02/11/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Antiwar Radio, Chaos 95.9 FM, in Austin, Texas.
Also streaming live worldwide on the internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and Antiwar.com slash radio.
And it's time to welcome Gareth Porter back to the show.
He is an independent historian and journalist, writes primarily for Interpress Service, that's IPSNews.net, and you can find all his stuff at Original.
Antiwar.com slash Porter.
Welcome to the show Gareth, how are you doing man?
I'm good, thanks again Scott.
Thanks very much for joining me on the show today, I appreciate it.
Okay so AFPAC, what's going on here with this peace talks between the Karzai government and the bad guys?
Very quickly, I mean I think Karzai has gone much farther in talking or offering to talk to the Taliban leadership than the Obama administration is really prepared to support at this point.
I think there was a very interesting back and forth at the time of the London conference at the end of January with Karzai publicly then calling for an invitation, extending an invitation to the Taliban leadership to join this peace jirga in the capital, and the Americans refusing to basically give their blessing to this idea, and very pointedly using the language of reintegration, which means talking about mid and low level people dropping their arms and joining the government, rather than reconciliation, which is the term for negotiating with the Taliban leadership.
Alright, so in other words, the Americans' plan is basically give up and join us if you want, otherwise we're going to keep trying to kill you at least for another little while, and Karzai's approach is let's go ahead and work things out on the basis starting out from where we are, which is the Taliban exists and they do have their own territorial power and so forth.
I think that's correct, there's a profound chasm between the viewpoint of the Afghan government and specifically the Karzai administration on this question of dealing with the Taliban and the position of the United States, the perspective of the United States.
I think that it's accounted for by the fact that Karzai, particularly as a Pashtun political leader, has to be listening to the voices of Pashtuns generally and the Pashtun civilian population in particular, and what he hears from them, and I can tell you that I've gotten this from a person very close to Karzai, I'm not at liberty to identify the person, but somebody who's very close to Karzai, indicates that the desire for peace is so strong and so clear that Karzai really has had no choice but to respond to that, and I think that's very clearly reflected in his rhetoric and also in his actions, despite the fact that he acknowledges he really can't do a deal without the support of the United States.
In the end, the U.S. has to be at the table, obviously, in order to bargain over its withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces, and in this regard, I think you're right to say that what the Obama administration is thinking, indeed, what they're hinting at very clearly is that they are not prepared to negotiate now, they want to hold off until, supposedly, or presumably, the U.S. military is able to somehow weaken the Taliban, particularly in the south and east of the country.
I think that's simply an unrealistic strategy, I think it's a strategic mistake of the First Order, which I think we will eventually, it will become very clear that that's the case.
Well, and it's the same thing on the larger level, too.
I mean, they're saying, with this attack on Helmand, that, look out, here we come in about two weeks, we're going to invade the hell out of this place, so, you know, don't be around, and then, at the same time, they're saying, well, we're going to fight them for another year and a half, and then, beginning in the summer of 2011, then we'll make a deal and get out.
Which is the same thing, again, only just on the larger scale.
What the hell is that?
This is an inherently confusing and confused strategy, because it represents a compromise between the White House's insistence that there be an exit strategy, on one hand, and the military's insistence on a counterinsurgency approach, a counterinsurgency strategy, on the other.
And I think what we're now getting is, in a way, the worst of both of those approaches.
But in any case, you know, what's really missing here is a willingness to say, look, you know, we know there's going to have to be a negotiated settlement, let's get started now and get this ball rolling, because it's going to take a while, we know that.
I mean, it's absurd to say, or to deny, which is what the administration's trying to do right now, that we're really interested in negotiating a settlement, because everybody knows that that's what's going to have to happen.
You know, McChrystal said as much in his interview with Financial Times while I was in Kabul.
I was told that very clearly by one of his aides.
You know, I thought that was a very clear-cut presentation, saying, yes, there's going to be a settlement, that what we're fighting about is really only to prepare for that settlement.
And, you know, having witnessed the strategic, the tragic strategic mistake of the Lyndon Johnson administration in Vietnam, of saying, oh, we won't negotiate now, we can always come back to the table after the military has really been able to use its power effectively in South Vietnam and against North Vietnam, and then it only took eight years before they could get a settlement, which was far worse than the settlement they could have gotten in early 1965.
And I would argue that we're in the same situation today.
Well, now help me parse this so-called the Taliban.
Whoever resists America is the Taliban, I guess.
It's the same as in Iraq, Scott.
I mean, this is the effective criterion.
If you resist us, then you're the enemy.
If you lay down your arms, then you're okay.
Well, and in a sense, there's truth right in the idea that it's mostly the Pashtun tribesmen who are the resistance, because we aren't fighting anybody else, really.
We're kind of fighting on the side of the other.
And then, you know, correct me to the degree I don't understand.
It is overwhelming, a Pashtun resistance, although not exclusively, yes.
Yeah, well, and, and they're really, they seem to break it down, at least by the names of the leaders, right?
So you got Hekmatyar, and you got Haqqani, and you got Mullah Omar.
And then they try to break it down by who's on which side of the Duran line between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Help me make sense out of this.
What's the truth of this?
Who are these guys?
You say in your article, I think the most recent one here, peace talks may follow ex-Taliban mediators plan.
You say they're trying to cut a deal now with Hekmatyar, the guy that bragged that he helped Osama bin Laden escape after accepting a bunch of millions of dollars from the CIA.
Right.
This is one of the obvious inconsistencies, if you will, in the administration strategy.
And he said to skin people alive, by the way, and throw acid in young girls' faces, and this guy's a monster.
Hekmatyar is, if anything, well to the right in Islamic terms of the Taliban.
I mean, he is much more unreconstructed as a, you know, an Islamic extremist than I think the Taliban is, by any serious measure.
And I mean, he has a terrible human rights record.
Everybody agrees with that.
And yet the administration, and of course, as you suggest, I mean, he was closer to Al-Qaeda than the Taliban were by a long shot.
And yet it's very clear that the administration would like to sort of slice him off, to carve him away from the Taliban by making a deal with him and bringing him into the government.
And so what you have here is a sort of, you know, a pragmatism that makes no strategic and certainly no moral sense whatsoever.
Okay, now, what about Haqqani and his son?
They say that these guys run the Pakistani Taliban and are friends of Osama now, or what?
Well, I think it's true that Haqqani is closer to Al-Qaeda than the Taliban is.
That's certainly true.
And it's again, I think there is evidence that the United States has been trying to figure out a way to get to the Haqqani folks as well.
Anything to sort of weaken the Taliban appears to be something that the administration is interested in.
So, you know, try to make sense of that in terms of their sort of positioning themselves, you know, on the side of morality and, you know, to women's rights and so forth in Afghanistan, it doesn't really work out.
And it certainly doesn't work out in terms of the official rationale strategically for the war, which is the only rationale is the United States must prevent Al-Qaeda from having an opportunity to return to Afghan territory.
So, you know, if that's the case, then we know for sure that the Taliban leadership has had the most distance between themselves and bin Laden ever since 1998.
I'm about to come out with an article which is going to document the evidence from a variety of wide variety of sources that the Taliban leadership, including Mullah Omar himself, were really acting rather forcefully to prevent bin Laden from being able to carry out any plotting against the United States, starting certainly after the explosions, the blowing up of the two American embassies in East Africa in August of 1998.
There was a very determined effort, you know, which was pursued by Mullah Omar to crack down on bin Laden and to isolate him from the world and prevent him from being able to carry out any plot.
So that's really clear on the record.
Well, I know that the independent, the London Independent reported that the Taliban sent their so-called foreign minister, whatever, to warn that bin Laden was planning an attack in the weeks before 9-11.
I have read that.
I'm afraid that I can't confirm or deny it, although I did meet with Mutawakkil, the then Taliban foreign minister, and tried to get into what happened in late 2001.
For various reasons, I was unable to get very deeply into that subject.
I got a very few guarded comments, but not as much as I'd hoped to get on that.
So I came back with relatively little data from that effort.
Well, that's interesting.
I can't wait to read that piece, though, about all the rest of what you have.
It's clear that they've tried from the afternoon of September 11th on, or maybe the next day, they push this thing that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are the same thing, and pretty soon that Osama and Saddam Hussein are, too.
But it's always been about conflating all these things together and making large groups out of individuals and smaller groups that actually have wide and varied interests.
You're absolutely right.
In this case, I think it's crucial to attack this conflation, which is extremely central in the administration's policy right now, because you have both Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, or Gates' spokesman at the Pentagon, making a very broad statement to the effect that Mullah Omar was complicit in the 9-11 attacks, that he has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, and the like, meaning people associated with Mullah Omar also have the same blood of Americans on their hands, and therefore the United States should not negotiate with these people.
That has become yet another sort of propaganda line to justify a policy that I think is really a very serious mistake.
Yeah, well, but I mean, the truth is, though, that that guy, Mullah Omar, did throw ladies down the well for showing their shoulder, whatever.
I mean, this guy, Gubedin, Hekmatyar, Haqqani, all the rest of these guys, the only people there are there to deal with, the opposition, their leaders, are all a bunch of monsters.
And, you know, Malala Joya was on this show, and she was, I think, the youngest member of the Afghan parliament elected there, and, well, pseudo-elected, you know how it is.
But she said, you know, hey, look, just stop helping me, stop working anything out, I don't want you to fight, I don't want you to win, I don't want you to make a deal, I want you to just go, because what are you going to do?
You're going to make a deal with Mullah Omar and Gubedin Hekmatyar?
Oh, that's going to be great, you know?
Thanks a lot.
Yeah, well, I mean, the only problem I have with that position is that there's only one deal to be made, and that's a deal that says, you know, the United States will withdraw its troops, and the Taliban will assure that there's no al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan.
And, you know, beyond that, I mean, it's going to have to be worked out between the Taliban and the rest of the Afghan political system, in any case.
The United States is not going to really be able to control, once its troops are out of there, what happens.
I mean, you know, I think, in effect, that's what we're talking about.
Yeah, well, people use her same argument to say that's why we have to keep fighting, but the fact of the matter is, when you lose a war and leave, then the people who were your quizlings, who you backed up with power that they can't continue to maintain themselves, are going to suffer for.
It's no different than the regime in South Vietnam, when we left there.
Well, you know, this is not a situation like Vietnam, in fact.
I mean, I would just say that people need to be aware that the United States is not such an overwhelming power here, that if its troops withdraw from Afghanistan, then everything reverts to, you know, what it was like when the Taliban were in power in 1996 to 2001.
That's not the case.
Precisely because you have other powers in the region who will certainly be interested in the outcome and who will be supporting the opponents of the Taliban, without any question.
Iran...
So it'll be somebody else's proxy war instead of ours.
Pardon?
It'll be someone else's proxy war instead of ours.
It will be.
There's no doubt that there will be continued conflict.
The conflict is not going to end, but I would argue that it's going to be at a much lower level and that there are still possibilities for, you know, ways of conciliation between the sides that are not going to be given a chance as long as the U.S. is fighting in that country.
Yeah.
All right, everybody, that's Gareth Porter from Interpress Service.
You can read what he writes at original.antiwar.com slash porter.
And I'm sorry, I can't keep you on here to talk about Iran, Gareth, but I guess I'll just have to do all the heavy lifting myself.
My pleasure, as always.
Thanks.
All right.
Bye-bye.
All right, y'all.
Again, original.antiwar.com slash porter.
And we'll be back after this.