Afghanistan - Haqqani, Colonel Imam

The most deadly US foe in Afghanistan
The Haqqani network, born of the Russian war and nurtured by the CIA, is behind many spectacular assaults in Afghanistan.
By Anand Gopal - CSM

.... The Haqqani network is considered the most sophisticated of Afghanistan's insurgent groups. The group is alleged to be behind many high-profile assaults, including a raid on a luxury hotel in Kabul in January 2008 and a massive car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that left 41 people dead in July 2008.

The group is active in Afghanistan's southeastern provinces – Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Logar, and Ghazni. In parts of Paktika, Khost, and Paktia, they have established parallel governments and control the countryside of many districts. "In Khost, government officials need letters from Haqqani just to move about on the roads in the districts," says Hanif Shah Husseini, a parliamentarian from Khost.


The Taliban: if you’re not beating them, you’re losing
By Sean McLain - The National

.... That the Obama administration will pay close attention to the recommendations of CNAS is without doubt. Two of the report’s authors, David Kilcullen and Nathaniel Fick, helped General David Petraeus to write the US army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, as did the group’s president, John Nagl. The report, entitled Triage: The next twelve months in Afghanistan and Pakistan, paints a dire picture of the state of the war.

.... The report’s authors observe: “In counterinsurgency campaigns, if you are not winning, then you are losing.” By all possible measures, the US and its allies are most certainly not winning.

The Taliban will ‘never be defeated’
‘Colonel Imam’, the Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, says the US must negotiate with its enemies
By Christina Lamb - Times

The Pakistani intelligence agent who trained Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to fight has warned that Nato forces will never overpower their enemies in Afghanistan and should talk to them rather than sacrifice more lives.

“You can never win the war in Afghanistan,” said so-called “Colonel Imam”, who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s occupation from 1979 to 1989, then helped to form the Taliban.

“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”