Ashraf Ghani’s New Plan to Win Afghanistan’s Long War Against the Taliban

Ashraf Ghani (Credit: inreuters.com)
Ashraf Ghani
(Credit: inreuters.com)

After his swearing-in in September 2014, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan approached Pakistan sensibly. He did not demand military operations against the Haqqani Network and other Taliban networks based in Pakistan because he knew Islamabad would never do that. Rather, he pleaded with Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Despite trying to smooth over relations with Pakistan after taking over the country from his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, Ghani’s stance was clear. He repeatedly said that Pakistan is in a “state of hostility with Afghanistan” and uses its proxies–chief among them, the Taliban–to exert pressure on Afghanistan for strategic gains.

This strategy of pursuing peace talks did not yield the desired result for Afghanistan. There were some occasional talks over the last two years, but the fighting has never quite gone away. The Taliban have once again vowed to launch a series of brutal attacks all over Afghanistan, invalidating and disregarding Ghani’s pleas for peace talks. A suicide attack and gun battle in Kabul in front of an National Directorate of Security (NDS) office claimed 64 lives and left 347 wounded on April 19, for example.

The Taliban has done this very thing throughout the past 13 years. They give glimpses of hope for peace in the winter months, since they cannot fight in the cold, only to take up arms again once their traditional fighting season begins.

Following the Kabul attack, Ghani summoned a joint session of the two houses of parliament. He addressed the nation and made bold announcements unlike any leader since Mohammad Najuibullah in the 1990s. Ghani said he no longer wants Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. He also added that the Taliban shed the blood of their own people and land for others’ interests. He added that the period of amnesty and soft behavior was over. Taliban who have been sentenced to death shall be executed soon, Ghani pledged. Despite these bold remarks, he said that Afghanistan’s door is open to those who lay down their weapons and put an end to militancy. His stance was applauded by many Afghans on social media. People of Helmand province  subsequently held a rally in support of the president’s remarks.

This is a major shift in Afghanistan’s outreach strategy to Pakistan and the Taliban. Karzai played at soft diplomacy with Pakistan throughout his presidency, in a bid to convince Islamabad to bring the Taliban to peace talks. He once publicly stated that he would side with Pakistan if there were to be a war between the United States and Pakistan; he even called the Taliban his “brothers.” But none of this rhetoric produced results.

Ghani’s statement at the joint session was not driven merely by emotion. He laid the ground for his strategy. Pakistan has always disowned the Taliban, but Ghani’s multilateral diplomacy essentially saw Pakistan confess that the Taliban are trained and sheltered in Pakistan. During his tour to the United States in March, Pakistan’s foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, admitted that Pakistan houses the Afghan Taliban.

On top of everything, Ghani is making advancements on diplomatic and military grounds with regional countries. His approach toward Central Asian countries is another example of his pragmatic diplomacy. Central Asian countries share the same fear of Islamist expansion in the region, as does Russia. Ghani’s national security adviser and top decision maker, Hanif Atmar, played a considerable role in furthering diplomatic missions with Russia, China, and India. Atmar traveled to India in November 2015 and China in April 2016. His visits with Russian officials and tour to China brought fruit militarily. China offered military aid to the Afghan National Army following Atmar’s visit to Beijing.

Moreover, after Russia allegedly approached the Taliban to help the group fight ISIS in Afghanistan, Atmar tried to convince Moscow that it was in its best interest to support Afghan forces instead of the Taliban–not only to fight ISIS, but all militant groups. Following his talks with Russian officials, Moscow gifted 10,000 automatic rifles to the Afghan Security Forces. Ten thousand automatic rifles might not mean a lot for a country’s military, but Moscow’s willingness for military cooperation speaks to the success of Ghani’s regional outreach.

The Taliban’s number one demand for a long time has been the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Afghanistan, but they continue their offensives, even after the U.S. military completely ended its combat mission in 2014. Thirteen years of appeasement and amnesty could not convince the Taliban to cut a peace deal. It is now sensible to stop investing Afghanistan’s resources in peace talks and start investing them in building up the country’s security forces. Finally, Afghanistan must put more diplomatic pressure on Pakistan and encourage the international community to do the same. This is now Ashraf Ghani’s plan.

Samim Arif is an Afghan Fulbright scholar. He studies Political Journalism and Public Relations at Indiana University.

 

Feeling GOP Peril, Muslims Try to Get out the Vote

'Bird of peace' visits Bernie rally (Credit: nydailynews.com)
‘Bird of peace’ visits Bernie rally
(Credit: nydailynews.com)

WASHINGTON, March 25  — American Muslims are watching in growing horror as Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz battle for the Republican presidential nomination, outdoing each other with provocative proposals that have included Muslim registries, immigration bans and fleets of police patrolling their neighborhoods.

With round tables, summit meetings and news releases falling on deaf ears, national advocacy groups are planning to fend off policies they consider hostile to Muslims with a more proactive strategy: driving up the Muslim vote.

Organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, the Islamic Circle of North America and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations are encouraging mosques to turn themselves into voter registration centers before the November election so that Muslims can make their voices heard at the polls. Registration drives are expected to ramp up significantly in June, during Ramadan, when attendance at Islamic centers peaks.

“The fear and apprehension in the American Muslim community has never been at this level,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR. “The anti-Islamic tidal wave is spurring civic participation.”

Muslims tended to lean Republican as recently as 2000, but a backlash after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, along with the Middle East policies of the George W. Bush administration, has led to a gradual shift toward the Democrats. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 70 percent of American Muslims identify with the Democratic Party, while just 11 percent consider themselves to be Republicans.

Although Muslims make up only about 1 percent of the population in the United States, civil rights groups have set a goal of registering a million new voters. Efforts will be focused on swing states such as Ohio and Florida that have large Muslim populations, potentially giving the small but united voting bloc the power to tilt close elections.

“The best answer to this anti-Muslim rhetoric is engagement in the political process,” said Naeem Baig, the president of the Islamic Circle of North America. “It is a matter of survival for the American Muslim community.”

Like many Muslims, Mr. Baig said that the vitriol directed at Americans who practice Islam is the worst that he can remember. Violence against Muslims and attacks on mosques increased last year, and Muslim parents say their children are being bullied at school. Even the voter registration push has drawn criticism in some circles, with websites such as Creeping Sharia lamenting greater Muslim engagement in American politics and suggesting that “the problem with CAIR’s initiative is that no one who follows the Quran can honestly claim to follow the Constitution.”

The tenor of the presidential campaign is being blamed for fanning such flames, with much of the responsibility for this being placed on Mr. Trump.

This month, Mr. Trump suggested in an interview that “Islam hates us,” and he angered many Muslims last year with his idea of a moratorium on Muslim immigrants. He has also waxed nostalgic about a myth of an American general who executed Muslims with bullets dipped in pig blood, citing it as an example of old-fashioned toughness.

Mr. Cruz, a Republican from Texas, has also been accused of stirring anti-Muslim sentiment. Last week he appointed Frank Gaffney, who is known for his conspiracy theories about the spread of Shariah law in the West, to his foreign policy team. And after the terrorist attacks by the Islamic State in Brussels this week, Mr. Cruz went further than Mr. Trump has gone by calling on the authorities to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.”

Such language is not going unnoticed by American Muslims, and leaders at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia have been holding voter education workshops. “We’re seeing an energy that is largely motivated by anti-Trump sentiment,” said Colin Christopher, the deputy director of government affairs at Dar Al-Hijrah. “The advantage of this is our community is going to put more resources to putting young leaders into the process.”

It is too soon to assess whether such voter registration efforts are succeeding, but CAIR says it is seeing a lot of energy behind the movement. Its polls have shown that about three-fourths of Muslims who are registered to vote planned to do so during the primary election season, and two-thirds of them expected to vote for Democrats.

Ghazala Salam, the president of the American Muslim Democratic Caucus of Florida, estimated that voter registration of Muslims in her state was up by almost 20 percent from a year ago and said that she saw a lot of Republicans changing party affiliations. She said that Muslim activists were setting up registration tables at luncheons and festivals and that anxiety about the election was spurring more people to sign up. “The community is very anxious and afraid about our security with all the rhetoric that we hear,” Ms. Salam said.

In cases where potential voters are reluctant to register, Reema Ahmad, a community organizer in Chicago, reminds them what is at stake this year. She regularly stands outside mosques to recruit new voters and sometimes will wonder aloud as prayer goers whisk by if they really want Mr. Trump to be president. It tends to stop them in their tracks.

“It’s one of the main tactics I employ,” Ms. Ahmad says, noting the importance of this election for Muslims. “If you’re not at the dinner table, you’re on the menu.”

Trump’s Rally in Chicago Canceled After Violent Scuffles

Trump's Chicago rally (Credit: reuters.com)
Trump’s Chicago rally
(Credit: reuters.com)

CHICAGO, March 11— With thousands of people already packed into stands and music blaring to warm up the crowd, Donald J. Trump’s campaign abruptly canceled his rally here on Friday night over security concerns as protesters clashed with his supporters inside an arena where he was to speak.

Minutes after Mr. Trump was to have taken to a podium on the campus of a large, diverse public university just west of downtown, an announcer suddenly pronounced the event over before it had begun. Hundreds of protesters, who had promised to be a visible presence here and filled several sections of the arena, let out an elated, unstopping cheer. Mr. Trump’s supporters, many of whom had waited hours to see the Republican front-runner, seemed stunned and slowly filed out in anger.

Around the country, protesters have interrupted virtually every Trump rally, but his planned appearance here — in a city run for decades by Democrats and populated by nearly equal thirds of blacks, Latinos and whites — had drawn some particularly incensed responses since it was announced days ago.

The canceled rally came on a day that Mr. Trump sought to move past the primary fight, saying that the party needed to come together behind him.

Elsewhere, Mr. Trump’s security has tried to identify and exclude potential demonstrators before they enter his events, but large groups of protesters had waited in line for seats here, and engaged in tense disputes with Trump supporters even as the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion was still filling up. For more than an hour before the event was to begin, security teams led protesters out, one by one, but many more remained, sparring with Trump supporters.

In a statement, Mr. Trump’s campaign said that he “has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date.”

 

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spar in fierce debate in Flint

 

Democratic debate between Sanders & Clinton (Credit: nytimes.com)
Democratic debate between Sanders & Clinton
(Credit: nytimes.com)

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders held a fierce and substantive debate in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night, disagreeing over trade, guns and the auto industry bailout while joining forces to call for the resignation of state governor Rick Snyder over the city’s water contamination crisis.

Shortly after they took the stage, the Associated Press announced that Sanders had won the Democratic caucuses in Maine, his eighth victory in the 2016 presidential primary race. In a statement, the leftwing Vermont senator thanked Maine’s voters and claimed momentum heading into Tuesday’s primaries in Michigan and Mississippi.

Onstage he and the former secretary of state had one of their sharpest exchanges yet when they were asked by a member of the audience about trade and job creation, an issue Sanders had been attacking Clinton over in the lead-up to the debate.

“Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of the disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America,” Sanders said.

“He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry,” Clinton replied. “I think that is a pretty big difference.”

“If you are talking about the Wall Street bailout, where some of your friends destroyed this economy … ” Sanders began.

“You know…” Clinton interjected, before Sanders cut her off: “Excuse me, I’m talking,” he said, dismissing her with his hand.

Bernie Sanders scolds Hillary Clinton for interrupting him during a particularly heated exchange on trade and government bailouts

Sanders repeatedly attacked Clinton’s past support for international trade agreements, an issue he is attempting to use against her in Michigan in order to win blue-collar votes in the rust-belt industrial state.

“I am very glad … Secretary Clinton has discovered religion on this issue,” Sanders said, referring to her position on trade. “We’ve lost 60,000 factories since 2001, they’re going to start having to – if I’m president – invest in this country, not in China, not in Mexico.”

The candidates began the debate by addressing the city’s toxic water crisis. Sanders recalled his meetings with residents: “I have to tell you what I heard, and what I saw literally shattered me. And it was beyond belief that children in Flint, Michigan, in the United States of America in the year 2016 are being poisoned.”

Clinton, who spotlighted the issue in an earlier debate, reminded the CNN audience that she had pushed the Democratic National Committee to host a debate in Flint.

“It is raining lead in Flint, and the state is derelict in not coming forward with the money that is required,” Clinton said, joining Sanders for the first time in calling for the governor to “resign or be recalled”.

Sanders and Clinton have both been campaigning hard in Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday.

Sanders has work to do if he hopes to win the state; Clinton is leading him by a double digit margin, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Just before the debate, Sanders earned the endorsement of former Michigan Senator Don Riegle, a native of Flint. During an impromptu press conference, Riegle said the Clintons’ support for the Nafta trade agreement “destroyed the Flint I loved”.

Clinton and Sanders also tussled over whether gun manufacturers should be legal liable when their weapons are used in crimes.

Clinton said that giving immunity to gun makers and sellers “was a terrible mistake” and noted that she and Sanders were on opposing sides of the debate.

Sanders has said his support for the 2005 law was in part an effort to protect small gun shops in his home state of Vermont. He told the audience in Flint that Clinton’s approach could amount to “ending gun manufacturing in America”.

Clinton referred in emotional terms to the Sandy Hook massacre and told Sanders: “You talk about corporate greed. The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can.”

At turns during the debate, Sanders sharply cut Clinton off or seemed to reprimand her for interrupting. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communication director, called his tone and behaviour “desperate and disrespectful” and said it was a sign of his campaign’s mounting frustration at the current dynamic of the primary race.

“It was quite mild compared to Republicans, and I also think it was really substantive. It’s not even in the same universe as the Republican debate, but he does seem to be frustrated and that was apparent,” she told the Guardian after the debate.

When asked if the senator’s tone was too harsh, Jeff Weaver, his campaign manager, said it was not, and said he hoped the analysis of the debate remained on the issues.

“He made a lot of forceful points tonight, there were a lot of forceful points to make, frankly on issues like trade and the economy, and he made those points and [laid] out the differences between them,” Weaver said in the spin room after the debate.

Weaver dismissed Sanders’s heavy losses on Super Tuesday and said the campaign was making progress among African American voters, seen as crucial to winning the Democratic nomination.

“It’s not about margins, it’s about making progress,” Weaver said. “There’s a long campaign to go. We are making substantial progress … At this point, in many ways, what we’re confronting is not by race but by age.”

Weaver called Clinton a “regional candidate” despite the fact that she has claimed three states outside of the South, including a narrow victory in Massachusetts, where Sanders had hoped to win.

There were also moments of levity during the debate. “We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot into mental health, and if you watch these Republican debates, you’re going to know why,” Sanders said.

“He’s called you a communist,” host Anderson Cooper told Sanders of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

“That’s one of the nice things he’s called me,” Sanders replied.

Clinton said she had won more votes than Trump in the primaries so far, and predicted that his “bigotry, his bullying, his bluster are not going to wear well on the American people”.

Sanders declared: “I would love to run against Donald Trump,” adding that polls showed “Sanders v Trump does a lot better than Clinton v Trump”.

Perhaps the most powerful moment came when Sanders was asked about his Judaism, which he has been accused of downplaying on the campaign trail.

“I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of who I am,” Sanders said.

“Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camp.”

He concluded: “I’m very proud of being Jewish and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being.”

Actor Mark Ruffalo briefly joined reporters in the spin room to discuss Sanders’ performance.

“The message that Bernie is giving us is one of imagination,” said Ruffalo, who has campaigned on the senator’s behalf. “It’s one of great ideas and one that takes America to its greatest potential … and early on that message really captured the minds and the hearts of feeling people.”

Former CIA director: Military may refuse to follow Trump’s orders if he becomes president

Gen. Michael Hayden (Credit: nydailynews.com)
Gen. Michael Hayden
(Credit: nydailynews.com)

Former CIA director Michael Hayden believes there is a legitimate possibility that the U.S. military would refuse to follow orders given by Donald Trump if the Republican front-runner becomes president and decides to make good on certain campaign pledges.

Hayden, who also headed the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005, made the provocative statement on Friday during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Trump, fresh off a string of primary victories, has yet to secure his party’s nomination, but Hayden said the candidate’s rhetoric already raises troubling questions.

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Hayden said during the interview with Maher.

Earlier this month, Trump told a South Carolina retirement community that he supports waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques because “torture works” when it comes to extracting vital information from terrorists.

Deeming waterboarding “torture,” President Obama’s administration discontinued its use during his first term in office. Proponents of the controversial practice, as The Washington Posts Jenna Johnson noted, avoid labeling it as torture, which would violate various international laws and treaties. Trump, meanwhile, has not only pledged to reinstate waterboarding, but also introduce other methods of interrogation that are “so much worse” and “much stronger.”

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump told the Sun City retirement community. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”

Trump has also said on multiple occasions that the United States should kill the family members of terrorists.

“That will make people think. Because they do not care very much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their family’s lives,” Trump said during a debate of Republican presidential candidates in December.

Politifact has pointed out that targeting terrorists’ family members is barred by the Geneva Conventions.

During his appearance on “Real Time,” Hayden cited Trump’s pledge to kill family members as being among his most troubling campaign statements.

“That never even occurred to you, right?” Maher asked.

“God, no!” Hayden replied. “Let me give you a punchline: If he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act.”

“That’s quite a statement, sir,” Maher said.

“You are required not to follow an unlawful order,” Hayden added. “That would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict.”

“You’ve given us a great reason not to support Trump. There would be a coup in this country,” Maher joked.

Hayden said he didn’t mean to imply that the military would provoke “a coup.”

“I think it’s a coup that you said it,” Maher added.

Facing the Taliban and His Past, an Afghan Leader Aims for a Different Ending

Facing Taliban (Credit: cyrusreporter.com)
Facing Taliban
(Credit: cyrusreporter.com)

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — When mujahedeen guerrillas captured this southern provincial capital in 1993, Gen. Abdul Jabar Qahraman was the Afghan government commander on the last flight out, surrendering the city.

In a resonant twist more than two decades later, Mr. Qahraman is again the face of the Afghan government here as an insurgency threatens to overrun his post.

This time, it is the Taliban at the city gates. The insurgents are firmly entrenched in a suburb of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, and separated from the seat of government by only the calm waters of the Helmand River. They control or contest at least 10 of the 14 districts in Helmand Province, Afghanistan’s largest in both size and opium production.

Mr. Qahraman came to Helmand last month as President Ashraf Ghani’s representative, taking charge of efforts to hold the province against the Taliban. But insisting that military measures alone are not the government’s best chance, the former general has also been trying to engage Taliban commanders in negotiations.

“Back then, too, I believed that the solution to the problem of this nation is not in fighting, and I believe that today,” Mr. Qahraman said in an interview last week at his command center here, in between aides’ frequently handing him the phone with military commanders, local officials and elders on the line. “Artillery, tanks and warplanes are failed instruments and should only be used very rarely, only when you think you will be destroyed.”

“Our first attempt is to slow the fighting, to quiet the fighting,” he added.

In some places, however, that has looked like retreat.

The army recently abandoned its last bases in the districts of Musa Qala and Now Zad, pulling out as many as 1,500 soldiers in an apparent move to strengthen a security belt around Lashkar Gah. American Special Operations forces have been drawn into the fight, recently moving to help clear roads to the provincial capital and getting involved in planning its defense.

Mr. Qahraman, 58, has been here before. His command was the last bastion of the Russian-backed Communist government in southern Afghanistan, and he became personally identified with its collapse here in 1993, when he withdrew his forces and turned Lashkar Gah over to the C.I.A.-backed mujahedeen. He went into exile in Moscow for a decade afterward.

He returned to Afghanistan after the United States invasion in 2001 and the fall of the Taliban, and became a member of Parliament. His views on how to engage the resurgent Taliban are a sympathetic fit with those of Mr. Ghani, who has tried to open talks with the insurgency’s leaders in an effort to reach a political end to the long war.

But in the immediate crisis, tribal elders here see his efforts as impractical and hopeless — the desperate acts of a nostalgic commander. The Taliban, instead of responding to his peace calls, have challenged him to a “face-to-face” fight, and they do not like the government’s chances.

“I think Mr. Qahraman is in daydreaming mode,” said Hajji Mohammad Tahir, an elder from Sangin District who recently attended discussions with Mr. Qahraman. “Right now, the Taliban have the upper hand, the government is beneath. Once you bring them down militarily, then it would be possible for local Taliban to put their weapons down and join the peace process — not now.”

Mullah Abdul Rahman Ehsan, a Taliban commander in Sangin, said Mr. Qahraman had clearly returned to Helmand to make up for past humiliations.

“Let’s fight first, and forget about peace and laying weapons down,” Mullah Ehsan said. “First we need to fight, then work on the peace process.”

Others even saw cynical motives in the recent events in Helmand, particularly after the surrender of the army bases. After a disastrous year militarily, the government might be striking deals with the Taliban in the districts to keep them away from the city, just as the Communist government did in its final days in southern Afghanistan.

The suspicion is furthered by the fact that the man in charge of Helmand operations is talking peace, and that the minister at the helm of national defense, Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, was until last year effectively in charge of the national peace process.

“The question that is going through my head, after they just retreated from Musa Qala, is what if they are saying we won’t resist in the districts and you don’t attack the city?” said Abdul Majid Akhundzada, the deputy head of Helmand’s provincial council, whose father was a leading rebel commander against Mr. Qahraman in the 1980s. “If that is not the case, why are they leaving without a fight?”

Mr. Qahraman, who said the recent retreats were necessary and not part of any deal, admitted to facing an uphill task.

In Helmand, the government has lost to the Taliban not just most of its districts, but also, over the course of the past few years, much of its public support and any semblance of corruption fighting. The allure of opium profits has ensnared Taliban and government officials alike.

Deep in the deserts that are supposedly Taliban territory, officials and local elders report nighttime drug raids by security forces. Bodies are left behind, but lucrative bags of opium end up disappearing.

“If you send me out in the whole of Helmand right now and say, ‘Jabar, find me a couple good district governors, a few good district police chiefs, a few good directors,’ I can’t find you one in the whole of Helmand. I absolutely can’t,” Mr. Qahraman said. “Even if you appoint these men closest to me, they will turn into wolves — the mentality has turned like that. The bad has become good in the perceptions.”

After a few disastrous months of fighting in Helmand, with the government territory shrinking, a delegation of senior officials recently dispatched by Mr. Ghani found that only about half of the Afghan Army force there on paper was actually on duty. Many troops were missing because of desertion, casualties or corruption, one member of the delegation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate information.

While acknowledging such problems, Mr. Qahraman said there should be enough forces in Helmand to fight an insurgency that he believes does not number more than 2,000 fighters. The Afghan forces are well supplied, he insisted, calling the modern army’s NATO support “a genetically modified cow that gives good milk” compared with the Soviet support a generation ago, which he called “a skinny cow.”

The problems lie in how the forces are managed, he said, and in corrupt leadership eating up supplies before they reach the units.

“Their only art is that they are mobile,” Mr. Qahraman said about the Taliban. “For us, on the other hand, even preparing the convoys takes days. They have an upper hand — they are locals, they know the terrain, and their load is smaller.”

Still, Mr. Qahraman said he hoped to make a difference in Helmand. He recited a Pashto poem:

“If you keep swimming after it, it will come to your hand / Who says there are no pearls in the sea?”

But Hajji Sharafuddin, 53, a mujahedeen fighter who battled Mr. Qahraman in the 1980s, fears that the former general’s history in Lashkar Gah will continue to repeat itself.

“Tomorrow, you will have another plane come for you,” Hajji Sharafuddin said, “and we will be left here watching.”

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan

Powers meeting on Afghanistan see Taliban talks by March

Peace talks on Afghanistan (Credit: abcnews.go.com)
Peace talks on Afghanistan
(Credit: abcnews.go.com)
KABUL, Feb 23: Afghan government and Taliban representatives are expected to meet in Islamabad by the first week of March for their first direct talks since a previous round of the peace process broke down last year, officials said on Tuesday.

Following a meeting in Kabul, the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), made up of officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China, “expressed strong support for the upcoming direct talks between the Government of Afghanistan and authorized representatives of the Taliban and other groups.”

In a joint statement released by the Afghan foreign ministry, they said the first round of direct peace talks is expected to take place by the first week of March in the Pakistani capital.

On Monday, the powerful chief of the Pakistan army, Gen. Raheel Sharif met officials from Qatar, where the Taliban maintains a political office, to prepare the way for Tuesday’s meeting, the fourth in a series of quadrilateral encounters aimed at laying the ground for full peace talks.

However the Taliban has been riven by factional infighting since last year’s announcement of the death of the movement’s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar some two years earlier. The Taliban has not yet clearly indicated whether it will take part in any talks with the Western-backed government in Kabul.

New leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has laid down preconditions for taking part in any talks, including the withdrawal of all foreign forces, while a breakaway faction that opposes him has rejected any negotiations.
But officials in Kabul have expressed hopes that at least some parts of the movement and other insurgent groups affiliated with it can be persuaded to join.

“I think there’s a lot of Taliban that want to come,” the outgoing commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Campbell said earlier this month. “That’s what’s going to be hard, to get all the right people to the table.”

Tuesday’s four-way talks in Kabul came against a backdrop of continuing violence and increasing military pressure from the Taliban, which has stepped up its insurgency since the withdrawal of most international troops from combat in 2014.

Over the weekend, Afghan officials confirmed that troops had pulled out of two key districts in Helmand, leaving the entire northern half of the volatile province in the hands of the insurgents.

Insurgents have also kept up their suicide bombing campaign, with 14 people killed in an attack on a clinic in Parwan province north of Kabul on Monday.

Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Perry and Katharine Houreld

You Say You Want a Revolution

Bernie wins New Hampshire (Credit: usnews.com)
Bernie wins New Hampshire
(Credit: usnews.com)

If there’s one thing that fires up Bernie Sanders supporters—and makes his detractors roll their eyes—it’s his call for a “political revolution.” To his base, it’s the very point of his anti-establishment, anti-elite candidacy. To his critics, it’s the very embodiment of his campaign’s naïve impracticality and vagueness.

But now that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have spoken, it’s time to take the idea of political revolution more seriously—more seriously, indeed, when Sanders himself appears to have. It’s time to ask: What exactly would it take?

It starts with Congress. And here it’s instructive to compare Sanders and Donald Trump. Both rely on broad, satisfying refrains of “We’re gonna”: We’re gonna break up the big banks. We’re gonna make Mexico build the wall. We’re gonna end the rule of Wall Street billionaires. We’re gonna make China stop ripping us off.

The difference is, Trump’s refrains are more plausible. That’s because today’s Congress is already willing to enact many of his proposals, whether repeal of Obamacare or severe restrictions on immigration. And if Trump became president, the 115th Congress would very likely be more conservative than the 114th.

For Sanders to deliver on his “We’re gonna” pledges, he needs an entirely different Congress. How to get it? Thus far, Sanders has laid out a theory of action that is basically, “If I come, they will build it.” That is, if he electrifies enough voters to win, then presumably those voters will have upended Congress as well. He’s banking on an electoral flood tide à la 1980, 1964, or 1932.

That’s possible, but it’s not a plan. If he’s serious about political revolution, the first priority for Sanders now should be to cultivate a crop of Democratic candidates who can oust Republican incumbents. House Democrats, at their lowest numbers since 1947, need 30 seats to regain a majority. If Sanders launched a “Bernie’s 30” effort, to persuade his formidable base of small donors to give money and time to a slate of candidates who can win a targeted set of seats now held by the GOP, that would help effect the actual institutional change his presidency would depend on.

A second step for a true revolution would be a common policy agenda for all these candidates. Here he could take a page from Newt Gingrich’s playbook and issue a progressive Contract With America that prioritizes 10 easy-to-digest legislative goals (Wall Street reform, campaign reform, single-payer health care, and so forth). Historians and commentators differ on how much the Contract truly caused the tectonic 1994 GOP takeover. But it did nationalize, and standardize, congressional campaigns in a way that Sanders would need to do.

Third, Sanders should also take a page from the Obama 2008 playbook. That campaign organized young people more systematically than any presidential campaign in history. Across the country, it held “Camp Obama” trainings, in which young people taught each other Marshall Ganz’s story-centered methods of community organizing. Sanders has the young people; now he needs the machinery to amplify their force.

Fourth, Sanders would have to learn from Obama 2008 how to catalyze culture makers. Every presidential campaign knows enough now to enlist celebrity musicians or artists. But Sanders could invite artists from all around the country, famous or not, to create work that spreads the message of his campaign. Culture shapes norms: about inequality,  racism, violence. And culture that isn’t made by the campaign but by the people packs a punch.

Fifth, Sanders would have to link up to other organic movements that are arising in parallel with his own campaign. The Democracy Awakening coalition, led by the NAACP and Public Citizen with dozens of other progressive organizations, for example, is planning a national rally in Washington for this spring. But Sanders should look beyond obviously progressive movements. If he wants a revolution, he needs also to invite in the segment of Trump supporters who aren’t racist xenophobes but who simply feel left behind by a changing country. That would be revolutionary.

Sixth, the Sanders campaign should study the Tea Party closely and learn from it. It’s too easy for progressives to dismiss the Tea Party as a creation of the Koch brothers. The more complex and instructive reality is that, especially early on, there were many thousands of Americans self-organizing on conference calls and Facebook and in person. What was their leadership structure? How did they communicate? What lessons do their grassroots leaders have about dealing with the party establishment?

Seventh, Sanders should be building a web of city leaders—elected and not—who will push policies in sync with his national agenda. Cities are increasingly the locus of civic innovation, whether on the sharing economy or living wages or criminal-justice reform. A true political revolution would activate citizens in every city of scale to provide the foundation from which federal reforms could arise.

Of course, Hillary Clinton could adopt some of these strategies, too. But her disadvantage is that she does not have many young voters. More crucially, she does not seek transformational change. The only other candidate who wants such change, Trump, sees his voters as an audience, as customers, as fans. Not so much as citizens. He loves them the way Il Duce loved his people. He wants to exercise power in their name, not to empower them to shape their own futures.

Which brings me back to the Sanders opportunity—and what I think of as an American opportunity. I supported Obama in 2008, and I’ve supported Clinton this time. But I am genuinely excited about the energy Sanders has activated, and I believe it’s good for the country if that energy gets converted to productive civic action.

So the message now to Bernie Sanders from Americans of every stripe should be this: You say you want a revolution? Help us make one.

Jeb Bush Had To Ask Voters In New Hampshire To ‘Please Clap’ For Him

Jeb in NH (Credit: pinknews.com)
Jeb in NH
(Credit: pinknews.com)

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who is trying to save his failing campaign in New Hampshire after finishing sixth in the Iowa caucuses, had to beg an audience in New Hampshire to clap for him.

“I will be a commander in chief that will have the back of the military, I won’t trash talk, I won’t be a divider-in-chief or an agitator-in-chief. I won’t be out there blowharding talking a big game without backing it up,” Bush said at a town hall in New Hampshire on Tuesday. “I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we’re prepared to act in the national security interests of this country to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world.”

When Bush’s comments were met with silence, he asked the audience to “please clap,” which they did.

According to HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates publicly available polling data, Bush trails Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) in New Hampshire.

Why do the Iowa caucuses matter?

Iowa-caucus (Credit: beliefnet.com)
Iowa-caucus
(Credit: beliefnet.com)

The Democratic and Republican Iowa Caucuses, the first step in nominating a candidate, will take place on February 1. Iowans defend the caucus as an exercise in real grassroots democracy, given the extent of politicking and discussion that goes on.

On February 1, the first voting contest in the presidential nominating process kicks into gear in the US state of Iowa. Because it is the first state to do so, candidates invest heavily there, whether by holding debates or canvassing.

Iowans vote in caucuses, which are small political meetings held throughout 1,681 locations scattered around the state. They are similar to primaries in that residents cast ballots for their preferred party candidate, and whoever garners the most votes wins. But people do not just show up and vote – the process is essentially a meeting of friends and neighbours in high school gyms and church basements, where discussions about candidates are held.

Representatives for the candidates are present and, at one point, attempt to persuade undecided voters. This is what makes caucuses different from primaries. The Iowa caucuses, which have represented the nation’s first ballot-marking since the 1970s, is also different for Democrats and Republicans.

The caucuses: Republican vs Democrat

In the US, elections take place like this: Citizens elect delegates, delegates elect nominees, and nominees become presidents.

On the Republican side, the caucuses are straightforward: Voters turn up, listen to speeches, and then cast their vote by a secret ballot. Votes are tallied statewide. A winner is subsequently declared.

On the Democratic side, the process is more convoluted and time-consuming. The number of people in the room are counted, and any candidate who does not get a certain percentage (a threshold set at the beginning of the night) in the first round, is eliminated.

Those who voted for losing candidates are then coaxed by the others to join their side and to vote for their candidate of choice. At the end, the results are collated across the state in all precincts.

Despite the hoopla surrounding the Iowa caucuses, the real impact of this process happens further down the line, when results are eventually translated into votes for delegates, who represent their states at their respective party conventions. These delegates are the ones who vote for a candidate to run in the national election.

Why are the Iowa caucuses significant? 

Iowans defend the caucus as an exercise in real grassroots democracy, given the extent of politicking and discussion that goes on. However, some argue that the lengthy and complex caucus is archaic and should be changed.

One of the problems with placing so much weight on Iowa is that it is not demographically representative of the US, with a population that is approximately 90 percent white versus 77 percent nationwide.

“The importance of Iowa is enshrined in tradition. It’s not practical,” said Jason Johnson, a professor of political science and communication at Hiram College in Ohio.

“Other states are more demographically and economically diverse and are a better indicator of how you would do nationally. It’s just that we have been doing it for so long that no one wants to advocate its change,” Johnson, who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats as a campaign manager, told Al Jazeera.

If this state is small and unrepresentative, why does it have such an impact on the race? In a nutshell, it is because it is the first contest for people to get their party nomination. If a candidate does not do well in those early states, like Iowa and New Hampshire, financial and electoral support eventually begins to dry up. This gives Iowa the power to narrow down the playing field.

“Because it is the first, a large number of voters within the two parties and a large number of the press and party elites in [Washington] DC choose to make it an important contest,” Johnson said.

“Your success in Iowa is perceived to be an indicator for your ability to organise, to get people on the ground and to have voters enthusiastically support you.”

What do the Iowa caucuses achieve?

Because of the sequential system, the results of the ‘first-in-the-nation’ caucuses can affect how people in the next state vote (it helps them adjust their expectations accordingly), give winning candidates more airtime and media attention, and impact the behaviour of donors. More importantly, it narrows down the number of candidates to a manageable size.

“Its most important facet is that it winnows the field,” said Lara Brown, the author of Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants. “It typically brings out two to three candidates who have the media momentum and organisational campaign to go forward.”

The winnowing effect of the Iowa caucuses helps predict the losing nominee. That is because it separates the “starters from the non-starters,” according to Bill Schneider, a political analyst who has covered every US presidential and midterm election since 1976.

“You will see candidates dropping out after Iowa,” Schneider told Al Jazeera. “People who vote in the Republican caucuses tend to be evangelical. They are not representative of the larger party. On the Democratic side, they tend to be very liberal, because it’s people who have the commitment to attend what’s essentially a meeting.”

Since 1972, no Democratic or Republican candidate who finished worse than fourth place in Iowa has gone on to win their party’s nomination, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Most often, it is those hopefuls who get a top tier spot who continue to do well in their campaigns. Those who do not usually drop out of the race soon thereafter, although there are a few exceptions. A case in point is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who, in 2008, won the Republican caucus, but dropped out just three months later, without securing the GOP nomination.

What does this mean for this year’s race?

Essentially, pundits, strategists, candidates and people will be using the Iowa caucuses’ results as a litmus test to see how the nation responds to candidates and to set the stage and build momentum for the first primary held in New Hampshire about a week later. It is also a chance for voters and the media to see if the results measure up to their expectations.

In the Democratic contest, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was leading in polls until Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders caught up with her. In Iowa, he recently topped Clinton at 49 percent to 45 percent, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll, essentially locking both candidates in a tight battle.

While Sanders has positioned himself to seriously compete in this race, Iowa may be a tough win for him, according to some observers.

“Hillary Clinton has long focused on Iowa as essentially a shortcoming of her previous campaign, and I’d be surprised if she doesn’t win there,” Brown told Al Jazeera. “Bernie Sanders has to bring a lot of first-time caucus-goers who may not be as active and knowledgeable as Clinton’s supporters.”

On the GOP side, all eyes will be on billionaire Donald Trump, and whether people will actually go out and vote for him. The celebrity tycoon is leading in Iowa with about 31 percent, compared with 29 percent for Senator Ted Cruz, according to the same Quinnipiac University poll.

“As Trump gains momentum, there will be a lot of caucusers who think he’s going to be the nominee so they say ‘let me get on board’,” said Joe Watkins, a Republican strategist. “They see who’s going to win and they want in. That’s how it works.”

Trump, who won the endorsement of former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, recently exuded confidence at an Iowa rally when he said he “could shoot somebody” on New York’s Fifth Avenue and “wouldn’t lose any voters”.

“With Palin’s endorsement, he’s digging into Ted Cruz’s base, which is the evangelical Christian base,” Watkins, who was a White House aide to former President George Bush senior, told Al Jazeera.

In New Hampshire, Trump has a much larger lead over the other Republican presidential hopefuls there, so if he wins in Iowa, he can bring both contests to South Carolina, which then puts him in a comfortable position on Super Tuesday, a day on which several US states hold primaries.

Schneider explained that there are two ways things can go for Trump: His supporters, many of whom have never voted in a caucus before, may not show up, especially since he has not invested as much time and energy on the ground there.

“A caucus is a meeting. It takes a lot more energy to attend a meeting,” Schneider said. “You need something to pull people out of their beds, find babysitters for their kids, to get them to that meeting. Without that sort of operation, his people won’t show up.”

On the other hand, it is possible that Trump’s supporters will show up without any organisation. “His people are so fired up, they want their voice to be heard. So it could happen. It happened to [Barack] Obama in 2008.”

What happens after the caucuses?

“Just because a candidate wins Iowa doesn’t mean he wins the general election,” Republican strategist Watkins said. “It’s all very fluid and not automatic.”

“It’s possible Trump can win Iowa and even the Republican nomination, but winning the general election is something else; he’d have to win constituents who aren’t Republican, or he has to walk back many of his comments that alienated others.”

The results of Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s primaries also tend to go hand in hand. “Iowa and New Hampshire are different kinds of tests, but they go together: Iowa is a very restricted electorate. New Hampshire is more open because they allow independents,” Schneider said. “If you fail both these tests, then it’s time to leave.”