Anjoman mountain region, Afghanistan. A trip in May 1996

Climbing with Bruce Watson at around 5500 m in the Hindu Kush. This valley is south of the mountain village of Anjoman. Photo: Bob McKerrow

A Panchjeri defending the valley with an anti aircraft gun. We drove up the Panjcher Valley and then walked over the Anjoman Pass, down to Anjoman village, then turned right into the valley leading up to some unclimbed 6000 m peaks. Photo : Bob McKerrow

At our base camp in 1996 from where we attempted a 6000 m peak. Bruce Watson, Ross Everson and Mathias (AVICEN) Ross and Mathias climbed it. Photo: Bob McKerrow


The author at over 5000 m in the Hindu Kush. Phot: Bob McKerrow

A snowy pool just below in the lower valley. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Looking to the high Hindu Kush. Photo: Bob McKerrow


Crossing the Anjuman Pass ( Kotali Anjuman). Ian Clarke, a British Halo trust de-miner. I did many crossings of this pass in 1994-96. This one was in early 1995. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Samay Hamed 9 11 children

My good friend Samay Hamed sent me his most recent poem about 9/11. It is well-composed and evocative.


I wish a small rainbow of a kite
From a burnt roof in Kabul
Could fly to New York... Read More
And a colorful bird in a drawing pad page
From an orphanage room in New York
Could fly to Kabul
So children of 911 both here and there
Could understan...d
There are no just suicide bombers in Afghanistan
There are no just politicians in the US
There are children who play and dream
Of a free and fresh future
They could understand each other
And
They will meet each other as tourists
Not as soldiers

Can we learn from Napoleon and John Master's to improve the situation in Afghanistan

US forces in Afghanistan should keep in mind John Masters' account of the British campaign against the Pashtuns. Here is a very provocative article by HDS Greenway - GlobalPost
Published: July 4, 2009 08:26 ET

BOSTON — Napoleon recommended that every private soldier carry a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, to inspire leadership qualities. U.S. Marines pouring into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province would be advised to carry a copy of a slim book called “Bugles and a Tiger,” the memoirs of a soldier-turned-author about campaigning against Pashtuns on the Northwest Frontier 70 years ago.

Before he turned his hand to writing novels, John Masters was a British officer fighting wily and resourceful tribesmen — the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today’s Taliban. I have quoted Masters before in this space for his insights on the enemies America faces in those same barren hills.

The British had a partiality for martial races. “Their darlings were the pale, fierce Pathans,” as Pashtuns were then called, along with the “unbending Sikhs” of the Punjab, Masters wrote.

Then, as now, the Pashtuns were often given to religious fanaticism, and from time to time the “the magic word, Jihad” would convulse the hill country. Before Islam, Pashtuns had been resisting foreigners since Alexander of Macedon crossed the Kabul River in 327 B.C.

When they could, the British recruited Pashtuns to fight other Pashtuns. They could cover “enormous distances at high speed on foot,” Masters wrote. “Each man carried 30 or 40 rounds of ammunition, a water bottle, a bag of raisins, a few disks of unleavened bread, and a lump or two of course sugar … loping ceaselessly on at five miles an hour” for 20 or 35 miles at a time. Today’s Talibs may prefer to travel in pickup trucks or on motor bikes, but their endurance and speed on foot has not diminished, and they travel just as lightly, except that today they carry more ammunition.

“The core of our problem,” Masters wrote, “was to force battle on an elusive and mobile enemy.., (who) tried to avoid battle, and instead fight us with pinpricking hit-and-run tactics.” When the Pashtun “tried to defend something, whether a gun or a village, we trapped him and pulverized him. When he flitted and sniped, rushed and ran away, we felt as if we were using a crowbar to swat wasps.”

British troops were frustrated, “robbed of a soldier’s greatest weapon — aggression.” For they knew that “there would be no tranquility among these proud and fierce people, however quickly we forced them into mere surrender, if we fought our campaign on unnecessarily ruthless lines. In normal warfare armies bomb cities and destroy the enemy food supply without compunction, but we had to be careful not to harm women and children if we could help it, and we could not shoot on suspicion, only on certainty, and we could not damage fruit trees or destroy water channels.”

How long before the Afghans can look after their own security?

With the situation in Kabul grabbing the headlines in the run up to the elections, I came across this article written earlier in the year by Anthony Paul.
Anthony Paul has reported on Asia and the Middle East for publications including Fortune, Reader’s Digest, Asiaweek, and the Singapore Straits Times. His first dispatch from Kabul came in the wake of the April 1978 communist coup.


By Anthony Paul - Special to GlobalPost
Published: February 12, 2009 15:33 ET
Updated: February 14, 2009 15:59 ET


When a suicide bomber sparked a breakout from Kandahar's Sarposa prison last June, by blowing up himself at the front gate, the local Afghan police — to no-one’s surprise — were caught unprepared.

Nearly 900 prisoners swarmed to freedom through the wrecked entrance. The 400 or so Taliban among the escapees then took over several villages near Kandahar, a blood-drenched hotbed of insurgency south of the capital.

At this point, the soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA), stepped in and performed impressively, working alongside NATO troops in major operation to find the escapees.

In doing so, the Afghan army units, from Kabul and Kandahar, lived up to a report last month to the U.S. Congress stating that “ANA operational capabilities grew markedly during 2008.”

The Congressional Research Service analysis noted approvingly that the ANA “deployed more than 1,000 soldiers south from Kabul, providing over half of the air lift required to transport them, within 24 hours.”

The report praised other ANA actions, including 35 combined air-assault missions in eastern provinces “most of them ANA-led,” and the ANA’s development of elite commando "kandaks," or fighting units.

These post-mortems of ANA operations are currently being used by Kabul and Washington as insights into both the Pentagon’s problems and the likely future direction of the Afghan war.

They address a question central to military strategies being devised here and in several Western capitals: When, if ever, will the embattled country’s own forces be able to maintain security without outside help?

When can young men from the United States and 41 other nations in the anti-Taliban coalition have relief from the Afghan war’s mounting death tolls. According to official figures, as of Feb. 4, 645 U.S. troops had died in the war and 422 soldiers of other nationalities.

Though the ANA is undoubtedly making some progress, the blunt, unpleasant answer to these two questions is: not for many years yet.

Before the Pentagon can begin withdrawing forces with the vigor President Barack Obama’s new administration hopes to marshal soon in Iraq, much more will need to be done to improve Afghan security forces.

Following his apparently successful counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq (a so-called “surge” involving the addition of more GIs to the forces already deployed there), General David H. Petraeus, as the new chief of U.S. Central Command, has been charged with pulling the Afghanistan effort from the brink of failure.

He has no illusions about the challenge, which may indeed be greater than he faced in Iraq. As he told Foreign Policy magazine last month, Afghanistan “has a smaller amount of educated human capital due to higher illiteracy, as well as substantial unemployment, an economy whose biggest cash export is illegal (opium), and significant corruption.”

Afghanistan’s position — straddling invasion routes between Central Asia and today’s India and Pakistan — has generated a centuries-old suspicion of foreigners. Ancient Persians dubbed the region “the land of the unruly.” The country’s mountainous spine is called the Hindu Kush (literally: place where Hindus are killed).

Most ANA recruits receive their basic training at the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC) a short drive out of the capital. Here, about 1,200 trainers teach basic combat skills, graduating a "kandak," or fighting unit, of the same number of men, 1,200, every 10 weeks.

As of late December, the Afghan army numbered about 68,000 soldiers. Another 80,000 or so Afghans are assigned to the country’s other security forces (e.g., air corps, police, border patrol). The goal is to train 134,000 for the ANA by the end of 2011.

Will a force that size mean that the Allies can leave? No one seems sure. In this eighth year of the Afghan war, the highest circles in Kabul, Washington and London continue to fiercely debate the total needed to make Afghanistan a stable, peaceful nation.

The outgoing head of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, Major General Robert Cone, says bluntly “134,000 probably isn’t enough.” Another senior U.S. commander says total forces would have to grow to 300,000.

By some calculations even that would still be nowhere near the number needed.

The Soviet Union introduced about 130,000 troops in the 1980s. When Soviet generals, in the face of rising casualties (an estimated 26,000 fatalities by the 1989 withdrawal), decided that something like a force of 300,000-400,000 would be necessary, secretary-general Mikhail Gorbachev elected to cut and run.

The U.S. Army’s new Counterinsurgency Field Manual, a document overseen by Petraeus himself, appears to call for as many as 650,000 for Afghanistan – or more than three times the current Afghan-Coalition’s mass (and well over the 545,000 troops peak U.S. commitment in Vietnam).

Former U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Ronald Neumann, has suggested raising a large conscripted Afghan force. He gives the example of Korea, where America helped mobilize a 700,000-man South Korean army in the 1950s in a country that then had a population two-thirds of present-day Afghanistan’s.

Asked to comment, Neumann’s successor, Ambassador William Wood, politely but bluntly rejected the idea.

“All I can say is that I think we’re getting adequate numbers, and better training than they’ve ever gotten before,” he told me last year in an interview at the Kabul embassy. “Large numbers of draftees who are not adequately trained, led or equipped give us more of a problem than a solution. Unfortunately, even with the draft you can’t produce a baby in less than nine months.”

Letter from Kabul - 1995

27 April 1995


After 16 years of war, including five years of bloody civil war, Kabul is peaceful. The fighting ceased on 21 March as Government forces drove the Taliban faction out of rocket range of Kabul. How long this peace will last is unclear, but the government in Kabul is looking very strong at the moment. During the last three weeks it has sunk in to Kabulis that there is peace. Countless number of shops have opened, a daily newspaper has started, music, onced banned, is now heard in restaurants. Women from wealthier families have cast aside their drab clothing and bright pink, red, yellow and blue clothes are starting to be seen.

It is strange for me having only known Kabul under siege to feel peace and calm. Over 30,000 people have been killed in Kabul and countless others wounded and maimed for life. But such is their resilience, Kabulis are rebuilding bombed homes and putting their shattered lives together. There are still about 400,000 people who need assistance and in response, 15 NGO's (non-governmental organisations) have got together and formed the Kabul Emergency programme and have a
coordinated strategy to feed, restore water supply, improve sewage and rubbish collection etc. Although we (the ICRC and Federation) have not joined because we have to remain neutral and impartial because of our mandates, we work closely with them. It is a very difficult time nation wide for the Red Cross, Red Crescent movement, because we must strive to work with all factions and not be seen to be giving a disproportionate amount to one factional area in comparison to the others.


Between 11 and 17 April I went to Badakhshan, the remote north-eastern province of Afghanistan which includes the Wakhan corridor where the Pamir mountains join the Hindu Kush. Our main reason was to give assistance to the village of Qarluk which was engulfed by a huge landslide late last month. Over 350 people were killed out of the approx. 750 people living in the village. All the women in the village were killed except three and most of the children. It happened at 11 am so most of the men were out ploughing in the fields.

Due to an ecological disaster facing the whole of Badakhshan, caused by overgrazing by cattle, sheep, goats, deforestation, ploughing and planting on steep mountain slopes etc, many villages are threatened by landslides. We encouraged a number of people to evacuate and rebuild in safer places.


We also visited other districts in Badakhshan. The general situation of the 1 million or so people living here is appalling. The province borders Russian Tajikistan and there is regular conflict on the border. Russian jets have been bombing villages inside
Badakhshan killing many innocent civilians. They do this saying that Afghanistan is harbouring Tajik rebel fighters. When I was in Faisabad jets Russian jets flew overhead and bombed a village 6 km away killing 6 people and seriously wounding many others. The following day Russian jets bombed neighbouring Taloquan killing over 100 innocent people. When I visited the district capital of Baharak I saw many houses flattened by Russian bombs and grieving families who had recently lost family members. In the hills behind Baharak, frightened women and children shelter in caves at night to shelter from the Russian aerial bombing. In the northern districts of Darwaz and Shegnan, famine is affecting large numbers of people. Traditional foods such as wheat is in short supply and starving people roam the country-side scavenging the land for wild flowers, tree bark, wild honey which keeps them alive. To replace the wheatflour which is the staple, people are grinding mulberries and making a flour from it. Many women and children have died of starvation and malnutrition is rife. To get news from Darwaz, 13 men from the district came to Kabul. It took them 15 days to fight there way over snow-bound passes to reach Faizabad the capital of Badakshan. It took them a further month to get to Kabul to break the news. The region is so remote and impossible to drive there from Kabul.
We had to wait over a week to get suitable weather to fly. Once there we travelled on mountains tracks for some of the way by Jeep and then walked and rode horses. We have mounted a major relief operation to assist the people of
Badakhshan. We flew in 700kg of medical supplies plus food and key items. I am also awaiting a charter plane from Iran with further relief supplies. In addition, I have sent a very urgent report to Geneva imploring them to inform the international community; governments and NGO's etc.


However, despite the tragedy unfolding, one can't but help notice the incredible beauty of the high mountains of the region. We were in the region north of the Hindu Kush and travelled through the Kohi Xaja Muhammad (range) which goes up to 5000m. As we crossed the high passes the massive bulk of the Hindu Kush was closeby to the south. Huge hanging glaciers spill from the high summits and the jumble of rock, ice and glaciers give this part of the Hindu Kush shape and form unique to the Greater Himalayan chain. Kush.

For the first week of April I was in Nangahar and Laghman provinces in the east of Afghanistan where we have ARCS branches. I think I wrote a little about that in my last letter.

I find that most days while I am working I find something which shocks, saddens or makes me very happy. Today I went with Ahmed Gizo to the Kharte Se hospital in the west of Kabul. On arrival we visited the men's ward which had 80 patients packed in. About 35 of them have had legs blown off during the past week by land-mines. Most of them are in a lot of pain as they have to regularly soak the open stumps in plastic bags of iodine to prevent infection until the final operation is done and the healing takes place. As I was talking to one man who had both legs blown off above the knee just two days ago, a nurse dipped the raw stump which looks as if someone had just chopped his leg off with a meat cleaver exposing bone, muscle and flesh were raw - as his stump touched the iodine he let out a piercing scream and then cried like a baby for some time after wards. I have seen thousands of people of all ages with legs blown off in the last 18 month and I find myself getting very angry with the countries that produce these weapons of destruction, and the armies that use them. However my anger subsided later when I visited the Red Cross orthopeadic centre were artificial legs are made and fitted. My good friend Alberto from the Italian Red Cross runs the centre. He has been doing the job for five years and employs about 150 local staff who do brilliant work producing , limbs, wheelchairs and crutches. There are three other Red Cross orthopeadic centres in Afghanisatm.

Who are the Taliban ?

Recent years have seen the re-emergence of the hardline Islamic Taliban movement as a fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government.

They are also threatening to destabilise Pakistan, where they control areas in the north-west and are blamed for a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks.

The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominence in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1994.

It is commonly believed that they first appeared in religious seminaries - mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia - which preached a hard line form of Sunni Islam.

The Taliban's promise - in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan - was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power.

In both countries they introduced or supported Islamic punishments - such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers and amputations of those found guilty of theft.

Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka.

Madrassas

The Taliban showed a similar disdain for television, music and cinema and disapproved of girls aged 10 and over from going to school.


The Taliban first came to prominence in Afghanistan in 1994
Pakistan has repeatedly denied that it is the architect of the Taliban enterprise.

But there is little doubt that many Afghans who initially joined the movement were educated in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan.

Pakistan was also one of only three countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recognised the Taliban when they were in power in Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until 2001.

It was also the last country to break diplomatic ties with the Taliban.

The attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001.



Mullah Omar's precise whereabouts are still unknown
The Taliban in Afghanistan was accused of providing a sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda movement who were blamed for the attacks.

Soon after 9/11 the Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan by a US-led coalition, although their leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was not captured - and neither was Osama Bin Laden.

In recent years the Taliban have re-emerged in Afghanistan and grown far stronger in Pakistan, where observers say there is loose co-ordination between different Taliban factions and militant groups.

The main Pakistani faction is led by Baitullah Mehsud, whose Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is blamed for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks.

Observers warn against over-stating the existence of one unified insurgency against the Pakistani state, however.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are still believed to be led by Mullah Omar, a village clergyman who lost his right eye fighting the occupying forces of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Afghans, weary of the mujahideen's excesses and infighting after the Soviets were driven out, generally welcomed the Taliban when they first appeared on the scene.


THE TALIBAN
Emerged in Afghanistan in 1994
Mainly supported by ethnic Pashtuns
Toppled after US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001
Fugitive leader Mullah Omar wanted, whereabouts unknown
Their early popularity was largely due to their success in stamping out corruption, curbing lawlessness and making the roads and the areas under their control safe for commerce to flourish.

From south-western Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly extended their influence.

They captured the province of Herat, bordering Iran, in September 1995.

Exactly one year later, they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, after overthrowing the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and his defence minister, Ahmed Shah Masood.

By 1998, they were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan.

They were accused of various human rights and cultural abuses. One example was in 2001, when the Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues in central Afghanistan, despite international outrage.

US onslaught

On October 7, 2001, a US-led military coalition invaded Afghanistan and by the first week of December the Taliban regime had collapsed.


Mullah Omar and his comrades have evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world

Mullah Omar and most of the other senior Taliban leaders, along with Bin Laden and some of his senior al-Qaeda associates, survived the American onslaught.

Mullah Omar and most of his comrades have evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world and are believed to be guiding the resurgent Taliban.

Since then they have re-grouped in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, but are now under pressure in both countries, from the Pakistani army and Nato respectively.

But Mullah Omar and most of his comrades have evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world and violence in Afghanistan has returned to levels not seen since 2001.

Despite ever higher numbers of foreign troops, the Taliban have steadily extended their influence, rendering vast tracts of Afghanistan insecure.

Their retreat earlier this decade enabled them to limit their human and material losses and return with a vengeance.

Thanks to the BBC for this.

Riding a Dead Horse - The wisdom of Buzkashi Riders

A Buzkashi match at Parwan, 21 March 1996. Photo: Bob McKerrow

The wisdom of Buzkashi riders, passed on from generation to generation in Afghanistan, says that 'when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount'. However, in the UN and NGO community a range of far more advanced strategies are often employed,such as:

Changing riders;

Appointing a committee to study the horse;

Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses;

Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included;

Reclassifying the dead horse as 'living impaired';

Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse;

Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed;

Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance;

Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance;

Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries
lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the mission of the organization than do some other horses;

Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses;

Preparing a workshop with paid attendants on the subject of Experience gaining in riding dead horses in post war setting;

Preparing a second workshop on environmental hazards caused by horse s…, and the advantage on using dead horses since they do not s… therefore are of no hazard to the environment.