NOVANEWS

During his intensive initial round of media interviews as commander in Afghanistan in August 2010, Gen. David Petraeus released figures to the news media that claimed spectacular success for raids by Special Operations Forces: in a 90-day period from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank-and-file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle- or high-ranking Taliban.

The claims of huge numbers of Taliban captured and killed continued through the rest of 2010. In December, Petraeus’s command said a total of 4,100 Taliban rank and file had been captured in the previous six months and 2,000 had been killed.

Those figures were critical to creating a new media narrative hailing the success of SOF operations as reversing what had been a losing U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

But it turns out that more than 80 percent of those called captured Taliban fighters were released within days of having been picked up, because they were found to have been innocent civilians, according to official U.S. military data.

Even more were later released from the main U.S. detention facility at Bagram airbase called the Detention Facility in Parwan after having their files reviewed by a panel of military officers.

The timing of Petraeus’s claim of Taliban fighters captured or killed, moreover, indicates that he knew that four out of five of those he was claiming as “captured Taliban rank and file” were not Taliban fighters at all.

Checking on the claims of the number of Taliban commanders and rank and file killed is impossible, but the claims of Taliban captured could be checked against official data on admission of detainees added to Parwan.

An Afghan detained by U.S. or NATO forces can only be held in a Forward Operating Base for a maximum of 14 days before a decision must be made about whether to release the individual or send him to Parwan for longer-term detention.

IPS has now obtained an unclassified graph by Task Force 435, the military command responsible for detainee affairs, on Parwan’s monthly intake and release totals for 2010, which shows that only 270 detainees were admitted to that facility during the 90-day period from May through July 2010.

That figure also includes alleged Taliban commanders who were sent to Parwan and whom Petraeus counted separately from the rank and file figure. Thus, more than four out of every five Afghans said to have been Taliban fighters captured during that period had been released within two weeks as innocent civilians.

When Petraeus decided in mid-August to release the figure of 1,355 Taliban rank and file allegedly captured during the 90-day period, he already knew that 80 percent or more of that total had already been released.

Major Sunset R. Belinsky, the ISAF press officer for SOF operations, conceded to IPS last September that the 1,355 figure applied only to “initial detentions.”

Task Force 435 commander Adm. Robert Harward confirmed in a press briefing for journalists Nov. 30, 2010, that 80 percent of the Afghans detained by the U.S. military during the entire year to that point had been released within two weeks.

“This year, in this battle space, approximately 5,500 individuals have been detained,” Harward said, adding the crucial fact that “about 1,100 have come to the detention facility in Parwan.”

Harward did not explain the discrepancy between the two figures, however, and no journalist attending the Pentagon briefing asked for such an explanation.

Petraeus continued to exploit media ignorance of the discrepancy between the number of Taliban rank and file said to have been “captured” and the number actually sent to the FDIP.

In early December, ISAF gave Bill Roggio, a blogger for The Long War Journal Web site, the figure of more than 4,100 “enemy fighters” captured from June 1 through Nov. 30, along with 2,000 rank-and-file Taliban killed.

But during those six months, only 690 individuals were sent to Parwan, according to the Task Force 435 data—17 percent of the 4,100 Taliban rank and file claimed captured as “Taliban.”

The total of 690 detainees also includes an unknown number of commanders counted separately by Petraeus and a large number of detainees who were later released from Parwan. Considering those two factors, the actual proportion of those claimed as captured Taliban who were found not to be part of the Taliban organization rises to 90 percent or even higher.

Three hundred forty-five detainees, or 20 percent of the 1,686 total number of those who were detained in Parwan from June through November, were released upon review of their cases, according to the same Feb. 5, 2011, Task Force document obtained by IPS. The vast majority of those released from the facility had been sent to Parwan in June or later.

Detainees are released from Parwan only when the evidence against them is so obviously weak or nonexistent that U.S. officers cannot justify continuing to hold them, despite the fact that the detainees lack normal procedural rights in the “non-adversarial” hearing by the Task Force’s Detainee Review.

The deliberate confusion sowed by Petraeus by referring to anyone picked up for interrogation as a captured rank-and-file Taliban was a key element of a carefully considered strategy for creating a more favorable image of the war.

As Associated Press reporter Kimberly Dozier wrote in a Sept. 3, 2010, news analysis after an interview with Petraeus, he was very conscious that “demonstrating progress is difficult in a war fought in hundreds of small, scattered engagements, where front lines do not move and where cities do not fall.”

SOF raids, however, could be turned into a dramatic story line. “The mystique of elite, highly trained commandos swooping down on an unsuspecting Taliban leader in the dead of night plays well back home,” wrote Dozier, “especially at a time when much of the news from Afghanistan focuses on rising American deaths and frustration with the Afghan government.”

Petraeus made sure the impact of the new SOF narrative would be maximized by presenting the total of Afghans swept up in SOF raids as actual Taliban fighters.

The deceptive nature of those statistics, as now revealed by U.S. military data, raises anew the question of whether the statistics released by Petraeus on killing of alleged Taliban were similarly skewed.

NOVANEWS

In the last few years, US-led NATO powers have continuously been insisting upon Pakistan to ‘do more’ against the militancy in the tribal regions in order to stop cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan. While ignoring the responsibilities of the US, ISAF and Karzai-led troops in Afghanistan, especially US civil and military high officials have unilaterally blaming Islamabad that level of militancy increased in Afghanistan owing to the militants who entered Afghanistan from Pakistan, and increased pressure on the NATO troops.

In the recent past, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and some high officials, while repeating the false allegations had indicated that Pakistan’s “failure to stop insurgents from Pakistani side of the border” has resulted into “40 per cent rise in the militant’s attacks in east Afghanistan…infiltration of insurgents in Afghanistan takes place from the safe-havens of FATA.” They have also been accusing Pak Army and Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI of close contact with the Afghan Taliban. Their media have also left no stone unturned for blaming Pakistan for cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan, also involving ISI.

During his trip to Islamabad on April 20 this year, in an interview with a private TV channel, US Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen has also alleged that ISI has been supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners in Afghanistan.

However, in one or the other way, American baseless blame game against Islamabad in connection with cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan continues. In this regard, we need to prove, whether Pakistan is responsible for cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan or the latter in Pakistan.

It is mentionable that on June 1, more than 500 heavily armed militants who entered Pakistan’s Upper Dir area from Afghanistan killed more than 30 police and paramilitary soldiers. Police said that well-trained terrorists who targetted a chekpost, also destroyed two schools and several houses with rocket and gunfire attacks, while killing a number of innocent people. The exact location where militants carried out an armed assault, lies about 20 kilometers inside the Pakistani territory which shares a common border with Afghan province of Kunar.

On June 2, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani conveyed to US State Department Pakistan’s reaction on the terrorist assault in Dir from Afghanistan. In this regard, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir showed strong concern with the Afghan ambassador in Islamabad on the cross-border attack launched from Afghanistan, calling for a ‘stern action’ by Afghan and US-led NATO troops to crackdown on militants in the area and their hideouts in Afghanistan.” He further indicated, “Pakistan’s apprehensions are also being brought to the attention of the US and NATO.”

Despite the stern reaction of Islamabad, on June 3, hundreds of militants crossed over from Afghanistan and again besieged the Pakistani area. Sources suggest that after a three-day operation and gun battle, Pakistani security forces killed 71 Afghan Taliban.

Here question arises as to why US-led NATO forces did not stop the Taliban-related insurgents when they entered Pakistani territory? Even then, they failed in this respect; second question is as to why these foreign forces based in Afghanistan did not attack the Al Qaeda or Afghan Taliban, while fighting with Pak security forces continued for three days? The fact of the matter is that especially America had itself encouraged and supported this cross-border terrorism in Pakistan. In this connection, American CIA, Indian intelligence agency, RAW and Israeli secret agency, Mossad which have well-established their network in Afghanistan, have been destabilising Pakistan because it is the lonely ‘nuclearsed’ country in the Islamic World. In this context, Indian secret consulates and foreign training camps are present in Afghanistan from where highly trained militants, equipped with sophisticated weapons including motivated suicide bombers are being sent to Pakistan’s various places so as to commit subversive acts regularly. In this regard, in the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Laden by a US military raid in Pakistan on May 2, terrorists’ attack on Pakistan Navy’s airbase, PNS Mehran on May 23 might be cited as major instance.

According to some sources, modern weapons of Indian, American and Israeli origin are available in the markets of Afghanistan. Smuggling of latest arms from west to Afghanistan is also being supported by the drug mafia of Afghanistan. In this connection, Afghan President Karzai’s brother and high officials have been found involved in drug smuggling for raising funds to support insurgency in Pakistan with the support of RAW.

It is notable that during the Swat and Malakand military operations, ISPR spokesman, Maj-Gen Athar Abbas had revealedin various press briefings that a number of foreigners from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and India including Afghans, having connections with the enemy countries were arrested. In one of briefings, he had disclosed that 400 foreign fighters were captured along with huge caches of sophisticated weapons, made of India and America—Afghan fighters had been infiltrated into Pakistan with the help of some external agencies bordering Afghanistan.

Besides, in a religious Madrassa of Wakhan, located in Afghanistan is functioning under the patronage of Indian officials—with the consent of CIA. It is being used for brainwashing of very young boys who are Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Caucasians. They have also been made to learn Pashto and traditions of Pathans. Posing as volunteers, they join the Taliban activists to fight against Pakistan’s security forces.

It is worth-mentioning that on July 17, 2008, USA Today wrote, “Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of jihadi fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that al-Qaeda is becoming the most active front of the war on terror”.

Nevertheless, Afghanistan shares a common border with the Central Asian Republics. And all the foreign insurgents are entering Pakistan through Afghanistan which has become a gateway. So as to why US-led NATO forces doe not capture these foreign terrorists when they enter Afghanistan from where they infiltrate in Pakistan.

It is of particular attention that when in 2009, Pakistan’s armed forces started the military operation in South Waziristan, scores of security check posts in Afghanistan side of Pak-Afghan border had been removed by the US commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal who was leading NATO forces in Afghanistan. Our security analysts had opined that it “is part of a plot by the US and Afghan commanders to remove the strategic security posts in South Waziristan Agency…an intriguing move aimed at different ends.”

Nonetheless, the most dangerous aim of the US by removing Afghan border check posts from the side of Pakistan was to give clear way and free hand to the Afghanistan-based Taliban commanders to send large-scale reinforcements in South Waziristan. Thus especially, America wanted to sabotage the South Waziristan operation by putting Pakistan’s more soldiers’ lives at risk in the fight against militants in this difficult terrain of the area.

It is noteworthy that US which is likely to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan along with NATO forces, has already made Pakistan volatile to the different war. And it wants to ensure that Pakistan must be the main target of Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda after the US-led NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

Returning to our main discussion, besides already mentioned developments, recent attack by the Afghan-based militants in the Upper Dir region clearly proves that the US and its allies are responsible for cross-border terrorism in Pakistan, while they have been blaming Islamabad in this respect because of their double game with the latter.