05/26/10 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

It's Antiwar Radio Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas, streaming live worldwide on the Internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio.
And I'm happy to welcome back to the show my good friend Gareth Porter.
He is one hell of a reporter, independent historian and journalist from Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net and we run every bit of it at original.antiwar.com slash porter.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Thanks, Scott.
Well, I appreciate you joining us here, man.
Listen, this Afghan war, I just don't even know how to make heads or tails of the thing.
And I figure if I just bring you on to talk to me about it for half an hour, maybe I'll understand it a little bit more.
Your most recent piece here at original.antiwar.com slash porter is McChrystal Strategy Shifts to Raids and Wally Karzai.
So why don't you tell us all about Wally Karzai and what the strategy was and what it shifted to and what this is about here?
Well, this is a story that, you know, kind of reflects a whole series of converging developments in recent weeks.
Basically, a lot of stuff happened in March, which we're just now basically becoming aware of or at least fully aware of.
And that's the first of all, the fact that the Marja operation was clearly recognized as a failure, not just by people outside, but people within the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
The more they saw what was happening there, they realized that this notion of a government in a box was just ridiculous.
It wasn't going to happen in the way that they anticipated, at least.
They found that there were very few government officials who even showed up in the two districts of Helmand Province, which were being covered by this Operation Moshtarak.
And so the basic premise of the whole operation, that we were going to bring governance reform to the benighted people of this area of Helmand Province, simply was not accurate.
All right.
Now, let me stop you there for a second here, and let me see if I understand this right.
You broke this story back when, a month and a half ago or whatever, when this nonsense was going on, that Marja is not a town of 80,000 people, like they said.
They're sending the Marines into this tiny little farming village, and basically it was all propaganda for the American people, that, look, we're going to take this town of 80,000 and we're going to do it right.
This is going to be, they said, this is going to be the measure of the future of our ability to succeed in Afghanistan, and you just watched.
This is going to be great.
We're bringing them a government in a box, is what the crystal told the New York Times.
Sorry.
Excuse me, there was an incredible degree of overconfidence being displayed by McChrystal and his staff here.
Okay, but now I'm confused about this.
Were they even really trying to take the town and give it a government in a box, or they were just trying to put the American people off for another two weeks before they do some other nonsense?
No, no, this was a huge miscalculation, Scott.
There's no question about that.
I mean, they now admit, in the latest story, which I'm sure you've seen on McClatchy News, Jonathan Landay reports, because he's been given access to McChrystal and his meetings with various military folks in Helmand Province, and he's basically berating the military officers who are in charge there for their failure to get something going, and they're saying, well, it's going to take longer.
We've only been here three months, and McChrystal's saying, hey, we don't have much time left.
And it's now admitted there's not enough troops, not enough U.S. troops in Helmand, in those districts, to be able to clear the Taliban from that area.
So I mean, the fundamental premise of the whole operation, there were two premises.
One, you know, that they had enough troops to basically clear the Taliban permanently from this area, that as long as the U.S. troops stayed there, the Taliban wouldn't be able to operate.
That's clearly not true.
And then that the government would actually show up and be able to do something, that's not true either.
And so as a result of this, what clearly has happened is that the U.S. military, from McChrystal all the way to the Pentagon, now have essentially de-emphasized the expectation that they're really going to be able to carry out any meaningful governance reform in Kandahar, which is now clearly recognized as the showdown in the Afghan conflict.
If they can't succeed in Kandahar, then the whole show is over.
And basically, I mean, they've admitted now that what they talked about in terms of governance reform and winning over the population, that's not going to happen in any time frame that is realistic as far as the U.S., the Obama administration is concerned.
So that's the first thing that's happened.
The second thing that's happened is that in part as a result of that, there's much greater emphasis now being placed on night raids.
I mean, the idea, I mean, they were going to do that anyway, let's face it.
I mean, that was going to be part of this operation, that they were going to try to track down, kill, or capture as many Taliban so-called local leaders as possible.
And I think, you know, that, let's face it, there's a very loose definition of what they're calling leaders.
I mean, anybody really who has any military responsibility in the Taliban, they're going to try to track them down.
Now the third thing that's happened, I think, is at least as important as the other two and in fact possibly more important, and that is that the McChrystal staff and command has gotten the message from the Obama administration that really the end of 2010 is the effective deadline for being able to show irreversible momentum, is what they're calling it now.
Not the middle of 2011, but the end of 2010.
So the pressure on McChrystal is extremely intense.
So it's very clear that he is now putting his primary hope on the effect of very stepped-up raids on the Taliban in Kandahar.
And he already gave the orders in March to step up those raids.
We don't know, we don't have the numbers for how much of a step-up there was, but clearly it's intensified.
And that brings us to then the fourth development, which is the primary subject of my article, and that is that they have dropped their objection to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Ahmed Karzai and the warlord and what has been in the past referred to as the Al Capone of Kandahar province.
And he is now being treated as a partner in the U.S. operations in Kandahar.
So that article that I did is really tying together all of those four developments in an explanation for why the Al Capone of Kandahar has suddenly become our partner.
Yeah, well isn't that strange?
Again, it's Gareth Porter, the article is McChrystal Strategy Shifts to Raids and Wali Karzai at original.antiwar.com slash porter.
And you have here this quote from McChrystal's intelligence chief, General Michael T. Flynn.
He says, the only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.
But in this case, Capone is Franklin Roosevelt's brother.
And so what I wonder is, why is it, or maybe that'd be Calvin Coolidge or something, anyway, why is it that they ever said, oh yeah, we're going to go in there and we're going to do this big invasion and clean up Kandahar, when the warlord of Kandahar, the guy that controls Kandahar now, is the brother of the president?
Did they not realize that that's his territory?
Of course they realized it was his territory.
Now, whether they really understood fully just how much power Ahmad Wali Karzai has in Kandahar is another question.
I do, in fact, have some doubts that McChrystal really fully apprehended the power that Wali Karzai has.
I think that he, for example, may not have really focused on the fact that Karzai had consolidated his control over all the police units in Kandahar in 2009, and that for years now he has really controlled the intelligence secret police service, the National Directorate of Security, in Kandahar province, because of the fact that the person who's in charge of the NDS in Kandahar basically is a loyalist to the Karzai family.
That is a fact which is extremely important, and this is the key link between the other developments that I've talked about and basically the decision to say that Karzai is not our favorite guy, but we can work with him.
That is that the United States clearly is extremely dependent on Karzai's organizations, the organizations that Karzai controls, for its intelligence on the Taliban in Kandahar province, and particularly in the city.
Basically they cannot continue to operate for the next few months without that intelligence continuing to flow to the special operations forces as they try to capture and kill as many Taliban so-called leaders as possible.
What is Wali Karzai's relationship with the Taliban?
Anything?
Well, this is interesting.
There are two things here, there are two links that I would say are significant.
And actually, I'm sorry, stop before, because I know you'll be able to remember your two points.
First, define Taliban.
Does that mean any Afghan who dares resist, or are we talking about actually people loyal to Mullah Omar, or what?
I think it's both.
This operates at two different levels.
On one hand, there are the real Taliban who are clearly in touch with and work with the Kedahshura, what has been called the Kedahshura, the National Taliban Central Leadership Council, which is clearly operating from Pakistani territory.
And I have reason to believe that Wali Karzai probably has had some contact with somebody at the level of regional commander, and possibly at the level of national Taliban leadership in the past.
And for one thing, Hamid Karzai himself has apparently, at least through intermediaries, made contact with top-level leaders of the Taliban, including Mullah al-Baradar, who was then captured by the Pakistani government, by the ISI.
So I think there have been contacts between Hamid Wali Karzai, on one hand, and high-level leaders of the Taliban.
On the other hand, it's also important to understand that Hamid Wali Karzai, as the Al Capone, if you will, of Kandahar, has to eliminate any potential tribal rival.
And Kandahar province is a hotbed of tribal rivalries.
And so he's constantly in the process of having to intervene within various tribes and sub-tribes, and support certain individuals who he has sort of picked out as his candidates for exercising influence within those units, within those groups, and basically eliminating those who oppose him within those tribes and sub-tribes.
And there are plenty of them who have opposed him in recent years.
And as a result, we know that Karzai has in fact carried out assassinations of a series of tribal leaders in Kandahar.
And he has used his loyal forces, in some cases undoubtedly the Kandahar Strike Force, which is the CIA-utilized counter-insurgency or basically anti-Taliban force in Kandahar, to carry out some of these assassinations.
He may also have used the secret police organization, the NDS, to do so.
And as a result, we know of course that the United States has gotten itself involved willy-nilly in these very violent tribal conflicts, in which Amit Wali Karzai is making himself extremely unpopular, no question about that.
And these people in the McChrystal staff and command understand, at least have since March, that the cost of basically publicly working with Amit Wali Karzai is that we are associating ourselves once again fully, even more fully, with Karzai, and at the cost of losing the willingness to work with us on the part of many other tribes and sub-tribes in Kandahar.
And they are aware that that is a huge political cost.
You know, there was something, I'm trying to remember which paper it was, it might have been the Washington Post reporting on State Department briefing, where the guy, it's funny because he's kind of striking a thing where he's Mr. Know-It-All or whatever, he's all full of his own brilliance, and he's telling the reporters, yeah, we decided we're going to start trying to figure out who's who in Afghanistan, and wait a minute, you guys are killing people on the word of other people and all these things, and you don't even have your own PowerPoint presentation as to who's who with power and influence in the state after a decade of this?
Absolutely.
I'm absolutely convinced that McChrystal waded into this thicket of internal conflicts, tribal and otherwise, in Kandahar without really understanding it.
It's impossible that he could have possibly understood the intricacies of these conflicts adequately to have any basis for making a decision about intervening in Kandahar, but he went ahead and did it anyway.
So I just don't understand that.
I mean, I could see your argument that, you know, well, they just want a basic low-level war forever, and all the generals get to keep their jobs that way and get new shiny medals and whatever, and the thing goes on forever, and Raytheon gets to make some money, you know, that kind of whole deal.
But it seems like if you're going to try to wage perpetual war in Central Asia, you would at least try to figure out who your allies are.
I mean, when McChrystal took over, did McKiernan not have a PowerPoint that had the names, at least, of, you know, people tend to listen to this guy when it comes to these issues, and in this town, this guy's got a lot of sway, but these two hate each other, and that guy, the three get along, and you know, no?
The short answer is no.
I mean, I'm sure that at that level of command, and even at the level of intelligence analysts, they simply did not have the knowledge that was required, would be required, to navigate even minimally in that political and social world of Kandahar politics.
Well, I mean, is it just because they're that much keystone imperialists, or is it that they really don't care?
Because the mission isn't really about creating a permanent monopoly state in that country.
The mission is stay there and kill people forever, so who cares?
Those are two aspects of the same coin.
And so, yeah, it's both.
Yeah.
Geez, stupid military.
Well, and so here's the other thing, is these night raids.
You know, I mean, I'm reading in the paper that there are major assaults being launched, I don't know how major, but still pretty brave considering the circumstances of who's armed up to which degrees.
You're basically having not just, you know, small ambushes and potshots, but you're having raids against NATO command centers all around the country and stuff.
These guys are getting braver and braver, and the reason why is because apparently their numbers are getting more and more.
Could that have anything to do with sending special forces guys in through their windows in the middle of the night to, you know, humiliate them in front of their wives and kids, if not kill them?
Yeah, that could have something to do with it.
I think you're onto something there.
I mean, because you're telling me that this is McChrystal's strategy, is we've got to step up these night raids.
He is relying on them for two reasons.
One, of course, he is, as everyone who has listened to your show I'm sure knows, the former commander of JSOC, the Joint Command of Special Operations Forces, which operated in both Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2008.
That is deeply engraved on his professional brain, if you will, that this is the way you operate, this is the way you get things done.
He believes deeply in the idea of night raids as a key strategic operation, regardless of what he might say publicly about winning hearts and minds.
He believes in that only a mile wide and an inch thick, and I think that he very easily was convinced that it's not going to work after reading the tea leaves in Marja and understanding what he was up against in Kandahar.
So more and more he's leaning on night raids as his only hope.
So that's the second point, but really that's all he's got left, and so he's going to play that card for everything it's worth.
Yeah, there's always carpet bombing.
Well there isn't, really.
I mean, I don't think that that's an option politically at this point.
That's a big difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam.
That's a huge difference, and that's why, in the end, this effort is going to fail.
It's going to fail spectacularly, and it's going to fail soon.
I mean, we're going to see over the coming weeks and months the playing out of this fiasco in Kandahar, and it's very clear that people on the ground except for perhaps the group that surrounds McChrystal, and as I've said before, he has surrounded himself with yes-men rather than people who question and give hard answers or address hard questions.
The rest of the people in NATO are convinced that this is not going to work.
So I think we're just weeks away from what I've called the Iraq 2006 moment in Afghanistan.
That is the moment when it has become clear not just to the people who have understood it already, but to the administration and to the political elite in Washington as well as public opinion, that this war is a failure and we've got to cut our losses and get out.
Yeah.
Or, well, we saw it happen in our 2006 moment in Iraq.
We just stayed and killed more and more and more people, perpetuated a horrible civil war.
That is because they called in Petraeus and had another card to play, which was 30,000 more troops and the argument that this surge is going to make a big difference.
Now, that's very, very unlikely to happen in the case of Afghanistan.
I know my friend Dan Ellsberg believes that that's still yet to come, that there will be yet another escalation in Afghanistan.
I am very skeptical about that.
I don't think it's politically possible.
Well, you know, the American people are against it, but, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep.
Like you said, they don't really give a shit, Gareth.
Well, I mean, it's really a question of whether they believe in this leadership, in the ability to do something that they haven't done already if we send in more troops.
Well, it comes down to the political question, whether Obama thinks there's going to be pictures on TV of people hanging onto the skids of the last helicopter leaving the roof of the embassy, right?
I mean, that's what he's got to fear, is a humiliating defeat more than a perpetual war forever where they just stand all in a circle firing out and never have to retreat all the way.
The difference here is that he still thinks that he has a negotiating option, and he's right.
He probably does have a negotiating option.
He can get in touch with the Pakistani government and say, we're ready to negotiate, we're ready to make a deal to withdraw our forces in return for the Taliban saying, you know, they give guarantees against al-Qaeda and some other concessions.
I think that they understand that that is the way that they can do this, whereas that was certainly not the case.
I mean, it was not on the drawing board for Vietnam or Iraq.
And so I think that is the difference here.
That's why we will not see, I predict we will not see another escalation of 30,000, 50,000 troops coming from Iraq.
That's where they would have to come from.
Yeah, well, and there's already about 100,000 in Afghanistan now.
That's right.
All right.
Now, Seymour Hersh came out.
He said he had five sources that said that there's in the field assassinations going on.
And this doesn't mean killing the wounded because it's easier than taking care of them.
This means, I think, just saying, yep, this is the guy and capping him in the back of the head.
And, you know, I don't know exactly what all you know about this, if anything, but I wanted to go ahead and bring up Bob Woodward's coverage of the surge in Iraq, where he was just absolutely beside himself with glee about this brand new high tech ability that the heroes have, meaning McChrystal and his assassins, to go and find all the worst leaders of the bad guys and kill them and just take them out.
Look, I mean, my view...
One more thing, one more thing.
I saw a whole thing on the Science Channel, I think it is, they have here in L.A.
And it was a whole thing about this guy just made this up based on the idea of the Kevin Bacon game.
And all these different genius mathematicians around the world have been working on this and working on this.
And they have a whole new kind of science.
It's a brand new branch called Network Science and figuring out the mathematical connections and algorithms and whatever to explain human behavior and, you know, relationships and what have you, right?
And so this is how apparently they were going around assassinating people in Iraq.
And I wonder whether you think this is the same story we're talking about here.
I am very skeptical about the Woodward story.
I think that he was taken for a ride by the McChrystal folks and Petraeus folks, but particularly McChrystal, that this was presented in terms which far exceed reality in the actual Iraq conflict of 2008.
Well, I wouldn't doubt that.
I mean, no doubt they killed a lot of particularly Shia militia commanders and fighters in particularly Sadr City.
But first of all, it's not at all clear that it was decisive.
In fact, I'm quite sure that it was not decisive.
It did not, in fact, determine the outcome of the conflict in Sadr City.
Yeah, tell me about it.
Sadr's in the catbird seat right now.
Well, exactly.
Nor in Basra.
I mean, you know, the fact is that the Shia militia forces in Basra gave a very good account of themselves and that the government was in serious trouble there.
And I think that Iran intervened in both Sadr City and Basra, not because the Shia militia were so depleted by this wonderful invention that is so secret, a secret technology of some sort, but because the Iranians had wanted all along to find an opportunity to get the Sadrists to cooperate with al-Maliki and to unify the Shia forces, which is, of course, what they are trying to do right now, what they have been trying to do in the context of Iraqi politics in 2010 around the parliamentary election.
Well, let me narrow my question here a little bit, because I didn't mean to imply that Bob Woodward was right, that this was all heroic and wonderful, and it's why they won the surge and all this nonsense.
The part I'm focusing on is, do these guys have a computer program that tells them, yep, that's the guy we're looking for, light him up, whether he's armed and pointing a rifle or not?
That's the question.
I don't know that.
I don't know the answer to that, but I'm very skeptical.
I mean, you know, that's the best I can do.
I don't really know, of course.
But, you know, I think we have to remain very skeptical about claims that are made, particularly in the context of that kind of journalism, where, you know, we don't have the documentation, we don't have anything to support it, basically.
And Woodward even admits that there are other people who say, no, that's not really what happened.
Oh, really?
I didn't realize that.
Well, and you know, Hirsch isn't always right about everything either, but he says he has five sources telling him this is happening, and that seems to warrant further investigation to me.
But, of course, he hadn't written it in the New Yorker.
He just said it on the station.
Right.
I think we just have to wait for the details.
I don't know anything, obviously, that would add to or subtract from the story at all.
All right.
Let me ask you one more.
Okay.
There's this whole thing in the New York Times about the U.S. is said to expand covert action across the Middle East.
Tell me what's going on.
Well, I'm still trying to figure out myself.
I'm trying to analyze this story, and I need more time, so I'm going to pass on that.
I will eventually come up with an analysis, and we can talk about it, but I don't have it yet.
Okay, great.
Well, we'll do that then.
All right.
All right.
Thanks very much, Gareth.
Good to be on again.
Thanks very much, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That's the great Gareth Porter.
He is an independent historian and journalist.
He wrote a bunch of books about Vietnam and all kinds of things.
I never do mention that because it seems kind of beside the point, but I should mention that more often.
Perils of Dominance is his most recent book, and he writes for Interpress Service, which is IPSnews.net, and you can find all his great reporting at original.antiwar.com slash Porter.
Hey, everybody.
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