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August’s B-side includes an alternative look at Afghanistan by narrating the story of an Afghan heroine, one Malalai Joya. The second article is actually a speech  by David Miliband the British Foreign Secretary on Afghanistan and provides a rejoinder of sorts to the first article. The final article looks at Pakistan’s power and energy problems and is written by Mustafa Qadri.

August’s B-side contents are:

• The Woman Who Will Not be Silenced: MALALAI JOYA
• NATO Speech in Brussels by DAVID MILIBAND
• Pakistan’s Power Politics by MUSTAFA QADRI

The real Afghanistan comes to the fore in the story of Malalai Joya, her story is both inspiring and a must read for policymakers and joe public too.

The Woman Who Will Not be Silenced: Malalai Joya

The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan – the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda

I am not sure how many more days I will be alive,” Malalai Joya says quietly. The warlords who make up the new “democratic” government in Afghanistan have been sending bullets and bombs to kill this tiny 30-year-old from the refugee camps for years – and they seem to be getting closer with every attempt. Her enemies call her a “dead woman walking”. “But I don’t fear death, I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice,” she says plainly. “I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: ‘I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.’”

The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and – when they were toppled – cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists.

But she says: “Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. That is what your soldiers are dying for.” Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.

We are our sisters’ keepers

I meet Joya in a London apartment where she is staying with a supporter for a week, to talk about her memoir – but even here, her movements have to be kept secret, as she flits from one safe house to another. I am told not to mention her location to anyone. She is standing in the corridor, small and slim, with her hair flowing freely, and she greets me with a solid handshake. But, when our photographer snaps her, she begins to giggle girlishly: the grief etched on to her sallow face melts away, and she laughs in joyous little squeaks. “I can never get used to this!” she says.

Then, as I sit her down to talk through her life-story, the pain soaks into her face once more. Her body tightens into a tense coil, and her fists close. Joya was four days old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day, her father dropped out of his studies to fight the invading Communist army, and vanished into the mountains. She says: “Since then, all we have known is war.”

Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother’s legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children alive as best she could. When the police became too aggressive, she took her kids to refugee camps across the border in Iran. In these filthy tent-cities lying on the old Silk Road, Afghans huddled together and were treated as second-class citizens by the Iranian regime. At night, wild animals could wander into the tents and attack children. There, word reached the family that Joya’s father had been blown up by a landmine – but he was alive, after losing a leg.

There were no schools in the Iranian camps, and Joya’s mother was determined her daughters would receive the education she never had. So they fled again, to camps in western Pakistan. There, Joya began to read – and was transformed. “Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are,” she says. Starting in her early teens, she inhaled all the literature she could – from Persian poetry to the plays of Bertolt Brecht to the speeches of Martin Luther King. She began to teach her new-found literacy to the older women in the camps, including her own mother.

She soon discovered that she loved to teach – and, when she turned 16, a charity called the Organisation for Promoting Afghan Women’s Capabilities (OPAWC) made a bold suggestion: go to Afghanistan, and set up a secret school for girls, under the noses of the Taliban tyranny.

So she gathered her few clothes and books and was smuggled across the border – and “the best days of my life” began. She loathed being forced to wear a burka, being harassed on the streets by the omnipresent “vice and virtue” police, and being under constant threat of being discovered and executed. But she says it was worth it for the little girls. “Every time a new girl joined the class, it was a triumph,” she says, beaming. “There is no better feeling.”

She only just avoided being caught, again and again. One time she was teaching a class of girls in a family’s basement when the mother of the house yelled down suddenly: “Taliban! Taliban!” Joya says: “I told my students to lie down on the floor and stay totally silent. We heard footsteps above us and waited a long time.” On many occasions, ordinary men and women – anonymous strangers – helped her out by sending the police charging off in the wrong direction. She adds: “Every day in Afghanistan, even now, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women act out these small gestures of solidarity with each other. We are our sisters’ keepers.”

The charity was so impressed with her they appointed her their director. Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. “Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy,” she says. “The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped.”

As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced – by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, “I realised women’s rights had been sold out completely… Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban – and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters.”

The warlords “have ruled Afghanistan ever since,” she adds. While a “showcase parliament has been created for the benefit of the US in Kabul”, the real power “is with these fundamentalists who rule everywhere outside Kabul”. As an example, she names the former governor of Herat, Ismail Khan. He set up his own “vice and virtue” squads which terrorised women and smashed up video and music cassettes. He had his own “private militias, private jails”. The constitution of Afghanistan is irrelevant in these private fiefdoms.

Joya discovered just what this meant when she started to set up the clinic – and a local warlord announced that it would not be allowed, since she was a woman, and a critic of fundamentalism. She did it anyway, and decided to fight this fundamentalist by running in the election for the Loya jirga (“meeting of the elders”) to draw up the new Afghan constitution. There was a great swelling of support for this girl who wanted to build a clinic – and she was elected. “It turned out my mission,” she says, “would be to expose the true nature of the jirga from within.”

I would never again be safe

As she stepped past the world’s television cameras into the Loya jirga, the first thing Joya saw was “a long row with some of the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known – warlords and war criminals and fascists”.

She could see the men who invited Osama bin Laden into the country, the men who introduced the misogynist laws later followed by the Taliban, the men who had massacred Afghan civilians. Some had got there by intimidating the electorate, others by vote-rigging, and yet more were simply appointed by Hamid Karzai, the former oilman installed by the US army to run the country. She thought of an old Afghan saying: “It’s the same donkey, with a new saddle.”

For a moment, as these old killers started to give long speeches congratulating themselves on the transition to democracy, Joya felt nervous. But then, she says, “I remembered the oppression we face as women in my country, and my nervousness evaporated, replaced by anger.” When her turn came, she stood, looked around at the blood-soaked warlords on every side, and began to speak. “Why are we allowing criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now… It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who have brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again… They should instead be prosecuted in the national and international courts.”

These warlords – who brag about being hard men – could not cope with a slender young woman speaking the truth. They began to shriek and howl, calling her a “prostitute” and “infidel”, and throwing bottles at her. One man tried to punch her in the face. Her microphone was cut off and the jirga descended into a riot. “From that moment on,” Joya says, “I would never again be safe… For fundamentalists, a woman is half a human, meant only to fulfil a man’s every wish and lust, and to produce children and toil in the home. They could not believe that a young woman was tearing off their masks in front of the eyes of the Afghan people.”

A fundamentalist mob turned up a few hours later at her accommodation, announcing they had come to rape and lynch her. She had to be placed under immediate armed guard – but she refused to be protected by American troops, insisting on Afghan officers. Her speech was broadcast all over the world – and cheered in Afghanistan. She was flooded with support from the people of her country, delighted that somebody had finally spoken out. One dirt-poor village pooled its cash to send a delegate hundreds of miles across the country to explain how pleased they were.

An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons – one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: “I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear.” She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: “You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me.”

But the US and Nato occupiers instructed Joya that she must show “politeness and respect” for the other delegates. When Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, said this, she replied: “If these criminals raped your mother or your daughter or your grandmother, or killed seven of your sons, let alone destroyed all the moral and material treasure of your country, what words would you use against such criminals that will be inside the framework of politeness and respect?”

She leans forward and quotes Brecht: “He says, ‘He who does not know the truth is only a fool. He who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal.’” The attempts to murder her began then with a sniper – and have not stopped since. But she says plainly, with her fist clenched: “I wanted the warlords to know I was not afraid of them.” So she ran for parliament – and won in a landslide. “I would return again to face those who had ruined my country,” she explains, “and I was determined that I would stand straight and never bow again to their threats.”

In every corner is a killer

Joya looked out across the new Afghan parliament on her first day and thought: “In every corner is a killer, a puppet, a criminal, a drug lord, a fascist. This is not democracy. I am one of the very few people here who has been genuinely elected.” She started her maiden speech by saying: “My condolences to the people of Afghanistan…”

Before she could continue, the warlords began to shout that they would rape and kill her. One warlord, Abdul Sayyaf, yelled a threat at her. Joya looked him straight in the eye and said: “We are not in [the area he rules by force] here, so control yourself.”

I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. “I am never frightened when I tell the truth.” She is speaking fast now: “I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.”

She says there is no difference for ordinary Afghans between the Taliban and the equally fundamentalist warlords. “Which groups are labelled ‘terrorist’ or ‘fundamentalist’ depends on how useful they are to the goals of the US,” she says. “You have two sides who terrorise women, but the anti-American side are ‘terrorists’ and the pro-American side are ‘heroes’.”

Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is “a shameless puppet” who will win next month’s presidential elections because “he hasn’t yet stopped working for his masters, the US and the warlords… At this point in our history, the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the US government and the mafia that holds power in our country.”

Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women – and get back in the fight. She tells me about a 16-year-old constituent of hers, Rahella, who ran away to an orphanage Joya had helped to set up in her constituency. “Her uncle had decided to marry her off to his son, who was a drug addict. She was terrified. So of course we took her in, educated her, helped her.” One day, her uncle turned up and apologised, saying he had learnt the error of his ways. He asked if she could come home for a weekend to visit her family. Joya agreed – and when she got back to her village, Rahella was forced into marriage and spirited away to another part of Afghanistan. They heard six months later that she had doused herself in petrol and burned herself alive.

There has been an epidemic of self-immolation by women across the “new” Afghanistan in the past five years. “The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery,” she says, “they are crying out for justice.”

But she was not allowed to raise these issues in the supposedly democratic parliament. The fundamentalist warlords who couldn’t beat Joya at the ballot box or kill her chanced upon a new way to silence her. The more she spoke, the angrier they got. She called for secularism in Afghanistan, saying: “Religion is a private issue, unrelated to political issues and the government… Real Muslims do not require political leaders to guide them to Islam.” She condemned the new law that declared an amnesty for all war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 30 years, saying “You criminals are simply giving yourselves a get-out-of-jail free card.” So the MPs simply voted to kick her out of parliament. It was illegal and undemocratic – but the President, Hamid Karzai, supported the ban. “Now the warlord criminals are unchallenged in parliament,” she says. “Is that democracy?”

We in the West have been fed “a pack of lies” about what Afghanistan looks like today. “The media are ‘free’ only if they do not try to criticise warlords and officials,” she says in her book, Raising My Voice. As an example, she names a specific warlord: “If you write anything about him, the next day you will be tortured or killed by the Northern Alliance warlords.” It is “a myth” to say girls can now go to school outside Kabul. “Only five per cent of girls, according to the UN, can follow their education to the 12th grade.”

And it is “false” to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. “By the 1950s, there was a growing women’s movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights,” she says. “I have a story here” – she rifles through her notes – “from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is ‘Afghanistan’s women lift the veil’. We were developing an open culture for women – and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again.”

Many of her friends urge her to leave the country, before one of her wannabe-assassins gets lucky. But, she says, “I can never leave when all the poor people that I love are living in danger and poverty. I am not going to search for a better and safer place, and leave them in a burning hell.” Apologising for her English – which is, in fact, excellent – she quotes Brecht again: “Those who do struggle often fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed.”

Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. But, she says, any Afghan democrat today is “trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.” She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. “With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it [will be] easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies.”

If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country’s war criminals to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. “Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished,” she says, “from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush.” Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. “What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed – many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people.”

The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 per cent of Afghans want an immediate Nato withdrawal. Many people in Afghanistan were hopeful, she says, about Barack Obama – “but he is actually intensifying the policy of George Bush… I know his election has great symbolic value in terms of the struggle of African-Americans for equal rights, and this struggle is one I admire and respect. But what is important for the world is not whether the President is black or white, but his actions. You can’t eat symbolism.”

US policy is driven by geopolitics, she says, not personalities. “Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia, so it’s a very important place to have military bases – so they can control trade very easily with other Asian powers such as China, Russia, Iran and so on.

“But it can be changed by Americans,” she adds. She is passionate now, her voice rising. “I say to Obama – in my area, 150 people were blown up by US troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m (£11m) to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? I say to Obama – change course, or otherwise tomorrow people will call you another Bush.”

It’s hard to be strong all the time

“It’s not good to show my enemies any weakness, [but] it’s hard to be strong all the time,” Joya says with a sigh, as she runs her hands through her hair. She has been speaking so insistently – with such preternatural courage– that it’s easy to forget she was just a girl when she was thrust into fighting fundamentalism. She was never allowed an adolescence. The fierce concentration on her face melts away, and she looks a little lost. “Yes, my mother is proud of me,” she says, “but you know how mothers are – they worry. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, the first sentence and the last sentence are always ‘Take care’.”

Two years ago, she got married in secret. She can’t name her husband publicly, because he would be killed. Her wedding flowers had to be checked for bombs. She will only say that they met at a press conference, “and he supports everything I do”. She has not seen him “for two months”, she says. “We meet in the safe houses of supporters. I cannot sleep in the same house two nights running. It is a different home every evening.”

Where does this courage come from? She acts as if the answer is obvious – anyone would do it, she claims. But they don’t. Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. “When I die, others will come. I am sure of that,” she says.

She certainly has a strong sense of belonging to a long history of Afghans who fought for freedom. “My parents chose my first name after Malalai of Maiwand. She was a young woman who, in 1880, went to the front line of the second Anglo-Afghan war to tend the wounded. When the fighters were close to collapse, she picked up the Afghan flag and led the men into battle herself. She was struck down – but the British suffered a landmark defeat, and, in the end, they were driven out.”

When she ran for office, she had to choose a surname for herself, to protect her family’s identity. “I named myself after Sarwar Joya, the Afghan poet and constitutionalist. He spent 24 years in jails, and was finally killed because he wouldn’t compromise his democratic principles… In Afghanistan we have a saying: the truth is like the sun. When it comes up, nobody can block it out or hide it.”

Malalai Joya knows she could be killed any day now, in our newly liberated Warlord-istan. She hugs me goodbye and says, “We must keep in touch.” But I find myself bleakly wondering if we will ever meet again. Perhaps she senses this, because she suddenly urges me to look again at the last paragraph of her memoir, Raising My Voice. “It really is how I feel,” she says. It reads: “If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice.” I look up into her face, and she is giving me the bravest smile I have ever seen.

‘Raising My Voice’ by Malalai Joya is published by Rider at £11.99. All profits will go to supporting the cause of women’s rights in Afghanistan. You can donate to her campaigns at malalaijoya.com/index1024.htm

Published in The Independent

WASIM VIEW- The news coming out of Afghanistan is almost always full of half-truths at best. The NATO lie takes centre stage on both print and electronic media. However the real truth and the real Afghanistan is a very different story and it is a story told by Malalai Joya and her struggle.

Malalai Joya is a breath of fresh air and a great hope for Afghanistan. Her story is one that inspires one and all and lays bare the NATO lie proving that Afghanistan has if anything deteriorated further after NATO’s occupation. Malalai’s story is a must read for all especially the West whose casus belli for invading Afghanistan included the grand notion of ridding the Taliban to provide human rights for women amongst others .

The fact that a woman like Malalai Joya is in hiding in London a key NATO capital thanks to death threats from warlords who rule most of the country is a slap in the face for NATO and the Afghan government. The slap hurts more given that the bastion of might that is NATO and the mayor of Kabul one Hamid Karzai are impotent to act against any of the warlords who rule Afghanistan with an iron fist, how the mighty have fallen!

Malalai Joya stands tall in her commitment to improving Afghanistan, her story is one that must be told and shared for it is one of hope, of a better tomorrow for Afghanistan.

The second article is in fact the speech verbatim of David Miliband the British Foreign Secretary and is included to give the NATO view on their now infamous and failing Afghanistan mission.

Afghanistan Speech to NATO Members by David Miliband

It is a pleasure to be with you here at NATO today, an organisation that for 60 years has worked for our shared security. NATO has always been an alliance of defence not aggression. It is also an alliance of values. In each era, it has adapted to new threats with ingenuity and resolve. After centuries of bloody conflict, NATO helped build peace across Europe. Following the end of the Cold War, NATO helped unite a divided continent. Then six years ago, with the Alliance’s collective security threatened by terrorists beyond its borders, NATO launched its first operation outside Europe. It is telling that the only time in 60 years when NATO has invoked Article 5 was on 12 September 2001.

The NATO operation in Afghanistan is part of a wider UN-mandated effort by the international community. It was sparked by a single overriding concern: in the words of the British Prime Minister in December 2007, “denying Al Qaida a base from which to launch attacks on the world.” It required, first, the removal of the Taliban regime that had provided shelter for Al Qaida, and second that we help the Afghan government build the strength to keep them out permanently.

Today, while people in our countries accept the need to fight the Taliban to avoid the return of Al Qaida to Afghanistan, they want to know whether and how we will succeed. That is what I want to set out today.

First, I pay tribute to the servicemen and women from 42 countries who have served in Afghanistan. On behalf of the British government I honour all those – international and Afghan – who have given their lives or been injured. Their bravery, their commitment and their sacrifice has been remarkable. Over 1000 service personnel have been lost in ISAF or Operation Enduring Freedom. 189 members of the British armed forces have died in Afghanistan. We owe them all a huge debt. Their bravery and courage, alongside the injured, will not be forgotten.

Today, the Ministry of Defence in London will give operational details on the progress of Operation Panther’s Claw in Helmand. This mission has taken a heavy toll. But it has also achieved significant gains, above all for the 80,000 Afghan people who now, for the first time in years, are under the jurisdiction of the legitimate Afghan authorities.

In recent weeks in Britain the debate about Afghanistan has centered on military tactics and resources. People in Britain know why we all committed to this mission. They want to know that all of the members of our Alliance are ready to give it the priority and commitment it deserves. Burden sharing is a founding principle of the Alliance. It needs to be honoured in practice as well as in theory.

I am a Foreign Minister, not a General or a Defence Minister, and I have come to talk not about military operations and military strategy but about politics. Because in Afghanistan we are fighting an insurgency. And the heart of NATO doctrine is that military force alone is never enough to achieve lasting success in counter-insurgency. Whether military breakthroughs are translated into strategic success will depend on the political strategy that is pursued and on the political coalition that is built – by the Afghan Government, by NATO and the UN, and by Afghanistan’s neighbours. That is my focus today.

The nature of the insurgency

It is vital that we understand the nature of the enemy. It is easy to brand the insurgency under a single label: ‘The Taliban’. The reality is more complex. And it requires our countries to work with Pakistan as well as Afghanistan.

There is no single authoritative leadership of the insurgency in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. Instead there are a range of different insurgent groups. They operate with varying degrees of autonomy in their own particular areas. Cooperation between them is opportunistic and tactical rather than strategic.

In Afghanistan the southern insurgency is led by members of the former Taliban government. It has the largest number of fighters and the most hierarchical and well organised leadership under Mullah Omar. It is these people against whom British and American forces have been conducting major operations in the last few weeks.

In the east of the country, by contrast, a variety of other factions operate, including the Haqqani network, Hizb-e Islami and a range of smaller groups.

In Pakistan’s tribal belt leaders of the Afghan Taliban are focused on gaining power west of the border. Within Waziristan, the three leaders of the main insurgency – Baitullah Mehsud, Gul Bahadur, and Maulvi Nazir – belong to different tribes and have different motivations. Each has links both to Al Qaida, and to the Haqqani network.

People are drawn into the insurgency for different reasons, primarily pragmatic rather than ideological. So there are the foot soldiers whom the Taliban pay $10 a day – more than a local policeman. There are poppy farmers who support the insurgents because they offer protection against eradication efforts. There are narco-traffickers who rely on them for safe passage of drugs. There are warlords and aspirant power-brokers who believe that the Taliban will win, and so position themselves for their own political advantage. And then – perhaps most crucially – there are the ordinary Afghans, who, despite dreading the Taliban’s return, doubt the capacity of the state to protect them, so hedge their bets. They may not give active support. But they acquiesce or turn a blind eye.

The nature of the insurgency gives it some advantages. The different groups can feed off and support each other – providing suicide bombers, training or equipment. The autonomy of local commanders makes their groups resilient, even when their superiors are killed or captured. And strong bonds of local and tribal loyalty make it easier for them to rally people against outsiders.

But the insurgents’ vulnerabilities are also clear.

The insurgency is a wide but shallow coalition of convenience: an amalgam of groups with different motivations and power centres. So they are divided.

The Taliban are the largest element of the insurgency but, because they exploit predominantly Pashtun communities and sentiment, their support base is limited to the Pashtun districts of the south and west, and to the Pashtun pockets in the north and east.

The insurgency remains deeply unpopular with ordinary Afghans, including in the south and east. Polling across Afghanistan shows that over 90% of the population do not want the Taliban back in power.

The Taliban can terrorise, but their military, technological and organisational inferiority to conventional forces means they cannot take and hold territory and power on a lasting basis. And when they do hold sway, and do put their values into practice, they appal the local population. This is what has happened in Pakistan in recent months, with a large swing in support to the government in revulsion at what the Taliban stand for.

Political Strategy

In the face of this enemy, our ultimate objective in 2001 holds true for 2009: to protect our citizens from terrorist attacks by preventing Al Qaida having a safe haven in the tribal belt -in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The role of military operations is to deny insurgents the space to operate. That is: to clear and hold towns and villages under insurgent control, so allowing Afghans to build basic governance and justice, to deliver welfare and dispense development assistance.

I have seen for myself how this can work in different parts of the country. It is now being tested in real time in Helmand. British, Danish, Estonian and Afghan troops have pushed the Taliban of out of Babaji. This has extended the writ of Afghan government, linking the provincial capital Lashkar Gar with the economic centre of Gereshk and bringing tens of thousands of people under Afghan government control. US troops have ventured far down south along the Helmand River valley, driving the Taliban out of Khan Neshin and restoring government control.

As international troops go in, it is essential they are followed by the Afghan National Army and Police. It is they who must guard key facilities, man checkpoints and protect the population from Taliban intimidation.

The test of success is therefore clear. As General McChrystal has said “The measure of effectiveness will not be enemy killed; it will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence”.

That shield today comes in military form from a partnership of international and Afghan military forces. Over time, the military shield must be provided increasingly by Afghan combat troops.

But the shield must also be delivered by a clear political strategy, because strategic progress relies on undermining the insurgency through politics. Three political challenges – that address the causes not the symptoms of the insurgency – will shape the future of Afghanistan.

First, a political strategy for dealing with the insurgency through reintegration and reconciliation. That means in the long term an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan, which draws away conservative Pashtun nationalists – separating those who want Islamic rule locally from those committed to violent jihad globally – and gives them a sufficient role in local politics that they leave the path of confrontation with the government.

Second, a political strategy for the wider population, through reassurance about their future. NATO must show the Afghan people that we will not abandon them to Taliban retribution; that our forces will stay until Afghan communities can protect themselves, but no longer than we are needed. And, as we transfer responsibility to Afghans and withdraw our troops from combat, the international community will continue to help Afghanistan – one of the poorest countries of earth – with aid and training.

Both of these tasks depend on credible, clean local government at provincial and district level that works with the grain of tribal Afghan society.

Third, a political strategy towards the neighbours in the region – including Pakistan and Iran – to ensure that they accept that Afghanistan’s future is not as a client of any, but as a secure country in its own right. Once again it should be the commercial and cultural crossroads of South West Asia. A country in which each of the neighbours and near neighbours has an open and responsible stake.

Let me address each in turn.

Reintegrating and Reconciling Insurgents

As President Obama said at the end of March, “in a country with extreme poverty that’s been at war for decades, there will also be no peace without reconciliation among former enemies…There is an uncompromising core of the Taliban. They must be met with force, and they must be defeated. But there are also those who’ve taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price. These Afghans must have the option to choose a different course.”

With counter insurgency efforts being stepped up on either side of the Durand Line, Taliban commanders and foot soldiers face an increasingly debilitating struggle. From this position, we need to help the Afghan government exploit the opportunity, with a more coherent effort to fragment the various elements of the insurgency, and turn those who can be reconciled to live within the Afghan Constitution.

The basis for both reintegration and reconciliation is a starker choice: bigger incentives to switch sides and stay out of trouble, alongside tougher action against those who refuse.

The Afghan government needs effective grass-roots initiatives to offer an alternative to fight or flight for the foot soldiers of the insurgency. Essentially this means a clear route for former insurgents to return to their villages and go back to farming the land, or a role for some of them within the legitimate Afghan security forces. Military pressure has an important role to play – these people must see the danger of remaining insurgents, but also believe that they will be protected from their former allies if they lay down their arms.

For higher-level commanders and their networks, we need to work with the Afghan government to separate the hard-line ideologues, who are essentially irreconcilable and violent and who must be pursued relentlessly, from those who can be drawn into domestic political processes.

Afghan history sets a precedent here. Blood enemies from the Soviet period and the civil war now work together in government. Former Talibs already sit in the Parliament. And Mullah Salam left the Taliban in late 2007 to become the district governor of Musa Qaleh. So there is no reason that many members of the current insurgency can not follow – if they are prepared to be part of a peaceful future and accept the Afghan constitution. The next Afghan government must make this clear, and work to establish a reintegration process across the country.

Reassuring the Population and Maintaining Consent

It is only when the cooperation, passive and active, of ordinary Afghans is removed that the insurgency will be fatally undermined. The squeeze on the Taliban must come from within as well as without.

The three biggest barriers to this happening more widely are: first, that Afghans fear that international forces will leave prematurely, leaving a state unable to protect them from the Taliban; second, the absence of clean and consistent local governance; and third the lack of economic opportunity and consequent unemployment. So people hedge their bets, turning a blind eye when they see insurgents laying IEDs or refusing to inform on insurgent infiltrators in their midst.

The further development of the Afghan Security Forces is vital. By the end of 2011 we will have trained and equipped 134,000 members of the Afghan National Army, up from 90,000 today. Alongside them will be a 97,000-strong police force – up from 80,000 today – guarding key facilities and institutions, manning checkpoints and tackling civil unrest.

These capacity-building efforts must continue; indeed they should be accelerated.

But, alongside security forces, Afghans look for the basics of authority. That means effective governors in each of the country’s 34 provinces; and the appointment by them of credible leaders of the 364 districts. But also local governance that is credible, competent and clean, properly resourced and supported from Kabul, and works with the grain of tribal structures and history. It is not possible to overstate the importance of these appointments.

The National Solidarity Program has empowered over 20,000 development shuras across Afghanistan to decide for themselves how international assistance should be spent in their communities. We need to see district governors – the uluswals – once again empowered to govern, working with shuras of the local elders whom the Taliban have undermined and removed. Such shuras would be the focus of political decision-making, but also deal with security and development issues. This is what we are already doing in Helmand to provide a single platform for Afghan Social Outreach, Public Protection and National Solidarity Programmes.

The third part of the offer to local people is development. We are not in Afghanistan because girls were not allowed to go to school. But helping them do so is an important down-payment to Afghans desperate for a better future for their children. Ditto health care. And ditto jobs. That is why in Helmand, British, American, Danish and Estonian civilian and military staff are working to help build schools, provide clean water and electricity, surface roads and support agriculture. It is why the UK Department for International Development (DFID) is spending about half a billion pounds in development assistance over the next four years. It is why other allies and partners, working with UNAMA, are doing the same across the rest of Afghanistan. For instance the European Commission and EU member states are spending more than 900 million Euros a year.

Regional stability

The final challenge is Afghanistan’s relations with its neighbours.

The neighbour with the greatest influence on Afghanistan’s stability is of course Pakistan. Militants move with comparative ease across the 1600 mile Durand Line, and the insurgencies in the south and east of Afghanistan are directed partly from Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan.

As I saw for myself a few weeks ago, we now have mutually reinforcing strategies on both sides of the border, with extra troops deployed in southern Afghanistan, across the border from the Pakistani military’s preparatory operations in Waziristan. The unity across political and military parts of the Pakistani state, and the support of the Pakistani population for the efforts in the North West Frontier, is striking.

The path to success on the Pakistani side of the insurgency requires a number of steps:

First, military operations need over time to address all militants who shelter Al Qaida, as well as those who threaten Pakistan itself.

Second, any future peace deals to reconcile militants should have clear red lines: they must be prepared to shut out Al Qaida, and not use violence against troops or citizens in Afghanistan.

Third, the areas that have already been subject to military operations – in Swat and the Malakand Division – need to be reconstructed quickly and internally displaced persons resettled, so that immediate military success does not give way to longer term civilian disaffection.

Fourth, the people of FATA need a clear roadmap towards proper inclusion in the Pakistani state, with the same rights – and responsibilities – as other citizens. The lack of governance and justice in FATA – and in parts of North West Frontier Province – created the vacuum which insurgents exploited. Once again, political problems require political solutions.

All of this needs international economic, political and security support. The new group Friends of Democratic Pakistan provides a basis to offer that.

History has taught, however, that Afghanistan’s stability does not depend just on its eastern neighbour. The country has long been a chessboard upon which the geopolitical struggles of others have been played out. In the nineteenth century the ‘Great Game’ saw Russian and British agents jockey for influence in the border region between two of the world’s great empires. Years later this struggle for power was repeated, as the dying days of the Cold War were played out between the Red Army and the Mujahadeen.

The reality is that in each case it is the Afghan people who have suffered. The country’s neighbours need to realise that it is in their interests for Afghanistan to be a stable, neutral state – a friend to all, and a client of none. Secretary Clinton’s initiative at The Hague Conference was an important signal of intent, and needs to be followed up.

Priorities over the Next Six Months

We are at an important point in Afghanistan’s history and NATO’s work there. The elections on 20 August need to be both credible and inclusive. These will be the first Afghan-led elections since the 1970s. We are doing all we can to help ensure that the process is as fair as possible: deploying additional troops so people can vote safely, and through the EU and OSCE despatching over 100 election observers to foster confidence in the overall process.

Ultimately, though, what will determine whether these elections mark a turning point is whether the candidates not just present clear manifestos but whether those are then implemented. We talk often about burden sharing between members of our alliance. But the biggest shift must now be towards the Afghan state taking more responsibility. Because it is only if the political will is there that a meaningful package of incentives and sanctions can be developed to support reconciliation and reintegration. It is only with political will that genuine progress will be made in rooting out corrupt and incompetent Ministers at all levels of government; and that district by district, province by province, the Afghan Security Forces will take on responsibility for security. And it is only with political will that the Afghan Government will succeed in deepening their cooperation with the Pakistani Authorities.

In Pakistan too, the international community needs to forge a new relationship. It must be characterised by clear principles: a partnership that is sustained and long-term, not stop-start. A partnership focused on backing civilian institutions and democratic government, not particular individuals. A partnership that covers the breadth of Pakistan’s interests – jobs, education, agriculture, security – not just our focus on Al Qaida and the Taliban. This breadth must be reflected in the investment we provide in civilian aid; and in a partnership based on a two-way dialogue about each other’s concerns and interests, rather than a transactional relationship about how Pakistan can serve our interests. The first EU/Pakistan summit was an important step in this direction.

Conclusion

NATO was born in the shadow of the Cold War, but we have all had to change our thinking as our troops confront insurgents rather than military machines like our own. The mental models of 20th century mass warfare are not fit for 21st century counter-insurgency.

That is why my argument today has been about the centrality of politics. People like quoting Clausewitz that warfare is the continuation of politics by other means. But in Afghanistan we need politics to become the continuation of warfare by other means.

We will not force the Taliban to surrender just through force of arms and overwhelming might. Nor will we convert them to our point of view through force of argument and ideological conviction. But by challenging the insurgency, by dividing the different groups, by convincing the Afghans that we will not desert them to Taliban retribution, and by building legitimate governance especially at local level with the grain of Afghan society, the Afghan government, with our support, can prevail.

We in NATO have a long, hard military campaign ahead of us. We explain to our public recent advances, though we know recent sacrifices will not be the last, and we also explain the seriousness of the security situation. Our enemies should never doubt our determination to accomplish this mission, because we know the very high cost of failure. Just as our friends should know that they can truly count on us, because we know that our own security depends on it.

For that, we need politics to succeed in Afghanistan. Today I have explained how it can do so.

Published in The New Statesman

WASIM VIEW- David Miliband’s speech is full of self-congratulation and much ado about nothing. Miliband’s contention that NATO is an alliance of defence and not aggression seems dubious given their Afghanistan occupation is certainly not a defensive act but moreover one of aggressive intent as the countless Afghan dead have testified in blood since 2001.

Miliband’s definition of the Taliban and its variants is indicative of where NATO has failed and indeed his speech is a charge sheet of NATO’s failings under his own personal watch too when he says of the Taliban: ‘So there are the foot soldiers whom the Taliban pay $10 a day – more than a local policeman. There are poppy farmers who support the insurgents because they offer protection against eradication efforts. There are narco-traffickers who rely on them for safe passage of drugs. There are warlords and aspirant power-brokers who believe that the Taliban will win, and so position themselves for their own political advantage. And then – perhaps most crucially – there are the ordinary Afghans, who, despite dreading the Taliban’s return, doubt the capacity of the state to protect them, so hedge their bets. They may not give active support. But they acquiesce or turn a blind eye’

The truth is that the Taliban’s continuing drug trade operations prove that they can outpay and outwit the military powerhouse that is NATO, including the sole superpower that is America. David Miliband is right in pointing out the vulnerabilities of the insurgents as an ‘a wide but shallow coalition of convenience: an amalgam of groups with different motivations and power centres. So they are divided’ Yet he is oblivious that much of the same can be said of NATO too which has occupied Afghanistan since 2001 and failed miserably with NATO allies also divided happy only to meet and attend photo calls but not burden share.

The rest of David Miliband’s speech on political strategy is nothing new and includes the new mantra of ‘talking to the Taliban’. However one can only be sceptical given results on the ground say a different story not least in the form of a massive increase in British soldiers killed in action recently. Afghanistan is not getting cold rather its getting hotter, indeed the Taliban who have ruled the country in the main except for a token NATO presence in Kabul, Helmand and other places are not likely to yield any time soon to the Mayor of Kabul and his NATO friends.

David Miliband is right in pointing out the important role Pakistan has to play in stabilising Afghanistan. Miliband is only too right in reminding his NATO friends that the current love affair must extend to a genuine partnership with Pakistan and not be a repeat of the on and off sordid relationships of the past. David Miliband’s test and indeed NATO’s test will be if they can translate their words into actions on the ground, as Pakistanis we will assess him and NATO on how they meet their own yardstick as intimated in his speech of creating a ‘partnership that covers the breadth of Pakistan’s interests – jobs, education, agriculture, security – not just our focus on Al Qaida and the Taliban. This breadth must be reflected in the investment we provide in civilian aid; and in a partnership based on a two-way dialogue about each other’s concerns and interests, rather than a transactional relationship about how Pakistan can serve our interests’. To be or not to be a partner, indeed that is the question!

The final article leaves Afghanistan and focuses effort on Pakistan’s energy woes as this is an area close to my heart and an area of focus for Other Pakistan’s think tank. An article by Mustafa Qadri details the as is situation.

Pakistan’s Power Politics by Mustafa Qadri

Few things are as oppressive in Pakistan as the summer heat. In colonial times, the British would shift their garrison headquarters from Rawalpindi to the cool peaks of Murree, just north of present day Islamabad. Today, the elite are more likely to skip the country entirely or barricade themselves in the air-conditioned comfort of their cars and homes.

On the streets of Pakistan’s vibrant cities, the industrious whir of countless generators is as ubiquitous as the hawkers desperately trying to make ends meet.

With its ever-growing population, Pakistan has always struggled to match energy supplies with demand. Those difficulties have turned violent recently. In Karachi and throughout the Punjab last week angry mobs went on a rampage and assailed power companies in frustration at the long daily power cuts that have brought modern life to a standstill.

The Gilani Research Foundation estimates (pdf) that 53% of Pakistan’s population goes without electricity for more than eight hours a day. In fact, the blackouts are even longer in rural and poor urban areas which also lack other basic infrastructure like roads and waste water drainage. The situation has led to a series of annual hikes in energy costs. In the poorest slums of Karachi, for instance, people are forced to clandestinely tap into the electrical grids of rich communities because the retail price is too prohibitive. Power theft in Karachi and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas alone is believed to cost the state £138m in lost revenues.

The government has been under pressure to increase tariffs and reduce subsidies across a broad spectrum of industries including energy ever since agreeing to an IMF loan package last year in desperation as the nation’s foreign reserves dwindled. The move has caused much consternation among consumers and local businesses, not just the angry mobs.

The power cuts occur with greater frequency during the long hot summer months. Every time they occur, modern life and business grinds to a halt. This, along with poor employment prospects, and education and health services – and not the Taliban – is the greatest concern for the average Pakistani.

“We have inherited these problems [from the Musharraf regime]. There was no planning done, there was no [energy] policy for the past 3-4 years,” Asim Hussain, national adviser for petroleum and natural resources, tells me during a break in a London conference on Pakistan’s oil and gas industry.

Just as a gaping hole divides the supply and demand for electricity in Pakistan, the country is heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels: local energy production accounts for only 15% of all usage. Oil and gas make up 80% of all of Pakistan’s energy consumption and with 62,000km of pipelines; it has one of the largest networks in the world.

Authorities say they hope to raise national power generation by 4000 megawatts by 2010 but there are concerns the target is unlikely to be met as political intrigues continue to plague the government. Similar intrigues have scuppered attempts at exploiting alternative and renewable energy sources such as hydroelectricity. Among the stalled initiatives is the contentious Kalabagh dam project that proponents say will deliver greater irrigation for agriculture and quench a thirsty nation’s energy needs by tapping into the Indus river. The project is opposed by all of Pakistan’s provincial governments except the dominant Punjab. Critics cite multiple reasons for opposing the dam’s construction including environmental degradation, mass displacement of regional communities, and domination of the project by the Punjab.

The failure to find local energy sources has compelled government and business to look abroad with mixed success. Pakistan recently signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran, but it will be some years before the taps will be turned on. Another proposal is to import LPG across the Persian Gulf from Qatar, but such an ambitious venture requires substantial infrastructure still lacking in Pakistan.

With that and the unending energy crisis in mind, the Pakistan government has been wooing multinationals at a series of oil and gas exploration conferences in London, Houston and Calgary last week. With its Petroleum Policy 2009, the current government says it will reinvigorate Pakistan’s troubled energy sector primarily through foreign investment.

Pakistan is not just a gateway to mineral resource wealth in Central Asia and the Middle East; it is rich in minerals and fossil fuels. According to government sources, there are believed to be reserves of 27bn barrels of oil and 280trn cubic feet of gas. Yet most of that wealth remains locked away: only 3.4% of oil and 19% of gas resources have been tapped thus far. “Pakistan has significant remaining exploration potential,” explains a British geologist at the London conference. That has much to do with the country’s “complex geology”, and the fact that many of the most promising sites lie in the unstable regions of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province, home to separatists, militants and bandits.

Those obstacles haven’t dissuaded some of the largest oil and gas companies – such as British Petroleum and ENI – from investing in large exploration licenses. “With great risks come great rewards,” explains one eager executive from another multinational. “We have had years of experience in Iraq,” another eager entrepreneur from a private security company assures me. The stakes are indeed high. “There is no doubt that we are dependent on foreign companies to exploit Pakistan’s natural resources,” senior petroleum ministry bureaucrat GA Sabri. Eighteen out of 20 companies operating ventures in Pakistan are foreign-owned.

For years indigenous and regional communities have complained that their ancestral lands have been damaged by prospecting resource companies, or that they haven’t been given a stake in the riches under their feet. In a glossy pamphlet, the state-controlled Pakistan Petroleum Limited claims to be committed to developing these very same communities.

As the government and multinationals divide the spoils, however, the question remains whether the average citizen will get a seat at the table.

Published in The Guardian

WASIM VIEW- Mustafa Qadri’s article is a good one in that it reminds us all of the sorry state of the nation that is Pakistan. It is that ordinary Pakistanis suffer the daily indignity of loadshedding due to energy shortages and that the masses are unlikely to benefit from Pakistan’s rich natural resources.

My own published article in the field Exploiting Thar Coal that can be read here is a good starting point in the discussion. Furthermore Qadri does well to summarise the situation and bemoans how Pakistan has failed to utilise her own natural resources for the benefit of the many and not the few. The abject failure of successive governments to utilise Pakistan’s resources is in effect a war crime against the ordinary Pakistani given the nation is suffering enormously whilst the solution to our power problems lie under our feet be it Thar coal or gas reserves.

That said as a principled opponent of the PPP government, I must state that the present PPP government is moving well to address the situation however its words are yet to match its actions on the ground in ensuring Pakistan’s exploits its vast natural resources. The nation waits to come out of the dark and into the light and it is hoped this can be a reality soon for the toiling masses of Pakistan.

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