Trump’s Request for India’s Help in Afghanistan Rattles Pakistan

Trump’s Request for India’s Help in Afghanistan Rattles Pakistan - The New York Times

However, Maria Sultan, a defense analyst based in Islamabad and director general of the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, said the Trump policy was “not as bad as we were expecting. The responsibility has been essentially shifted to Afghanistan.”

She warned that intelligence-based operations against groups inside Pakistan might increase. “This will further reduce the space for cooperation between Pakistan and U.S. and will be counterproductive for a long-term relationship,” Ms. Sultan said. More

HOW ROGUE TECHIES ARMED THE PREDATOR, ALMOST STOPPED 9/11, AND ACCIDENTALLY INVENTED REMOTE WAR

ON THE AFTERNOON of October 7, 2001, the first day of the war in Afghanistan, an Air Force pilot named Scott Swanson made history while sitting in a captain’s chair designed for an RV. His contribution to posterity was to kill someone in a completely novel way.

In the moments leading up to the act, Swanson was nervous. He sat in a darkened trailer tucked behind a parking garage at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, remotely piloting a Predator drone over Kandahar, 6,900 miles away. Nearly everything about his rig had been cobbled together and hastily assembled. The Predator itself, one of just a handful in existence, was flying about 250 pounds heavier than usual. And the satellite communications link that connected Swanson to the aircraft would periodically shut down due to a power issue, which software engineers in California were frantically trying to patch.

When the order came through to take the shot, Swanson pulled a trigger on his joystick. A little more than a second later, a Hellfire missile slid off an aluminum rail on the Predator’s wing and sailed into the Afghan night.

Swanson’s target was a pickup truck parked outside a compound thought to be hiding Mullah Omar, the supreme commander of the Taliban. The missile killed two unidentified men believed to have been his bodyguards. It was the first time a US drone had fired a weapon in combat. It was the first time a modern drone had ever killed a human being. More

 

 

 

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To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone

Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were "militants" — even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed.

They simply cite always-unnamed "officials" claiming that the dead were "militants." It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.

This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of "militant" is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: "Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen").

This morning, the New York Times has a very lengthy and detailed article about President Obama’s counter-Terrorism policies based on interviews with "three dozen of his current and former advisers." I’m writing separately about the numerous revelations contained in that article, but want specifically to highlight this one vital passage about how the Obama administration determines who is a "militant." The article explains that Obama’s rhetorical emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths "did not significantly change" the drone program, because Obama himself simply expanded the definition of a "militant" to ensure that it includes virtually everyone killed by his drone strikes. Just read this remarkable passage;

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. "Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs," said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the "single digits" — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it "guilt by association" that has led to "deceptive" estimates of civilian casualties.

"It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants," the official said. "They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are."

For the moment, leave the ethical issues to the side that arise from viewing "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants"; that’s nothing less than sociopathic, a term I use advisedly, but I discuss that in the separate, longer piece I’ve written. For now, consider what this means for American media outlets. Any of them which use the term "militants" to describe those killed by U.S. strikes are knowingly disseminating a false and misleading term of propaganda. By "militant," the Obama administration literally means nothing more than: any military-age male whom we kill, even when we know nothing else about them. They have no idea whether the person killed is really a militant: if they’re male and of a certain age they just call them one in order to whitewash their behavior and propagandize the citizenry (unless conclusive evidence somehow later emerges proving their innocence).

What kind of self-respecting media outlet would be party to this practice? Here’s the New York Times documenting that this is what the term "militant" means when used by government officials. Any media outlet that continues using it while knowing this is explicitly choosing to be an instrument for state propaganda — not that that’s anything new, but this makes this clearer than it’s ever been. More

 

 

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Afghanistan Wakhan: Day in life of 8th grade schoolgirl Gul Bahar

Gul Bahar: A Day in the Life of an Afghan Schoolgirl from Central Asia Institute on Vimeo.

VIDEO Afghanistan Wakhan: Day in life of 8th grade schoolgirl Gul Bahar -impoverished, but empowered through literacy http://t.co/0zKg69cIiC

 

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Targeted Killing of Terrorists

High technology enables the United States and other countries to kill specific terrorists with limited collateral damage. Yet, as Nicholas Rostow reminds us, just because targeted killings may be arguably legal and even ‘prudential’, that doesn’t mean they avoid certain costs.

The struggle against terrorism—more specifically, the effort to prevent terrorist attacks—has raised difficult legal and policy issues including so-called targeted killing, or the killing of specific individuals because of their involvement in terrorist organizations and operations. As we shall see, this form of targeted killing involves domestic and international legal authorities and policy and prudential issues. A substantial number of countries confronting what they consider to be terrorist attacks and threats engage in targeted killings. Each has to resolve questions about authorities and prudence because, while terrorists are always criminals, they also may be lawful military targets. The dual character of terrorists leads to the conclusion that, as a matter of policy, a state should weigh the totality of the circumstances and conclude that no other action is reasonable to prevent a terrorist attack before engaging in the targeted killing. Careful analysis in advance may preempt problems later.

This essay addresses the question principally from the American perspective. It examines the authority, as a matter of U.S. law, for the United States to kill individual terrorists and the international legal context for such operations. The operating premise is that the targeted killing of al Qaeda leaders is emblematic of the subject under review in contrast to such domestic police action against terrorists as the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and execution of Timothy McVeigh, who was principally responsible for the bombing of the Federal office building in Oklahoma City in April 1995.1 The essay concludes that authority in domestic and international law exists for such operations and that, as a policy choice, the United States would do well to apply the Geneva Conventions of 1949 in the conflict with terrorists whether or not it is legally required. In any event, policymakers need to weigh the consequences of targeted killing operations because, like all military operations, unforeseen results—positive and negative—are likely.

Authorities for Targeted Killing

As spokesmen for the U.S. Government have emphasized,2 America’s use of force against terrorists takes place in the context of “armed conflict.” For practical and legal reasons they distinguish the conflict with al Qaeda and similar organizations from counterterrorism law enforcement at home or in other countries, which principally involves the police. This delimitation is commonsensical. It is also important. One does not want the U.S. Government engaging in military operations on American soil absent extraordinary circumstances. Authority for using the military instrument abroad against terrorists in the context of “armed conflict” comes from the Constitution and statute, and the use of armed force needs to comply with the international law of armed conflict (also known as the laws of war or international humanitarian law).

More than 200 years of practice have confirmed that the President has the responsibility to direct the Armed Forces to defend the country. The President accordingly had constitutional authority to order counterattacks by U.S. forces against terrorists who had engaged in attacks against the United States and its citizens even before September 11, 2001.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have not had to rely on their constitutional authority alone. After September 11, 2001, Congress gave the President broad authority

to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.3

This statute provided explicit authority for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and against those the President determined were involved in the September 11 attacks. The words “necessary and appropriate” limit the use of the military instrument to those situations where police action, by the United States or the state in which the terrorist is found, is impossible. Had the perpetrators resembled Timothy McVeigh and been subject to arrest inside the United States, the use of the Armed Forces would have been neither necessary nor appropriate. One therefore should not expect remotely piloted aircraft attacks in London. In states unable or unwilling to take action to prevent their territories from being used by terrorists, the legal and practical situation is different. A use of force, as against Osama bin Laden, may be lawful as well as the only practicable course, especially when a host government withholds its cooperation. On balance, it became more important to the United States and to the international multilateral effort to suppress terrorism to capture or kill bin Laden than to be sensitive to a breach of Pakistan’s territorial integrity and amour propre.

The conduct of military operations pursuant to these constitutional and statutory authorities has to conform to U.S. legal obligations regarding armed conflict. In the main, the rules for American use of force are contained in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and subsequent treaties to which the Nation is a party or, as in the case of some articles of the 1977 Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which Washington regards as accurate statements of the customary international law of armed conflict. In 2010 the State Department Legal Adviser stated that the United States applied “law of war principles,” including:

First, the principle of distinction, which requires that attacks be limited to military objectives and that civilians or civilian objects shall not be the subject of the attack; and

Second, the principle of proportionality, which prohibits attacks that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.4

In other words, if the target is lawful under the laws of armed conflict, a state may use weapons, including weapons delivered by remotely piloted, unmanned aerial vehicles, against such targets. In this sense, targeted killing is high technology sniping.

This analysis rests on the premise that the United States is in an armed conflict with al Qaeda as a result of the attacks of September 11, 2001, a conclusion that itself reflects a process of analysis. Under longstanding principles of international law, a state bears responsibility for uses of force from its territory about which it knew or should have known. That responsibility includes a duty to prevent and, if prevention proves impossible, suppress. When a state is unable or unwilling to discharge such international legal obligations, the victim state presumptively has rights of self-defense. Thus, when Afghanistan was the base from which the 9/11 attacks were conducted and when Afghanistan was unwilling or unable to take action against the perpetrators, the United States enjoyed the right to use force in self-defense to attack those actors in Afghanistan. This legal analysis provides the basis for the U.S. use of force in Afghanistan commencing in 2001.

Laws of War and Targeted Killing

Confusion has bedeviled discussion of the conflict between the United States and al Qaeda. Assuming that al Qaeda is a true nonstate actor, governments have had to decide whether the United States is in international armed conflict with al Qaeda and, if so, what rules apply. These questions are rooted in the language of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949.

By their terms, the Conventions apply to conflicts among the “High Contracting Parties” or to “armed conflict[s] not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties.”5 This language means, respectively, conflicts between or among states and civil wars.6 Based on that language, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the conflict with al Qaeda was a global, noninternational armed conflict to which Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 applied because that seemed to be the only part of the Conventions that could apply to nonstate actors.7 While the effort to avoid placing alleged terrorists in a legal no-man’s land is laudable, the Supreme Court’s effort in this regard involved intellectual incoherence. As it must, the executive branch adheres to the Supreme Court decision. At the same time, without violating that decision, the U.S. Government may follow an intellectually coherent and simpler approach than the Supreme Court’s by following the Geneva Convention lead.8

The Geneva Convention Approach

The Geneva Conventions, binding as they are on all states, provide a useful guide to governments. They do so whether one uses military or law enforcement instruments against terrorists. If a government treats terrorists outside its jurisdiction or the jurisdiction of a state capable of using the criminal law against terrorists as subject to the Geneva Conventions, then its course is clear. If it captures a terrorist fighter, that fighter may be prosecuted for violations of the Geneva Conventions and then returned to prisoner of war status once a sentence, if any, is served. Prisoner of war status ends with the end of the conflict. Today it is difficult to foresee an end to the U.S. conflict with al Qaeda notwithstanding the deaths of so many al Qaeda leaders and followers.

Treating terrorists as if they are not combatants and are not entitled to prisoner of war status may be legally correct; it nonetheless puts a government in a policy and legal straitjacket. Terrorists inevitably fail the requirements set forth in the third Geneva Convention to wear a uniform, carry weapons openly, obey the laws of war, and operate in an organized fashion under a commander responsible for his or her subordinates, with rigorous systems of command and control, in order to enjoy the privileged status of combatant and prisoner of war upon capture.9 The terrorists’ failure in these respects does not make it easier to deal with detainees, as the American experience during the past 11 years demonstrates. As a result, a new approach is needed. That approach should be rooted in the law and in common sense. The Geneva Conventions provide both.

For the United States, acting as if terrorists captured in battlefield conditions are combatants and therefore prisoners of war would have a number of benefits. First, it would limit challenges to the legal status of detainees because they would not be held in what might appear to be legal limbo. As a result, whether they were held in prisoner of war facilities within the United States or at Guantánamo Bay would not matter in legal terms. Detainees would not acquire more rights by being held as prisoners of war within the United States than they do in Guantánamo Bay, and the administration should be able to close the prison facilities there without increasing its legal exposure. Second, it would clarify the status of prisoners for prison guards by making clear that the prisoners were not in a penitentiary status unless convicted of a crime. Third, it could improve the international reputation of the United States, which stands sullied as a result of allegations of torture and questions about its authority to hold alleged terrorists indefinitely, even those who might be acquitted at trial.

Since 9/11, the United States has traveled far in its quest to diminish, if not eliminate, the risk of terrorist attack. In the process it has revealed much about its willingness to engage in targeted killing and the conclusion that this tactic is useful and “wise” as well as legal.10 The argument for wisdom is that technology permits such a high degree of accuracy that collateral damage—the killing of bystanders—and the risk to American lives are reduced. The third test of wisdom is an act’s consequences. The wise strategist will weigh consequences of chosen tactics. For example, the negative consequences of the frequent U.S. use of remotely piloted aircraft to attack al Qaeda in Pakistan in 2011 led to an intense “Pakistani animus toward unilateral U.S. action [with] huge implications for America’s counterterrorism aspirations in the country.”11 To avoid negative consequences does not require inaction, but rather an effort at forethought and foresight. It is something that cannot be guaranteed even if one abides by the law. So far the United States has followed U.S. and international law by engaging in targeted killing as a combat tactic against military targets. Keeping to this line will be clarifying and simplifying even though one may argue that the law does not require treating terrorists as if they were military targets. Lawfulness by itself does not guarantee wisdom. But it is a good starting place. JFQ More

 

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Russia’s Strategic Pakistan Play

Russia’s decision to go ahead with the sale of Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan, even in the face of official Indian concerns, is being seen by some quarters as evidence of a “major” regional re-alignment in the wake of the American drawdown in Afghanistan.

In fact, the Russia-Pakistan dialogue for regional integration has been underway for some time now and beyond security cooperation, it is more fundamentally driven by Moscow’s push towards ‘southern” markets and Pakistan’s need for a capable yet politically “manageable” strategic sector trade and investment partner. The Mi-35 sale (if it does materialize) reflects the fact that the geo-economic stakes for both sides are now high enough for them to make a concerted push towards a long term compartmentalized working relationship in a manner not dissimilar to the way in which their more traditional partners – India for Russia and America for Pakistan – deal with each other. Indeed, in a world characterized by both competition and cooperation the heady rhetoric of “strategic partnership” means little and it is the transactional content that weighs on any relationship. Far more than cooperation in counter-terrorism, Russia and Pakistan will have to move forward quickly on Putin’s commitment to invest in the latter’s energy and metallurgy sectors for their relationship to be meaningful.

Mi-35

It could be argued that it was actually America’s entry into the region a decade ago that ultimately accentuated the circumstances that impel Russia and Pakistan closer to each other. Pakistan’s counter-terrorism cooperation with America salved with military aid has been toxic for domestic stability, as the situation in FATA and Waziristan reveal. As the tempo of internal stability operations has increased, Pakistan is keen to diversify away from America for certain classes of weaponry to a source that can supply cheaper and more rugged alternatives with a much smaller political price on the domestic front. The Mi-35 fits that bill and is likely to prove useful for Pakistani operations against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in mountainous areas, given its pedigree from the Afghan theater. At the moment Pakistan is using AH-1 Cobra Gunships that were originally obtained from America for use against Indian armoured formations in the plains and are proving expensive to use in operations against the TTP. Pakistan may not wish to be saddled with too much expensive American equipment that it can”t afford without generous aid.

Russia until recently was “reluctant” to transfer equipment that could be labelled as offensive in nature such as the Mi-35, and was holding back probably with an eye on a number of Indian military procurement tenders such as the multi-billion dollar medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA) competition. In 2010, Russia’s UAC, which was participating in the tender, even made noises about blocking the re-export of 150 KlimovRD-93 turbofans from China for Pakistan Air force’s future mainstay, the JF-17, on the grounds that it would compete with the Russian Mig-29 in international markets. By 2013, however, with Russia having lost out on the MMRCA tender and other Indian competitions, the Russians reiterated their commitment to continue supplies of the RD-93 and the JF-17 Block II commenced production in late 2013. So while much is being made of the Mi-35 sale, the fact is the Pakistanis seem set to rely on Russian engines for a majority of their fleet in the coming decades. When seen along with the fact that Russia supplied IL-78 MP refuelling tankers to Pakistan between 2009 and 2012, it is clear that comfort levels on both sides have been growing for quite a while now.

However, Russia is now willing to supply tactical equipment to Pakistan, especially in categories such as attack helicopters, where India either has domestic projects or may buy American. In many of these categories, though Pakistani spending ability given relatively cheaper Russian equipment is not insignificant, the pull for the Russians also comes from securing greater Pakistani willingness to help the Russians maintain security over energy infrastructure transiting areas like Eastern Afghanistan.

Once again, the American push to set up energy transit corridors from Central Asia to India such as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline has created a situation of Russia-Pakistan commonality. Russia has for some time expressed an interest in joining the TAPI project and is now pushing decisively for it even while proposing new oil pipelines next to it. Russia is also eager to partner in the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project, opposed by the Americans, but with clear potential if Pakistan agrees to guarantee delivery of gas to the India border. Of course, besides military supplies, Russia can also offer Pakistan a lot of useful intelligence in the latter’s fight against the TTP given that group’s link with various Central Asian terrorist organizations.

For Pakistan, the opening of Russia as a source for weapons greatly increases Pakistan’s leg room vis-à-vis American pressure at the strategic level. Moreover while Pakistan is certainly eager to get involved in trilateral military projects with Russia and China like the JF-17 (which may now even be exported to Myanmar), direct Russian weapon sales are also coveted since the Pakistani military does not want to field only Chinese weapons either.

In fact, as terrorist activities in Xingjiang increase and Pakistan’s internal security situation worsens, the Chinese have been rather selective in their Pakistani investments. For instance, Pakistan’s decrepit railways have actually had to turn to India for help and are looking to lease up to 50 diesel engines as rolling stock. While Indian industry has been making overtures to Nawaz Sharif’s government to open up to cross border investment, the Pakistani military is still looking to a politically less sensitive prospect to shore up the flagging core sectors of the Pakistani economy clearly in need of reliable foreign capital.

Of course, if former Pakistani Army Chief General Kayani’s views are anything to go by, the military understands that there can be no Pakistan without a viable economy. While in uniform, it was Kayani who made a couple of visits to Russia and today the Russians are being wooed as a source for investment in Pakistan’s flagship Thar Coal Project as well as a strategic partner for upgrading the South Asian country’s moribund steel industry. Chechnya it seems is more distant than Kashmir or even Xingjiang and Russia could yet prove a politically acceptable partner for meeting an energy crisis ridden Pakistan’s requirements in quite a few sectors.

For Russia the benefits of succeeding in Pakistan are worth the risk, since it could leverage influence over Af-Pak to reach Indian shores. Indeed, even Pakistan’s Gwadar port, much touted as a Chinese “pearl” could actually host a LNG liquefaction facility that could send cheaper gas supplies than Qatar to import terminals in South India. However, both Russia and Pakistan will have to work quicker to remove long-standing trade disputes for a more conducive environment.

India will of course watch closely to see whether the Russians are indeed able to use the dependencies they are creating in Pakistan for closer regional energy integration. That the Russians are increasing strategic options for their neighbor when even the Saudis are handing over Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists will obviously be of concern to New Delhi. That is especially so since the Pakistanis themselves are masters at selective counterterrorism at a time when many jihadists in Syria and Afghanistan may soon be looking for a re-direct.

Saurav Jha is a commentator on energy and security. Follow him on twitter @SJha1618.

 

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Spreadsheets list prices paid for an Afghan life, a cow and a car

The description in a single box of a spreadsheet is brief and to the point: “We shot into a crowd and killed a lady’s son.”

Next to it stands an amount: $1,000.

The entry from October 2007 detailing an incident in Kabul covers one of hundreds of “condolence payments” paid to Afghans by U.S.-led forces for deaths, injuries and property damage, described in leaked military spreadsheets.

The sheets document some $4 billion in spending on a military-backed scheme, the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, intended to win over ordinary Afghans with reconstruction projects that improve local communities and provide jobs.

The bulk of the money goes on transport and building projects, although the sheets include entries as diverse as $91,000 for riot batons and almost $6,000 for scout uniforms. But commanders also use the fund to pay for harm done by U.S. troops or their allies – from deaths in botched air strikes to crops damaged by military vehicles.

Thomson Reuters Foundation has analysed these condolence payments, which offer a rare, detailed line-by-line insight into a key period of the war, as part of a project to explore how nations and organisations try to put a monetary value on life and limb.

Covering some 19,000 rows of data, the sheets appear complete for the years 2008 to 2010, when the United States was ramping up its war against the Taliban with thousands of extra troops. Leaked to the website publicintelligence.info, the files also include some entries going back through 2003 and as recent as 2011.

The Department of Defense did not respond to requests by time of publication to comment on the documents, although a special advisor in its freedom of information office said by email the spreadsheets appeared to be leaked.

They list some $1 million paid to Afghans for deaths, injuries and property damage during the period. Additional amounts were paid from $10 million in funds withdrawn in bulk and used for multiple purposes including condolence payments, but no breakdown of these payments was shown.

The average sum for an Afghan life was $2,500 while the most frequent was $2,000, according to the Foundation’s analysis.

But the data present some jarring contrasts. Sometimes Afghans received as much for a dead animal or the destruction of a vehicle as they got for the loss of a loved one.

A man in Kunar province received $2,500 in 2008 for a cow “that got caught in crossfire and razor wire”. Another got $800 for the loss of a camel. A farmer in the eastern province of Laghman received $2,640 after a stray missile killed two cows and 10 chickens.

In 2010 in Kabul, a payment of $2,500 was made to the owner of a Toyota Hiace van after it was fired upon by an armoured military vehicle “driven by U.S. or Coalition Forces”.

ENOUGH COMPENSATION?

The payout of $2,500 represented roughly three times the average annual income for an Afghan in the 2008 to 2010 period, based on International Monetary Fund estimates of GDP per capita figures adjusted for cost of living and inflation. The U.S. military continues to use $2,500 as a guideline for a civilian death, although the increase in salaries and rising cost of living mean that its value today has slipped to represent about twice the average Afghan income.

Michael Semple, an Afghanistan expert who has served as the European Union’s deputy special representative in the country, said this money would not go far even in a rural area. In Afghan culture, a brother would be obliged to support the widow and children of a dead family member who was head of household.

“I know lots of families where the main economically active person is having to support 15 people because he has brought in one or two widows and their children,” said Semple, a visiting professor at Queen’s University in Belfast.

“So in that context, if you get a few thousand dollars from the DoD (U.S. Department of Defense), then frankly it helps you pay for the funeral expenses and maybe sees you through the first month. But for the rest of their lives, the people who are left behind depend on brothers and uncles and fathers.”

The leaked data show the highest payment for a civilian death was $4,700 to the family of an interpreter killed on a military base in Khost province in September 2008. The lowest was $1,000 to a woman in Kabul in September 2007 for the killing of her son.

In one case U.S. forces paid $4,500 to two men after seven relatives were killed in an air strike in Helmand in August 2010.

NO OBLIGATION TO PAY

The United States is in the process of withdrawing most of its troops from Afghanistan after 12 years of fighting Taliban insurgents, although it will keep a force of 9,800 there next year and will remain the country's biggest foreign donor.

In the three years covered by the leaked data, more than 7,300 civilians were killed in Afghanistan. Around two thirds of the deaths were caused by insurgents, one quarter by pro-government Afghan security forces and international troops and the remainder were unexplained, according to the United Nations mission in the country.

Military forces are under no legal obligation to pay civilians for any harm caused by combat operations, according to experts in international law. But they sometimes make payments, even while not admitting legal liability, in recognition of local customs. The U.S. military initially ruled there was no such practise but reversed course in face of anger from the families of civilians killed in botched air raids, crossfire and at border checkpoints.

The payments are not classed as compensation but are meant to recognise the grief of a family, wounds of a civilian or damage to property.

The Pentagon says U.S. and other contingents in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan take local circumstances into account when deciding how much to pay out.

“Commanders consider the severity of injury or type of damage, cost of living in the local community, and any other applicable cultural considerations,” said U.S. Navy Commander Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

“We have found that working through community elders or local contacts to determine fair damage amounts defuses community tensions, reinforces the authority and legitimacy of local elders, and establishes a stronger relationship between the Troop Contributing Nation and local government officials,” she said via email. More

 

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Himalayan Water Security: The Challenges for South and Southeast Asia

The scramble for control of natural resources to support economic and population growth, combined with the uncertain effects of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau, is raising tensions in Asia over Himalayan water resources.

Ten of the region’s largest and longest rivers (the Amu Darya, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Salween, Tarim, Yangtze, and Yellow) originate in the Himalayas. These rivers help provide water, food, and energy for nearly 4 billion people in China and across South and Southeast Asia—nearly half of the world’s population. However, depletion and diversion of these transborder resources to meet growing industrial, agricultural, and urban demands have the potential to trigger far-reaching economic, social, and environmental challenges.

The lack of comprehensive and effective regional frameworks for cooperation hinders sustainable management of these waterways. China, which controls the headwaters of these rivers, has an enormous need for Himalayan water to satisfy economic and energy demands but has little incentive to participate in formal water-sharing and water-management agreements with its neighbors. China’s dam-building and water-diversion projects are a source of major concern to the countries downstream, which often complain about Beijing’s lack of transparency and reluctance to share information. Although managing water-sharing relations with China might be the most prominent challenge, cooperation is not much easier at the middle and lower reaches of the rivers. Collaboration in South and Southeast Asia is frequently frustrated by competing national interests, economic priorities, political disputes, and weak regional organizations. In addition to the environmental impacts of man-made diversion projects and unsustainable freshwater usage, there is also inadequate cooperation on scientific research to understand and prepare for the effects of climate change on the region’s water supplies.

This Asia Policy roundtable contains seven essays that discuss the challenges and implications of water security in Asia and recommend steps that both upstream and downstream countries could take to better manage the region’s shared water resources.

Asia’s Unstable Water Tower: The Politics, Economics, and Ecology of Himalayan Water Projects
Kenneth Pomeranz

China’s Upstream Advantage in the Great Himalayan Watershed
Jennifer L. Turner, Susan Chan Shifflett, and Robert Batten

Melting the Geopolitical Ice in South Asia
Robert G. Wirsing

Himalayan Water Security: A South Asian Perspective
Tushaar Shah and Mark Giordano

Hydropower Dams on the Mekong: Old Dreams, New Dangers
Richard P. Cronin

Climate Change and Water Security in the Himalayan Region
Richard Matthew

Securing the Himalayas as the Water Tower of Asia: An Environmental Perspective
Jayanta Bandyopadhyay

Download PDF

As I have been arguing for a number of years South Asia needs to re-negotiate the Indus Water Treaty to encompass Afghainstan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan before the region starts to suffer from water insecurity and the effects of climate change. Editor

 

 

 

© 2014

Secret state: Trevor Paglen documents the hidden world of governmental surveillance, from drone bases to "black sites"

Secret prisons, drone bases, surveillance stations, offices where extraordinary rendition is planned: Trevor Paglen takes pictures of the places that the American and British governments don’t want you to know even exist

As anyone who has worked there knows, Kabul is a tough place, redeemed by the charm of the people and the abundance of cheap taxis. But Trevor Paglen had trouble finding a taxi driver willing and able to take him where he wanted to go: north-east out of the city along an old back road reputed to be so dangerous – even by Afghan standards – that it had seen no regular traffic for more than 30 years.

Finally he succeeded in digging out an old man who had been driving a cab since before the Soviet invasion. "We started driving and we left the city behind and we're out in the sticks," he recalls, "and we end up in a traffic jam – not cars but goats. And we wait for the goats to go by and we see the shepherd, this very old man, traditional Afghan clothes, big beard, exactly what you'd picture in your head. But he's wearing a baseball hat.

"The shepherd finally turns to look at us in the car – and on that baseball cap are the letters KBR. It stands for Kellogg Brown and Root – a company that was a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Dick Cheney was on the board of. The local goatherd is wearing a Dick Cheney baseball cap!" It was the final clue he needed that this particular bad road was the right road. There in the distance, behind a high cream wall and coiled razor wire, was what Paglen was looking for: the nondescript structures of what he says he is "99.999 per cent sure" is the place they call the Salt Pit: a never-before-identified-or-photographed secret CIA prison. See photo above.

Governmental surveillance

Trevor Paglen is an artist of a very particular kind. His principal tool is the camera, and most of his works are photographs, but the reason they are considered to be art – the reason, for example, that this bland photo, three feet wide by two feet high, showing the outer wall and the interior roof outline of the Salt Pit, with a dun-coloured Afghan hill behind it, sells for $20,000 – is because of the arduous, painstaking, sometimes dangerous path that culminated in pressing the shutter; and because it reveals something that the most powerful state in history has done everything in its power to keep secret.

Since he was a postgraduate geography student at UCLA 10 years ago, Paglen has dedicated himself to a very 21st-century challenge: seeing and recording what our political masters do everything in their power to render secret and invisible.

Above our heads more than 200 secret American surveillance satellites constantly orbit the Earth: with the help of fanatical amateur astronomers who track their courses, Paglen has photographed them. A secret air force base deep in the desert outside Las Vegas is the control centre for the US's huge fleet of drones: Paglen has photographed these tiny dots hurtling through the Nevada skies. To carry out the extraordinary rendition programme which was one of President George W Bush's answers to the 9/11 attacks, seizing suspects from the streets and spiriting them off to countries relaxed about torture, the CIA created numerous front companies: grinding through flight records and using the methods of a private detective, Paglen identified them, visiting and covertly photographing their offices and managers. The men and women who carried out the rendition programme were equipped with fake identities: Paglen has made a collection of these people's unconvincing and fluctuating signatures, "people," as he puts it, "who don't exist because they're in the business of disappearing other people".

It sounds like the work-in-progress of an extraordinarily determined investigative journalist. But while the dogged tracking of a Seymour Hersh will culminate in a 5,000-word piece for The New Yorker, blowing the lid off, say, alleged American plans to seize control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons or the origin of the sarin used in the Syrian civil war, Paglen is not interested in such narratives. Not that he is uninterested: he describes the extraordinary rendition programme, for example, as "incredibly evil", and has worked closely with human-rights activists. But rather than a charge sheet of the guilty men or calls for government action or popular insurrection, he presents us with a succession of enigmatic images: boring suburban offices, middle-aged men getting into American cars, shimmering lines in the sky, aircraft waiting to take off.

The new project that brings him to Britain is in line with this, though it is also prettier than most of his work. A photograph more than 60 metres wide which will stretch the entire length of the platform of Gloucester Road Underground station – home of the Art on the Underground programme – shows an idyllic expanse of rolling north York moors. And there, nestling among the folds of the hills are the massed giant golfballs of the vast RAF Fylingdales surveillance station, jointly operated with the US.

Given the existence of bitter and determined enemies, what's wrong with having secret facilities to keep a close eye on them?

"I think mass surveillance is a bad idea because a surveillance society is one in which people understand that they are constantly monitored," Paglen says, "and when people understand that they are constantly monitored they are more conformist, they are less willing to take up controversial positions, and that kind of mass conformity is incompatible with democracy.

"The second reason is that mass surveillance creates a dramatic power imbalance between citizens and government. In a democracy the citizens are supposed to have all the power and the government is supposed to be the means by which the citizens exercise that power. But when you have a surveillance state, the state has all the power and citizens have very little. In a democratic society you should have a state with maximum transparency and maximum civil liberties for citizens. But in a surveillance state the exact opposite is true." More

 

© 2014

The Wrong Afghan Friends

At a checkpoint on a dirt road in southeastern Afghanistan in 2012, Rahim Sarobi, a farmer, braked to a stop behind a knot of idling cars. Up ahead, Afghan gunmen were piled into the back of a Toyota Hilux. On the ground, tied to the rear fender by their wrists, lay two bloodied men, laboring to breathe.

Everyone was ordered out of their vehicles. The burly checkpoint commander, known simply as Azizullah, said the unfortunate pair had not slowed sufficiently at the checkpoint, and only the Taliban don’t slow down. But Mr. Sarobi and fellow motorists recognized the men as farmers from their village. They pleaded, but Azizullah would not listen. The motorists were ordered to follow the pickup as it dragged the men along six miles of rock-studded road. By the time the convoy reached Azizullah’s base, the pair were dead. Their bodies were left decomposing for days, a warning to anyone who thought of disobeying Azizullah.

Mr. Sarobi told me that story in Paktia Province last February. It echoes ominously against President Obama’s announcement on Tuesday that about 9,800 American troops will stay in Afghanistan after most have withdrawn this year. Special Operations Forces will continue training Afghans and assisting in counterterrorism. And if the current pattern holds, we can expect them, alongside the Central Intelligence Agency, to keep partnering with commanders like Azizullah to fight the Taliban.

Bear in mind that Azizullah is not a member of the Afghan army. He does not work for the Afghan National Police. He is not, in fact, under the authority of the Afghan government at all.

Instead, his militia, which has been supported by the Special Operations Forces, is part of a network of semi-independent rural paramilitary groups that owe their funding, weapons and very existence to America’s war on terror. By backing this network, the United States is fostering an environment of lawlessness and impunity, exacerbating Afghanistan’s longstanding problems, and creating fertile ground for the Taliban insurgency to survive. Using such strongmen seems to run counter to the doctrine laid out in 2006 in a much publicized Army/Marines counterinsurgency manual, which emphasized the need to convince citizens that America’s fighting forces will keep them safe.

On my trip to Paktia last winter, I met with other villagers who shared stories about the commander. A university student said he was at a village bazaar with his teenage cousin, who had fled his own village to escape Taliban threats. Azizullah’s militiamen accused the cousin of having ties to insurgents. He was arrested, taken to Azizullah’s compound, chained to a wall, raped repeatedly by militiamen, and released the next morning.

Azizullah’s crimes are detailed in a confidential dispatch, sent in 2010 to the United States military by United Nations officials, asking the Americans to sever ties with him. “A boy aged 16 was arrested by Commander Azizullah approximately four months ago in the Angur Ada area in Bermal district” states a copy of the dispatch that I obtained. “His father tried to intervene and told Azizullah he could arrest him instead of his son. The boy was released after 25 days, during which Azizullah sexually abused him.”

Afghans tell similar tales about other American-backed commanders, who hold sway over villages, districts or provinces. In southern Afghanistan’s Khas Oruzgan district, residents accuse Abdul Hakim Shujayee of going on multiple killing and raping rampages. Afghan officials in Kabul said their government tried to arrest him, but failed because he was protected by American Special Operations Forces. American officials say they have cut their ties with him, a claim that has been met with skepticism from residents. In 2011, in the village of Khosh Khadir in Daikundi Province, villagers told me that an American-supported strongman known as Lalay let his forces rampage through the village in response to a Taliban attack, hanging civilians from trees, abducting women, and setting homes and shops ablaze.

American authorities insist there is no proof of such allegations, and experts on Afghanistan often attach the caveat that enemies in Afghanistan tell wild tales about one another. But it is unclear whether an investigation has ever been conducted in any of these cases. American officials have told me that Azizullah and those like him are essential for combating the Taliban, and even the strongmen’s detractors acknowledge their Taliban-hunting prowess. Maj. Michael Waltz, a former Special Operations Forces officer who worked with Azizullah, put the argument this way in an interview: “We can’t sacrifice security for this multigenerational effort to build rule of law.”

In fact, the United States has favored counterterrorism over building Afghan state institutions and promoting the rule of law. Less than 10 percent of American funding in Afghanistan has gone to nonmilitary expenditures, even as Washington has poured millions into the coffers of regional strongmen with human rights records arguably as poor as the Taliban’s. One result: The writ of Hamid Karzai’s weak government is concentrated in the cities, while power brokers like Azizullah unofficially rule the countryside — especially the rural south and east. So villagers like those I met feel they have no recourse to justice or protection from predation — just the sort of grievance the insurgency exploits.

The Afghan government has tried to co-opt the strongmen by anointing them as governors and police chiefs. And in recent years, the United States has rebranded hundreds of militias as “Afghan Local Police,” placing them under nominal government authority. In most cases, though, the strongmen retain independent sources of revenue, including drug money or American patronage, as well as control over the militias. Their corruption infects the whole government; a Joint Chiefs of Staff report says the state has sometimes become, in effect, a collection of “criminal patronage networks.” The report also quotes an unnamed member of an interagency task force network as explaining: “The corruption piece is hard because security reigns supreme. We won’t remove corrupt officials if it looks like it will interrupt security.”

“Security,” in this context, does include protecting citizens from the Taliban — but not from predatory American-backed strongmen. Rural Afghans consistently told me they wanted freedom from both. But that is unlikely if American proxies continue the war on terror as it has been fought.

The most effective weapon against the Taliban would be a strong centralized state, responsive to citizens’ needs. This would require Americans to sever unilateral patronage relationships with rural power brokers and militias, and direct all funding to the state. (To deter corruption, international donors and Kabul could manage disbursement jointly, through trust funds.) The Afghan government should then absorb these forces into its ranks; with the strongmen stripped of American protection and independent revenue sources, integration should be easier. More

 

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'Killer robots' to be debated at UN

Killer robots will be debated during an informal meeting of experts at the United Nations in Geneva.

Two robotics experts, Prof Ronald Arkin and Prof Noel Sharkey, will debate the efficacy and necessity of killer robots.

The meeting will be held during the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

A report on the discussion will be presented to the CCW meeting in November.

This will be the first time that the issue of killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons systems, will be addressed within the CCW.

Autonomous kill function

A killer robot is a fully autonomous weapon that can select and engage targets without any human intervention. They do not currently exist but advances in technology are bringing them closer to reality.

Those in favour of killer robots believe the current laws of war may be sufficient to address any problems that might emerge if they are ever deployed, arguing that a moratorium, not an outright ban, should be called if this is not the case.

However, those who oppose their use believe they are a threat to humanity and any autonomous "kill functions" should be banned.

"Autonomous weapons systems cannot be guaranteed to predictably comply with international law," Prof Sharkey told the BBC. "Nations aren't talking to each other about this, which poses a big risk to humanity."

Prof Sharkey is a member and co-founder of the Campaign Against Killer Robots and chairman of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.

Side events at the CCW will be hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Automation of warfare

Prof Arkin from the Georgia Institute of Technology told the BBC he hoped killer robots would be able to significantly reduce non-combatant casualties but feared they would be rushed into battle before this was accomplished.

"I support a moratorium until that end is achieved, but I do not support a ban at this time," said Prof Arkin.

He went on to state that killer robots may be better able to determine when not to engage a target than humans, "and could potentially exercise greater care in so doing".

Prof Sharkey is less optimistic. "I'm concerned about the full automation of warfare," he says.

Drones

The discussion of drones is not on the agenda as they are yet to operate completely autonomously, although there are signs this may change in the near future.

The UK successfully tested the Taranis, an unmanned intercontinental aircraft in Australia this year and America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has made advances with the Crusher, an unmanned ground combat vehicle, since 2006.

The MoD has claimed in the past that it currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention.

On 21 November 2012 the United States Defense Department issued a directive that, "requires a human being to be 'in-the-loop' when decisions are made about using lethal force," according to Human Rights Watch.

The meeting of experts will be chaired by French ambassador Jean-Hugues Simon-Michel from 13 to 16 May 2014. More

 

© 2014