Crossfire War - NATO Gen. Warns - 70% of Afghanis Will Soon Support Taliban

By Willard Payne

Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Central Asia Theatre: Tehran - Kabul - Islamabad/Brussels; 70% of Afghan Population will Support Taliban Within Six Months - Warning from NATO General - Brussels Undermined by Islamabad Treaty - Waziristan - Corruption

Night Watch: KABUL - When NATO proudly assumed responsibility for stabilizing Afghanistan more than a year ago, eager to make its first power projection beyond Europe, Brussels assumed all it had to do was just train the new Afghan Army and police, with no serious military opposition. But the Taliban re-emerged this year more organized, more heavily armed and over a wider area than since they were overthrown five years ago. Today Debka reports a stark warning from the NATO commander in the country, General David Richards, that if the lives of most of the population do not improve within six months then nearly three-fourths of the Afghan people, 70%, will no longer support NATO's and the international community's effort to rebuild the country, they will support the Taliban instead. [DEBKA]

Besides Tehran's obvious support for the Taliban and their excellent relations with President Hamid Karzai, still denied by established analysts in the West, too embarrassed to admit it, what has enabled the Taliban to re-emerge is the enormous corruption of Karazai's administration and the corruption of the reconstruction projects discussed in detail on crossfirewar.com earlier this year. As always, corruption is Tehran's greatest weapon. What intelligence agencies and anlysts also missed was the announcement, right after the Taliban were first overthrown, was that Tehran found some of them useful.

Though Tehran initially realized the Taliban were a divisive influence, when they first appeared 10 years ago, they knew the Taliban had potential, since they were opposed to the West, and therefore next time Tehran will help them keep the West occupied in a country with a divided sense of unity, even in the best of times, no strategic raw materials, in some of the world's worst - most barren climate and protecting a narco-state.

The reasons for this debacle in the making are numerous. There are warlords in Afghanistan's parliament either directly or they are represented by fronts and some of them will join Pakistan in its next war with India, reliving the time when Central Asian warlords established the Mogul Empire.

In the meantime opium has had a record harvest this year, a more reliable source of income than poorly paid Afghan workers on reconstruction projects which pay non-Afghan workers a lot more. Karzai seems to be indicating he will leave office next year, as if washing his hands of the situation. There is also another embarrassing factor analysts overlooked, that the Taliban, despite their oppression, are not seen as an alien culture like the West is.

But established decision makers in the West are noted for overlooking the obvious. And it is obvious that Afghans who have worked with the international community will be at extreme risk when NATO leaves some time next year as fighting resumes in the Balkans and Mediterranean, threatening their new position in Lebanon. What I assume has not been missed is that the Taliban and other Islamic groups in the country are benefitting from being taught some of the tactics Islamic units have used against the occupation in Iraq. The news even mentioned recently that Chechen fighters are now being directed to Afghanistan and it is definitely Tehran who is doing that.

First the Taliban re-surfaced in their historical base, the south around Kandahar, then in the center provinces, then the east and now what has really undermined Brussels even further, the coup de grace, is the peace treaty Islamabad has just signed with tribal communities in Pakistan's Waziristan Province along the Afghan border. Islamabad no longer has time to entertain the myth of working with the West and to look for the zombie Bin Laden, as if they ever made more than a public relations effort to. Waziristan is a base of support for the Taliban, who initially emerged sponsored by business interests in Pakistan who were tired of their connections in Afghanistan being attacked by criminal gangs and paying a tribute at every roadblock. So Islamabad armed some Islamic students-Afghan refugees studying at Madrassas along the Pakistan-Afghan border, steeped in the tradition of their culture and their primitive interpretation of the Quran, that reflected this culture and sent them on. But their working relationship continues.

In some ways it was a similar operation Islamabad's ISI intelligence service performed by supporting the Islamic uprising in Kashmir, but obviously the people of Kashmir are not living in the tenth century, but they do share the same sense of mission concerning the Jihad and attacking oppressors, whether in Afghanistan-Iraq-Kashmir-Chechnya-Bosnia-Palestine. And they all have the same financial support, Tehran-Riyadh-Ankara-Islamabad-Damascus, almost every Islamic capital except Cairo, including ones the West still tries to believe are its allies. No Islamic government would mind if Brussels lost in Afghanistan, not even Kabul. Perhaps Karzai is tired of the act of welcoming NATO, just as Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf was barely able to disguise his contempt of the West's leadership during his book tour.

What has defeated Brussels-Washington even more is their having embraced the greatest foreign policy myth in at least a century, that finding and capturing Bin Laden is important. As if the myopic visionary, decoy, could arrange flight school training. Tehran-Islamabad know such an operation is beyond Bin Laden and they also know why the West have convinced themselves he controls al-Qaeda. Because the Ayatollah Khomeini was in a Paris suburb when he overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 and engineering services headquarted in San Francisco were invited back to Iran, through their London branch office, the day after the Gulf War ended in 1991.

This is not the war the West banked on and (f)allout fighting has not even begun yet.

Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com