Pakistani Security Officials Had Warned of Afghan Army's Collapse

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani security officials had warned Americans and Indians that the Afghan Army would collapse when faced with the Taliban onslaught, according to multiple people including American journalist Steve Coll and Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker who has served in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has recently written that Pakistanis' skepticism has been validated. 

Afghan National Army

In response to a question posed by New Yorker staff writer Isaac Chotiner, Steve Coll, author of "Directorate S" about Pakistan ISI, said, "I remember talking to the Pakistani generals about this (US building Afghan Army) circa 2012. And they all said, “You just can’t do that. It won’t work.” They turned out to be right". Here's the relevant excerpt of the New Yorker interview published on August 15, 2021: 

Isaac Chotiner: Why, ultimately, was it so hard to stand up the Afghan military to a greater extent than America did? Was it some lack of political legitimacy? Some problem with the actual training? 

Steve Coll: I don’t know what proportion of the factors, including the ones you listed, to credit. But I think that the one additional reason it didn’t work was the sheer scale of the ambition. And this was visible in Iraq as well. Building a standing army of three hundred thousand in a country that has been shattered by more than forty consecutive years of war and whose economy is almost entirely dependent on external aid—that just doesn’t work. What did work was what at various stages people thought might be possible, which was to build a stronger, more coherent, better-trained force, which has effectively been the only real fighting force on behalf of the Kabul government over the past few years. This force is referred to as commandos or Special Forces, but it is basically twenty or thirty thousand people. That you can build with a lot of investment and hands-on training. But you can’t just create an army of three hundred thousand. I remember talking to the Pakistani generals about this circa 2012. And they all said, “You just can’t do that. It won’t work.” They turned out to be right.

A 2013 video clip of Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has recently surfaced in which he essentially confirms what Steve Coll told The New Yorker.  Doval can be heard saying that the 325,000 strong Afghan Army and police will deliver. He said the Afghan Army is well trained and sufficiently motivated. Doval believed the Afghan National Army will defend the Afghan state and Afghanistan's constitution and democracy irrespective of what happens at the political level, he added. Doval said he didn't believe 15-20 Pakistani security officials who have told him otherwise. He said he never believes anything the Pakistanis say.  

Former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker who has served in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has written in a New York Times Op Ed that "We (Americans) have again validated their (Pakistanis') skepticism".  Here's an excerpt of Crocket's Op Ed:

I pushed Pakistani officials repeatedly on the need to deny the Taliban safe havens. The answer I got back over time went like this: “We know you. We know you don’t have patience for the long fight. We know the day will come when you just get tired and go home — it’s what you do. But we aren’t going anywhere — this is where we live. So if you think we are going to turn the Taliban into a mortal enemy, you are completely crazy.” We have again validated their skepticism.

In a recent interview with BBC's Yalda Hakim, General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the British Armed Forces, has said that the Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa is an upright man. Carter said that General Bajwa wanted to see a peaceful and moderate Afghanistan. He said that Pakistan had to face various challenges. Pakistan sheltered 3.5 million Afghan refugees on its soil. The British military chief said Pakistan had set up barricades on the Afghan border and was keeping a close eye on border traffic.  

Carter Malkasian, former advisor to US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dunford, has recently talked about how Afghan governments have scapegoated Pakistan for their failures. He said: "Let’s take Pakistan, for example. Pakistan is a powerful factor here. But on the battlefield, if 200 Afghan police and army are confronted with 50 Taliban or less than that, and those government forces retreat, that doesn’t have a lot to do with Pakistan. That has to do with something else". 

In another discussion,  Malkasian explained the rapid advance of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani. Here's what he said:

Over time, aware of the government’s vulnerable position, Afghan leaders turned to an outside source to galvanize the population: Pakistan. Razziq, President Hamid Karzai and later President Ashraf Ghani used Pakistan as an outside threat to unite Afghans behind them. They refused to characterize the Taliban as anything but a creation of Islamabad. Razziq relentlessly claimed to be fighting a foreign Pakistani invasion. Yet Pakistan could never fully out-inspire occupation.  

Here's Ajit Doval from 2013 on his assessment of the strength of the Afghan Army:

https://youtu.be/l2ZuJxUBHDs

https://www.youtube.com/embed/l2ZuJxUBHDs"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" />

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Indian NSA Ajit Doval on Use of Taliban Against Pakistan

Why is India Sponsoring Terror in Pakistan?

Karan Thapar Debunks Indian Narrative of Kulbhushan Yadav

Coll's Directorate Demonizes Pakistan ISI

Gen Petraeus Debunks Charges of Pakistani Duplicity

Husain Haqqani vs Riaz Haq on India vs Pakistan

Pakistan ISI: Afghans' Bogeyman?

Ex CIA Officer on ISI

Gall-Haqqani-Paul Narrative on Pakistan

India Ex RAW Officer Documents Success Against Pakistan

Robert Gates' Straight Talk on Pakistan  

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

#American #WhiteSupremacist groups praise #Taliban for "victory" over massive #US military power. "These farmers and minimally trained men fought to take back their nation back from globohomo (globalists)" #Afghanistan #Kabul https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/politics/far-right-groups-praise-tal...

Far-right extremist communities have been invigorated by the events in Afghanistan, "whether by their desire to emulate the Taliban or increasingly violent rhetoric about 'invasions' by displaced Afghans," according to recent analysis from SITE Intelligence Group, an American non-governmental organization that tracks online activity of White supremacist and jihadist organizations.
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As the United States-backed government in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and US troops raced to leave the country, White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for what the Taliban accomplished, a worrying development for US officials who have been grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism.

That praise has also been coupled with a wave of anti-refugee sentiment from far-right groups, as the US and others rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan by the Biden administration's August 31 deadline.
Several concerning trends have emerged in recent weeks on online platforms commonly used by anti-government, White supremacist and other domestic violent extremist groups, including "framing the activities of the Taliban as a success," and a model for those who believe in the need for a civil war in the US, the head of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, John Cohen, said on a call Friday with local and state law enforcement, obtained by CNN.

Cohen said on the call that DHS has also analyzed discussions centering on "the great replacement concept" a conspiracy theory that immigrants, in this case the relocation of Afghans to the US, would lead to a loss of control and authority by White Americans.

[Riaz Haq]

Did #Pakistan Help #Taliban Retake #Afghanistan? Ex #US #military advisor Sara Chayes alleges the it was the #Pakistani #ISI that helped the "rag-tag" Taliban militia plan & execute their recent military campaign to swiftly retake Afghanistan https://youtu.be/AJxfj8kuZlA via @YouTube

[Riaz Haq]

HOW THE TALIBAN EXPLOITED AFGHANISTAN’S HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
ALEC WORSNOP


https://warontherocks.com/2021/09/how-the-taliban-exploited-afghani...


The Taliban Did This Before

During their initial rise in the 1990s, the Taliban took advantage of Afghanistan’s low population density to conquer large swaths of territory by making deals with local leaders. They then used those areas to launch blitzkrieg-like attacks that overwhelmed the forces of the Northern Alliance, an amalgam of fighters that included units from the (fleeing) central government and Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and Pashtun militias. Rather than rely on traditional tools such as artillery and armor, the Taliban moved quickly in weaponized pickup trucks (“technicals”) to defeat dug-in defensive positions. Low force-to-space ratios meant that defenders — particularly those without close air support — had significant ground to cover and had to move swiftly and in a coordinated fashion to stand any chance of successfully countering Taliban threats from many directions.

Not only were many of the Taliban’s foes in the 1990s hampered by limited training and mobility. They were often less cohesive than the Taliban due to the fragmented coalition of actors composing the Northern Alliance. As I observed in the 2012 analysis, in conflicts with low force-to-space ratios and limited military capabilities, cohesion is fundamental: In such scenarios, “when forces are not cohesive, they will not move in a coordinated manner to push back breakthroughs and often will be less willing to fight in numerically challenging situations, let alone counterattack under fire.”

When the Taliban faced better-trained and cohesive groups, their progress was often slowed. For example, in March 1995, organized government forces from the Central Corps, reinforced by airlifted troops from Kabul and close air support, turned back the Taliban’s first attempt to surround and seize Herat. Similarly, organized and cohesive government forces decisively withstood assaults on Kabul in 1995. Such instances emphasized the capacity of reasonably prepared troops — especially ones who had air support — to push back the type of mobile warfare used by the Taliban. Even so, in the 1990s, the Taliban’s cohesion and the sheer scale of their offensives overwhelmed the relatively limited groups of well-prepared defenders in the Northern Alliance.

How Things Went From Bad to Worse

The events of the past weeks share many similarities with the Taliban’s initial rise to power over two decades ago and bore out key aspects of what my 2012 analysis suggested might happen. In fact, the Afghan security forces of 2021 were generally worse off than anti-Taliban forces were in the 1990s. While the density and distribution of Afghanistan’s population have not changed significantly since then, in 2021 — unlike in the 1990s — the Taliban enjoyed a presence throughout the country. That allowed them to pressure the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in multiple locations simultaneously. As a result, the Afghan military had to try to cover large swaths of territory, move quickly to respond to the Taliban’s political and military threats, and attempt to hold its own in pitched battles and counterattacks.

The Afghan security forces were not up to these tasks. The Taliban took a host of provincial capitals and Kabul itself in a matter of days, more quickly than even the most pessimistic, publicly available estimates predicted. The Afghan military lacked the capacity and cohesion required to stand firm and defend against fast-moving offensives across many fronts simultaneously. It had long been clear that it was an anemic force which was ill-prepared to take on a major challenge in a coherent and steadfast fashion. As many have noted, since summer 2013, when Afghan forces assumed the lead responsibility for security in the country, things got worse and worse. By 2021, the Afghan military was poorly organized, lacked the ability to provision and pay its soldiers consistently, and was inadequately trained.

[Riaz Haq]

Thousands of #Afghans refugees streaming into #Pakistan By @AJLabs https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2021/afghanistan-refugees-kar...

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1433497419270950914?s=20

Karachi, Pakistan - As the world watched the frantic evacuations from Kabul’s airport, thousands of people were making their way to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan on foot and in any vehicles they could find, far from the glare of news cameras.

Officially, the border is closed to all except those with valid paperwork for medical reasons, work or to see family on either side.

Yet, thousands of Afghans have streamed through the Spin Boldak border crossing in Afghanistan’s southeastern Kandahar province into the Pakistani town of Chaman.

Local sources say that, for weeks, up to 5,000 Afghans had been crossing daily until August 15, the day the Taliban took control of Kabul; that number has since doubled.

Today, Pakistan is home to more than 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, many of whom entered the country some 40 years ago, after the Soviet invasion in 1979.

Hundreds of thousands more joined them after the US invasion in 2001.

By 2002, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) counted three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Many returned to Afghanistan and the numbers dropped until the US troop withdrawal began this year.

Pakistan’s government insists it is unprepared for a refugee influx and is considering options for how best to manage the new arrivals.

After negotiating the crossing, most refugees make their way to Pakistan’s main urban centres, seeking shelter, safety and, in some instances, the means for an onward journey.

In a bustling corner of Karachi, a sprawling metropolis of more than 20 million people in southern Pakistan, a sizable Afghan community has lived for decades.

Many of them came as refugees in the 1980s.

Behind the narrow, broken streets near the city’s largest bus terminal, the neighbourhood is covered with low-rise apartment complexes, the roads choked with motorcycles and bicycles.

In the corner of one such apartment compound, there are several homes with their doors wide open.

A group of men sits on the stoop as young boys play in the concrete yard.

Some of them have just made their way from Afghanistan. They had to brave violence and risk being turned away or arrested at security checkpoints as they fled a country in the throes of transition.

It is a journey some have endured before.

This is the second time they become refugees. Some, who have refugee ID cards issued by the Pakistani government, know they will have certain rights and protections guaranteed in their host country.

But others have entered without any paperwork at all. Here are some of their stories.

[Riaz Haq]

#British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace: "It is obvious that Britain is not a superpower. But a superpower that is also not prepared to stick at something isn’t probably a superpower either. It is certainly not a global force" #USA #Afghanistan #superpower https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-is-not-a-superpower-an-...

Britain’s 2007 decision to build and deploy two aircraft carriers — now accompanying the Americans in the Pacific — has been seen by many in the military as an absurd overstretch from a country in denial about still being a global power. Wallace sees it differently. ‘I think it really goes to what the definition of what a global power is,’ he says. ‘It is obvious that Britain is not a superpower. But a superpower that is also not prepared to stick at something isn’t probably a superpower either. It is certainly not a global force, it’s just a big power.’

Britain, meanwhile, can act with others. ‘I take the view that the future of foreign policy around the world will involve more bilateral than trilateral alliances depending on the problems we face. So, West Africa may be a more French/British thing, East Africa may be the same.

‘Britain hasn’t been able to field a mass army for 50 years — if not longer.’ At the back end of the Cold War, he says, he was in the British Army of the Rhine. 'It was always part of a massive international effort — so I think our defence paper is in exactly the right space.’ Britain, he says, still has ‘a huge range of tools at our disposal: from soft to hard power, economic power, scientific power and cultural power’.

Military intervention will still play a role. ‘Some countries in Africa are on the edge of being failed states.’ Stopping them from collapsing, he says, could stave off other conflicts. ‘What you need is an armed forces that can help the resilience of the [African] governments so things don’t get so acute that you end up having a proper fight,’ he says. ‘Fundamentally, I think that is what we need to be doing in the world.’ An important question is whether the intervention-weary public would be so keen for British forces to shore up African governments.

The United Nations, Wallace says, has been noticeable by its absence in Afghanistan and elsewhere. ‘If the UN isn’t for helping failed states, then what is it for?’ The question also arises in West Africa. ‘The anti-corruption, the deradicalisation, the education, all of the things the UN signed up to in the Algeria agreement haven’t been delivered. You don’t stop terrorism and security unless you deal with the other stuff.’

Difficult questions are also facing Europe. ‘We have risen to America’s challenge: to spend more on defence. I think the question is actually for Europe: is Europe prepared to put its money where its mouth is? To be fair to Donald Trump, he was straight as a die on that. There’s a difference between taking America for granted and depending on America. I think historically we have taken America for granted and that means we now need to step up to invest. The Prime Minister has made the biggest investment since the Cold War and we will continue to do that. Let’s hear what the others do.’

The other issue is staying power. ‘The question for the West — whether it is Ukraine, whether it is the South China Sea or upholding international laws — is resolve. That is the question: do we have resolve?’ Like Tony Blair, he dislikes the phrase ‘forever war’. ‘I think standing up for the values you believe in, standing up to protect your interests, is a forever commitment. It’s unending — so be prepared.’

He recently visited the Korean War memorial in Seoul, which is marked by the words ‘Freedom is not free’. ‘That is absolutely right — freedom is not free. Of course, we hope that standing up for it doesn’t involve the lives of our men and women. But when your adversary is constantly challenging you, then you have to constantly stand up for what you believe and constantly enable the defence of it. And that will be forever.’

[Riaz Haq]

Can the IRGC-Taliban honeymoon continue? (Part 2

https://www.mei.edu/publications/can-irgc-taliban-honeymoon-continu...


In the years leading up to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban had strained relations with Iran. Tensions between the two sides escalated to the point that the Iranian government and the Quds Force actually assisted American forces during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Part of this cooperation was rooted in the enmity between Iran and the Taliban at that time, and part was rooted in Tehran's fear of a confrontation with the United States in the months following the attacks of 9/11, especially considering that Washington would view Iran's non-cooperation as a hostile act. However, after Iran was branded part of the "axis of evil" and the subsequent invasion of Iraq by American forces, Tehran's strategy in the region gradually changed. The basis of the new strategy was that if the Americans were tranquil on Iran's eastern and western borders, they might put an invasion of the country on the agenda. To prevent this from happening, the Quds Force was determined to help anti-American militia forces cause problems for and ramp up pressure on U.S. troops in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. This strategy found more advocates within the Iranian regime when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.

Cause for cooperation

Following the rise of Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Afghanistan in 2015, Tehran found another justification to cooperate with the Taliban: containing ISKP jihadists whom Iran viewed as a threat against its borders. Following this cooperation, Taliban Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was quoted in July 2016 as saying that the group was "establishing new relations with Tehran."

In late 2018, Iran acknowledged for the first time that it was hosting Taliban envoys for bilateral talks. Tehran, however, stressed that the Afghan government was aware of the meeting and that the purpose of the talks was to "resolve security problems in Afghanistan." In late January 2021, another delegation of the Taliban, led by Mullah Baradar Akhund, political deputy and chief of the Taliban’s diplomatic office in Qatar, went to Tehran, which was widely reported in Iranian media.

The most recent official visit of a high-ranking Taliban delegation to Tehran took place on July 7, 2021, when they were hosted at a meeting organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the future of Afghanistan. According to the Foreign Ministry, in addition to the Taliban, three other Afghan delegations, including a few Kabul officials, were also present at the talks.

The recent official negotiations between Iran and the Taliban, initiated by Hassan Rouhani's administration, were followed by the approval of the U.S. and Afghan governments. In fact, after the Taliban delegation's visit to Tehran, U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price said, "What Iran is trying to do, or is in the process of trying to do by hosting this meeting, may well be constructive." At the same time, the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the outcome of the meeting between Afghan politicians and Taliban representatives in Tehran.

But apart from formal diplomatic relations — which are also likely to continue under Ebrahim Raisi's administration — the most important relations between Iran and the Taliban have always been unofficial, i.e. through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force. These relations have been criticized by both American and Afghan authorities.

[Riaz Haq]

Afghanistan is rich in resources like copper, gold, oil, natural gas, uranium, bauxite, coal, iron ore, rare earths, lithium, chromium, lead, zinc, gemstones, talc, sulphur, travertine, gypsum and marble.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/what-are-afghanistans-un...

Returning to power in Afghanistan after a 20-year absence, the Taliban have regained control of natural resources that a former mines minister of the country once said could be worth up to $3 trillion.

That estimate was made toward the end of the last commodities supercycle in 2010 and could be worth even more now, after a global economic recovery from the coronavirus shock sent prices for everything from copper to lithium soaring this year.

Afghanistan is rich in resources like copper, gold, oil, natural gas, uranium, bauxite, coal, iron ore, rare earths, lithium, chromium, lead, zinc, gemstones, talc, sulphur, travertine, gypsum and marble.

Below is a breakdown of some of Afghanistan's key resources, as estimated by the country's mining ministry and the U.S. government, as well as their potential monetary value for the war-ravaged Afghan economy if security challenges can be overcome.

COPPER

A 2019 report by Afghanistan's Ministry of Mines and Petroleum put the country's copper resource at almost 30 million tonnes.

This giant asset is still to be developed but the 11.08 million tonnes of copper MCC estimates it to hold would be worth over $100 billion at current London Metal Exchange prices .

OTHER METALS The 2019 report also said Afghanistan had more than 2.2 billion tonnes of steelmaking raw material iron ore, worth over $350 billion at current market prices.

Gold resources were much more modest at an estimated 2,700 kg, worth almost $170 million, while the Afghan ministry also said base metals aluminium, tin, lead and zinc were "located in multiple areas of the country."

LITHIUM AND RARE EARTHS

An internal U.S Department of Defense memo in 2010 reportedly described Afghanistan as "the Saudi Arabia of lithium," meaning it could be as crucial for global supply of the battery metal as the Middle Eastern country is for crude oil.

The comparison was made at a time lithium was already widely used in batteries for electronics devices but before it had become apparent how much lithium would be needed for electric vehicle (EV) batteries and the world's low-carbon transition.

A 2017/18 report from the U.S. Geological Survey notes Afghanistan has deposits of spodumene, a lithium-bearing mineral, but does not provide tonnage estimates, while the 2019 Afghan report makes no mention of lithium at all.

The 2019 mines ministry report does, however, say Afghanistan holds 1.4 million tonnes of rare earth minerals, a group of 17 elements prized for their applications in consumer electronics, as well as in military equipment.

OIL & GAS

With hydrocarbon-rich Iran and Turkmenistan to its west, Afghanistan harbours around 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and another 500 million barrels of natural gas liquids.

That's according to the 2019 Afghan report, which cited a joint U.S.-Afghan assessment, and implies a value of $107 billion for the crude oil alone at current market prices.

"Most of the undiscovered crude oil is in the Afghan-Tajik Basin and most of the undiscovered natural gas is in the Amu Darya Basin," the report said.

GEMSTONES

Afghanistan has historically been a major source of lapis lazuli, a deep blue, semi-precious stone that has been mined in the country's northern Badakhshan province for thousands of years, as well as other gemstones such as rubies and emeralds.

The finest grades of lapis lazuli can fetch up to $150 per carat, according to the 2019 Afghan report, which notes, however, that the majority of gemstones mined in the country leave the country illegally, mostly to Peshawar in Pakistan, denying Afghanistan vital revenue.

[Riaz Haq]

For some Western powers hoping to influence the new Taliban government, there are hopes that Pakistan could play a role as a mediator.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58443839

The country has a unique relationship with Afghanistan. They share a 2,570km (1,600 mile) border. They are significant trading partners. There are numerous cultural, ethnic and religious connections. The former Afghan leader Hamid Karzai once described the two countries as "inseparable brothers".

But for some capitals queuing up to revive their relationship with Islamabad, there are mixed feelings.

Pakistan has not been seen by all as a firm ally in the battle against jihadist terrorism. It has long been accused by many in the United States and elsewhere of providing support for the Taliban, something it denies.

Yet diplomats in the West want to persuade the Taliban to allow their nationals to leave Afghanistan, to let humanitarian aid in and to govern moderately. And that means they need to talk to countries like Pakistan and others in the region.

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What is Pakistan worried about?


Pakistan's historic support for the Taliban does not, however, mean it is entirely relaxed about the group's takeover in Kabul. Pakistanis have suffered hugely over the years at the hands of Islamist terror groups launching attacks over the border from Afghanistan.

Pakistan has a huge interest in ensuring the new government in Kabul cracks down on groups like Al Qaeda and the local Islamic State offshoot - ISIS-K. That means Pakistan has an interest in the Taliban acting firmly and not allowing Afghanistan to descend into an ungoverned space.

The other great concern of Pakistan is a refugee crisis. The country already has about three million Afghan refugees from previous wars and, with its ravaged economy, it cannot afford to support any more.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to the UK, Moazzam Ahmad Khan, told the BBC Today programme: "We don't really have the capacity to take more refugees in and that's why we're suggesting - and requesting - that let's sit down together and work on the possibility of avoiding that eventuality."

What does this mean for relations with West?
Pakistan's relations with the West are not great.

Perhaps the poorest are with the United States. Joe Biden has refused even to call Prime Minister Khan since he became president.

Lt Gen HR McMaster, the former US National Security Adviser, told a Policy Exchange seminar this week that Pakistan should be treated as a "pariah state" if it did not stop its support for jihadi groups.

"We have to stop pretending that Pakistan is a partner," he said. "Pakistan has been acting as an enemy nation against us by organising, training and equipping these forces and by continuing to use jihadist terrorist organisations as an arm of their foreign policy."

But that American view has not stopped other Western powers knocking on Pakistan's door. In recent days, foreign ministers from Britain and Germany have visited Islamabad. Italy's will go soon.

Diplomats believe - or at least hope - that Pakistan still holds some sway over the Taliban. They also fear that shunning Pakistan risks encouraging the country even further into the warm embrace of China.

The question of course is whether Pakistan really can influence the Taliban.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, widely tipped to be the leader of the new government, has in the past spent time in Pakistani detention. How warm he remains towards his former gaolers remains to be seen.

[Riaz Haq]

The future of Silicon Valley may lie in the mountains of Afghanistan


https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/20/lithium-afghanistan/

United States Geological Survey teams discovered one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of lithium there six years ago (in 2008). The USGS was scouting the volatile country at the behest of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. Lithium is a soft metal used to make the lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries essential for powering desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. And increasingly, electric cars like Tesla’s.

The vast discovery could very well propel Afghanistan — a war-ravaged land with a population of 31 million largely uneducated Pashtuns and Tajiks, and whose primary exports today are opium, hashish, and marijuana — into becoming the world’s next “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” according to an internal Pentagon memo cited by the New York Times.

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Depending on who you talk to, the current lithium global reserves are adequate for at least another generation of lithium-ion battery manufacturers to produce them.

But not everybody thinks so, and some say the light metal compound may someday run dry. That could in turn spell trouble for any company whose business depends on light and portable mobile electronics — unless someone comes up with an alternative to lithium batteries before then.

The experts VentureBeat interviewed pointed to sharp year-on-year increases in the demand for lithium. That’s putting heavy pressure on existing stockpiles.

According to Lithium Americas, a Canadian lithium-mining company with significant business interests in Argentina, lithium demand will more than double in the next 10 years, while lithium prices have nearly quadrupled during the same timeframe.

Tesla, for its part, is in the process of investing up to $5 billion to build its own lithium-ion Gigafactory in Texas, a plant capable of churning out 500,000 expensive battery packs a year by 2020 for its line of zero-emission, all-electric cars.

A Tesla spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

As a potential source to feed that demand, enter Afghanistan.

“At some point, if present trends continue, demand [for lithium] will outstrip the supply. And again, at some point, the market for lithium-ion could get so big that it actually affects the supply chain,” said Donald R. Sadoway, a professor of the Materials Chemistry Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.

Looking at Afghanistan, Sadoway says the war-ravaged nation, which has no effective mining infrastructure in place, may well be attractive to the world’s mining outfits.

“In this regard,” Sadoway, one of the world’s foremost experts on energy sources, says, “the deposits in Afghanistan could be important.”

Andrew Chung, a venture capitalist with Khosla Ventures in Silicon Valley who has invested in multiple startups producing alternative batteries, says lithium-ion batteries are limited in their lifetime cycles, scalability, and cost. Despite this, Chung says, he can understand how the untapped reserves of Afghan lithium are now an increasing focus.

“It is an issue of the supply chain, whether it’s Afghanistan or other [countries]. There is a finite supply, and lithium-ion will continue to be the [power] choice for the next decade,” Chung said.

Some of the Valley’s biggest and most powerful tech companies either declined to comment for this story or never returned calls. But they didn’t deny the importance of lithium-ion batteries.

[Riaz Haq]

#America's ground war in #Afghanistan is over. Now it’s the #USNavy’s turn. The lack of #US-controlled airfields near Afghanistan could mean more planes taking off from #American #aircraftcarrier decks at sea. #Pakistan https://politi.co/3zIQdUE via @politico

Worried about the reemergence of ISIS-K, or an emboldened al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Biden administration has pledged to continue to launch “over the horizon” airstrikes from drones and manned aircraft. But it has yet to detail a plan for how those aircraft will collect intelligence on targets, or conduct sustained missions from such great distances.

Air Force pilots flying from the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar or Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates have for years hit targets in Afghanistan, but they first have to wind their way through the Gulf around Iran, and back up through Pakistan, refueling at least once and often spending hours in the air before circling over a target.

“Land-based fighters in Qatar or Kuwait may not have the time on station to do close-air support missions for special operations forces,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer now at the Hudson Institute. He said that could lead to the use of more long-loitering drones, and Navy aircraft flown from the North Arabian Sea.

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That tension is on full display now. The Japan-based aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan flew F/A-18 Hornets over Kabul during the evacuation operation last month, and remains in the North Arabian Sea alongside the USS Iwo Jima, which launched the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit into Kabul at the same time.

For decades, the U.S. has based an aircraft carrier in Japan to project U.S. power in the Pacific on a consistent basis. The call to send the Reagan to the Middle East this spring raised hackles among China hawks as it left the entire Pacific region without a fully operational aircraft carrier for the entire summer.

Reagan's absence was perhaps felt most acutely in June, when a large Russian naval task force — the biggest since the end of the Cold War, according to Moscow — edged uncomfortably close to Hawaii, leading the U.S. to scramble F-22s from Pearl Harbor to intercept bombers accompanying the flotilla.

At the time, the Reagan was in the Indian Ocean heading for its Afghanistan mission, and the USS Carl Vinson was still undergoing predeployment drills near Hawaii, practicing launching F-35s for the first time.

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“They were supposed to remain in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, but they ended up spending most of their deployment in the Middle East,” 2nd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis told reporters when Eisenhower finally made it home in July.

“The Navy needs to get out from under that weight” of grinding deployments to the Middle East, Bryan Clark said. The Reagan will “likely remain there until relieved since the U.S. is now mounting counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and [drones] may not work for all situations.”
But those deployments mean wear and tear on crews and ships, and also require pulling assets from the Pacific, where the Biden administration says Washington’s true strategic interests lie.

That tension is on full display now. The Japan-based aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan flew F/A-18 Hornets over Kabul during the evacuation operation last month, and remains in the North Arabian Sea alongside the USS Iwo Jima, which launched the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit into Kabul at the same time.


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It won’t just be manned aircraft pulled into whatever continuing surveillance and strike missions deemed necessary by the Biden administration, however. Drones will undoubtedly play a significant role, and the relatively limited number of advanced, long-loitering aircraft available at any given time could also pull from the Indo-Pacific Command.