought to extend their reach have turned their attention to the north, where NATO has established a second supply route in the wake of debilitating attacks on its southern pipeline.

"[Militants] have been trying to widen the ground for the insurgency in Afghanistan and now they have got momentum," says Waliullah Rahmani, executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies. "The militants are eager to target this route to prevent a smooth supply chain from northern Afghanistan."

Last week's airstrike targeted two fuel tankers headed to supply NATO troops in Kabul that had been hijacked by the Taliban. Up to 70 civilians who had gathered to siphon fuel from the trucks, which had become mired in mud in Kunduz Province, were killed in the strike.

Kunduz has seen a particular uptick in insurgent activity, says Thomas Ruttig, founder of the Afghan Analysts Network, which he attributes to pressure on insurgents in neighboring Pakistan. On Friday, Pakistan announced it had captured a senior Taliban leader, Muslim Khan.

"The IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan] have been pushed out of Waziristan and the north has Uzbek minorities," making the area hospitable for Uzbek militants, says Mr. Ruttig. While Kunduz itself does not border Uzbekistan, the neighboring province of Balkh borders Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and could become the main supply route for NATO supplies if security continues to worsen in Kunduz province.

The map mentioned above also shows supply routes and the incremental increase in Taliban control of the country.


Frustrated Pashtuns sympathetic to Taliban

While the upsurge in violence is relatively recent, the conditions have been festering for some time, say Mr. Rahmani and Ruttig. The violence has been directly linked to districts with large Pashtun populations, whose grievances the government has long failed to address – making them sympathetic to the Taliban, who share their ethnicity and language.

"The districts which are turning violent are those which have had a very recent history of abuses against the Pashtuns. The government has allowed these conditions to go unaddressed and this is now being addressed by the population by giving shelter to the Taliban and other insurgents," says Prakhar Sharma, the head of research at the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, an Afghan research organization.

Humanitarian groups concerned, but still operating

The growing insecurity is of particular concern to humanitarian and aid agencies which have been working in the more stable northern areas. Aid agencies like Oxfam, Care, and Save the Children have long argued that they are better able to deliver sustainable aid in these areas than in southern Afghanistan.

In fact many organizations have stopped working in the more insecure areas, not just because of the problems of access but also because of the conditions attached by donors who would like the development aid and humanitarian agencies to be used in pursuit of military goals. Aid groups felt that doing so would compromise their independence

While aid agencies approached by the Monitor said the growing insecurity had not stopped them from working in the north, they all expressed concern over the recent developments.

Ashley Jackson of Oxfam International says staff have had to change the way they work and pull back temporarily after the Kunduz bombing.

"So far we have not seen anything impacting on our work but we are definitely concerned," says Jennifer Rowell of Care. "We would like to make sure that the civil military guidelines are respected as are humanitarian laws and that we have access."

The militarization of aid has made it difficult for organizations like Care to engage in southern Afghanistan, says Ms. Rowell, and "we will have to be extra vigilant in the North."

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0911/p06s08-wosc.html

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Afghans Head To Polls Amid Threats Of Violence

Aug 19, 2009 8:48 pm US/Pacific

Afghans Head To Polls Amid Threats Of Violence

Taliban Tries To Sow Chaos In Afghanistan Before Presidential Election

Follow U.S. Forces In Afghanistan Online:Twitter Facebook YouTube

CBS News Interactive: About Afghanistan


Afghan men look at a poster showing how to cast the vote outside a polling station ahead of elections in Kandahar on Aug. 19, 2009.
Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images



KABUL (CBS) --Thousands of polling centers across Afghanistan opened for voting Thursday, and millions of Afghans were expected to choose a new president to lead a nation plagued by armed insurgency, drugs, corruption and a feeble government.

Turnout, particularly in the violent southern region, will be key to the vote's success — the country's second direct presidential election. Taliban militants have pledged to disrupt the vote and have circulated threats that those who cast ballots will be punished.

"Yes, we are going to vote," Abdul Rahman, 35, said as he stood 50 yards (meters) outside a polling center in Kabul. He and his friends were waiting to see a line of people go inside and vote safely before casting ballots. "If anything happens to the polling center, we don't want to be too close to it."

More: U.S. Department Of Defense On Afghan Mission
More: NATO's International Security Assistance Force

Helicopters circled overhead in the capital as police manned extra checkpoints. In one northern Kabul neighborhood, a car with loudspeakers encouraged people to vote.

Karzai, who has been in power since the Taliban was ousted eight years ago, is favored to finish first among 36 official candidates, although a late surge by former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah could force a runoff if no one wins more than 50 percent.

Preliminary results were expected to be announced Saturday Kabul time.

Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan the last three years, and the U.S. now has more than 60,000 forces in the country close to eight years after the U.S. invasion following the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.

International officials predict an imperfect outcome for a vote that they hope Afghans will accept as credible — a key component of President Barack Obama's war strategy.

On the eve of the balloting, the U.S. military announced the deaths of six more Americans — putting August on track to become the deadliest month for American forces since the war began. Rising death tolls underscore the urgency of establishing a strong, effective government to stem the growing Taliban insurgency.


More: U.S. Central Command Multimedia On Region
Slideshow: Stumping In Afghanistan: Road To Presidential Palace

Karzai, a favorite of the Bush administration, won in 2004 with 55.4 percent of the vote, riding into office on a wave of public optimism after decades of war and ruinous Taliban rule. As the U.S. shifted resources to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan fell into steep decline, marked by record opium poppy harvests, deepening government corruption and skyrocketing violence.

Faced with growing public discontent, Karzai has sought to ensure his re-election by striking alliances with regional power brokers, naming as a running-mate a Tajik strongman whom he once fired as defense minister and welcoming home notorious Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, allegedly responsible in the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners early in the Afghan war.

Those figures are believed capable of delivering millions of votes among their followers, but their presence in the Karzai inner circle has raised fears in Western capitals that the president will be unable to fulfill promises to fight corruption in a second term.

Voter turnout — especially in the insurgency-plagued Pashtun south — is likely to be crucial not only to Karzai's chances but also to public acceptance of the results. Karzai is widely expected to run strong among his fellow Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group which also forms the overwhelming majority of the Taliban.

Abdullah, son of a Pashtun father and a Tajik mother, is expected to win much of his votes in the Tajik north, where security is better and turnout likely to be bigger. Abdullah, an ophthalmologist who has railed against government corruption, was a member of the U.S.-backed alliance that overthrew the Taliban in 2001 and would be expected to maintain close ties with the West.

One fear is that Abdullah's followers may charge fraud and take to the streets if Karzai claims a first-round victory without a strong southern turnout.

The country has been rife with rumors of ballot stuffing, bogus registrations and trafficking in registration cards on behalf of the incumbent, allegations his campaign has denied.

Mindful of the dangers, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Afghans this week to hold "credible, secure and inclusive elections" and called on candidates and their supporters "to behave responsibly before and after the elections" — a clear warning against street demonstrations by disappointed politicians.

"It's very difficult in Afghanistan to see perfect elections," Richard Holbrooke, Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan envoy, said during a news conference in Pakistan. "Nowhere in the world (is there) a perfect election. Don't expect perfect elections in Afghanistan."

In the south, turnout may be affected by the Taliban campaign of intimidation — whispered threats, posted warnings and a run of headline-grabbing attacks in Kabul — aimed at frightening Afghans from going to the polls.

"The Taliban control our area and they have already warned us that they will cut off our fingers or kill us if we vote," said Abdul Majid, 25, a shop owner in Ghazni city. "I don't want to vote."

In Afghanistan's two most important and dangerous southern provinces — where thousands of U.S. troops deployed this summer — more than 130 polling stations will not open, officials said. These included 107 out of 242 polling stations in Helmand province, the focus of the most recent fighting, and 17 out of 271 in Kandahar, where the Taliban Islamist movement was born.

Underscoring the threat, four election workers were killed Tuesday delivering materials to a polling station in northeastern Badakhshan, a province generally considered safe. Two elections workers died in a separate incident the same day when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Kandahar province, officials said Wednesday.

And on the eve of the voting, three gunmen described by police as Taliban militants took over a bank in Kabul. Police stormed the building and killed the three.

Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the election "is not functional democracy by Western standards" but the important thing would be for Afghans to "feel the election was legitimate by their standards."

If not, he wrote in a commentary, Afghans will "see the government as distant, corrupt, and ineffective," and empower the Taliban.

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Source: http://cbs13.com/national/afghanistan.taliban.election.2.1134642.html

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Tehrik-i-Taliban: A Specious Claim and Brash Threats

Tehrik-i-Taliban: A Specious Claim and Brash Threats
April 8, 2009 | 1822 GMT


Global Security and Intelligence Report

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

When we wrote our Global Security and Intelligence Report last week on Baitullah Mehsud and the Manawan attack, we had no intention that the piece would be part of a series, but several developments over the past week have compelled us to once again write about Pakistan — and Mehsud and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in particular.

First, on April 4, eight paramilitary police were killed in a suicide bombing against their camp in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. This attack was the second suicide bombing in Islamabad in less than two weeks, and followed closely on the heels of the March 23 attack on the headquarters of the Police Special Branch in Islamabad. After the April 4 attack, one of Baitullah Mehsud’s deputies, Hakimullah Mehsud (who, like Baitullah, is a member of the large Mehsud clan) contacted the press to claim credit for the attack and threatened that the group would carry out two suicide attacks per week in Pakistan. According to press reports, Hakimullah Mehsud said: “We have shown enough restraint, previously, we were striking once in three months, but from now onward we will go for at least two suicide attacks a week.”

On April 5, a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque in Chakwal, a Punjab city located approximately 50 miles southeast of Islamabad. The attack killed at least 22 people and injured another 35. About 2,000 people had gathered at the mosque for Majlis Aza, an annual Shiite celebration. The bomber reportedly detonated himself when guards stopped him in the crowd at the mosque’s front gate.

Umar Farooq, the spokesman of the shadowy militant organization Fedayeen al-Islam (FI), called The Associated Press the same day to claim credit for the Chakwal attack. Farooq said his group staged the attack on the mosque as part of a “campaign against infidels.”

Oddly, on April 4, Baitullah Mehsud (or someone claiming to be him) called Reuters to claim responsibility for the April 3 shooting at a U.S. immigration center in Binghamton, New York. “They were my men,” the caller told the AP. “I gave them orders in reaction to U.S. drone attacks.” This claim was quickly discounted by eyewitness accounts of the shooting. According to surviving victims and other witnesses, the Binghamton shooting was carried out by a lone gunman, Jiverly Voong, who was a Vietnamese immigrant with no apparent links to Islam or the Taliban.
Background on Mehsud

Before plunging into the Binghamton claims and threats to attack the continental United States, let’s take a quick look at the man behind them, Baitullah Mehsud. As STRATFOR has previously discussed, Mehsud, who is only in his mid-30s, is a member of a new generation of militant leaders in Pakistan’s tribal badlands. As part of this new generation, Mehsud has endeavored to systematically remove or undermine the established tribal leaders in South Waziristan, usurping power and thus severing many of the tools of influence the Pakistani government held in the region. This process of killing off the old tribal leadership has been a significant contributing factor to what we have previously referred to as the “Talibanization” of Pakistan. In some ways, Mehsud personifies the struggle between al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence organizations for influence and control of Afghan and Pakistani jihadists.

Since Mehsud operates largely outside of its control, the government of Pakistan has come to view Mehsud (and others like him) as a larger threat to Pakistan than the Afghan Taliban or the foreign jihadists — like al Qaeda — that Mehsud considers allies. Indeed, Pakistan has long tried to play up the importance of Mehsud to the United States and has been quite agitated that, until relatively recently, the United States was not targeting Mehsud’s TTP organization. When the United States finally did turn its sights on Meshud and his network, the TTP responded by launching attacks against the Pakistani authorities. Indeed, Hakimullah Mehsud said the group was stepping up the tempo of their attacks precisely because of the U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks directed against the TTP.

As we noted last week, although Baitullah Mehsud tells journalists that he is ready to be martyred, the UAV attacks against the TTP do pose a very real threat to him, and to the viability of his organization. The scope of this threat is made evident by their response to the attacks.

However, there is also another dynamic that threatens the TTP, and that is the efforts of the Pakistanis and the Americans to try to split the nationalist militants from those who are more internationally focused. That is, split those groups who want to carry out jihad to create a transnational caliphate (like al Qaeda) from those groups whose primary interest is establishing more localized control — like the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion. This approach is very similar to the approach coalition forces took in Iraq to separate al Qaeda in Iraq from the more nationalistic Sunni tribal militants in places like Anbar province.

While the United States is attempting to divide the jihadists on the Afghan side of the border, the Pakistanis are attempting to do the same among those in Pakistan. If the Pakistanis and Americans are able to split the more nationalist jihadists (like the Haqqani network) away from the more internationalist jihadists (like al Qaeda and the TTP) this could leave al Qaeda and the TTP isolated and far more vulnerable — which is why this process is seen as a threat by Mehsud and company. Indeed, divisions already exist with groups like the Haqqani network, which opposes attacks inside Pakistan.
Claims and Threats

Into this mix, Mehsud has injected threats to hit the United States and has made the strange claim of credit for the Binghamton shooting. Let’s examine the Binghamton claim first. We were quite surprised — and a bit embarrassed — to see this claim come out only a couple of days after we wrote in our security weekly that a prominent militant leader like Mehsud did not have to take credit for other people’s attacks, and that lying about such things would hurt his already well-established reputation.

Initially, we thought that perhaps the claim was some sort of psychological operation by the Pakistanis or Americans designed to make Mehsud look like a fool or a nut. However, when days passed and the TTP issued no retraction, it became apparent that Mehsud had actually made the claim for some reason. Also, despite his carefully crafted public image of never displaying his face, Mehsud is a media animal, who, as his frequent calls to Reuters, The Associated Press and Pakistani journalists testify, loves to see his name in print. With all the coverage surrounding the Binghamton claim, he undoubtedly was aware of the event. Had the claim been orchestrated by an intelligence agency seeking to discredit him, he would have quickly denied it — just as he quickly denied the claims that he was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

As to the threat to attack the United States, one must use a two-step test: 1) Does the actor behind the threat possess the capability to carry out the threatened action? and 2) Does the actor possess the intent to do so? When we look at the capabilities of the TTP, the group has not demonstrated the ability to operate as a transnational organization. We have seen instances of grassroots-type jihadists elsewhere who were allegedly trained at TTP camps, but providing paramilitary training to grassroots jihadists is different from actually training and dispatching operatives to conduct attacks on your behalf.

The technical skills and tradecraft required to conduct an act of terrorism are very different from those needed to be an insurgent, and are very different from the subjects taught in basic military — or paramilitary — training. Even if the grassroots operatives are trained in some of the more technical skills of terrorism such as bomb-making, there are still important tradecraft skills that must be acquired and honed before a person can become a successful transnational militant capable of conducting acts of terrorism in a hostile environment. We define terrorist tradecraft as the set of subtle skills needed to maintain secrecy and operate within a hostile environment. These skills are foundational to the success of both the individual jihadist and his network anywhere, but they are acutely critical while conducting transnational operations.

Merely being able to travel internationally with ease is something many guerrilla fighters cannot do. More refined tasks, such as conducting preoperational surveillance in a major metropolitan area, maintaining secure communications, establishing cover for status and cover for action while undertaking operational activity, or acquiring weapons without arousing unwanted attention, are simply things not taught to most guerrilla fighters, and they are skills that require a great deal of practical training in order to master.

So far, the TTP has shown an ability to successfully operate inside Pakistan and Afghanistan, but its operations to date have been somewhat rudimentary (like the Marawan attack) and have not shown an advanced degree of nuance or sophistication. Likewise, the group has not demonstrated the ability to train and dispatch operatives to a major western city like New York or London in order to conduct an attack. (Al Qaeda has demonstrated this ability but the TTP has not.) When all is said and done, employing an improvised explosive device manufactured at a camp in Pakistan against a target in Pakistan is a far cry from employing it against a target in London.

Now, with regard to the second step of the test — intent. Is the TTP really planning to strike Washington, D.C., New York and London? This is a question that almost every major intelligence and law enforcement agency in the West began to focus on following Mehsud’s public statements in a January 2008 interview with Al Jazeera that he wanted to attack the United States and the United Kingdom. “We pray to God to give us the ability to destroy the White House, New York and London,” Mehsud said during the interview. “And we have trust in God. Very soon, we will be witnessing jihad’s miracles.”

But does such a public statement — or even his March 31 statement in which he threatened strikes against Washington, D.C. in response to U.S. UAV attacks — really translate into intent? This is where the intent side of the equation gets very fuzzy. Merely stating that one is going to do something is not necessarily a clear indication that there is real intent to do so.

Indeed, there is a good argument to be made that if Mehsud truly intended to strike the United States or United Kingdom he would remain silent about his aspirations in order to help ensure the operational security of any operatives he has dispatched abroad to conduct such strikes. Certainly, Osama bin Laden did openly declare war against the United States in August 1996 and again in February 1998, but he never mentioned specific targets in those declarations and was certainly far more circumspect with his statements as his operatives got closer to actually executing attacks. In fact, bin Laden even went so far as to deny responsibility for many of the early al Qaeda attacks and initially denied responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
Calculations

Mehsud is neither stupid nor crazy. Such people do not become major militant leaders at age 35 in the violent world of Pakistan’s tribal areas. He is clearly rational and quite Machiavellian. What he is doing, therefore, likely has some rational explanation beyond the fact that he likes to hear his name mentioned by the media. While the threats against the United States and United Kingdom may be explained away under the “media debutante” rationale, unless Mehsud made a terrible miscalculation in taking credit for the Binghamton shooting, there must be some other overriding reason to risk damaging his reputation as a militant leader with a specious claim.

As seen by the U.S. reaction to the 9/11 attacks, any successful large-scale attack on American soil could have dire consequences for Mehsud. Such a strike could, at the very least, serve to steel U.S. resolve to stay in Afghanistan, or it could motivate the United States to dramatically increase its focus on totally destroying the TTP. Additionally, if Mehsud is truly intent on hitting the United States or United Kingdom, we should see him begin to hit American and British targets within his current operational sphere, i.e., within Pakistan, before graduating to American and British targets overseas.

There is another possibility. Perhaps Mehsud does not possess the intent to attack Washington, New York or London. Maybe his threats — along with the Binghamton claim — are intended to scuttle the emerging U.S. strategy of dealing with factions of the Taliban in an effort to divide them and isolate the more radical elements.

If Mehsud does fear such a strategy — and he has reason to, following its successes in Iraq — it is possible that his recent antics are an effort to influence public perception inside the United States regarding the Taliban. As the United States reaches out to factions of the Afghan Taliban in an attempt to split them from al Qaeda, et al., Mehsud threatens the United States and attempts to link the Pakistani Taliban to a shooting in Binghamton, New York. Even though the link to the shooting was quickly and officially discounted, it is a safe bet that it will live on for a long time as an urban legend or rumor, especially among the more conspiracy-minded. Such perceptions are going to make the strategy of negotiating with any Taliban (Afghan or Pakistani) appear to be less tenable for many Americans.

At the same time, Mehsud could be using his rhetoric in an attempt to steer the more nationalist jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan toward his more transnational agenda. In any case, Mehsud’s efforts to shape opinion at home or abroad could explain his recent posturing, however bogus or brash it might be.

Source:http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090408_tehrik_i_taliban_specious_claim_and_brash_threats

Obama's Diplomatic Offensive and the Reality of Geopolitics

Obama's Diplomatic Offensive and the Reality of Geopolitics
March 10, 2009 1246 GMT


By Reva Bhalla

The Obama administration is only one and a half months into the job, but between pressing “reset buttons” with the Russians, reaching out to the Europeans, talking about reconciling with the Taliban, extending invitations to the Iranians and rubbing elbows with the Syrians, this is already one of the most diplomatically active U.S. administrations in quite some time.
During the campaign, now-President Barack Obama made the controversial statement that he was prepared to speak to adversaries, including countries like Iran. This position was part of a general critique by Obama of the Bush administration, which Obama said enclosed itself diplomatically, refusing to engage either adversaries or allies critical of the United States. Now, Obama is sending emissaries across the globe to restart dialogue everywhere from Europe to the Middle East to South Asia to Russia. For Obama, these conversations are the prelude to significant movement in the international arena.

From a geopolitical perspective, that people are talking is far less important than what they are saying, which in turn matters far less than what each side is demanding and willing to concede. Engagement can be a prelude to accommodation, or an alternative to serious bargaining. At the moment, it is far too early to tell which the present U.S. diplomatic flurry will turn out to be. And of course, some of the diplomatic initiatives might succeed while others fail.

Nevertheless, as the global diplomatic offensive takes place, we must consider whether Obama is prepared to make substantive shifts in U.S. policy or whether he will expect concessions in exchange for a different diplomatic atmosphere alone. Since Obama and his foreign policy team are too sophisticated to expect the latter, we must examine the details of the various conversations. In this case more than others, the devil is very much in the details.

Russia
The Obama administration has made clear to Russia its desire to reset its relations with Russia, with Clinton even presenting a red “reset button” as a gift to her counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on March 6 at a NATO summit in Geneva. But the Russians want to clarify how far the Americans really intend to rewind the tape. The 2004 Orange Revolution and NATO’s reach to the Baltics crystallized Moscow’s fears that the United States intends to encircle and destabilize Russia in its former Soviet periphery through NATO expansion and support for the color revolutions. Since then, Russia has been resurgent. Moscow has worked aggressively to reclaim and consolidate its influence in the Russian near abroad for its long-term security while the United States remains preoccupied in its war with the jihadists.

The Russians are pushing for a grand deal that guarantees a rollback of NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine, scraps plans for U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD), maintains some semblance of Russian nuclear parity in post-Cold War treaties, and ensures Western noninterference in a region that runs from the Baltics down through Eastern Europe and across the Caucasus and Central Asia — what Russia views as its rightful sphere of influence. Only then can Russia feel secure from the West, and confident it will remain a major player in Eurasia in the long run. In return, the Russians theoretically could make life easier for the Americans by cooperating with Washington against Iran and increasing support for U.S. operations in Afghanistan through the expansion of an alternate supply route — two key issues that address the most pressing threats to U.S. national security interests in the near term, but which may not be entirely worth the strategic concessions Moscow is demanding of Washington.

So far, the Obama administration has responded to Russia’s demands by restarting talks on the START I nuclear armaments treaty in exchange for Moscow allowing U.S. nonmilitary goods bound for Afghanistan to transit Russia and Central Asia. The Russians responded by permitting some supplies bound for Afghanistan to pass through the former Soviet Union as an opening toward broader talks. The United States then privately offered to roll back its plans for BMD in Central Europe i f Russia would pressure Iran into making concessions on Tehran’s nuclear program. But the Russians have signaled already that such piecemeal diplomacy will not cut it, and that the United States will need to make broader concessions that more adequately address Moscow’s core national security interests before the Russians can be expected to sacrifice a relationship with a strategic Middle East ally.

At the Geneva NATO summit, Clinton upped the offer to the Russians when she signaled that the United States might even be willing to throw in a halt to NATO expansion, thereby putting at risk a number of U.S. allies in the former Soviet Union that rely on the United States to protect them from a resurgent Russia. This gesture will set the stage for Obama’s upcoming trip to Russia to meet with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, but the Russians will be watching closely to see if such gestures are being made for the sake of public diplomacy or if the United States really intends to get down to business.

Europe
In Europe, Obama is dealing with allies rather than adversaries, but even here his administration’s work does not get any easier. The willingness of Obama to talk with the Europeans far more than his predecessor is less important than what Obama intends to demand of NATO, and what those NATO members are capable of delivering.
A prime example is how Washington is requesting the Europeans to commit more NATO forces to the war in Afghanistan now that the United States feels ready to shift gears from Iraq. Despite their enthusiasm for Obama, the Europeans are not on the same page as the Americans on NATO, especially when it comes to Afghanistan. The U.S. argument for strengthening NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan is that failure to do so would recreate the conditions necessary for al Qaeda to rebuild its ability to carry out transcontinental attacks against the West, putting both European and American cities at risk. But the Europeans (for the most part) view a long-term war effort in Afghanistan without a clear strategy or realistic objectives as a futile drain on resources. After all, the British — who currently have the largest European contingent in Afghanistan — remember well their own ugly and drawn-out efforts to pacify the region in three brutal wars in the 19th and early 20th centuries, each won by Afghan tribesmen.
This disagreement goes beyond the question of Afghanistan to a long-standing debate over NATO’s intended security mission. NATO was formed during the Cold War as a U.S.-dominated security alliance designed to protect the European continent from internal and external Soviet aggression. Since the end of the Cold War, however, NATO’s scope has widened, with only limited agreement among members over whether the alliance should even be dealing with the broader 21st century challenges of counterterrorism, cyberattacks, climate change and energy security. More important, NATO has pushed up against Russia’s borders with its expansion to the Baltics and talk of integrating Georgia and Ukraine, worrying some states that they may need to bear the burden of Washington’s hardball tactics against the Russians. Germany, which is dependent on Russians for energy, has no interest in restarting another Cold War. The French have more room to maneuver than the Germans in dealing with a powerful player like Russia. But the French can only work effectively with the Russians as long as Paris avoids getting (permanently) on Moscow’s bad side, something U.S.-dominated policy of trying to resurrect NATO as a major military force could bring about.

Before taking any further steps in Afghanistan, the Europeans, including those Central and Eastern Europeans who mostly take a hard-line stance against Moscow, first want to know how Obama intends to deal with the Russians. Even with the Poles going one way in trying to boost NATO security and the Germans going the other in trying to bargain with Russia, none of the European states can really move until U.S. policy toward Russia comes into focus. The last thing the Poles would want to do is to take an unflinching stance against Moscow only to have the United States cancel BMD plans, for example. Conversely, the United States is unable to formul ate a firm policy on Afghanistan or Russia until it knows where the Europeans will end up standing on NATO, their commitment to Afghanistan and their relationship with Russia. Add to this classic chicken-and-egg dilemma a financial crisis that has left Europe much worse off than the United States, and the gap between U.S. and European interests starts to look as wide as the Atlantic itself.

Iran
Talking to Iran was a major theme of Obama’s campaign, and the first big step in following through with this pledge was made March 5 when Clinton extended an invitation to Iran to participate in a multilateral conference on Afghanistan, thereby recognizing Iran’s influential role in the region. There is also an expectation that after Iran gets through elections in June, the United States could move beyond the multilateral setting to engage the Iranians bilaterally.
The idea of the United States talking to Iran is not a new concept. In fact, the United States and Iran were talking a great deal behind the scenes in 2001 in the lead-up to the war in Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban and in 2003 during the precursor to the war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. In both of these cases, core mutual interests brought the two rivals to the negotiating table. Iran, facing hostile Sunni powers to its west and east, had a golden opportunity to address its historical security dilemma in one fell swoop and then use the emerging political structures in Iraq and Afghanistan to spread Persian power in the wider region. The United States, knocked off balance by 9/11, needed Iranian cooperation to facilitate the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions to uproot al Qaeda and intimidate al Qaeda state-sponsors into working with Washington.

U.S.-Iranian relations have been rocky (to say the least), but have reached a point where it is now politically acceptable for both openly to discuss U.S.-Iranian cooperation on issues related to Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Iranians hold influence and where the United States is still engaged militarily.

Iran knows that even with the United States drawing down from Iraq, Washington will still maintain a strategic agreement with Baghdad that could be used as a launchpad for U.S. designs in the region as it works to protect Sunni Arabs from Iranian expansionist goals. At the same time, Washington has come to realize that its influence in Baghdad will have to be shared with the Iranians given their geographic proximity and clout among large segments of the Iraqi Shia.
Though U.S. and Iranian interests overlap enough to the point that the two cannot avoid working with each other, negotiating a power-sharing agreement has not come easily. In Iraq, Tehran needs to consolidate Shiite influence, contain Sunni power and prevent the country from posing a future security threat to Iran’s western frontier. In addition, the Iranians are looking for the United States to recognize its regional sphere of influence and accept the existence of an Iranian nuclear program. The United States, on the other hand, needs to defend the interests of Israel and its Sunni allies and wants Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions (or at least place real curbs on its nuclear program) and end its support for militant proxies. Though Washington and Tehran have made some progress in their diplomatic dialogue, the demands of each remain just as intractable. As a result, the U.S.-Iranian negotiations start and stop in spurts without any real willingness on either si de to follow through in addressing the other’s respective core demands.
In reaching out to Iran over Afghanistan, the Obama administration is now trying to inject more confidence into the larger negotiations by recognizing Iran as a player in Kabul in return for intelligence sharing and potential logistical cooperation in supporting the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. But as much as Iran enjoys the recognition and shares an interest in preventing jihadist spillover into its territory, the Iranian regime is not about to offer its full cooperation on an issue as big as Afghanistan as long as the United States avoids addressing issues that the Iranians deem more central to their national security interests (e.g., Iraq.) Complicating matters further at this juncture is Iranian displeasure over U.S. talk of speaking to the Taliban, a long-time enemy of Tehran that the Ir anians will fight to keep contained, but with which the United States needs to engage if it has any hope of settling Afghanistan.

The Taliban
Obama told the New York Times in a March 6 interview that the United States is not winning the war in Afghanistan, and that in addition to sending more troops, his strategy for the war might include approaching elements of the Afghan Taliban. While he acknowledged that the situation in Afghanistan is more complex, he related the idea to the successful U.S. strategy of reaching out to Iraqi Sunni nationalists to undercut the al Qaeda presence in Iraq.
The idea of negotiating with the Taliban to split the insurgency has been thrown around for some time now, but just talking about talking to the Taliban raises a number of issues. First, the United States is fighting a war of perception as much as it is fighting battles against die-hard jihadists. So far, Obama has approved 17,000 additional U.S. troops to be deployed to Afghanistan, but even double that number is unlikely to convince Taliban insurgents that the United States is willing or even capable of fighting this war in the long run. The Taliban and their allies in al Qaeda and various other radical Islamist groups are pursuing a strategy o f exhaustion where success is not measured in the number of battles won, but rather the ability to outlast the occupier. Considering that Afghanistan’s mountainous, barren terrain, sparse population centers and lack of governance have historically denied every outside occupier success in pacifying the country, the prospects for the United States are not good in this war.
Talk of reconciliation with the Taliban from a U.S. position of weakness raises the question of how the United States can actually parse out those Taliban members who can be reconciled. It also raises the question of whether those members will be willing to put their personal security on the line by accepting an offer to start talks when the United States itself is admitting it is on the losing side of the war. Most important, it is unclear to us what the United States can actually offer these Taliban elements, especially as Washington simultaneously attempts to negotiate with the Iranians and the Russians, neither of which want to live next door to a revived Taliban and both of which must cooperate with the United States if Washington is to be able to fight the war in the first place.

Syria
After exchanging a few words with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem in Egypt on March 2, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dispatched two emissaries in what was the highest-level U.S. delegation to Syria in four years. The March 7 visit came on the heels of a British announcement that London will be resuming talks with Hezbollah’s political wing — a move likely made in close coordination with the Americans.
The Americans want Syria to end its support for militant proxies like Hezbollah and stop interfering in Lebanese affairs. But Syrian dominance over Lebanon is non-negotiable from the Syrian point of view. Lebanon historically has been Syria’s economic, political and military outlet to the Mediterranean basin, allowing Syria to play a prominent role in the region. If Damascus is not in control of Lebanon, then Syria is poor and isolated. Even though the Americans and the Syrians are holding talks again, it is still unclear that Washington is willing to accept Syrian demands regarding Lebanon. And unless the United States is, these talks are guaranteed to remain in limbo.

That said, there may be more to these talks then meets the eye. Instead of rushing to cater to Syrian demands over Lebanon, the United States is probably more interested in using the Syrian talks (largely a Turkish-backed initiative) to send a positive signal to Turkey — a resurgent regional power with the ability to influence matters in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans. Turkey is beginning to throw its weight in the region around again, and will have a major say in how the United States interacts with states that Ankara perceives are in the Turkish sphere of influence (Syria and Iraq, for example). The United States will need Turkish cooperation in the months and years ahead, particularly as it reduces its military presence in Iraq and attempts to deal with another resurgent power, Russia. It comes as litt le surprise, then, that one of Obama’s first major trips abroad will be to Ankara. Rather than revealing any true U.S. interest to accommodate the Syrians, the U.S. diplomatic opening to Syria is more likely a gesture to the Turks, whose agenda for the Middle East includes reshaping Damascus’s behavior through negotiations with the United States and Israel and containing Iran’s regional ambitions.

Back to Reality
Obama has put into motion a global diplomatic offensive fueled by a dizzying array of special envoys designed to change the dynamic of its relations with key allies like the Europeans and adversaries like the Russians, the Taliban, the Iranians and the Syrians. This diplomatic blitzkrieg may spin the press into a frenzy. But once we look beyond the handshakes, press conferences and newspaper headlines and drill down into the core, unadulterated demands of each player in question, it becomes clear that such a diplomatic offensive actually could end up yielding very little of substance if it fails to address the real issues.

This is not a fault of the administration, but the reality of geopolitics. The ability of any political leader to effect change is not principally determined by his or her own desires, but by external factors. In dealing with any one of these adversaries individually, the administration is bound to hit walls. In trying to balance the interests between adversaries and allies, the walls only become reinforced. Add to that additional constraints in dealing with Congress and the need to maintain approval ratings — not to mention trying to manage a global recession — and the space to maneuver becomes much tighter. We must also remember that this is an administration that has not even been in power for two months. Formulating policy on issues of this scale takes several months at the least, and more likely years before the United States actually figures out what it wants and what it can actually do. No amount of power delegation to special envoys will change that. In fact, it could even confuse matters when bureaucratic rivalries kick in and the chain of command begins to blur.

Whether the policymakers are sitting in an Afghan cave or in the Kremlin, they will not find this surprising. As is widely known, presidential transitions take time, and diplomatic engagements to feel out various positions are a natural part of the process. Tacit offers can be made, bits of negotiations will be leaked, but as long as each player questions the ability of Washington to follow through in any sort of “grand bargain,” these talks are unlikely to result in any major breakthroughs. So far, Obama has demonstrated that he can talk the diplomatic talk. The real question is whether he can walk the geopolitical walk.

Source: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090309_obamas_diplomatic_offensive_and_reality_geopolitics