Posts Tagged ‘American’
90000 afghan war documents leaked
WASHINGTON – Some 90,000 leaked U.S. military records posted online Sunday amount to a blow-by-blow account of six years of the Afghanistan war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures.
The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks posted the documents on its website Sunday. The New York Times, London’s Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were given early access to the documents.
The White House condemned the document disclosure, saying it “put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk.”
The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what U.S. officials considered high-value insurgent and terrorist targets. Some of the raids resulted in unintended killings of Afghan civilians, according to the documentation.
Among those listed as being killed by the secretive unit was Shah Agha, described by the Guardian as an intelligence officer for an IED cell, who was killed with four other men in June 2009. Another was a Libyan fighter, Abu Laith al-Libi, described in the documents as a senior al-Qaida military commander. Al-Libi was said to be based across the border in Mir Ali, Pakistan, and was running al-Qaida training camps in North Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border where U.S. officials have said numerous senior al-Qaida leaders were believed to be hiding.
The operation against al-Libi, in June 2007, resulted in a death tally that one U.S. military document said include six enemy fighters and seven noncombatants – all children.
The Guardian reported that more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are on a “kill or capture” list, known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List. It was from this list that Task Force 373 selected its targets.
Walking, not running: New START and the Nuclear Posture Review
By: Andrew Somerville
The achievements of the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and the signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) are the first steps towards President Obama’s stated goal of a nuclear free world. However limited their successes may be, their announcements signify real progress in nuclear disarmament
Only two days after the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Report on April 6 laid out a coherent reduction plan for US nuclear weapons, President Obama and Russian President Medvedev met in Prague to sign the new version of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Whilst one of these is a bilateral treaty reducing the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world and the other a unilateral doctrine outlining American nuclear weapons policy, these documents have much in common. Both have been much anticipated, and have been the subject of intense debate and anticipation. As such, they have both become not merely important indicators to the international security environment and key influences on May’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, but also an important gauge of whether the Obama administration will be able to achieve its lofty foreign policy goals whilst dealing with so many domestic issues. But now that they have been delivered they must be evaluated for what they actually achieve.
Obama’s Nuclear Agenda
Twelve months ago, when the newly-elected American President gave a speech in Prague stating his goal of eventual nuclear disarmament, a message was clearly sent identifying nuclear weapons as one of his flagship policy areas. However, as his pledge to negotiate a New START treaty by the end of 2009 was not delivered, and the date of the NPR Report slipped from December to February and then further and further into 2010, faith in President Obama’s ability to provide leadership on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament began to wane. To some it appeared that bitter domestic battles and the loss of a super-majority in the Senate were consuming the political capital required to deliver such significant goals, potentially leaving the President weakened and unable to gain the leverage necessary to achieve change at either national or international level. As negotiations stalled, the high hopes originally held for the New START treaty and for a successful outcome to the inevitable struggle between the White House and the Department of Defense over the NPR faded. Giving way instead to fears that these processes would be respectively hamstrung by arguments over missile defence in Europe and inertia over the role of nuclear weapons in US security.
The sudden and rapid acceleration of these recent developments clearly signals President Obama’s commitment to nuclear disarmament, and that his attention has now returned to the issue. The announcement of a breakthrough in US-Russia negotiations and an agreement of a treaty text came on 26 March, only days after the signing of the contentious Healthcare Reform Bill. Just over a week after these achievements came the launch of the NPR Report, followed by the signing of the treaty in Prague. This alone would be enough to show that the President retained his focus on the nuclear agenda – laid out in last year’s speech in the same city – but is further bolstered by the reports of his personal involvement in the negotiation process via a series of telephone calls to his Russian counterpart at the height of the domestic tussles. However, achieving agreement on these documents would hardly be a success if their contents did not contribute to the Prague disarmament agenda. On that score, both of these documents successfully manage to make multiple modest advances.
New START
New START reduces the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals from 2,200 warheads to 1,550, and reduces the number of launchers (ICBMs, SLBMs and Heavy Bombers) to a total of 800 with up to 700 of these deployed. This is a modest, but welcome, reduction in warheads that is more significant in maintaining momentum towards further disarmament. Despite representing a claimed cut of 30 per cent from the upper warhead limit of the Moscow Treaty, the actual post-reduction total will be much larger than the figure of 1,550, owing to the counting rules of the Treaty – each bomber counts as carrying only one warhead no matter how many it may actually be loaded with. More important are the issues not addressed by the Treaty. Missile defence is not subject to control despite Russian pressure to include such technology, although the preamble contains the statement ‘Recognizing … that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties’. Moreover, the treaty makes special effort to create a strict divide between missile defence and offensive missile capabilities. However, the Treaty also includes a clause for withdrawal under ‘exceptional circumstances’, which the Russian government has stated is a reference to any future development of US missile defence ‘quantitatively or qualitatively… in such a way that threatens the potential of the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation’.[i] Nor are planned conventional ballistic missile arms subject to restrictions, at least according to the original announcement by the US State Department. These compromises and hard-won omissions from the Treaty are crucial, as they minimise the potential for resistance to ratification from the US Senate.
The NPR
A range of policy declarations made by the NPR compliment the concrete reductions contained within New START. Key amongst these is the stated aim of presenting a roadmap towards nuclear disarmament. Substance towards this overarching goal is provided by a number of important decisions within the NPR
The issuing of the Negative Security Assurances (NSAs) pledging not to use nuclear weapons against Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) parties ‘in compliance’ with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is not new, but this position is strengthened considerably in the Obama NPR. Firstly, by abandoning the Bush administration’s ambiguity over whether nuclear weapons would be used in response to a chemical or biological weapon attack. This NPR clearly states that nuclear weapons will not be used against NNWS in any situation, rather relying on conventional forces to deter such attacks. However, it stops short of making a full pledge of ‘No First Use’, clearly declaring that there are a narrow set of circumstances in which the use of nuclear weapons is acceptable following a chemical or biological attack by a state either in possession of nuclear weapons, or not in compliance with the NPT. Secondly, the ‘Warsaw Pact Clause’, outlining the possibility of using nuclear weapons against states that are in alliance with nuclear-armed states, has been removed. This clause was originally contained in the 1995 NSA declaration to the UN General Assembly and in all subsequent pledges. The removal of this phrase within the NSA symbolises the desire to move away from the ‘Cold War thinking’ that has dominated nuclear strategy until now. The pledge to de-MIRV the ICBM force, reducing the number of warheads on each missile from three to one, is important as a key reduction in capability, and the decision to retire the nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missile will also be welcomed by many.
Small steps
The reasoning behind each decision in the NPR report is discussed and transparently explained in the context of taking a step along the road to disarmament, but without taking any potentially destabilising risks. This level of openness is admirable, but it is also important to highlight that both of these documents are modest steps along this path. There are many disappointments for those who may have hoped for more radical policy changes. The New START’s numerical cuts in warhead numbers are relatively conservative and do little to reduce capabilities, though it is hoped that further reductions can be made in the near future. There is also the NPR’s decision to maintain all three ‘legs’ of the nuclear triad. Some strategists have mooted the possible removal of the long-range bomber from the nuclear arsenal, but this capability is confirmed as the remaining part of the nuclear force for the foreseeable future and the decision has been made to proceed with the life extension programme for the B-61 gravity bomb. [ii] Europeans hoping for US leadership on the issue of NATO’s shared tactical nuclear weapons capability – currently based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the Netherlands – will be disappointed by the short mention in the NPR, firmly placing the onus for any decision on the shoulders of this year’s new NATO Strategic Concept. The lack of movement towards reducing alert levels of the remaining nuclear forces will concern others, as will the perceived ‘glossing over’ of concerns over the strategic impact of missile defences and conventional ballistic missiles.
However, to focus on these points would be to neglect the role of these achievements as part of the overall strategy. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, President Obama pledged to ‘complete a Nuclear Posture Review that opens the door to deeper cuts, and reduces the role of nuclear weapons’.[iii] This is precisely what has been achieved by this combination of the New START and the Nuclear Posture Review. Neither of these are revolutionary in themselves, but nor are they intended to be. Given both the political realities of the US and the pressures of the international security environment, pushing too far too soon on any one front could have proven disastrous to the initiative that President Obama began last year in Prague. Instead, by making progress and compromises across a number of issues, the policy and capability changes are kept palatable to all audiences, whilst the entire debate moves forward as a whole and provides the foundations for further advances. In this context, these achievements should be recognised for what they are: the delayed small steps at the beginning of the long road to stable nuclear disarmament.
The views expressed above are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RUSI
The general’s DC wishlist
By: C. Raja Mohan
As General Ashfaq Kayani arrives in Washington this week to lead what has been billed as a comprehensive strategic dialogue with the United States, there is considerable anticipation in Rawalpindi about the goody bag that might await the Pakistan army chief.
With the Army GHQ in Pindi demanding strategic parity with India and primacy in Afghanistan in return for the recent services rendered to Washington, there is some concern in Delhi about where the US-Pakistan relationship is headed and what it might mean for the geopolitics of the region.
Pindi’s expectations from Washington as well as Delhi’s fears about the direction of the US-Pakistan relationship might, however, turn out to be somewhat exaggerated.
If there is always a big gulf between the Pakistan army’s reach and its grasp, the Indian foreign policy establishment has a habit of reading too much into Pakistan’s relations with the US.
While Delhi cannot stop Pindi from overplaying its hand, it must respond calmly to the likely results from the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue this week. Even more important, Delhi must prepare to shape the evolution of the US-Pakistan relationship rather than merely protest against it.
A self-confident India that builds on its own partnership with Washington and works its undervalued levers in Islamabad can explore the many contradictions in the current US-Pakistan partnership and influence its future direction.
For one, both the US and Pakistan say the purpose of their strategic dialogue is to construct an enduring relationship rather than an instrumental one. The Obama administration has indeed apologised for the past American habit of using and discarding the Pakistan army.
Only a bold man will bet that the US-Pakistan relationship will now evolve into something more than the marriage of convenience it has been for decades. After all, there are little commercial or societal ties that bind the US to Pakistan and it might be difficult to sustain the US-Pakistan partnership once the current expediency passes.
To be sure, the American interest in Pakistan will continue so long as it has troops in Afghanistan. This surely will not be a permanent condition.
In Washington, the rhetoric is all about looking beyond the military/ security relationship with Pakistan. The Obama administration wants to channel the expanded American assistance to Pakistan into such areas as agriculture and education. Any amount of money that America and the world might mobilise for Pakistan’s economic development will be a drop in the bucket.
Pakistan’s ruling party – the GHQ – is under no obligation to win political mandate from the people, let alone renew it periodically. It has little incentive, then, to promote economic and social transformation in Pakistan.
For all the American hopes to move the relationship beyond security cooperation, Kayani’s focus in Washington this week will be on geopolitics and not the social sector.
Given his recognition that the American connection might once again be a short-lived one, Kayani would naturally want to extract, quickly, whatever he can from the Obama administration on India and Afghanistan.
Although Pakistan’s leverage in Washington today is real, Kayani might be over-estimating its value. Kayani’s American wishlist is said to have four key demands. First, re-establish strategic parity with India in the atomic domain with a civil nuclear deal of the kind Delhi gained from President George W. Bush.
Second, Pindi wants substantive conventional weapons transfers to redress what it sees as India’s threatening military modernisation. Third, Kayani wants Washington to press India to make major concessions on its disputes with Pakistan, including the old one on Kashmir and the newly minted one on the Indus waters.
Finally, Pakistan wants the US recognition of its case for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and to have a decisive say in the construction of new political arrangements across the Durand line.
There is no way the US can meet the entirety of Pakistan’s demands. Nor can the administration deliver on them unilaterally; some of them – like the nuclear deal – require congressional consensus as well as unanimity in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. There are others that are simply not possible – force Indian concessions on Kashmir.
On Afghanistan, where the US needs Kayani’s troops, there will be some give and take; but India will have to be super-paranoid to believe Washington will simply hand over Afghanistan to the Pakistan army.
The presumed endgame in Afghanistan will be a prolonged one and no final decisions are at hand in Washington this week. Having already written some big cheques to Pakistan since it came to power, the Obama administration too has demands on Pindi. These include more substantive army action against the Afghan Taliban and its associates and freedom of action for American use of force on Pakistan territory.
Since Kayani cannot return without a going-home present, India must expect that there will be some American rewards for him this week. Expanded supply of arms to Pakistan is certainly one possibility.
The temptation is strong in India to protest against any and all arms sales to Pakistan. Delhi must resist it, because such objections carry little credibility.
India’s main problem with Pakistan is not about a fragile conventional military balance that might be upset by American arms transfers. It is to change Pakistan’s belief that under the nuclear gun it can promote anti-India terror groups with impunity.
As it responds to the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue this week, Delhi’s message must be three-fold – global efforts aimed at a positive transformation of Pakistan are welcome; expanded economic and military assistance to Pakistan must be conditioned on Pindi’s commitment to dismantle its jehadi assets; India is ready to address all of Pakistan’s concerns – including Kashmir – if it gives up violent extremism as an instrument of state policy.
Pak-US partnership welcomed
By our correspondent
LAHORE: PPP central leader and former Ambassador to the US, Syeda Abida Hussain, has termed Pak-US strategic partnership a window of opportunity for Pakistan and said Pakistan should represent its case and get $30b.
Abida stated this while speaking at a dialogue organised by the TECH Club on the issue of “Pakistan’s internal and external threats” here on Sunday. Abida Hussain said, “We should keep it in view that that America’s strategic partnership was with many other countries and we should present ourselves in an effective manner.”
She said President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari within two years in his office had caused no damage to the interest of the country. She said history of militancy in Punjab or even Jhang wasn’t new. She said she herself had defeated the founder of a banned religious organisation from Jhang in the past and had faced life threats constantly. However, she said she didn’t believe that Sharifs had any liking towards militancy and cited the incident in which the PML-N Quaid had a narrow escape from a bomb blast in Raiwind in past.