TRIPOLI, Libya – One night late last month, in a sweltering apartment deep in the heart of Tripoli, a group of men gathered around the television to watch the evening news. The program was carried on Libya al-Ahrar, a Doha-based news channel beaming into Libya in support of the revolution. At precisely 8:30 p.m., after the breaking of the Ramadan fast and as locals were streaming to the mosques, the message these men were waiting for came: “Truly, we have granted you a clear victory,” the newscaster said, before signing off for the night.
It was a verse from the Quran, but to the men in this room, in the tightly packed neighborhood of Souq al-Juma, it was so much more — a code that signaled that their uprising was to begin. Over the next 48 hours, the people of Tripoli pushed Libya’s six-month revolution to its staggering denouement, ensuring their country would never again be the same and reinvigorating the Arab awakening — and it all began in this neighborhood.
Read the rest of this entry »
As southern Afghanistan was still reeling from the assassination of local heavyweight Ahmed Wali Karzai, gunmen on Sunday struck down Jan Muhammad Khan, one of the most notorious powerbrokers in southern Afghanistan. JMK, as he is known to the Americans, was the governor of Uruzgan province until 2006, when his policies proved so divisive that he was removed and given a titular role in Kabul. “He was so hated, even when there was a drought we’d blame him,” an Uruzgani farmer told me once.
In style, JMK and Ahmed Wali couldn’t have been more different — Jan Muhammad was an unpolished, old-guard mujahed, evoking images of the rough-and-tumble life of the Afghan frontier, while AWK was an English speaking, business-minded powerbroker. But both are products of the modern way of war, men of enormous power born of contracting dollars and access to U.S. officials. They leave behind lucrative political and financial networks, and what becomes of these networks will play a big role in determining the shape of things to come in southern Afghanistan. Who, then, is likely to take their place?
Read the rest of this entry »
After years of rumors of talks with the Taleban, the US is finally meeting a senior Taleban representative face-to-face. In a series of encounters this spring in Germany and Doha, it has been leaked to the press that US officials have met with Tayyeb Agha, a leading Taleban figure. But the world of the Taleban is quite murky—the makeup of the senior leadership is poorly understood, nor is it certain that there is a unified viewpoint on talks within the Quetta Shura. Who, then, is Tayyeb Agha, and what does he represent?
Read the rest of this entry »
Mahalla, Egypt–In the sprawling factories of El-Mahalla el-Kubra, a gritty, industrial town a few hours’ drive north of Cairo, lies what many say is the heart of the Egyptian revolution. “This is our Sidi Bouzid,” says Muhammad Marai, a labor activist, referring to the town in Tunisia where a frustrated street vendor set himself on fire, sparking the revolution there.
Indeed, the roots of the mass uprising that swept dictator Hosni Mubarak from power lie in the central role this dust-swept company town played years ago in sparking workers’ strikes and grassroots movements countrywide. And it is the symbolic core of the latest shift in the revolution: a wave of strikes meant to tackle social and economic inequities, which has brought parts of Egypt to a standstill.
Read the rest of this entry »
CAIRO—Late Thursday night, one could hear the sound of hundreds of thousands of people hushing each other. In Tahrir, the central square that has become the heart of the Egyptian revolution, they jostled, they craned their necks toward the soundstage, they inched closer to the giant TV screen, to listen to dictator Hosni Mubarak.
When he finally appeared on screen, the square fell silent. Mubarak began by sympathizing with the martyrs of the revolution, and acknowledging that the protesters’ demands were “legitimate and just.” He spoke about putting the interests of Egypt ahead of his own. The crowd shivered in anticipation. But the words so many desperately wanted to hear never came. “I will not leave,” he said defiantly, “until I am buried in the ground.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Walk south along the Nile in Cairo’s febrile downtown, past austere, colonial-vintage government buildings and stately luxury hotels, cross into Tahrir Square, and you’ll pass from one authority to another. Outside, tanks and armored personnel carriers guard Egypt’s besieged and maligned government; inside the square, in the heart of the city, hundreds of thousands of protesters and revolutionaries hold jurisdiction, establishing a parallel capital where dictator Hosni Mubarak has little control. Those who for years lived in fear under Mubarak’s regime openly taunt police. Impromptu lectures and debates erupt on the curbside, near the Ministry of Information, no less. “I see the world with new eyes,” one protester told me.
Read the rest of this entry »
In 2010, population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine — in which as much emphasis is placed on swaying the population as on fighting the enemy — was supposedly the guiding concept for U.S. strategy in southern Afghanistan. The Kandahar offensive, a series of counterinsurgency operations in restive Taliban strongholds, was to be the centerpiece of this approach. NATO’s chief spokesman James Appathurai explained the strategy by saying, “It is about protecting the population, about changing the political culture and perception… Kandahar is, from the psychological and communications point of view, the heartland of the Taliban… The biggest problem in Afghanistan is not the Taliban, but the lack of strong governance and the delivery of services.” But a close look at the last year reveals that the population-centric approach may not have been implemented at all.
Read the rest of this entry »
The following is excerpted from Anand Gopal’s paper released by the New America Foundation’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, “The Battle for Afghanistan: Militancy and Conflict in Kandahar.” The paper is available here.
The Victor’s Hubris and the Failure of Reconciliation
Just as Kandahar was falling, fissures appeared in the Taliban movement. As most of the government was crumbling-Kabul and other major cities had fallen, leaving just Kandahar, Helmand, and Zabul provinces still under Taliban control-some of Mullah Omar’s chief lieutenants secretly gathered and decided to surrender to the forces of Hamid Karzai.[i] This group included Tayeb Agha, at one point Mullah Omar’s top aide; Mullah Beradar, a former governor and key military commander; Sayed Muhammad Haqqani, the former ambassador to Pakistan; Mullah Obaidullah, the defense minister; Mullah Abdul Razzak, the interior minster; and many others.
Read the rest of this entry »
Pul-i-Charkhi, Afghanistan — In a wood-paneled office here in the dusty fringes of Kabul, Hajji Shirin Dil feverishly works the phones. He shouts orders into one receiver as he dials another phone, while aides wait patiently to speak to him.
He could be Wall Street day trader, if not for the sleepy gunmen by his side. Instead, Mr. Dil owns a profitable logistics company and is cutting deals with various warlords, whose private security companies protect his trucks carrying vital provisions to the foreign troops.
But a recent pledge by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to ban security companies threatens to grind this business to a halt, and in the process calls attention to the foreign forces’ reliance on a complex network of private companies and local strongmen to protect their supply lines.
“I can’t move anything without protection,” says Dil. “The Taliban can stop my trucks and the foreigners won’t get supplies.”
Read the rest of this entry »
On an evening this past spring, near midnight, a land cruiser pulled up to the house of a government official in Kandahar city. The vehicles carried a senior Taleban figure, sent by Mullah Omar, and some tribal elders. That night the group met secretly with a leading Afghan official and discussed the course of the war and the prospects for negotiations. After the meeting the Taliban figure moved to a hideout outside of the city, before eventually disappearing across the border into Pakistan.
It was typical of the types of contacts that have been occurring between senior Taleban leaders and Afghan officials for years. There have been scores of clandestine meetings between the warring sides, sometimes simply to establish a rapport and sometimes in an attempt to build a more substantive dialogue. These include leaders meeting Afghan officials on their own initiative in some cases, and in others Mullah Omar or the entire senior leadership sending representatives. Thus when NATO and US officials announced recently that there have been attempts by the Taleban to reach out to the Afghan government, it should not be seen as a shift in the insurgents’ approach. Rather, by recognizing these attempts, it is Washington that is changing course. Nor are the contacts a sign that actual negotiations are near; rather, their recognition merely signals Western fears that mission failure is afoot.
Read the rest of this entry »
RSS: