The reach of the Taliban

An article in New York Times edition of Oct. 12 suggests that the Taliban's control of Afghanistan is the most extensive that it has ever been since before the U.S. invasion in 2001.

The story, based on a United Nations report, shows that the UN is finally admitting to what's been well known for the past five years, easily since 2010. The Taliban has controlled much of Afghanistan for nearly a decade.

I wrote about this Afghan reality back in 2010 and 2011 in Above the Din of War.

The extensive Taliban control throughout the country was well established when I arrived for my second year there in August 2010.

My eyes were opened at a briefing by the Afghan NGO Security office, a real time security service for all the internationals. You got text messages on attacks anywhere in the country as soon as they happened.

There were sometimes hundreds per day, from minor shootings and kidnappings, to suicide bombers. Handy info if you didn't want into the middle of nasty business.

The security folks showed a map on the screen that day with each province in red that had a Taliban shadow government. The entire map was red!

What the US commander in Afghanistan, General Campbell told Congress recently is true. The Afghans control Kabul and major city centers. And, the Afghans are holding on. Barely.

When you look at the territory in government control, it's probably about 20 percent or less of the country. This is the map with the NY Times article:

The black is nearly complete Taliban control, the red is extreme, and tan is serious.
The center of the country is in white, which means little Taliban presence. But that's only because no one lives there. It's too rugged. The northern sections should not be white either.

The reality in 2010 -- five years ago!! -- was that the Afghan police and military would not venture from their city compounds without moving in heavily armed convoys.

I had a taste of this in the southern Helmand province when my police escort drove at a breakneck speeds on dirt roads to minimize the chances of us being hit. This was after I was assured that the road and town that I visited was completely safe!

This was before the US and NATO draw down. It's only gotten worse. It's surprising that the Taliban hasn't done more like they did recently in Kunduz.

That the UN is only now admitting this is because they don't want to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

Obama reluctantly has kept about 10,000 soldiers there because without them, the country would undoubtedly be in Taliban hands

Trump's borderline reality

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center reveals that support for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border remains strong.

Building such a wall is unrealistic.

The research by Pew was reported Oct. 8 in the LA Times with a piece written by David Lauter, a Washington-based reporter for the Times.

The poll showed that general public support for a border wall hasn't changed much, with just under half of the country supporting the construction of a wall. 

But a look inside the numbers shows that members of both parties are going in the opposition direction on the issue.

Support for a wall has increased among Republicans, rising from 65 percent in 2007 to 73 percent now. That's an increase of eight percent. Nearly three of every four Republicans support a wall. 

But support for the wall has dropped by an equal amount among Democrats. They've gone in the opposite direction, from 37 percent supporting the wall down to 29 percent. That's less than one in three Democrats.

The overall result is that support remains unchanged.

Driving the rise in support of the wall are the belligerent remarks made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He falsely believes that building a wall will solve the country's immigration problem. 

Trump thinks a border wall is a simple thing. It's not.

As I wrote in The Dangerous Divide, winner of this year's International Latino Book Award for current affairs, a border wall would be expensive, a near physical impossibility, and ineffective.

Much of the U.S.-Mexico border is in harsh, rugged, and remote terrain--some of the most inhospitable in the world. That's why it's favored by human smugglers. And, it's why the number of dead migrants found in these regions is increasing. I noted that in a recent blog posting.

While building a wall may be technically possible, such a project could easily take a decade or longer. Estimates put the costs of it in the tens of billions of dollars. Is this how we want to spend our hard-earned tax dollars?

Such a project will only spur more in-migration by those hoping to beat the placement of the final brick. And, once built, it will only insure that the estimated 12 million or more undocumented migrants already here will certainly stay, knowing that once out, they'll never be able to return.

The wall also does not resolve the situation of the 12 million undocumented migrants already here. Trump's remarks suggest that the U.S. should round up these 12 million people and deport them. 

Really? Such a suggestion conjures images of the German Nazis rounding up people for their death camps. Is that the way we do things in America?

Trump's calls for a wall and deportations reveal a serious disconnection from reality. The estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. provide a vast amount of labor that many Americans won't do.

They cultivate the land, pick the crops, build the houses, nail the roofs, landscape golf courses, clean the hotel rooms, cook restaurant food and wash the dishes, etc.

They provide critical labor that is the underpinning of the U.S. economy. Without their low-paid labor, much of the services and products in America would cost much more than they do.

Yet, our archaic and brutal immigration laws keep these critical workers in the shadows of the law, leaving them to be victimized and subject to extortion and intimidation. 

Their American dream is a nightmare.

A simple and easy solution is for the U.S. to restore a wide-spread guest worker visa system for those who want to work in this country. It would allow these migrant workers to earn the money they desire and return to their home country when they want.

It would allow the U.S. government to keep track of who's in the country, where they are, and what they're doing.

Instead, blowhards like Trump are calling for a horribly expensive and virtually impractical wall. It only stokes fear and hatred, more of which we don't need.

  

Cabbages and Kony

The four-year fiasco that is the futile search for renegade militia leader, Joseph Kony and his army of child soldiers, has once again become the focus in Washington, DC.

Congress discussed Kony recently during a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. The hearing was titled, “Ridding Central Africa of Joseph Kony: Continuing US Support.”

While there appears to be continuing support to keep up the hunt for Kony, the reality on the ground in Africa is typically confusing at best.

A recent article in the Washington Post provides a well-crafted update on the search for Kony. It focuses on the apparent dealings the Ugandan army and U.S. special forces advisers have had with Muslim rebel fighters in the region, known as the Seleka.

I have argued in First Kill Your Family that the Ugandans aren't truly committed to finding Kony.

It is absurd for the Ugandans and their American advisers to complain that they can'd find Kony. Many people know where he is. The Post even published the following map:

The only ones who don't seem to know are the soldiers who have been hunting him ever since late 2008 when the Ugandan army botched an air and ground assault on Kony's camp in the Garamba National Park in the north eastern corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2011, President Obama ordered 100 U.S. military advisers to help the Ugandans with the hunt for Kony. They've been unsuccessful so far, and Obama will soon have to decide to continue the U.S. support or cut it.

Kony has been killing elephants and rhinos in Garamaba ever since he arrived there in late 2005, having abandoned his marauding of northern Uganda for some "fresh meat." Only recently, however, has this on-going slaughter of wildlife become an issue.

Kony and others, it seems, have been selling the highly valuable tusks to black marketeers who arrive in helicopters, load their cargo, and fly off. If a bunch of men who deal in wildlife parts can find Kony, why can't the Uganda and U.S. Special Forces?

While the Post article looks at a potential controversy should the U.S. advisers be pumping the Seleka for information and cooperation, it's a needless discussion.

The Seleka are apparently among the many who have been dealing with Kony. So if the Ugandans and the Americans are serious about finding Kony and bringing him to just, then WHY NOT talk to them? How can the Kony mission not use any and all means to find Kony?

While the Kony mission stumbles along, the reasons for it lack of success became quite evident as one reads deep into the article. The problems are many.

First, the U.S. has been rotating personnel in and out of the mission, which is based in Entebbe, a town south of the capital of Kampala, and the site of a military airport that also hosts UN planes. This has made it nearly impossible for continuity of the mission.

Second, the U.S. made some noise about adding to the mission three of the highly mobile Osprey aircraft, which can take off and land vertically, along with crew and added personnel. It only lasted three weeks before they were all pulled and reassigned to missions with higher priorities.

This has forced the mission to rely on private contractors to ferry food and supplies around to the various remote base camps. But officials now say that these contractors work at their own pace, meaning that they fit in the work when they can. Hardly a high priority mission.

Third, the U.S. advisers complained about how the Ugandans use, or abuse, U.S. equipment. In one instance, the Ugandans used a U.S. helicopter for a resupply mission, but only put five cabbages on it. Five cabbages? Are you serious?

That's supposedly a resupply mission for soldiers who are supposed to trekking around the jungles looking for Kony?

If anything, it shows that the Ugandans are not serious about finding Kony, as I've long argued, and are more interested in getting and using U.S. arms and equipment for their own purposes.

What if Putin succeeds in Syria?

A provocative article appeared in the online publication, Counter Punch that predicts that Vladimir Putin's forces and tactics will prevail in Syria.

Given the information that's presented in the article, the prospect of victory raises a lot of questions about President Obama's hands-off, anti-war policy in the Middle East. If Putin does succeed, it will be a huge embarrassment to Obama, who just last week predicted abject failure to Putin's aggressive tactics. 

Not only has Putin bombed Syrian rebel targets, he's committed Russian ground forces in Syria, euphemistically called "volunteers," a move that Obama has refused to make.

It's an interesting piece, though a bit optimistic. 

While I'm not a war monger, I very much disagree with Obama's hands off policy regarding Syria. 

With active assistance from the U.S., the moderates who years ago spearheaded the widespread uprising against the humanitarian nightmare that was and is Assad's regime, could have accomplished it. The opportunity was there.

Instead, inaction let Assad achieve a stalemate that prolonged the war and opened the door to extremists in Syria such as the Al Nusra Front and gave rise to ISIS. Inaction precipitated the current quagmire. 

The situation is so bad now and continuing to deteriorate that a return of Assad is preferable to the growth of the cut-throat Muslim lunatics of ISIS and the Nusra Front. 

A quick online search of either will reveal the grotesque cruelty these maniacs employ to kill thousands of innocent people and even fellow Muslims to impose their harsh control.

The current refugee crisis in Europe, which will soon reach the shores of the U.S., is the direct result of U.S. and European inaction in Syria. Putin seems to know that unless someone steps in and puts an end to the fighting there, it could easily destabilize Russia.  

Now Russia is moving in forcefully and seems to be winning. The article reports 700 surrenders, and expects more on the way. If Russia succeeds in defeating the Syrian rebels and pushing the extremists out of Syria, it will be a major embarrassment to Obama, if not the U.S. military.

If the Muslim extremists are pushed out of Syria and into Iraq, and clearly into the hands of the U.S.-trained and back Iraqi forces, then what? 

The Iraqis have shown no stomach for facing up to ISIS, which has captured massive amounts U.S. arms and equipment from the Iraqis and uses it against them. 

This could put even more pressure on Obama to commit U.S. ground forces once again into Iraq. This eventuality is something that Obama has refused to do, but he may have not other choice if Russia succeeds. 

The situation is bad, but is the result of the inability of the Obama administration to recognize the serious threat posed by Islamic fundamentalists. Russia has had to deal with extremists in the past, and has done so harshly. 

As bad as it is, it seems to be the only effective solution.

Kony mutiny not the first

As followers of my writing and this blog know, I advocate serious, coordinated, international action against the renegade militia leader Joseph Kony.

The lack of that kind of action,  however, is the source of endless articles, speculation, and discussion. Good writing about the fiasco to find Kony continues to gurgle up from time to time.

Of late is an article in The New Yorker magazine by a young writer named Ledio Cakaj, He's a blogger for the Enough organization. This is his first piece for the magazine. I recommend it.

The article details interviews with a handful of Kony's former soldiers (there are thousands) about a mutiny and attempted assassination of Kony from within his disaffected ranks. The article suggests that the 2013 attempt on Kony may was the first of its kind against the maniacal leader.

It wasn't.

I spent a significant amount of time in 2005 and 2006 tracking Kony's life and actions, which resulted in the award-winning 2009 book First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.

It's the first serious work on Kony to be published in the United States. It remains the gold standard of source material for anyone who wants to know about Kony, what makes him tick, and why he has not been captured.

For nearly 20 years, Kony's number two man was Vincent Otti. He  was a former shopkeeper who bridged the chasm between Kony's self-delusions and the real world. Otti regularly talked live via satellite phone on Ugandan radio shows. He was quite entertaining.

Otti brokered the extended peace talks with Kony that began in June 2006 in the remote jungles of South Sudan. As followers know, the peace talks finally broke down after two years during which Kony skillfully turned the talks into a three-ring circus.

After Kony's team would negotiate terms of an agreement, a large contingent of negotiators would, at great trouble and expense, decamp to a jungle rendezvous for the signing. Declarations that "peace was at hand" echoed across the skies and the worldwide web. Activists swooned.

But Kony didn't show. Three times.

The last of Kony's no-shows was followed by the abortive airstrike and (delayed) ground attack by the Ugandan army on Kony's camp in the the Congo's Garamba National Park. Kony had been living there since late 2005, having fled northern Uganda.

But Kony was gone. He'd been tipped off. The same thing happened in 2013. A privately funded attack on his camp, also by an elite unit of the Ugandan army, found an empty Kony camp in the corner of South Sudan where multiple reports said he was living. (Is there a connection here???)

Kony lived relatively well during the peace talks, thanks the largess of the international community. He was sent convoys of trucks loaded with food and supplies. The thinking was that this would keep Kony at the bargaining table. Not!

From the beginning of Kony's early days in Garamba, once a prime wildlife reserve, he helped himself to the abundant wildlife there, routinely slaughtering elephants and the rare and nearly extinct white rhinos that once lived there.

Cakaj's article discusses a number of Kony's men whom he sent from his enclave in the recesses of northern South Sudan to Garamba to slaughter remaining elephants. The tusks were carried back to be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and sustain Kony and his men.

Back to Otti. After spearheading the peace talks, Otti realized Kony was playing the activist community for fools and would never sign an agreement to surrender.

Otti was 61 at the time. He was tired and sick of war. He wanted to go home. At least a third of Kony's men, all of whom were under Otti's command, felt the same way. They were sick of Kony and of living on the run, not to mention his endless slaughter of innocent men, women, children, and wildlife.

They were going to leave, a move that would cripple Kony's army.

Kony got wind of the mutiny. Fearing an assassination attempt, he summoned Otti. On October 2, 2007, Kony's personal guards grabbed Otti, forced him to his knees, and as Otti plead for his life,  executed him. His body was never found.

Otti's death was followed by many desertions. Some of these soldiers gave themselves up to the Ugandan army. They provided details of the Otti's death and the failed mutiny. They said that Kony justified the execution of his trusted long-time commander by saying that Otti had tried to kill him.

Kony has survived attempts on his life and massive desertions from his ranks. He will continue to do so until the international community decides they've had enough of this maniac. Kony will survive until those who can take meaningful action.

Border deaths on the rise again

Among the good humanitarian work done by the Tucson Samaritans is the monthly tally they keep of the total number of recovered human remains found in the desert south of Tucson, Arizona.

Alarmingly, after a slow but steady decline in recent years, the numbers are on the rise again. The numbers reveal a nine percent increase over the previous year. (121 last year, up to 133 this year.)

For the uninitiated, the recovered human remains are the skeletal remains found on in the broad swath of rugged high country desert across much of southern Arizona, just north of the Mexican border.

The remains are an excellent indication of undocumented border crossing activity. The remains, normally skeletons picked clean by the desert scavengers and harsh, dry weather, are of those unfortunate souls who lost their lives for various reasons trying to enter the U.S.

Fewer finds point to a decrease in clandestine crossings. Increased finds point to more crossings.

The increase in these grisly finds shows that U.S. Border Patrol enforcement measures seem to have little effect on the ebb and flow of migrant crossings.

The Border Patrol, of course, would argue to the contrary.

Most experts, and I agree, say the amount of migrant crossing is based on economic need and is largely unaffected by levels of enforcement. This is because of the remoteness of much of the border, which makes it virtually impossible to patrol or control.

The numbers gathered are not the random ramblings of humanitarians. These are statistics collected by and provide to the public by the Pima County Forensic Science Center. The stats represent remains found each month in Pima and Santa Cruz Counties, but also include some remains found in Pinal, Gila, and Graham counties, for various reasons. 

The increase in recovered remains comes despite a large concentration of border enforcement in southern Arizona in recent years by the Border Patrol. The concentration of man power in Arizona followed the hardening of the border in southern California and the El Paso, Texas, region, which forced migrant crossing into southern Arizona. 

With the hardening of the border in Arizona, now in-migration has moved to the more remote regions along the sprawling Texas border south of El Paso. Few accurate numbers on the found human remains are available there.

This means that the statistics provided by the Tucson Samaritans is one of the few accurate indications of border crossing activity.

The area covered by the Arizona statistics is only eight percent of the border. With 121 recovered remains in this small area, more than a thousand possible deaths occurred along the entire border. 

However, official statistics show that the 121 recovered remains are about forty percent of total. That would put the total annual deaths along the border at about 300. 

The remoteness and rugged terrain of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, which are the primary cause of the deaths (not gun violence), points to the absurdity of building the American equivalent of the Berlin Wall along the 2000-mile border.

Yet, that's what likely Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump proposes. It staggers the mind. 

Why not, as I suggest in The Dangerous Divide, provide temporary work visas to people who want them? Those who want them know they can get the jobs they want, which most American don't won't do. 

And, it would allow the U.S. to keep track of who's in the country, where they are, and what they're doing. It would also allow the visa holders to return to Mexico without fear they could never come back.

But of course, that's too simple and easy. 

The fall of Kunduz is no surprise

The Taliban's taking of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz is not surprising. As I wrote in Above the Din of War, the Taliban has controlled 75 percent of the country since 2009.

While no one wants to report it, the government has had only a marginal control of the major urban areas.

In my extensive interviews with Afghans, their frustration with US and NATO forces was loud and clear.

Why, they asked, can't the combined forces of the world's most powerful countries defeat the untrained, ill equipped, ragtag Taliban? They concluded that these foreign forces didn't want to, and preferred to keep the country in a constant state of war.

But the answer was even more simple. The US took it's eye off the ball back in 2003 and invaded Iraq, stayed for a decade, and accomplished nothing but completely destabilizing the Middle East.

Back in Afghanistan, the Taliban regrouped and came back. They were also able to take advantage of most Afghans' disgust with a grossly corrupt government lorded over by Hamid Karzai, who with his friends and family, drained the country dry.

The Taliban is now flexing their muscles.

This will be the theme during the coming years until they finally overwhelm an Afghan government that few like or respect. Afghanistan will eventually be fragmented much like it was prior to the US invasion.

I argued in my book that the focus on Afghanistan has been on the military, not development of the civilian side.

Everyone looks at the military to win, stabilize, or whatever.

Meanwhile, Afghans wonder what happened to the billions (trillions?) of dollars spent there over the past 14 years. Their lives have not improved.

They're victims of endless attacks from both sides, truly caught in the middle. Many argue that if "peace" means getting rid of the US and a return of the Taliban, they'd prefer that to the current situation. I don't blame them. At present, they have little to look forward to but more bloody war.

More western troops isn't going to change that.

If the west focused more on improving the economy and lives of average Afghans, rather than more soldiers and weapons, Afghans would feel very differently.

The bottom line is that you can't win a war without the support of the local populace. The policy makers and the military know this, but aren't doing anything about it.

That's why I find it hard to argue with Afghans who think the west only wants endless war. America fights wars. Sadly, anything else is secondary.

Kony and the LRA: Truth, Lies, and All the Rest

Ugandan authorities think they've found the remains of Okot Odhiambo, one of the most ruthless deputies of Joseph Kony's army of child soldier, the Lord's Resistance Army.

Odhiambo is rumored by the Ugandan army to have been killed or died about a year ago. But like Odhiambo's former comrade-in-arms, Vincent Otti, neither Otti's nor Odhiambo's remains have been found or identified.

While the news may be a step toward the elimination of Kony and his horde, the news has to be viewed with skepticism.

This kind of news from the Ugandan army is designed so that Kony's name does not fade from the pages of international news for more than a month or two. That the news emanates from the Ugandan army gives the impression that the Ugandan army is on top of the situation. It's not.

The recent French Press Agency story on the Odhiambo discovery quotes a Ugandan defense/military official saying that Kony is on the run and moments away from capture--something the Ugandan government has been saying for two decades.

"It will not be a surprise that he (Odhiambo) could be dead, because the UPDF [Ugandan army] has in the past killed many top LRA commanders and he cannot be an exception," Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga said last year. "The LRA's strength has diminished and the remaining force, including Kony, are on the run."

These kind of statements are wishful thinking. Similar rumors were spread about ten years ago, about the time my book, First Kill Your Family, was published. Military leaders who were supposedly fighting Kony claimed that each of Kony's devastating counter-attacks were nothing more than the "final kicks of dying horse." The horse was not dying and the kicks were not final.

Some of those old rumors concerned Dominic Ongwen, who at one time was reportedly captured and/or killed when his unit of the LRA had lingered in northern Uganda after Kony and Otti had decamped to the Garamba National Park in northern Democractic Republic of the Congo.

Today we know that Ongwen, known as the "White Ant," is where he belongs in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

How Ongwen ended up there illustrates the convoluted mis- and dis-information about the LRA.

Initial reports suggested that Ongwen had been captured by the U.S. Special Forces backing the Ugandans who are tracking the LRA through the jungles of Central African Republic. In fact, Ongwen surrendered  after a 30-minute firefight to the Christian militia Seleka rebels who had and have been fighting in the CAR.

The Seleka rebels turned him over to the U.S. Special Forces and demanded the $5 million reward that had been offered for Ongwen's capture.

"I did not want to die in the bush, so I decided to follow the right path and listen to the calling of the ICC," said Ongwen, in the Acholi language on a video taken by the Ugandan army, according to reports.

In Dominic's own words, he did not want to die in the bush. Many others who have defected from the LRA have said the same thing. They're tired of running. That's not the same thing as saying they're afraid of the Ugandan army and certainly not any goofy programs orchestrated by U.S-based "humanitarian" groups.

They're just tired.

Given the choice between  a life of endless scavenging in the bush and living in an apartment in The Hague, Ongwen chose the apartment.  He knows the ICC won't kill him, no matter how many people he killed or ordered killed and watched while they died horrible deaths.

But he knows that Kony would eventually kill him, as Kony reportedly did with Otti. Ongwen was not humane, but the court would be. Ongwen knew that.

With the desertion/surrender of Ongwen, it's been interesting to see who's lined up to take credit.

Of course the Ugandan military is first in line, even though Kony still fights as he has since 1985, when the earliest incarnations of what became the LRA battled the Ugandan army of President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni has been unable to stop Kony since 1985. Why could he succeed now?

Next to take credit has been the international community, starting with the U.S. government. It's been quickly followed by the international humanitarian community.

As I wrote in First Kill Your Family, the only way Kony will be defeated is when and if he decides to give himself up--or if and when he's killed. Kony is a self-professed prophet and militia leader. He knows only one life -- killing, plunder, and abduction. He won't change because he can't.

He won't come out of the bush because he fears he'll be killed. And the Ugandans won't go after him because they fear Kony's mystical powers. Kony lives, and for the time being, that won't change.

What and why we write

The title caught me. It contained the word international, as in International Blog Hop.

It came via writers I know only through Facebook, such as JD Rhoades and Elizabeth Lynn Casey aka Laura Bradford.

Blog about writing and pass the pen. No Bogarting allowed.

I like the international thing. I spent 10 years knocking around largely forgotten, yet unforgettable corners of world, like Albania, Slovenia, Moldova, Armenia, Afghanistan, Uganda, the Congo, South Sudan, and Somalia, with a pit stop in Zanzibar and a trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro.

(My wife Dina finally said I had to unpack that carry-on I kept next to the bed. I didn't grumble much.)

Staring at this blank screen, I thought of the writers and journalists I've worked with in far-flung places. They're fearless scribes who face unimaginable difficulties -- the ever-present threat of being killed for broadcasting or writing the wrong thing (aka the truth) about a maniacal president or warlord.

Here in the U.S. the biggest problems are Internet speed, occasional heartburn, and too many choices.

Yet, these writers had a refined sense of beauty and art, and an appreciation of the time it takes to create it -- notions lost in our headlong rush into the digital age.

So....

1) What am I working on?

Fiction. After six books of narrative nonfiction, I've conceded that Americans don't care much for what happens in the next county, let alone on another continent. It's an unfortunate fact even if we have 100,000 troops in a country for more than a decade to fight a nebulous "war on terror."

Never mind that we don't know who the enemy is, what language they speak, or why they hate us.

For international issues to find a place in the American psyche demands delivery by mythological creatures known as super agents. They're typically misfit ex-CIA-turned-contractors or rogues brought back from obscure locales like Uruguay or Monte Negro for one last chance. (Normal people don't live and work in places like that, do they?)

They often have special knowledge and experience of the countries or regions, even if only bits and pieces of that are revealed. No matter, though. They're really good at knocking off the bad guys, who are always potent and plentiful.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Other than it brings to light global tragedies that compel reconsideration of our role in the world, which no one wants to do?

With my fiction foray, I've deviated from the cop/agent as the central character and substituted a journalist. (Write about something I know, right?) But journalists don't carry guns, even though they're good at digging up dirt and getting into trouble. So, my guy's got a special agent friend with weapons and he knows how to use them.

3) Why do you write what you do?

Nothing is more satisfying than going into a global hot zone, and getting paid to do so, then emerging with the story-behind-the-story. But enough of that. My move toward fiction is explained above.

4) How does my writing process work?

Nonfiction requires organization and preparation: detailed book proposals and sample chapters. Not a lot is left to the imagination, but manuscripts are malleable. Chapters are whacked and others added. Then there's the logistics of finding contacts and meeting sources. I've had the luxury of working in places and at jobs that afforded me time to develop the books on the side. But not always.

For fiction, I like three things: an issue/theme, a beginning, and an end. The rest happens at the keyboard. I start in the morning and don't quit until I have at least 1,000 words. By then I can usually hear a glass of Cabernet calling my name.

We'll see soon enough how the process works, though. My agent specializes in nonfiction. She flinched when I told her I was working on fiction. There's always Amazon.

The nightmare of the Navajo

Twenty years ago I was asked by a remarkable man named Michael O'Shaughnessy and his wife Marianne if I would write a book about the devastation caused by uranium mining on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners Area.

I was thrilled at the prospect. At the time I had been working as a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper covering the battle to bury so-called low-level radioactive waste in underground salt beds near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The stuff to be buried was the contaminated debris -- tools, gloves, beakers, etc -- used by the plutonium handlers in America's nuclear weapons factories.

(The controversy surrounding that project, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), is far from over since now the site, just as many opponents feared, is being mentioned as a burial site for high-level radioactive waste.)

The story of the Navajo uranium miners was a compelling aspect of the same story. With the waste burial project, I had been writing about the end-game of America's Cold War nuclear arsenal. The Navajo people and their lands told of the front end, the source of of America's Cold War weaponry.

I researched and wrote the book on the fly, making frequent trips to the reservation to meet with former Navajo uranium miners who were dying of lung cancer. They lived in all corners of the reservation, in communities that were left with contaminated water supplies and piles of  uranium ore and processed waste.

I visited one family that had used the chunks of discarded uranium to build a house. It had exposed the family and others similarly situated to constant bombardment by low levels of radiation, the effects of which are only now becoming apparent.

I visited dozens of abandoned mine sites, which was easy to do. There were more than 1,000 on the reservation due to its unique geography that had left the Navajos sitting on rich deposits of uranium that were critical to America's nuclear arsenal.

Most mines were small. They called them "dog holes." They'd been dug by crews of miners who worked with picks, shovels and wheel barrows, loaded the ore in trucks, and drove it to one of the processing plants built on the reservation.

Some were bigger mines, but the techniques and tools were the same. The uranium was found in horizontal layers of sandstone, which cracked and crumbled easily with dynamite. Eager to earn profits quickly, the miners often scrambled into the mines shortly after the blasts and inhaled choking clouds of dust laden with silica and uranium.

The silica from the sandstone lacerated the miners' lungs and left deadly particles of uranium lodged in the delicate tissues. Some miners died within years. Others died after decades of dwindling health.

The Navajo uranium miners knew nothing of the dangers they faced, since few spoke English. Their ancient language lacked a word for radiation. Yet the government was well aware that the miners were in trouble. But rather than insuring miner safety, the government conducted a secret study that charted the deteriorating health of the miners. It was a well documented death watch.

Despite the destruction of environment and the death and health problems caused by the uranium mining, little was or has been done to rectify these problems. Two massive lawsuits filed on behalf of the Navajos by former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, resulted in no award of damages or cleanup.

The major mining companies were not held responsible because the Navajo miners had not filed their worker compensation claims in time. The government was excused when a federal judge ruled that in times of national emergency, such as the Cold War, certain people were expendable.

The only relief came in 1993 when the U.S. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which provided one-time payments of $100,000 to stricken miners or their surviving families. Qualifying for the compensation was yet another nightmare for the Navajos.

The results of my work became the 1994 book, If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans, published by Red Crane Books, the publishing company that the O'Shaughnessys created. The company's amazing book list was ultimately turned over to the Museum of New Mexico Press.

The story of the Navajo and uranium is far from over, however. As was once again made clear in an article this past week in the New York Times, the uranium and radioactive pollution continues to plague the Navajo. Rather than cleaning up the mess, the U.S. government is now moving the Navajos off of their land.

This situation on the Navajo lands is undoubtedly one of the darkest chapters of U.S. history. It is an on-going human and environmental disaster that neither the public nor the government wishes to acknowledge.

It is absurd that these original Americans have been subjected to such an on-going horror. As the government drags its feet, refusing to face the problem, the radioactive pollution continues to creep across the Navajo lands and leach into the ground water.

This nightmare began in the mid-1950s, nearly 65 years ago. Several generations of Navajos have suffered, and many more will as well. When will the nightmare end?

The deafening silence

Yesterday evening I was a guest at KGNU, a community radio station in Boulder, CO. The talk show topic was Afghanistan, where the U.S. has fought its longest war.

With me on the show by phone was Noor, an Afghan law student who worked with me as a fixer and translator for my book, Above the Din of War, a collection of wide-ranging interviews with Afghans about how they see their lives, their country, and their future.

Their view is bleak, and rightly so.

I wrote the book because the Afghan people are the most important, yet most ignored piece of the Afghan puzzle. Yet their views, their wants, and their needs are ignored as the debate over Afghanistan flares and fades from day to day.

It is as if 30 million or so Afghans don't exist. Yet, they have suffered the brunt of nearly 13 years of war that the U.S. and the international community have waged in a futile effort to defeat the Taliban.

Afghanistan is slowly but surely disintegrating. As the U.S. and international community prepare to decamp, President Hamid Karzai flails and wails and his corrupted and disconnected government crumbles.

The U.S. is on a trajectory to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban. It is not only a strategic and diplomatic mistake on a monumental scale, it also will open the door to a humanitarian disaster that will make Afghanistan's horrific civil war of the early 1990s look tame.

This became clear as Noor told the tragic tale of one of his best friends who died at the hands of the Taliban. The radio host had asked why, if most Afghans hate the Taliban, don't they rise up against them?

Noor explained that his friend had worked for one of the many private security firms operating in Afghanistan that collect exorbitant fees to protect people and materiel vital to the war.

When a relative died in Kabul, his friend's family took the body to be buried in their home village in Paktia province, one of the most deadly and dangerous for U.S. and Afghan forces. Paktia is on the border with Pakistan and in the rugged mountains where the Taliban holds sway.

When the Taliban learned that Noor's friend was in the village for the burial, they beheaded him. He was accused of being traitor and spy because he had worked for an international security company that supported the war against the Taliban.

The village was horrified, but crippled with fear and helpless to fight back, Noor explained. The villagers lacked the weapons, supplies, and men to resist the Taliban. The Afghan army unit in the area only sporadically fought the Taliban there and spent most of its time in a secured compound. The village was at the mercy of the Taliban.

No one in the village knew who the Taliban were, Noor said, since they were not locals and spoke a foreign dialect of the Pashtun language. The Taliban traveled freely across the border into Pakistan where they were supplied and armed. The local villagers were defenseless.

His friend's family was left destitute. His friend's widow and children now beg on the street and rely on handouts from friends and relatives.

This story illustrates what can and will happen many thousands of times over as U.S. and international forces complete the Afghan draw-down.

Noor is one of the lucky ones. He recently obtained a visa that will allow him to live in the U.S. and he stays in daily contact with his family and friends in Kabul. Everyone there is preparing for the worst, he said. Many are making arrangements to flee the country.

Meanwhile, the White House and the Pentagon tell the American public that the Afghan army can handle things, that a new president will be elected in April, and that all is well. Mission accomplished.

Sadly, the only accomplishment will be leaving Afghanistan in worse shape then when we arrived, a country edging toward civil war with tens of thousands of lives at risk.

When it came time for the call-in portion of the show, the station phones were silent. It was not surprising.  America grew tired of the war in Afghanistan long ago.

Yet, the silence was deafening.  
 

Karzai's desperate moves

It should come as no surprise that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been engaged in supposedly "secret" talks with the Taliban, as reported in today's New York Times.

A survivor, Karzai is desperately trying to save himself, his friends, and his family. And, I doubt that US intelligence was not aware of Karzai's actions. What's fascinating, however, is that Karzai's actions are newsworthy.

As the article points out, these behind-the-scenes talks have produced nothing. One of the reasons that they've been fruitless is that Karzai and the US have had no luck in finding anyone of any substance who truly represents the Taliban's seemingly untouchable leader, Mullah Omar.

But that too, should not come as a surprise. As I wrote in Above the Din of War, one of the Taliban's best games has been to pose impostors as their inside men, people who supposedly have direct access to Mullah Omar.

The funniest one was when US and British intelligence services sent a mission into Pakistan to pick up a man who was said to be a Taliban insider. The man was handed a bag of $100s and whisked into a series of high level meetings with US and Afghan officials.

Though this man did little more than grunt and nod, he was touted as a breakthrough. In the end, however, it was revealed that this man was little more than a Pakistani shopkeeper. His story is the Pakistani version of Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure.

The Taliban is still laughing over that one. But there's more. Take, for instance, the death of the former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the man who Karzai appointed to head up his Peace Council.

After a couple of years of trying, the Taliban sent an envoy to meet with Rabbani, who was kind enough to let the man stay at his home while he was away from Kabul. When Rabbani returned and met with the man, the envoy detonated a bomb hidden in his turban, killing himself and Rabbani.

Hmmm. Could there be a message here?

Then there was the time when Karzai killed talks that the US State Department had arranged with the Taliban in Qatar. In one of the few instances where I have agreed with him, Karzai said no because the Taliban had essentially set up what amounted to an embassy-in-exile in Qatar. The Taliban wanted to conduct talks posing as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Karzai refused.

So, why would Karzai continue to reach out to the Taliban after all of this?

As I've written in earlier posts, Karzai has lost touch with reality. He lives exclusively inside the confines of his fortified palace, yet is able to see the writing on the wall. The Taliban's grip is growing stronger each and every day. It is only a matter of time before their strangle hold on Afghanistan is once again complete.

Karzai knows that when the Taliban takes over again, his life and that of his extended family and associates is over. What can be confiscated of his will be taken by the Taliban. If he escapes alive, he'll be lucky. In an effort to forestall this inevitability, Karzai has reached out to the Taliban.

As the Times points out, this may help explain why Karzai has refused to sign the agreement that would put the US forces inside Afghanistan for another decade. It would also explain why he has so steadfastly insisted on releasing dozens of Taliban prisoners the US has kept locked up in Baghram.

By delaying the signing and ranting against the US, Karzai has foolishly tried to curry favor with the Taliban. Sorry. It won't work.

The cost of corruption

This past week, a US government oversight agency issued a quarterly report on the handling of US aid to Afghanistan that underscores the abject failure of America's longest and perhaps most tragic war.

The report was produced by the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, and its report can be found on-line: http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2014Jan30QR.pdf

Among the reports key findings are:

--USAID contractors assessed 16 Afghan ministries and found they are unable to manage and account for funds; they identified 696 recommendations for corrective action -- 41 percent of them rated "critical" or "high risk."

--USAID's own risk reviews of seven Afghan ministries concluded each ministry is unable to manage U.S. direct assistance funds.  The reviews identified 107 major risks -- 99 of them rated critical or high.

--USAID said it would not award direct assistance dollars to these Afghan ministries "under normal circumstances." USAID waived its own requirements for providing direct assistance funds.

--USAID has not required the Afghan ministries to fix most of the risks identified prior to receiving U.S. money.

--USAID’s assessments revealed a high risk of corruption at the Afghan ministries.

--USAID failed to fully disclose to Congress that none of the ministries it assessed are capable of managing direct assistance funds.

--USAID insisted that SIGAR withhold key information from Congress and the public, even though USAID shared it with the Afghan government.

If one looks beyond the bureaucratic language, it is clear that those in the Afghan government are stealing US funds with wild abandon. USAID knows  it, yet by its own admission, the agency continues to dispense the funds, even against its better judgement and in violation of its own rules!

This might be an argument for an immediate cutoff of funds and a speedy withdrawal. But not so fast.

War time corruption is nothing new. Iraq was rife with corruption and it drove the cost of the war both in Iraq and and Afghanistan to dizzying heights. Corruption in the Afghan government also is not new. In fact, it has been going on for much of 13 years of this war, everyone knows it.

As I wrote in Above the Din of War, the corruption has been so pervasive that the vast majority of Afghans divorced themselves from the government long ago. And along with that estrangement, most Afghans pulled back their support for the US efforts to defeat the Taliban.

Their thinking was quite clear and straight forward. After the initial excitement of a country having been liberated from the oppressive and fundamentalist Taliban regime, the vast majority of Afghans felt their country was on the verge of prosperity and new found freedoms.

Instead of building on that all of this goodwill, the US inexplicably diverted its military and civilian resources to Iraq. This was undoubtedly the worst possible move the US could have made. The decision's dreadful economic impact was such that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal must someday be held accountable.

While the Iraq war was waged, Afghanistan was put on the back burner. Afghanistan's puppet leader, President Hamid Karzai, was left to run the show. He took advantage of the situation by surrounding himself with family and friends who helped themselves to largess of America and the international donors.

America simply looked the other way. But the Afghans did not. They saw the billions of dollars that they had thought would help them and their fellow Afghans recover from decades of war being stolen each and every day by the people the US had put into power.

They were not only Karzai and his pals, but the dozen or so warlords that still control Afghanistan. These former warlords were handed various and sundry ministries much like spoils of war.

The Taliban took advantage of the growing discontent and rampant corruption. They rightly asked their fellow Afghans to once again join them to help root out those who have been corrupted by the westerners and their money and their armies.

Slowly but surely, the Taliban was resurrected and now controls and estimated 80 percent of Afghanistan.

With Karzai refusing to sign a bilateral agreement that would let the US stay in Afghanistan for another decade, the Taliban is salivating. In the coming months, the Taliban knows, it will be able to quickly pounce and again claim Afghanistan, having driven the corrupted westerners from their land.

But the US cannot and should not let that happen. As I wrote in earlier columns, there is too much at stake to be lost, not only in Afghanistan and the region, but at home and around the world.              

Is Karzai crazy?

In the Monday, January 27 issue of the Washington Post, reporter Kevin Seiff reported from Kabul that Afghan President Hamid Karzai believes that the U.S. is secretly helping the Taliban and is behind many of the deadly attacks there in recent years.

This includes the recent suicide bombing and gun attack on La Taverna, the Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, where 21 people, including three Americans, were killed.

The rational response, of course, is that this is ridiculous. Why would the United States fight a war in Afghanistan against the Taliban for 13 years, and all the while secretly help the Taliban? Of course it's absurd.

But as I researched and wrote Above the Din of War, it's an attitude and belief in Afghanistan that is shared by many people.

The thinking is this: Why has the world's most powerful army, which has the world's most sophisticated weaponry, best intelligence services, and employs the best trained soldiers not been able to defeat the Taliban? After all, the Taliban are essentially untrained and miserably equipped. They use antiquated weapons, only AK-47s and RPGs, communicate largely by cell phones, and run around the countryside wearing blankets and broken down shoes.

Good question. Many Afghans answer by saying that the U.S. simply does NOT want to defeat the Taliban. They believe the U.S. is keeping the Taliban alive by equipping it and aiding it.

Karzai has picked up on this thinking and is now, according to Seiff, trying to develop a dossier of photos and information that would prove this assertion. Unfortunately, the evidence that Karzai has been gathering is bogus, as was pointed out in a recent article by the New York Times.

In that Times piece, angry survivors of a northern village that had been attacked by an airstrike showed a photo of dead and mutilated bodies that was from an attack that had occurred elsewhere in 2009.

What's going on here? As I have said before, it is time to stop taking Karzai seriously, which is what the Obama administration continues to do, and is why Seiff and the Washington Post tried to make sense of Karzai's comments and thought process.

I can only agree with U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham's assessment of Karzai's comments: "It's a deeply conspiratorial view that's divorced from reality," the Post quoted him as saying. "It flies in the face of logic and morality to think that we would aid the enemy we're trying to defeat."

The key words here are "divorced from reality."

One of the few times I saw Karzai in person was during a 2004 press conference with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. At the time, Karzai was friendly and talked about the great cooperation between the two countries in fighting a common enemy.

But what struck me, however, was that Karzai was essentially a prisoner of his own device inside the highly fortified presidential palace. As far as I knew, he never left. It was too dangerous. The only people Karzai sees are the ones who come to him, passing through an incredible gauntlet of security -- paid for by the U.S.

No wonder he sounds wacky. He has spent the last 10 years knocking around a fortified palace watching as the war has dragged on for more than a dozen years with no clear resolution in sight. Meanwhile, the Taliban grows stronger and stronger as the U.S. and NATO steadily ratchet down their forces.

After more than a decade as Afghanistan's nominal leader, Karzai sees his country ebbing into the chaos, civil war, and the hands of the Taliban. There's nothing Karzai can do to stop it. He has been and is completely at the mercy of the U.S., which after the coming April 5 presidential election -- if it actually occurs -- will happily toss him out on the street.

(Karzai will probably turn up in Dubai the day after the election, if not earlier.)

What few shreds of dignity that Karzai may have left can only be salvaged by his increasingly strident and self-destructive anti-American ravings. These are, after all, nothing more than his sad and futile attempt to align himself with the 30 million Afghans who abandoned him long ago.

It's pathetic, of course, but no more pathetic than the U.S. government officials, policy makers, and perhaps even some journalists who still take him seriously.

Abandoning Afghanistan

An article in today's New York Times raises a lot of issues surrounding the so-called "zero option," which would be a total pull-out of Afghanistan by the end of this year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/world/asia/afghanistan-exit-is-seen-as-peril-to-drone-mission.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140127

While the headline suggests that the drone program would be put in jeopardy, a lot more is at stake. Not only would total withdrawal simply turn over large portions of the country to the Taliban and the fundamentalist elements in Pakistan, it would pave the way to a return to civil war. That alone is enough to reject the zero option. 

As the article mentions, a major reason for our presence in Afghanistan is to keep an eye on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. While it is well known that Pakistan and India have arsenals aimed at each other  -- a sad homage to the paranoia that grips the region -- it's much more serious because Pakistan is apparently developing highly mobile "tactical" nukes. 

Given the inherent instability of Pakistan, its illusory control of the northwest provinces, and its widely accepted ties with and support of the Taliban, possession of tactical nuclear weapons poses a big problem.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to suspect that these exceedingly destructive weapons could fall into the hands of elements of the Taliban and/or the fractured and diverse incarnations of al-Qaeda.

The threat of this to both Afghanistan and Pakistan is obvious. But it doesn't stop there. The region is at stake as well.

Perhaps the best example is al-Qaeda's recent takeover of Fallujah, the bloody and bitterly contested city in Iraq. This is a clear and dangerous consequence of the US total pull-out of Iraq. 

Now Al-Qaeda militias control parts of Syria. They're scattered across northern Africa in countries such as northern Nigeria, Algeria, Libya, and Mali.

This makes a domestic threat to the US all the more real. 

Yes, this theme has been explored extensively already by thriller writers and Hollywood productions. At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, this is a real situation that is evolving slowly but surely.

Because of this, it is all the more important that the US abandon the zero option in Afghanistan. The threat posed by the region, if left to its own devices, is frighteningly real. 

There is historical precedent. The attacks of 9/11 were hatched by bin Laden while he was in Afghanistan. And where did he go to hide for more than a decade? Pakistan.

What is still more disconcerting is that the US policy makers are presenting Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an obstacle because he won't sign the agreement that would give us a long-term presence in Afghanistan.

This is absurd. Karzai is in office and is only alive, in fact, because the US put him there and keeps him there. Not only is the stability of the region dependent on US and NATO presence, so is US long-term security.

All of this is at risk because Karzai is throwing yet another irrational and self-destructive temper tantrum in a fake show that he cares about the Afghan people? No one in Afghanistan takes Karzai seriously, so why should the US?

It is apparent that by giving Karzai the credence that he does not deserve, the Obama administration is giving itself political cover for a possible total withdrawal.  

The US cannot abandon Afghanistan. There is far too much at stake, in the country, in the region, and at home for the US to pull out. It would be a huge mistake. 

An all too familiar story

There's a good story posted yesterday on-line in the New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/10/how-a-texas-philanthropist-funded-the-hunt-for-joseph-kony.html.

The story is about how Texan philanthropist Shannon Davis and others, have helped fund, train and equip a special unit of the Ugandan army to pursue the notorious warlord, Joseph Kony and his army of child soldiers, now roaming somewhere, people think, in the Central African Republic.

Some thoughts:

Davis and the others rightly suggest that the Ugandans are the ones who must capture or put an end to Kony, not the legions of non-Africans who follow the agonizing and consistent failures of the Ugandan army. 

The result of the Davis funded mission, however, is hauntingly familiar to the first such attack on a Kony camp, funded by the Bush administration in Dec 2008. Despite nearly a year of training and millions in military aid, Kony was long gone when the Ugandans botched what was supposed to be a decisive blow on his base camp in the Garamba National Park in the DR Congo.

In the wake of the attack, it became clear that Kony had been tipped off, mostly likely by the Ugandan army insiders. I would suspect that same thing happened in this latest assault. The Ugandan army is trying to blame US intelligence for not sharing that Kony was already gone. I suspect it is the other way around. The Ugandans knew Kony was gone, but attacked anyway just so the funders would feel that their efforts had not been wasted.

I would suggest that Kony has not really been deprived of a safe haven. He has been roaming the remote reaches of the Central African Republic for more than seven years now, and roamed northern Uganda for 20 before that. Moving and setting up new camps is routine.

I would also suggest that Sudan's president al-Bashir willingly supports Kony, the first person indicted by the International Criminal Court, since now he too is on the court's most wanted list. Helping Kony is finger in the eye of the court.

It's been the same story with Kony told over and over, only with different players. As I argue in First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, Uganda does not want to capture or kill Kony. He is much more valuable alive than dead or on trial before the International Criminal Court. That well-funded and well-intention people like Davis and Buffett, not to mention US Special Forces, are willing to train, equip and fund the Ugandans year-after-year illustrates how Kony is a cash cow for the Ugandans.

This has been obvious since the onset when Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni padded his military payroll and the pockets of his generals with thousands of non-existent "ghost soldiers" who were supposedly fighting Kony when he was in northern Uganda prior to vacating the country in 2006. The Ugandan army's refrain is sadly familiar when the generals are asked what they need to capture Kony: money, equipment and training. 

The US continues to advise and assist the Ugandans in their "pursuit" of Kony because the Ugandans are the bulk of the African Union's mission in Somalia. 

As a terrorist haven for the al-Qaeda-like Al Shabab, which conducted that horrific attack on the mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and previously bombed locations in Kampala, keeping a Ugandan force in Somalia is strategically much more important to US interests than Kony will ever be. 

A few helicopters and contingent of special forces to chase Kony is little more than a bone tossed to the Ugandans.

--Peter Eichstaedt

Talks with the Taliban won't work

For once, President Hamid Karzai may have it right.

As U.S.-Taliban-Afghan government talks were about to open last week in Doha, Qatar, Karzai objected to the Taliban's decorations of their political office with their flag and other markings of their so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

While it may seem like a small thing, the significance of the flag, etc., was huge. The Taliban, in essence, was declaring that the office was an embassy of their country and their "government."

By extension the talks, they were implying, were and are taking place on their territory and on their terms, and with an illegitimate entity -- Karzai's government.

By sitting down with the Taliban in such a circumstance, Karzai knew that it was tantamount to conceding a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.

For all practical purposes, the Taliban is right. They've won the war in Afghanistan.

As I wrote in Above the Din of War, the Taliban controls at least 75 percent of the country and has for the past several years. The Karzai government, such as it is, controls only the major urban areas, due mostly to the presence of U.S., British, and other international forces.

While international forces and Afghan forces patrol the countryside, they do so at the risk of serious Taliban attacks and the high likelihood of devastating roadside bombs.

The relentless and deadly suicide bombings in Kabul and other urban areas, which grow each day in intensity and frequency, show that the grip of the Afghan forces is tenuous.

Once the international pull-out is complete, the Taliban will quite easily cement their control throughout most of the country.  Within six months of the pull out, we can expect to see a map of Afghanistan that resembles that of 2000, when the Northern Alliance held just parts of northern Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled the rest.

The Taliban has nothing to lose and much to gain by engaging these so-called peace talks. They do so from a position of strength because the United States and its NATO allies are headed for the exists.

As the Taliban is wont to say about the U.S. and NATO: "They have the watches. We have the time."

With the American withdrawal set for the end of next year, just 18 months away, the U.S. is desperate for some sort of a negotiated, political settlement.

The fact is that the Taliban has no reason to make concessions or to sign anything that might diminish  their command and control over vast swaths of Afghanistan.

Yet, when and if talks with the Taliban actually begin, the Taliban will earn bonus public relations points by simply sitting down and portraying themselves as willing to talk about peace, regardless of the truth of the matter.

Each and every day such talks continue, the U.S. will reveal its desperate desire to walk away  from Afghanistan and declare, "job done," regardless of the reality on the ground.

Even if an agreement can be reached with the Taliban, there is little or no way that provisions of it could be enforced, should they be violated by the Taliban.

The absurdity that surrounds these would-be peace talks is difficult to fathom.

I would have thought that someone with the experience of Secretary of State John Kerry would have rejected the notion of Taliban talks without major concessions on their part.

Ironically, it seems that Karzai is one of the few who gets it.

Kony's plunder of wildlife

A report issued by the Enough Project and titled, Kony's Ivory, documents yet another in an endless string atrocities by Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

The report, http://www.enoughproject.org/files/KonysIvory.pdf,  reveals how Kony and his cutthroats have contributed the destruction of elephant population in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to the report, the elephant population has dwindled from about 20,000 (other reports set the figure at only 7,000) to just 1,500 in the past decade due to poaching, much of it by the LRA.

As anyone who has been following this issue knows, Kony and company set up camp in the Garamba park in late 2005 and early 2006, using it as a base while peace talks were conducted in Juba, South Sudan, with the Ugandan government.

Even then, reports were rife that Kony's men were killing the Garamba wildlife, mostly for the meat.
I visited the periphery of the park twice, both times in connection with research for First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army.

The first time was in 2006 on the northern edge of the park where it borders South Sudan.

The second was on the western edge of the park in 2008 in the town of Dungu, which had been attacked and raided by the LRA, despite the presence of United Nations forces.

In Dungu, I met with wildlife officers who talked about the dangers faced by the park rangers, who had basically withdrawn from much of the park because of the LRA, but also told me of extensive poaching.

It is good that Enough has documented this on-going tragedy, but it may be too little, too late.

The report provides no details on who is buying the ivory, how and why, or where it goes once it leaves the park. The only details we get are from one former LRA captive who says that people arrived in helicopters to buy it. Really? From where?

If the buyers used helicopters, it means some fairly well-heeled smugglers are involved, most likely based in Nairobi, Kenya, or Khartoum, Sudan. Or, more likely, that corrupt military commanders from either country (imagine that!) are in the middle of the illegal trade.

Just last month the Reuters wrote a story about the wider problem of elephant poaching across central Africa, based on a United Nations report, singling out the LRA as an example of the problem: http://news.yahoo.com/libya-war-weapons-may-killing-central-africa-elephants-062616139.html?.tsrc=lgwnaww.

As early as 2004, a year before the LRA entered Garamba Park, the slaughter of white rhinos was being reported as a major concern for wildlife biologists, as noted in the British newspaper, the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/democraticrepublicofcongo/1462372/Poachers-killing-last-of-the-rare-white-rhinos.html.

Closer to home, the National Geographic Society was also involved, reporting in 2004 about the problem on it's website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0507_040507_whiterhino.html

Solutions anyone?

The common thread here is that various armed groups across Africa kill the elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns, since they can get several thousand dollars per pound for ivory. The sale of the ivory buys weapons and supplies for armed groups.

One report mentioned that the rhino horns went to Yemen where they were carved into handles for highly prized daggers for wealthy sheiks. Likewise, the rhino horns are valued for their supposed medicinal qualities and the ivory for its rarity by Asians.

Despite the on-going human tragedy and the destruction of the last wild herds of elephants and rhinos in Africa -- a problem that has been highly publicized for more than a decade -- nothing is being done to stop it.

This is all too reminiscent of what is being done, or more precisely NOT being done, about Kony and the LRA. The Ugandan army, which had been chasing Kony in the Central African Republic for the past five or so years, gave up the hunt by using the recent military coup in the CAR as an excuse to quit.

The U.S. Special Forces mission, sent by President Obama in 2011 to help in the search for Kony, also decided to stand down.

As wildlife activists have been saying for years, the slaughter of African wildlife must be attacked on many fronts.

First, enforcement. The poachers certainly must be stopped. This will require a trained and pervasive force which will require commitment and funding.

Second, the traders must be found, stopped, prosecuted and jailed.

Thirdly, the demand must be curtailed. This will require working with the Chinese and Southeast Asian nations to gain their support and cooperation.

While the Enough Project report may help rekindle interest in the poaching problem, it does little more than note a problem that people have known about for decades.

If there is to be any hope of actually solving the problem, Enough and the other groups involved in the report need to much more than plow what is already heavily plowed ground. 

Sudan harbouring Kony: report

It should come as no surprise that reports this past week from Resolve Uganda claim that Sudan has been harboring international fugitive from justice, Joseph Kony, and his Lord's Resistance Army.

 

Sudan, of course, denies the charge.  

Titled, "Hidden in Plain Sight," the Resolve report  (http://www.resolveuganda.org/) includes satellite images that it claims is a recently-abandoned camp, where Kony apparently was seen in late 2012. The region is called Kafia Kingi, and is in the far northwestern corner of South Sudan, where the borders of Sudan and the Central African Republic meet.  

 

Despite the fact that the territory is clearly in the newly independent South Sudan, Kafia Kingi is "disputed" land nominally controlled by Sudan.

"Eyewitnesses testify that elements from Sudan's military actively provided Kony and other LRA leaders with periodic safe haven in Sudanese-controlled territory from 2009 until at least February 2013," according to the Resolve report.

 

While the report raises the necessary red flags about Kony's whereabouts and lines of support, it reflects a host of past behavior patterns on the part of ALL parties concerned.

 

For much of the 20 years that Kony fought his bloody war in northern Uganda, he and his army of child soldiers found refuge in South Sudan during Uganda's dry season, where Kony was able to establish semi-permanent camps and grow food.

 

In First Kill Your Family, I write about my interviews with Kony's former top commanders who described being hosted by the Sudanese, who controlled South Sudan then, including one LRA commander who was flown to a hospital in Khartoum where he was treated for a severe wound that resulted in a leg amputation.

 

Sudan's support for Kony was due to Kony's guerilla war against Uganda, following the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was an ardent supporter of the late John Garang, who led South Sudan in its war for independence from Sudan. 

 

The situation is no different today than it was back then. While Kony has directed his attacks in the past couple of years against the innocent people of eastern Central African Republic, the fact that he remains camped out in South Sudan is a warning.

Then as now, Kony has the strong potential of being a thorn in the side of South Sudan, wreaking havoc on the South Sudanese, who even now are struggling to solidify their independence and their claims to the oil-rich Abyei region that is challenged by Sudan.

 

Another repeated pattern that the Resolve report reveals is of Uganda's wholly inept efforts to capture Kony. Uganda's army, which has been chasing Kony since 2008 when peace talks finally collapsed, is considered one of the best in east Africa.

 

The fact that Uganda's army can't find Kony is not an accident. Kony is much more valuable to Uganda alive and on the loose than he is captured and on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he was indicted for war crimes in 2005. 

 

Kony has been and continues to be an endless excuse for Uganda to received millions of dollars of U.S. and international civilian and military aid. 

 

After all, U.S. Special Forces were assigned in 2011 to help Uganda's efforts to find Kony in the Central African Republic -- just the latest tranche in two decades worth of money and equipment that has been handed over to the Ugandans.

 

What has Uganda been doing with all that support and advice? Not much, it appears, since the search for Kony for the past two years has been based in Obo, a remote town in the far eastern tip of the Central African Republic.

 

Obo is nowhere close to where Resolve says Kony has been operating since 2009. Look for yourself on www.googlemaps.com. Kony's apparent location is about 400 north of where the Ugandans and the Americans have been looking.

 

If a handful of humanitarian activists can track down Kony, what have the Ugandan and their American advisers been doing? Not much, because Uganda does not want Kony captured or killed, but is happy to accept American aid.

 

If the Resolve report is even remotely true, this is a huge embarrassment to the State Department and the U.S. military advisers.

 

According to new reports, this is the U.S. response: "The United States is aware and continues to evaluate reports that the LRA has operated in the disputed Kafia Kingi area claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan," said Patrick Ventrell, deputy State Department spokesman.

"The US and the international community as a whole would take very seriously any credible evidence of support or safe haven being provided to the LRA," he said, adding Washington has encouraged Sudan to cooperate with regional efforts to counter the LRA.

Meanwhile, the US has thrown more money on the table, a reward of $5 million for the capture of Kony, who Secretary of State John Kerry said would "not be easy to find."

 

Given the fact that Uganda once arrested, jailed, then deported a group of mercenaries who were organizing to capture Kony, this reward will undoubtedly result in the same lack of success as all previous efforts.