Trajectory of disaster

Paul Weinberg writes an excellent piece in Toronto's Now Magazine, pointing to a fundamental contradiction in the Canadian military's counterinsurgency strategy. The basic problem is that Canadian troops, in an effort to avoid or reduce the effects of insurgent attacks, are kept isolated from Afghan civilians. Rather than a strategy that involves lightly armed foot patrols and development projects (said to be COIN 'best practices' if you will), Canadian troops are patrolling in armoured vehicles and generally pointing a lot of guns at a lot of people. The resulting alienation of the population undermines public support for the occupation forces and thus of the Afghan government.

... “We don’t have as many boots on the ground as the government would like us to think,” [UWO professor Peter Langille] says.

The Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies estimates that of the 2,500 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, only about 450 are currently on foot or in armoured vehicles, and another 100 are engaged in big-gun artillery. The rest are playing support roles.

Langille claims Canadian soldiers have been shooting off thousands of rounds of ammunition from their M777 155-millimetre howitzers at suspected insurgents, risking the lives of civilians, rather doing foot patrols and village visits.

These big guns can fire from a distance of 30 to 40 kilometres but do not have pinpoint line-of-sight accuracy.

Described as “area weapons,” they may hit anything or anybody within a 300-metre radius of their target.

He suggests the Canadian Forces are acting out of frustration with the refusal of other NATO countries to provide combat reinforcements. “By the time [the Canadians] chose to deploy tanks and heavy artillery, they had to know they were going to lose [the war]. So they chose systems to lose the fewest people.”

According to UBC prof Michael Wallace:

“The problem is a combat strategy that seeks maximum isolation between the Afghan population and Canadian soldiers, whether it is fast-moving LAVs, tanks, or helicopters. The message is, if we need to use these on a long-term basis, we’ve lost, no matter what the relative body count.

Weinberg continues:

Take what happened in the foreign affairs committee November 27. There, according to committee minutes, Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister Leonard Edwards declared the Afghan mission’s much-vaunted “three Ds” mandate – development, diplomacy and defence – dead as a doornail.

When NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar opined that this sounded suspiciously like a policy shift, Edwards waved him off, replying that the change is only a matter of government branches working in one effort. “We don’t have a three-D strategy; we have a one-D strategy – we’re all working together,’’ he said. (link)

It's interesting to compare the comments above, especially Wallace's, with yesterday's blog post here. British forces in Helmand, who famously lack tanks and other heavy armour vehicles, seem to have compensated for their lack of protection. In 13 months, they fired 4 million rounds of ammunition. (See this photo of British troops in Helmand, versus this photo of Canadians in Kandahar.)

Picking up on themes similar to those of Weinberg, the Inter Press Service relates:

Six years on it's understood that the crucial window to inject development and win over disillusioned Pasthuns when the Taliban fled was diverted by the Iraq war. According to the Congressional Research Service, Washington has spent about US$3.4 billion a year on reconstruction, or less than half of what went to Iraq.

The aid that has trickled into Afghanistan has gone almost wholesale towards military expenditures. But the integrated "light footprint" strategy used so effectively to topple the Taliban, in which special forces on horseback and small ground units reinforced Northern Alliance irregulars, was replaced by blast-walled compounds and heavy armor vehicles.

They quote a former practitioner who gives a usable definition of counterinsurgency:

Former marine Captain Nathaniel Fick, a seasoned veteran of the Afghan and Iraq campaigns, highlighted in an August 12 Washington Post op-ed what he called "the paradoxical world of counterinsurgency warfare - the kind of war you win without shooting".

Those now backing on a "surge" of marine manpower to hunt Taliban appear to have forgotten what he reminds us: "The laws of these campaigns seem topsy-turvy by conventional military standards: money is more decisive than bullets; protecting our own forces undermines the US mission; heavy firepower is counterproductive; and winning battles guarantees nothing."

And concerning other COIN approaches:

A related option [i.e. related to a plan to ally with tribal leaders who are hostile to the Taliban] is to ensure that at least some US military aid is tied to specific performance, step up counter-insurgency training for the army and the paramilitary Frontier Corps, and provide $750 million in development aid to FATA over five years as part of a long-term effort to weaken the insurgency.

But Christine Fair, a regional specialist at the Rand Corporation, has argued that such a plan is "four years too late", given the degree to which radical forces have taken control of the region. "I'm not sure who we would spend it on," she said at a recent briefing. (link)

UK troops fire 4 million bullets in a year

The Telegraph has a story on yet another instance of the British Labour government's misleading the public. Some weeks ago, senior British officials admitted that British government representatives had in fact been negotiating with the Taliban, despite earlier government claims to the contrary. Now, the Ministry of Defence admits that it previously issued an erroneous report of the number of bullets which their forces had used in Afghanistan. Here's the breakdown of the numbers, including the earlier reported number and the corrected one:

Rounds used [by British troops in Helmand province, Afghanistan]

Aug 2006 - Sept 2007

SA80 (5.56mm)
Original report: 1,100,000
Actual number: 2,020,000

General Purpose Machine Gun (7.62mm)
Original report: 1,600,000
Actual number: 1,830,000

Artillery (105mm) Original report: 12,000
Actual number: 25,000

The shadow defence secretary noted that these figures "call into question [Defence Secretary] Des Browne's judgment that the Taliban poses no strategic threat to the Government of Afghanistan." (link)

Diplomats 'constrained' by military in Afghanistan

Ottawa's Embassy newsweekly this week has a story on efforts to replace Michel de Salaberry, who returned to Canada in November following a six-month stint as Canada's civilian representative in southern Afghanistan. The fact that his position appears to have sat vacant for two months is testimony to the ambivalent attitude of the Conservative government toward DFAIT and diplomacy. But the Embassy article goes further, quoting the assertions of an NGO official that Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan are following the dictates of the military:

Mr. de Salaberry met civil society officials in Ottawa on Dec. 17 where he presented a mixed review of the situation in Afghanistan.

One NGO representative at the meeting who asked not to be identified said Mr. de Salaberry alternated between positive assessments and the feeling that significant challenges remain. One such problem was that the governor in Kandahar is deeply involved in illegal drug trafficking.

"I'm also convinced that he was clearly constrained," the representative said. "The military called the shots." ... (link)

Granatstein's UN fantasies

Historian Jack Granatstein has lately moved from academia to cheer-leading, creating for himself a position as one of the Harper government's most prominent boosters. He has an Op-Ed in the Globe and Mail of January 8. It's subscriber-only but I paste the juicy bits below:

... Paul Martin's government sent troops to Kandahar precisely to play a counterinsurgency role, not for peacekeeping or peacemaking. The government of 2005 understood that there could be no peace until the Taliban were either defeated or had their support reduced to a level at which the elected Karzai government could gradually extend its control across the country.

Granatstein seems to be forgetting the famous observation of Canada's Major-General Leslie: "Every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you." Leslie's statement acknowledges two important things: One, pursuit of a military solution in Afghanistan will only result in a growing insurgency; and two, the NATO war will also cause growing opposition from Afghan civilians.

Granatstein continues:

The opposition parties and those who support them have forgotten a few facts. ... The United Nations authorized the intervention and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization picked up the burden.

In other words, Afghanistan is part of a UN-authorized mission now being conducted by NATO-led forces. Canada, then, is not, as [Defence critic Steven] Staples puts it so crudely, "really fighting for George Bush." It is, in fact, trying to help fulfill a UN mandate. ...

UN mandate? UN authorized? That's a stretch. Here's what one of Canada's leading jurists Osgoode Hall's Michael Mandel has to say about the opening of Operation Enduring Freedom:

The Security Council passed two Resolutions on terrorism between September 11 and America’s attack on Afghanistan on October 7 (SR 1368 of September 12 and SR1373 of September 28). No honest reading of these could possibly conclude that they authorize the use of force. They condemn the attacks of September 11 and take a whole host of measures to suppress terrorism ... [N]ot once does either of these resolutions mention military force or anything like it. They don’t even mention Afghanistan by name. Nor do they use the accepted formula "all necessary means" of Resolution 678 of November 29, 1990 by which the Security Council authorized the Gulf War of 1991.

Absent authorization of the Security Council, the only even barely arguable legal basis for the war in Afghanistan is the right of self-defence preserved by Article 51 of the [UN] Charter ... (link)

But Article 51 surely doesn't apply either for several reasons, as Mandel explains.

Elsewhere, writing with David Orchard, Mandel and co-author write of the status of ISAF, the multinational force under the NATO umbrella:

... From the start, ISAF put itself at the service of the American operation, declaring "the United States Central Command will have authority over the International Security Assistance Force" (UNSC Document S/2001/1217). When NATO took charge of ISAF, that didn't change anything. NATO forces are always ultimately under U.S. command. The "Supreme Commander" is always an American general, who answers to the U.S. president. (link)

While Granatstein, in concert with many others, sees a UN stamp of approval on America's Afghan war, honest observers should be more skeptical of the oft-repeated claims of government and military officials. The idea that the UN might take an independent stand from the US on such a matter is highly suspect. During the lead-up to the 2001 attack on Afghanistan, Bush administration officials seem to have regarded the UN as their personal clean-up crew: "Let the UN administer [Kabul] or maybe the OIC," Colin Powell advised Bush (OIC is the Organization of the Islamic Conference).

Bush asked [CIA Director George] Tenet, "How do you get the Northern Alliance to accept the Pashtun tribes?"
"The UN administration."
"It's okay with me," Bush said. "No problem with the UN doing Kabul." [Bob Woodward, Bush at War, pp 231, 236]

If you still think that the UN would only ever be backing a "Just War", consider the remarks of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan when he explained how the UN became involved with the Iraq occupation.

"The Security Council’s mandate was for us to help the Iraqi people. I don’t think one can say that the Security Council sanctioned the occupation of Iraq, it merely noted the occupation of Iraq and asked the UN to help the Iraqi people..." (see reference here.)

Recall that Annan himself, while still S-G, had labeled the US war in Iraq "illegal".

Chalmers Johnson reviews 'Charlie Wilson's War'

Chalmers Johnson was once a Cold Warrior - an academic supporter of the US war in Vietnam and Indochina. Somewhere along the way he had a conversion - like Saul on the road to Damascus, a 180 degree turn, a 360 degree turn - well, whatever you may call it. At any rate he is a leading scholar of Japan with an intense interest in US foreign policy especially its intelligence services.

He reviews the latest Tom Hanks vehicle, "Charlie Wilson's War". Excerpts:

... Wilson's activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States' current status as the most hated nation on Earth.

[In 2003] I published a review in the Los Angeles Times of the book that provides the data for the film Charlie Wilson's War. ...

In my review of the book, I wrote,

"The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every 'secret' armed intervention it ever undertook. ... Therefore the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest. ...

"Crile's sole measure of success is killed Soviet soldiers (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period 1989 to 1991. That's the successful part.

"However, he never once mentions that the 'tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are the same people who in 1996 killed nineteen American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew a hole in the side of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on September 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon." ...

But there are a number of things both the book and the film are suppressing. As I noted in 2003,

"For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must sign off on -- that is, authorize -- a document called a 'finding.' Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. ...

In the bound galleys of Crile's book, which his publisher sent to reviewers before publication, there was no mention of any qualifications to his portrait of Wilson as a hero and a patriot. Only in an "epilogue" added to the printed book did Crile quote Wilson as saying, "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame." That's it. Full stop. Director Mike Nichols, too, ends his movie with Wilson's final sentence emblazoned across the screen. And then the credits roll. ...

An Imperialist Comedy

Which brings us back to the movie and its reception here. (It has been banned in Afghanistan.) One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists. They start believing that they are the bearers of civilization, the bringers of light to "primitives" and "savages"...

Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team, notes that the film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."

Similarly, we are told by another insider reviewer, James Rocchi, that the scenario, as originally written by Aaron Sorkin of "West Wing" fame, included the following line for Avrakotos: "Remember I said this: There's going to be a day when we're gonna look back and say 'I'd give anything if [Afghanistan] were overrun with Godless communists'." This line is nowhere to be found in the final film.

Today there is ample evidence that, when it comes to the freedom of women, education levels, governmental services, relations among different ethnic groups, and quality of life -- all were infinitely better under the Afghan communists than under the Taliban or the present government of President Hamid Karzai, which evidently controls little beyond the country's capital, Kabul. But Americans don't want to know that -- and certainly they get no indication of it from Charlie Wilson's War, either the book or the film. ...

My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is James Rocchi's summing-up for Cinematical: "Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia." (link)

Prison stats reveal ruse of 'Foreign Taliban'

One of the stock phrases of NATO spokespeople, and thus of their loyal repeaters in the press, is "foreign fighters", or "foreign Taliban". The phrase has some accuracy and utility considering that many southern and eastern Afghans have deep connections with Pakistan, and thus Pakistani nationals are certainly among the insurgents which NATO/US forces are battling. However, those who wield these phrases are usually strongly hinting (or explicitly saying) that Uzbek, Arab and even Chechen fighters operate among the Taliban. Uncritical reporters have retailed these assertions, though supporting evidence has been non-existent.

Now consider a recent New York Times report on a US-run prison in Bagram. The thrust of the article is that the growing insurgency in the country has resulted in the Bagram facility becoming over-crowded, while plans to pass many prisoners on to an Afghan-run prison have stalled. The Red Cross accuses US officials of mistreating prisoners and not allowing Red Cross officials full access to detainees, as required in agreements with that organization. Further, the article cites unnamed US officials who claim that these habeus corpus violations were approved at the highest levels.

Author Tim Golden relates that "the Bagram detention center has become primarily a repository for more dangerous prisoners captured in Afghanistan." That being the case, you would expect that those odious "foreign fighters" who are thought to make up the middle management of the Taliban would be represented in the prison population. Not so.

Of the 630 prisoners thought to be in the US-run prison, "all but about 30 of those prisoners are Afghans, most of them Taliban fighters captured in raids or on the battlefield." And how many of those 30 (some 5% of total prisoners) are Pakistani? Golden apparently didn't learn that, but I would guess all of them are, otherwise we would have heard about a captured Arab or Chechen Taliban.

I have been blogging about the "foreign fighter" rouse since June, when the Globe and Mail's Graeme Smith repeated the NATO line. The problem with such claims is that there has been no evidence presented to substantiate them. No Arab Taliban have been trotted before the cameras. Indeed, even no Uzbek Taliban have been exposed, though it is quite possible that exiled members of Uzbekistan's Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) do in fact train in the lawless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. And the idea that Chechen fighters, only 500 strong in their homeland and motivated by nationalism not religion, would traipse over to Afghanistan to fight alongside Pashtun fighters is ludicrous on the surface. That, however, has not stopped claims to the contrary.

In September, CanWest's Matthew Fisher reported that Canadian troops face off against Chechen militants. In October, the NYT's David Rohde similarly reported on the presence of Chechens along with Arabs as well as Muslim militants from China. Last week CanWest's reporter on the ground in Kandahar continued the tradition by parroting a Canadian general's line about foreign militants.

Similarly, writing over a year ago veteran Afghanistan reporter Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press related the wild claims of a former Taliban government minister. Gannon was far too credulous of his claims that about 500 Taliban suicide bombers were being trained in 50 camps run by experienced jihadis of Arab and other foreign backgrounds. In truth, as revealed by a UN report on suicide bombing this year, bombers in Afghanistan are clearly not trained by experienced warriors, as their success rate shows.

The 'Blame Iran' scam (with update)

Defense journalist Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine, takes Peter MacKay to task for his recent statement that IED's in Afghanistan are being supplied from Iran. While MacKay did not specifically accuse the Iranian government of supporting the arms traffic, newspapers like the National Post picked up on the theme and ran with it. Their headline on Dec 26, page one: "Iran Aiding Taliban: MacKay".

Taylor observes that "it is not surprising that MacKay’s allegations of Iranian interference echo those currently emanating from the U.S. State Department." Indeed, US officials have made the same allegation in the past few months. The problem with such accusations is the there is no evidence to back them up. Further, it is obvious to all observers that Iran's influence in Afghanistan is a decidedly stabilizing one. This goes right back to the Bonn conference of January 2002 when Iranian diplomats were an integral part of efforts to establish a new government in Kabul. (See Bob Woodward, Bush at War.)

The reality was acknowledged by Canada's General Laroche, as related by CTV News: Top General says no evidence Iran behind IED's.

Back to Taylor:

To be fair to MacKay, foreign fighters operating in Afghanistan are a major obstacle to NATO’s potential success and eventual withdrawal. However, these are not the idealistic Muslim jihadists, but the roughly 20,000 Western mercenaries employed as private security contractors. Unlicensed and unregistered, these yabobs operate completely outside both Afghan law and coalition forces’ military discipline. ...

If MacKay is serious about plotting a new course for our mission he would be wise to quit reiterating American-generated "blame Iran" rhetoric and start challenging the uncontrolled use of so-called private security mercenaries in Afghanistan.

Update:

CanWest's Mike Blanchfield picked up on Taylor's theme and rounded up some more illuminating details:

"I think we're going to have to ask him where he got his information," Brig.-Gen. Marquis Hainse said several days later. ...

His office isn't saying. But his spokesman made clear Friday where it didn't come from: U.S. ambassador David Wilkins, who accompanied MacKay on his lengthy journey to Kandahar.

The original source of the Iran-meddling-in-Afghanistan narrative began with top Bush administration officials. ...

U.S. experts suggest it is unlikely that Tehran is directly supporting the insurgency.

In western Afghanistan, Iran is a positive influence and evidence is easy for any visitor to see, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In Kandahar, MacKay said he was concerned about information on how to make improvised explosive devices was coming into Afghanistan from Iran.

But Gary Sick, a member of the National Security Council in the 1970s, said there is nothing inherently Iranian about the IEDs. "Anyone with a decent machine shop who knows what they're doing" can build IEDs." (link)

Militias for Afghanistan

The Financial Times has an interesting piece on British plans for Pashtun tribal militias - known as arbakai. British and Danish military officials are reported to support the idea of establishing the militias in places like Helmand, where British troops lead the NATO efforts. However, the senior NATO general, American Dan McNeill, says such a plan would not work in Helmand though he suggests that in eastern Afghan provinces like Khost the plan might be effective.

... The tribal militia plans have appalled some analysts who say that any attempt to provide tribes with weaponry will further undermine a disarmament process that is already criticised for being ineffective.

Ehsan Zahine, director of the Tribal Liaison Office in Kabul, said it was unlikely that a 200-year-old arbakai system would be effective even in the three south-eastern provinces where it has traditionally held sway.

“In a place like Khost it will be very hard to persuade villages to fight for a government which they regard as abusive. Two years ago our proposal to use arbakai in the south-east was rejected. Now it’s unlikely the tribes would be willing to fight for a government they no longer trust.”

Jelani Popal, the head of the recently created Independent Directorate for Local Administration, is promoting the use of “community self-defence forces” but he told the FT they would have to be relatively formal bodies more akin to a locally recruited police force. In many cases, such local forces would not even be armed.

He said he had come under strong pressure from one of the foreign missions in Kabul to agree to non-uniformed “loose militias”.

“I did not agree to that, we do not want to create mujahedeen groups when we have worked so hard on national disarmament.”

Mr Popal said his proposal was similar to the ill-fated auxiliary police scheme introduced in 2006.

“It was a good idea, but it was badly implemented. Not enough attention was paid to recruitment – people just went to warlords to get 60 people or so. Many of them were drug addicts or criminals, or related to the warlord. We will ensure the community defence forces are properly screened and trained.”

An official at the British embassy in Kabul said the UK was not planning to exactly replicate the arbakai outside the south-eastern border lands. Proposals were being worked out for a small-scale trial of the plan. ... (link)

The reason why an arbakai system might be expected to work in the eastern provinces, while it would not in Helmand, has to do with geography and the nature of Pashtun tribal relations in the two areas. The eastern tribes are located in more mountainous areas where tribal independence is prized - and arguably easier to maintain. (See this photo of a valley in Khost. Notice the mountains which hem the valley in.) Thus, it would be relatively straightforward to establish an arbakai (or legitimize existing ones) on a valley-by-valley basis in the region. In Helmand, by contrast, the tribes are federated into the Durrani or Ghilzai tribal confederations. (Notice too, the typical geography of southern Helmand - see this photo.) Thus, attempts by British forces to put arbakai in charge of a given area in Helmand would run up against the desires of these larger Pashtun tribal federations.

Readers may recall that US officials recently floated the idea of using Pakistani tribal militias in their counter-insurgency efforts on the other side of the Durand line.

Majority of Canadians say no to extended mission

An Angus Reid poll released on New Year's Day finds that a majority of those polled do not want to see the Afghan mission extended beyond Feb 2009. (Link to press release. Link to full poll results - pdf.)

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? - Canada should extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond February 2009

	Dec. 2007	Jul. 2007
Agree	28%	16%
Disagree	61%	63%
Not sure	11%	22%

Rubin on 9/11

Barnett Rubin, the leading scholar on Afghanistan, was in Manhattan on Sept 11/01. He wrote about it on his blog recently:

... I went up to the roof of a friend's apartment building, together with a friend of hers whom I did not know. It was about noon. The Towers had collapsed, and we saw the huge clouds of smoke. At that time we didn't know about the heroic achievement of the New York Police and Fire Department in evacuating people from the buildings. I thought I was watching the death of 10,000, maybe 20,000 people. And I was pretty sure who was responsible. I had been writing about the "Arab Islamists in Afghanistan" since 1989. Now I knew why Ahmad Shah Massoud had been assassinated two days earlier, on September 9, 2001, in Afghanistan's first suicide bombing.

My old friend (she had been a fellow student of my wife at the University of Chicago 30 years before), knowing of my "expertise," asked me the question I dread, What happens now? My standard answer is that I am not an expert on the future; I have never even been there. But on September 11, 2001, I lost my pessoptimistic irony. I didn't know what would happen. But I knew what I feared: that the U.S. would lash out in anger, blaming Afghans for an act planned in their country by a group they did not control. "I hope we don't just carpet-bomb Qandahar," I said. I don't recall what my friend's friend said exactly, but it was something like, "Kill them all." And this was within shouting distance of where Bob Dylan and Joan Baez started their careers when I was in junior high school. ... (link)

2500 Afghan protesters angered by US

Some 2500 residents of Nangarhar province gathered to demand the release of a tribal leader held by US-led forces.

JALALABAD, Dec 30 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Hundreds of demonstrators in Sherzad district of eastern Nangarahar province on Sunday demanded the release of tribal elder detained by coalition forces.

Tribal elder Zabit Zahir was arrested on Dec 26th in the district.

About 2500 residents and tribal elders of the district marched from Bagh-i-Omomi to Mamakhil village on Sunday morning.

The protesters were asking early release of the elder and an end to unauthorized operations in the area.

Haji Rahmatullah, a tribal elder told Pajhwok Afghan News the march was peaceful.

He however warned if such arrests and operations continued against the tribal elders and residents they will stop cooperation with coalition forces and Afghan government.

Through a written resolution the protesters demanded that all the prisoners arrested by coalition forces should be released in Nangarhar province.

The written resolution said: "If the detention of tribal elders was not stopped, the deterioration of security situation will be the responsibility on those who do such actions"

The resolution said Zabit Zahir is a well-known tribal elder and has worked for peace, if the coalition forces have any evidence against him, they should make it public.

Khybar Momand, district chief of Sherzad told this news agency the protest ended peacefully and police had taken strict security measures.

... Meanwhile coalition forces said they have arrested Zabit Zahir accused of supporting the opposition. (link)

While US-led forces in Nangarhar had to deal with peaceful protests, a CanWest dispatch tells of Canadian soldiers in Kandahar encountering a more 'kinetic' form of protest:

Allison Lampert
CanWest News Service

ZHARI DISTRICT, Afghanistan (Jan 1/07) The soldiers of B Company had spent months preparing for Afghanistan, but the harshness of the war they were about to fight really hit them at their going-away party in June. ...

During the next few months, Canadian troops would expand their presence on the ground throughout Zhari district. Roads that were ominously quiet when the soldiers started their tour are now lined with children.

A few throw rocks, but the vast majority wave at the Canadian convoys. (link)