Afghanistan: Karzai has nothing to work with

The centre cannot hold

If a country, a nation is to become one, achieve unity it needs a centre. Afghanistan, has in its history never really had national unity, it was an empire dominated by Paytans since its conception in 1770.

After the northern tribes, represented by a bunch of warlords together with the CIA and the USAF defeated the Taliban a tribal head named Karzai was made President of Afghanistan.

But Karzai does not have a power base. In the struggle between the Taliban and the pro-western Afghan "government" the only real power are the Taliban. This is brought out by a fragment of a long article on Karzai in the New York Times by Elisabeth Rubin. At some point Kabul is rocked by 6 hours of riots against foreigners and the U.S. Forces there and an abservers is quoted to say:

I felt really bad for him,” Jawed Ludin recalled. Karzai was so alone. He continued to watch the riot footage in his back room, trying to glean the plot. “I realized that, at that time, he had no dependable instrument of power,” Ludin said. “He didn’t have the money, the police, the intelligence. He had nothing.

Things fall apart.

And this in a nutshell is why the pro-western alliance in Afghanistan will fail.

Legitimacy and nuclear massacre

Achieving legitimacy

According to the theories of military experts such as Mr. Martin van Creveld and Mr. William Lind, wars between states are replaced by conflicts where non-state actors are involved. This is the theory of non-Trinitarian War of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). Non-state actors are organisations such as religious organisations, criminal gangs, ethnic groups and other forms of social organisation. Non-state actors are competing with the states for legitimacy in the eyes of the populations they serve. As the story of David and Goliath illustrates the underdog has a greater possibility to win legitimacy than the giant. In any conflict it is therefore important to appear to be an underdog. Use of heavy weapons to achieve goals has to be avoided. Heavy weapons give a contender the appearance of a Goliath. In addition heavy weapons have a tendency to cause unintended victims amongst civilian populations. Good weapons in the effort to win legitimacy are light, precise and easy to hide.



New leadership for European societies

In the previous post "Hells Angels on the March" this blog feature a commentary on a piece by Baron Bodissey of the GoV blog. The piece by Baron Bodissey is titled "Drawing the Line" on Biker War in Denmark and draws an anology on the beginning of the feudal era in Europe and the present day conditions. The idea is that groups like the Hells Angels can be the new leadership of European society, due to their willingness to provide security for the Europeans against Muslims. This while the authorities are losing their legitimacy in the eyes of their populations as they are unwilling to enforce law and order, especially not against non-muslims.

This fits in well with the theories of non-Trinitarian and 4th Generation Warfare.

Still many people cling to the idea of state militaries delivering the West by its fire power. One commenter at GoV called Zenster uses the comment thread on Bikers and Feudal Europe to start advocating his idea of a takeover of the USA by the military. After the coup the military must:

Conduct simultaneous nuclear strikes against Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, Sana'a and Riyadh. Possibly with Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur thrown in for good measure. Then, while Muslims crawl out of the ashes, inform Islam that there's plenty more where that came from while setting about the fortification of Western civilization.

This scenario has nothing to do with Biker gangs providing security to Europeans. But it is also a real bad strategy to gain legitimacy. So I wrote back:

This is an argument for a effortless massacre of mostly civilians.There is a difference between a massacre and war. War has a aspect of a duel and personal sacrifice, which is absent in massacre.

Any nation who undertakes this action will utterly lose legitimacy in its own eyes. The spirit of this action is also against the spirit of the European knighthood, who took great pride in personal bravery and protection of the weak.

Zenster was not easily fazed, replying:

While you are talking about an "effortless massacre", perhaps you might pause and reflect upon the outcome if it was Islam that had all of the nuclear weapons and us in the West who did not.

Snouck: lets examine the record of a muslim country with nuclear weapons. Pakistan has had nuclear weapons since 1974. They have not used them.

Zenster continues:

Your talk of how, "War has a aspect of a duel ..." is sheer nonsense in the modern context of warfare. Were the concept still applicable, American soldiers would be engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the Taliban. A ridiculous notion at best.

Snouck: Zenster misconstrues my statement "war has aspect of a duel" that I think that war must consist of duels. What I mean is that there has to be a perception of equal and fair combat between opposing forces. When this is absent the weaker party feels it is not bound by the same rules since it is set up for defeat in a conventional fight.

Zenster continues:

As General Patton said about war:

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.

However coarse it might sound, war is about killing people. Islam absolutely refuses to field an army in uniform in its assault upon the West. There is a price that must be paid for such perfidy.

If Islam wishes its civilian population and warriors to be indistinguishable from each other, then we are not obliged to distinguish between them, now are we?

Snouck: Well, we are. That is if we wish our forces and our civilization to remain legitimate in the eyes of ourselves and our descendants.

What are the targets that Zenster wants to see nuked in muslim capitals?

Zenster:

The large Islamic capitals are not just "civilian populations". They are home to some of the most extensive terrorist facilities in the world. Cairo's El Azhar university is a prime example. This one institution alone continues to churn out jihadist imams by the hundreds.

Each of these Muslim seats of power represent a nexus of global terrorism. None of them have the least claim to innocence. All of them are actively funding international terrorism and their collective leadership remains one of the singular most enabling forces with respect to jihad.

Snouck: an agressive action of the magnitude of a nuclear strike must be effective in stopping the training of jihadist imams. I'll hencefort call them imams. Al Azar and the other centres must have the monopoly of imam production in order for the strike to have lasting results. But imam training is not monopolized by Al Azar. These imams can be produced anywhere where there are a few huts plus a few imams.

Zenster opinioned:

Islam is clearly fascist in nature and fascism is a bastion of elitism

It is true that Islam is elitist and that removing the most influential imams will leave a vacuum. But Islam does not have a clearly defined hierarchy. If the top imams are removed, imams with less prestige will take their place. They will continue to preach Sharia and Jihad. So a strike will not have a decisive effect. Meanwhile other powers will fear and hate the US for having attacked Islam with nukes. They will be assisted by a backlash against the military government by the population. Isolated at home and abroad the military government of the US will find it impossible to rule. Once they have been removed from power their actions will be the target of the propaganda by the media. The media will show the footage of destroyed muslim cities on TV for years, causing a storm of national self hatred.

I did not pursue the debate with Zenster due to lack of time and the fact that the post had moved beyond the weekly range of posts which is well read by visitors.

Zenster continues:

Furthermore, it would instantly remove from power a huge number of America's very worst enemies.

Snouck: Muslim manpower is the second target for Zenster's zestful nuke plans.

There are 1,3 Billion Muslims in the world. In order to just half their manpower 650 million muslims have to be killed. There is no way that the West would survive committing such incredible slaughter.

Loss of civilizational self confidence

An important cause for the loss of civilisation self confidence was the overstepping of the boundary between state violence against militaries and state violence against civilians. The massacres of civilians in the Soviet camps system, the carpet bombing of cities and the victims of the German camp system during the Second World War undermined the belief of Westerners in Western civilization. Thus the wanton killing of civilians goes against the interest of Western civilizations nation state system.

Better look like David

The interest of the West is best served by a strategy that hurts only the evil doers, such as the terrorists or the muslim criminals that prowl the streets of Europe. The less formidable the force that handles the terrorists the more advantegeous it is. Better look like a herdsman than like a mighty warrior.

Or as the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said about the art of war:

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands

The military organisations of the future will not posess large bases, installations or expensive crew served weapons. They will blend in with the population. Disperse. They will not offer a target for nuclear weapons. That way they remain legitimate and the population will be prepared to support them with funding and recruits.

Western civilization can flourish under those circumstances.

US has no strategy for Afghanistan

After the attack on the WTC in 2001 the US quickly moved to invade Afghanistan. The goal was to capture Bin Laden and to eliminate and capture the Al-Qaida network which was responsable for 9-11 attack on US citizens. The US drove the Taliban government of Afghanistan into Pakistan. Then the US invaded Iraq and lost sight of its original objective.

Today the Taliban and Al-Qaida are back in force in Afghanistan and the fight they offer NATO and Pro-Karzai forces is getting more and more intensive. So what are the US and NATO forces doing in Afghanistan.

The new US President Obama asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Department of Defence (DoD) and he got a startling answer:

"Frankly, we don't have one."

After seven years in Afghanistan the US DoD still has no strategy!

Read more here on the US in Afghanistan.

Muslims attack Church in Gouda

Muslim youth attack Church

Four Moroccan teenagers attacked a Church in the town of Gouda in The Netherlands. The attack took place on Saturday 22 November during the afternoon. The target is situated in the Gouda neighbourhood of Bloemendaal.

The name of the church is the Reformed Christian Church "Vaste Burcht". This is Dutch for "Well-built Stronghold". The Church lived up to its name as only the door of the church was damaged by the fire.

Three of the four arrested teenagers spend a whole night in a police prison. A fourth was released.

In Parliament

The matter was mentioned in Dutch Parliament by Freedom Party (PVV) MPs Geert Wilders and Sietse Fritsma. Among other things they asked for criminals with Dutch and Moroccan (Dutch) nationality to be banned from The Netherlands.



Reaction of the Gouda authorities

Police and fire brigade reacted quickly to the attack. The mayor of Gouda, Mr. Wim Cornelis stated to "take the case seriously".

Earlier disturbances in Gouda in september 2008

Another quarter of the town of Gouda called Oosterwei was in the news in September. The neighbourhood had been terrorized by Moroccans (Dutch) and other ethnics for a years already, but now it finally hit the news due to busdrivers refusing to drive their route trough Oosterwei after a busdriver had been mugged.

Geert Wilders: protect Dutch citizens

In an effective performance Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders asked in parliament why the Dutch Royal Army was in Afghanistan protecting Afghan villagers from the Taliban if the Dutch in many towns and cities were not safe from Moroccan street terrorists.

Authorities try to diminish the issue

The mayor of Gouda, Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin (Dutch), Minister of the Interior Guusje ter Horst and the police chief of the police district that Gouda resorts under Mr. Jan Stikvoort (Dutch) tried to put the anarchy in Gouda under wraps. They stated that there had been an "incident".

In a reaction Geert Wilders subtly demanded that the police chief of Gouda had to be demoted to a parking supervisor in a rural part of The Netherlands.

The authorities are exposed as failures

Shortly thereafter a TV presenter was mugged in Gouda, a woman was hit by a dart arrow and a police trainee was stabbed. All by Moroccans. The icing on the cake was the looting of a supermarket by a group of Moroccans, with the police taking more than an hour to arrive.

The press finally does its work

A mayor newspaper, De Telegraaf, put reports of this serie of incidents on their front page, during september and october. This established the reality of the anarchy. And this anarchy in Gouda and many other places is not incidental but structural. It had become clear that the authorities did not have things in hand in the town of Gouda.

The authorities come around and recognize there is a problem

The authorities reacted by summing up programs to deal with Moroccan street terror "harshly". But the volume of violent crime and the number of criminals is so large that the capacity is lacking to punish violent criminals significantly. Also when the treatment that politicians and police managers want to prescribe to criminals one realises that they do not intend to punish but to "treat" or "help" the criminals.

Labour MP says: "Geert Wilders is right!"

One Labour Party MP however insisted that Moroccans had to be "humiliated in front of their peers" (Dutch).

Will it have a positive effect?

Even if capacity was created to punish Moroccan and other ethnic criminals. By imprisoning them for a considarable time. Even if this would happen it is doubtful that this would have much effect. The situation has gotten too far out of hand. Prisons are full of Moroccans and other minorities anyway. They have become crime schools, rather than correctional facilities.

Too little, too late

The rapid reaction of the Gouda Mayor and Police to the Gouda Church is a result to the effect of the Dutch press pointing out reality of Dutch Multi-Cultural society and the effective opposition work of Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party.

But it will not have a significant effect. The situation is out of government control . And therefore out of control of Parliamentary politics.

A strengthening Anti-American coalition

The response to the terror attack on New York in 2001 was the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Both countries were not able to resist the US military superiority and succumbed to occupation.

Both however are massive liabilities to the US, eating away resources.

The ruling elites of Non-Western nations looked on in initial alarm at the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Their fear was for their own hides in case the US might try something similar with their own nations, removing the elites from power and bringing Iraq-style disorder to their nations.

Already before the war in the Middle East there was concern in China and Russia about US-hegemonism. In order to strengthen themselves these nations, which are growing in economic and societal power and centeredness started to improve their co-operation.

Initially the co-operation took the form of weapons sales by the cash-starved Russians to the Chinese, plus the transfer of military technology to the Chinese military. Later the co-operation was solidified in the form of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), a formal alliance with a permanent secretariat and staff, based in the capital of China. Kazakhastan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan also became members of the alliance.

Important goals of the alliance is furthering trade between the member states and the fight against terrorism against the member states. China is a dynamic economic and monetary powerhouse and an increasingly strong competitor of Western Nations. Russia is also becoming economically stronger, while it also has technological and military production strength. It furthermore has vast oil reserves, which are increasingly becoming scarce, hence the rising price of oil. The other nations in the alliance are also strong in oil and commodities, underwriting the economic expansion of the more prosperous members of SCO.

Recently Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan became members of SCO. This means that the alliance now borders on US occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Four members of SCO have nuclear weapons (Russia, China, Pakistan and India). The alliance gives Iran enormous strategic depth.

The US is under pressure of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And under pressure of Sunni nationalist and Islamic groups of fighters. These groups are fighting in a highly dispersed pattern, in order to nullify the US lead in firepower.

The US forces fighting the Sunnis in and around Bagdad, the core of the Sunni demographic in Iraq are depending on a long supply line to the port city of Basra on the Persian Gulf. Astride the supply line lie the Shia villages, towns and cities. The Shias thus control US logistics. Weapons, food, spare parts, re-inforcements, fuel, medical evacuation can be turned of if the Shia Mullahs. The Shia Mullahs have been put in power by the US organised elections. And by the dismantling of the old Iraqi Army and the nationalist Baath party, which left religious and tribal groupings as the only forms of social and political organisation in Iraq.

Iran is also able to cut off oil supplies to the rest of the world due to their ability to interdict shipping when it travels through the Hormus Straits, the bottleneck for transporting Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Iranian and most of Saudi Arabia's and Gulf State oil deliveries. Just threatening the flow of oil to Asia and the West would send the oil price sky high, slowing down investment in the US economy and hurting the US labour market, which is already under pressure from out of control Mexican immigration.

The US has a technological edge over Iran, militarily. It will be able to destroy Iranian air defense easily and defeat the Iranian Army in the field. However it will run in far greater trouble than it is currently in when it tries to occupy Iran's population centres and faces a new urban guerrilla from its 68 million population.

And then the Iranians will be able to pull the plug on the US Army in Iraq's logistics lifeline and deny the world economy of its oil in a market that has no swing capacity, as in 1973.

The threats that the US have uttered against Iran on Israel's behalf are essentially empty.

Dutch Commandos battle Taliban in Afghanistan

Dutch Commandos (Dutch) are in Afghanistan as a part of the Deployment Task Force (DTF). The region where they operate is called Uruzgan. The task of the Dutch Commando's is to prepare the way for a Dutch Army force (1.400) which will deploy in Uruzgan for 2 years as a part of the US-led efforts to fight terrorism ("The War on Terror").

The Commandos (Dutch) killed dozens of Taliban fighters in the past few months. Amongst them was also an "important leader" according to kolonel Henk Morsink, the DTF Commander.

The Dutch Commandos had 6 heavy fights with fighters in the neighbourhood of the provincial capital Tarin Kowt. The Commandos were pinned down by Afghan fighters. With helicopter gunship support (Dutch Apaches) the Commandos managed to wipe out Taliban and hostile forces.



The most likely weapon to be selected by the Apache weapons officer is the M230 30 millimeter gun.


Using the Commandos in small groups to recconnoitre (recce) the country is a nice tactic. It encourages the Taliban to group themselves in a bigger group with more fire power thus forming a target that can be engaged with a heave weapon platform such as the Apache.

The Commandos had a few hairy escapes in their encounters with the Taliban. They thank their guardian angel.

The Dutch Ministry called the mission "do able", although it is admitted to be the hairiest mission in a long time. The present governing coalition gives the mission full support, but will be replaced in 2007, before the indicated end date of the mission.

Personally I do not see the point of the mission. The Netherlands or the West has no interests in Afganistan. The mission of Nato in Afganistan is to support the US in El Jorge's Great War on Terror.

This mission is doomed to fail. Obviously the West has to respond to Al-Qaida's terror. But invading countries in the Middle East is not a way to harm Al-Qaida decisively. Western Armies in their wars in the Third World since 1945 constantly defeat the enemies they face. And they constantly fail to translate the military victories in political gains.

It is time for the West to rethink the way it wages war.