Mattis: NATO Might Drop Ally Pakistan For "Connections With Terrorist Groups"

Defense Secretary James Mattis told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that Pakistan might be dropped by the United States as a NATO ally due to its support for the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Currently, Pakistan is formally designated as a major non-NATO ally (MNNA) - a defense relationship which confers military and financial benefits but does not automatically imply a mutual defense pact.

During the hearing which covered a wide range of national security issues, Mattis was asked if the US would consider revoking Pakistan"s status, and responded, "I"m sure it will be."  The firm but not completely unexpected response which is sure to add tensions to the already shaky US-Pakistan alliance came after Mattis stated in his opening remarks that, "we will firmly address Pakistan"s role. NATO"s demands need to be heard and embraced in Islamabad."

Mattis along with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that they view Pakistan"s main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as an enabler of terrorism in Central Asia. General Dunford said, “It is clear to me that the ISI has connections with terrorist groups.”

Image source: Andrew Harnik, via The Middletown Press/AP 

President Trump himself recently singled out longtime US ally Pakistan as a "safe haven to agents of chaos, violence and terror" when he announced a new plan for ramping up US anti-terror actions in Afghanistan back in August. Trump specifically blamed Pakistan for harboring Taliban leaders and other radical Islamic allies like the Haqqani network, which has long been leading insurgences against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. 

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif recently warned Washington against using Pakistan as a "scapegoat" for US failures in America"s 16-year long war in Afghanistan. Pakistan sees its role as a key regional US partner against terrorism, and consistently points out that it has suffered tens of thousands of casualties from terrorist attacks since joining the US campaign after 9/11. But US officials have pointed to Pakistan"s consistent willingness to "look the other way" when it comes to the extremist groups that have long operated in its territory. Famously, Osama bin Laden himself was found to have been living comfortably in Abbottabad not far from Pakistan"s premier military academy.

Lawmakers were also briefed Tuesday that the thousands of additional US troops President Trump has ordered to Afghanistan - about 3,500 to augment the roughly 11,000 currently there - will cost over $1 billion a year, bringing the Pentagon"s annual expense of its Afghan operation to a whopping $12.5 billion annually. 

The White House has sold the plan as a necessary long term counter terror measure with a general advisory mandate in a region long seen as the epicenter of global terrorism, but has adamantly downplayed any talk of nation building in Afghanistan. Along with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqani network, a branch of the Islamic State is also on the rise in the country since 2015. 

In the midst of the briefing by America"s top military officers, Senator John McCain repeatedly chastised Mattis and Dunford for not bringing a clear vision of the new Afghan strategy, saying, “We want to be your partners, but this committee will not be a rubber stamp for any policy or president." And added, "unfortunately, we still have far more questions than answers about this new strategy.” But lost on McCain and other lawmakers (or more likely well known and willfully suppressed), which better explains the question of "how we got here", is the deeper issue of the origins of these terror groups which the panel acknowledged are in cahoots with Pakistan intelligence.

The birth of Sunni Islamic terror groups like the Haqqani network, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda are rooted in  "Operation Cyclone" - the 1980"s CIA program to arm Afghan and Arab mujahideen fighters against the Soviet Union in Central Asia. The now well-known and exhaustively documented program produced the original Frankenstein of global jihad that spawned an entire generation of veteran terrorists, and it is the previously US-sponsored jihadi gift that keeps on giving.

In what was probably the first ever US government classified report to identify Osama Bin Laden as a terrorist threat, a 1993 paper (now declassified) called The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous admitted the increasingly global "jihadist movement" was spawned from "US support of the mujahidin."

The report produced by the State Department"s Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted that the “support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan mujahidin” in the war against the Soviets, “is now contributing experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups worldwide,” and concluded the following:

The alleged involvement of veterans of the Afghan war in the World Trade Center bombing [February 1993] and the plots against New York targets are a bold example of what tactics some former mujahidin are willing to use in their ongoing jihad. US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US interests from attack.

So ironically, when Pakistan"s foreign minister repeatedly tells the US to stop exclusively scapegoating Pakistani intelligence for the jihadist menace, there is more truth in his words than meets the eye. The Inter-Services Intelligence agency was but one of many US partners (Saudi Arabia and Egypt were other big ones) the US joined with in funding and supplying the original jihad which helped to leave the entire region in shambles and which spawned future generations of terrorists.

Korea, Afghanistan, And The Never-Ending War Trap

Authored by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times,

While the US-backed "Hunger Games" in South Korea plow on, a "new strategy" for Afghanistan is really all about business. But China is already there...

There are more parallels between an unfinished 1950s war in Northeast Asia and an ongoing 16-year-old war in the crossroads between Central and South Asia than meet the eye.

Let’s start with North Korea.

Once again the US/South Korea Hunger Games plow on. It didn’t have to be this way.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained how: “Russia together with China developed a plan which proposes ‘double freezing’: Kim Jong-un should freeze nuclear tests and stop launching any types of ballistic missiles, while US and South Korea should freeze large-scale drills which are used as a pretext for the North’s tests.”

Call it sound diplomacy. There’s no conclusive evidence the Russia-China strategic partnership floated this plan directly to the administration of US President Donald Trump. Even if they did, the proposal was shot down. The proverbial “military experts” lobbied hard against it, insisting on a lopsided advantage to Pyongyang. Worse, National Security Adviser H R McMaster consistently lobbies for preventative war – as if this is any sort of serious conflict “resolution”.

Meanwhile, that “plan for an enveloping fire” around Guam remains on Kim Jong-un’s table. It is essential to remember the plan was North Korea’s response to Trump’s “fire and fury” volley. Kim has stated that for diplomacy to work again, “it is necessary for the US to make a proper option first”. As in canceling the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian war games – featuring up to 30,000 US soldiers and more than 50,000 South Korean troops.   

South Korean President Moon Jae-in dutifully repeats the Pentagon mantra that these Hunger Games, lasting until August 31, are “defensive”. Computer simulations gaming a – very unlikely – unilateral Pyongyang attack may qualify as defense. But Kim and the Korean Central News Agency interpret the war games in essence for what they are: rehearsal for a “decapitation”, a pre-emptive attack yielding regime change.

No wonder the KCNA insists on a possible “catastrophe”. And Beijing, crucially, concurs. The Global Times reasonably argued that “if South Korea really wants no war on the Korean Peninsula, it should try to stop this military exercise”.

Can’t pack up our troubles

It would be a relief to defuse the drama by evoking that great World War I marching song; “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag/ And smile, smile, smile.”

But this is extremely serious. A China-North Korea mutual defense treaty has been in effect since 1961. Under this framework, Beijing’s response to Trump’s “fire and fury” was a thing of beauty. If Pyongyang attacks, China is neutral. But if the US launches a McMaster-style pre-emptive attack, China intervenes – militarily – on behalf of Pyongyang.

As a clincher, Beijing even made it clear that its preference is for the current status quo to remain. Checkmate.

Hunger Games apart, the rhetorical war in the Korean Peninsula did decrease a substantial notch after China made its position clear. According to a Beltway intel source, that shows “the US and Chinese militaries, as the US and the Russians in Syria, are coordinating to avoid a war”.

Evidence may have been provided by a very important meeting last week between the chairmen of the US and Chinese Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford and General Fang Fenghui. They signed a deal that the Pentagon spun as able to “reduce the risk of miscalculation” in Northeast Asia.

Among the prodigious fireworks inherent to his departure as White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon nailed it: “There’s no military solution, forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

And extra evidence in the “they got us” department is that B-1B heavy bomber “decapitation” practice runs – out of Andersen Air Force Base in Guam – have been quietly “suspended”. This crucial, largely unreported fact in the air supersedes rhetoric from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Pentagon head James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who previous to Bannon’s exit were stressing  “strong military consequences if North Korea chooses wrongly”.  

Once again, it’s all about The Belt & Road Initiative

Now let’s move to Afghanistan.

“Mad Dog” Mattis once famously said it was fun to shoot Taliban fighters. “Known unknowns” Don Rumsfeld was more realistic; he moved out of Afghanistan (toward Iraq) because there were not enough good targets to bomb.

Anyone who spent time working/reporting on the Afghan Hindu Kush and the southwestern deserts knows why the proverbial “there’s no military solution” applies. There are myriad reasons, starting with the profound, radicalized Afghan ethnic divide (roughly, 40% are mostly rural, tribal Pashtun, many recruited by the Taliban; almost 30% are Tajik, a great deal of them urban, literate and in government; more than 20% are Hazara Shiites; and 10% are Uzbek).

The bulk of Washington’s “aid” to Kabul throughout these past 16 years has been on the bombing, not the economy, front. Government corruption is cataclysmic. Warlords rule. The Taliban thrive because they offer local protection. Much to Pashtun ire, most of the army is Tajik. Tajik politicians are mostly close to India while most Pashtun favor Pakistan (after all, they have cousins on the other side of the Durand line; enter the dream of a future, reunited Pashtunistan).

On the GWOT (Global War on Terror) front, al-Qaeda would not even exist if the late Dr Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski had not come up with the idea of a sprawling, well-weaponized private army of demented jihadis-cum-tribal Afghans fighting the communist government in Kabul during the 1980s. Add to this the myth that the Pentagon needs to be on the ground in Afghanistan to prevent jihadis from attacking America. Al-Qaeda is extinct in Afghanistan. And Daesh does not need territory to concoct/project its DIY jihad.

When the myth of the US in Afghanistan as a categorical imperative is exposed, that may unveil what this is all about: business.

And we’re not even talking about who really profits from large-scale opium/heroin trade.

Two months ago the Afghan ambassador to Washington, Hamdullah Mohib, was breathlessly spinning how “President Trump is keenly interested in Afghanistan’s economic potential”, as in “our estimated $1 trillion in copper, iron ore, rare-earth elements, aluminum, gold, silver, zinc, mercury and lithium”. This led to the proverbial unnamed  “US officials” telling Reuters last month that what Trump wants is for the US to demand some of that mineral wealth in exchange for “assisting” Kabul.

A US Geological Survey study a decade ago did identify potential Afghan mineral wealth – gold, silver, platinum, iron ore, uranium, zinc, tantalum, bauxite, coal, natural gas and copper – worth as much as US$1 trillion, with much spin dedicated to Afghanistan as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium”.

And the competition – once again, China – is already there, facing myriad infrastructure and red-tape problems, but concentrated on incorporating Afghanistan, long-term, into the New Silk Roads, aka Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), along with its security cooperation arm, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

It’s no secret the Russia-China strategic partnership wants an Afghan solution hatched by Afghans and supervised by the SCO (of which Afghanistan is an observer and future full member). So from the point of view of neocon/neoliberalcon elements of the War Party in Washington, Afghanistan only makes sense as a forward base to harass/stall/thwart BRI.

What Russia and China want for Afghanistan – yet another node in the process of Eurasia integration – is not much different from what Russia, China and South Korea want for North Korea: increased connectivity as in a future Trans-Korean Railway linked to the Trans-Siberian.

As for Washington and the proverbially bombastic, failed futurists  across the Beltway, do they even know what is the end game of “investing” in two never-ending wars with no visible benefits?

Watch Live: President Trump Unveils "New Path Forward" For Afghanistan

As we detailed last night, President Trump will unveil his long-awaited new strategy for Afghanistan tonight. Will he, as Ron Paul suggests, do the sensible thing and end the failed longest war in history? Or will he continue doing the same thing and expect that somehow he will "win" the war? Does America even know what "winning" looks like in Afghanistan?

Here"s Ron Paul"s preview (which may be a post-mortem)...

With the anti-neocon Steve Bannon out, and nobody left in Trump"s inner circle to halt the simmering push for war, we suspect we know the answer, and as The Hill details, here"s what to look for in his speech...

How many more troops?

The United States has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan on a dual mission of training, advising and assisting Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and conducting counterterrorism missions against groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Trump gave Mattis the authority in June to send more troops there, but Mattis has held off deploying any more until Trump finalized a strategy. “I was not willing to make significant troop lifts until we made certain we knew what was the strategy, what was the commitment going in,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him on Sunday. Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said he needs a “few thousand” more troops to break the stalemate against the Taliban. That few thousand is said to equal about 4,000 U.S. troops. Those troops would be used to embed with conventional Afghan forces closer to combat — at the battalion level — and improve the capabilities of the Afghan air force and special operations forces. Nicholson assured the Afghans on Sunday that the U.S. commitment to the country will continue. “I assure you we are with you in this fight. We are with you, and we will stay with you,” Nicholson said during a ceremony at Camp Morehead, a training base for Afghan commandos southeast of Kabul.

What’s the end game?

Trump himself has questioned why America is still in Afghanistan after more than a decade of war. He’ll need to explain to the American people what victory would look like in Afghanistan and how a few thousand additional troops can achieve it when 100,000 before could not. “We’ve been there for now close to 17 years, and I want to find out why we’ve been there for 17 years, how it’s going and what we should do in terms of additional ideas,” Trump said in July. Military officials have described victory as getting the country secure enough to prevent another 9/11-style attack on the United States. To do that, they say, the United States needs to have an open-ended presence to train Afghan forces to be able to fight insurgents and terrorists themselves, as well as to stabilize the Afghan government with anti-corruption and other reform efforts. Officials have also said a negotiated political settlement with the Taliban is the only way to end the conflict, which they say U.S. forces can help with by reversing Taliban battlefield gains and forcing them to the negotiating table.

Will Trump incorporate unconventional ideas?

Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, has been privately and publicly shopping a plan to replace most U.S. troops with contractors. Prince’s plan would include sending 5,500 private military contractors to embed with Afghan forces at the battalion level. They would be supported by a 90-plane private air force. The plan was championed by Bannon, but opposed by Mattis, McMaster, key leaders in Congress and Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. With Bannon gone, the proposal appears dead. Still, Trump is said to have been deeply skeptical of the options the military presented to him. That skepticism could translate into using elements of Prince’s plan. Trump has also expressed interest in mining Afghan’s vast mineral resources, estimated to be worth up to $3 trillion. Ghani reportedly pitched Trump in May on the potential to mine as a way to keep him interested in the country. Trump has stressed a desire for the United States to be paid back for its military support before, such as with NATO. In that vein, he could emphasize the monetary benefits of continued involvement in Afghanistan during his address.

Will Trump mention Nicholson?

Trump reportedly got so fed up with the state of the war and the options being presented to him that he suggested firing Nicholson. “We aren"t winning," Trump reportedly said during a July Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan. "We are losing." Nicholson has been the top U.S. general in Afghanistan since March 2016 and has won accolades on Capitol Hill for his candor about the state of the war, which he first described as a stalemate in February. Last week, Mattis defended Nicholson, but would not say whether the president has confidence in the general. “Ask the president,” Mattis said. “I will tell you right now, he is our commander in the field, he has the confidence of NATO, he has the confidence of Afghanistan, he has the confidence of the United States,” Mattis said.

What about Pakistan?

The administration has stressed that its strategy will take a regional approach, including pressuring Pakistan to more aggressively combat terrorist safe havens within its borders. To do that, the administration could reduce aid or make it contingent on Pakistan’s efforts against terrorists. Mattis has already withheld $50 million in aid from Pakistan over what the Pentagon described as its insufficient actions against the Haqqani Network. Still, the Pentagon said that decision was unrelated to the overall strategy review for Afghanistan that was then ongoing. Other options to pressure Pakistan include taking away its status as a non-NATO ally and naming the country as a state sponsor of terrorism. Mattis on Sunday said Trump’s strategy would address Pakistan, but would not get into more details ahead of the president’s address. “It is a South Asia strategy,” Mattis said. “It is not just an Afghanistan strategy. So if you look at the region, it"s a South Asia strategy, and we"ll be addressing those issues in it.”

As we noted briefly earlier, the key highlights of the upcoming speech were leaked online courtesy of Fox News" Jennifer Griffin, and are as follows:

• The president has signed off on 4,000 more US troops to Afghanistan; not clear he will talk numbers tonight. No talk of withdrawal.


• In speech tonight Pres Trump will ask "region to do more,"  will ask "India and Pakistan to do more to bring Taliban to negotiating table.


• Trump strategy to include negotiating w/ Taliban. In past Qatar negotiations failed because Pres Obama announced troop withdrawals: US official

Of the items above, the aditional 4,000 troops are the most notable and confirm Ron Paul"s guess above - continue doing the same thing and expect that somehow he will "win" the war!

President Trump is due to speak at 9pmET from Fort Meyer, Va....

Trump's Slide Into Endless-War Syndrome

Authored by Ivan Eland via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump touted his nationalist “America First” foreign policy, which implied that he wanted to stay out of foreign brushfire wars. Even before that, he tweeted his disapproval of American involvement of the Afghan War.

The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria

Yet now he has delegated the authority to his Secretary of Defense to send several thousand more troops to Afghanistan to join the almost 9,000 that remain there advising and assisting Afghan forces and hunting Islamist terrorists. And that is not the only instance in which the Trump administration has gone against his original inclination or is contemplating it.

Trump appears to be delegating the troop re-escalation decision for Afghanistan to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, because the president wants to be able to dodge responsibility in case that policy is ultimately unsuccessful, just as he blamed the botched Special Operations raid in Yemen on the military. Re-escalation is likely to fail, because the administration has no strategy for turning the already-lost conflict around. Adding 3,000 to 5,000 troops, according to a U.S. military that never wants to admit losing a war, would allow American troops to “advise” Afghan troops in battlefield areas, instead of remaining at higher headquarters, and also to call in U.S. air and artillery strikes in support of those local forces.

Yet the Afghan War is the longest conflict in American history, and no conception of “success” can be realistically imagined. How can an augmented force of 13,000 or 14,000 American advisers have success helping a still pathetic Afghan military (even after 16 years of U.S. training), when 100,000 much more potent U.S. combat troops could not defeat the Taliban during all those prior years of conflict?

And if the Taliban’s gains on the battlefield aren’t enough, the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has caused some Islamist militants to pledge allegiance to the even more radical and brutal ISIS group. One can easily see that when the 3,000 to 5,000 troops have little effect on the battlefield, which is the probable outcome, the military will begin demanding a more sizeable re-escalation of the endless conflict.

Should we give the U.S. military a blank check for perpetual war until it comes up with a face-saving way to exit with honor? Such a ruse didn’t fool anyone in the Vietnam War.

India’s Interests

The original U.S. enemy, Al Qaeda, is already a spent force in that part of the world. In addition, the Indian government is assisting Afghanistan economically and Afghan forces militarily and would have an incentive to do much more if the United States withdrew from the fight. India doesn’t want its arch rival Pakistan’s support of the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan to result in a Taliban-controlled or influenced Afghan government that will augment Pakistan’s power in the South Asian region. Thus, the United States could let India, which has greater strategic interest in this local war than does the United States these days, take over countering the Taliban and ISIS in the region.

Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilots fly near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 5, 2017.  (Army photo by Capt. Brian Harris)

In addition to re-escalating an already unsuccessful Afghan War, some in the Trump administration want to ramp up the fight in Syria and assistance to the Saudi Arabian-led coalition against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are loosely aligned with Saudi-rival Iran.

Trump, seemingly only to prove he was tougher than President Obama was in Syria, mounted a for-show cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base after an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Before the U.S. attack, the Trump administration warned the Russians and the thus the Syrians that it was coming, thus severely mitigating its effect.

Lately, however, some in the Trump administration want to widen the war against ISIS in Syria to include Iranian-sponsored militias that are also fighting ISIS. Yet the perils of escalation in Syria became apparent when a Syrian government plane dropped bombs near U.S.-sponsored rebels, U.S. aircraft shot down the plane, and then the Russians declared that any American aircraft flying over Syrian government-controlled areas would be tracked as potential targets. Russian downing of an American aircraft or vice versa would be an unneeded and dangerous escalation between two nuclear-armed great powers over the outcome of a civil war in a country that is not strategic to the United States.

The desire of some Trump administration officials to go after Iranian-sponsored militias in Syria is part of a larger Trump inclination to support Saudi Arabia in its regional rivalry with Iran in the Persian Gulf. That regional rivalry is also playing out in the destitute country of Yemen, with the United States selling the despotic Saudis a fresh batch of expensive military equipment, some of which will probably be used to kill Houthis in Yemen, including lots of civilians. Yet if Syria is not strategic to the United States, the poor nation of Yemen is certainly not either.

In the Syrian civil war, the United States should sit back and watch its adversaries fight each other — ISIS and other radical Sunni Islamists versus Iran, Iranian-sponsored militias, the autocratic Syrian government, and Russia.

In the internecine conflict in Yemen, the Saudi coalition, which has already killed many civilians, is hardly better than Iran.

In the Afghan civil war, the United States should accept defeat, withdraw its forces — instead of re-escalating the war — and let India fully take over assisting the Afghan military in its fight against the Taliban and ISIS.

In sum, Trump should avoid getting co-opted by the U.S. military and honor his campaign rhetoric, which implied staying out of non-strategic brushfire wars.

US Soldiers Wounded In Latest "Insider" Attack At Afghan Base

Several US soldiers were wounded on Saturday after being shot by an Afghan soldier at a base in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, the third “insider” attack on US troops stationed in the country this year, and the second on one week. Initially conflicting reports emerged about the number of casualties in the attack, with Afghan officials telling Reuters that four US troops had been killed; that number has since been revised.

Here’s Reuters:

A spokesman for the U.S. military command in Kabul denied earlier comments by an Afghan official that Americans had been killed, but confirmed that an unspecified number of soldiers had been wounded at Camp Shaheen, the headquarters of the Afghan army"s 209th Corps in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

At least one Afghan soldier was killed and another wounded, the U.S. official said. Abdul Qahar Araam, spokesman for the Afghan army"s 209th Corps, had announced that an Afghan soldier shot and killed four U.S. troops inside the base.

The German military heads the multinational advising mission based in Mazar-i-Sharif. A spokeswoman for the German forces at the joint mission command in Potsdam said "according to what we know right now, no Germans were affected".

On June 11, three U.S. soldiers were killed and a fourth wounded when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them at a base in eastern Afghanistan"s Nangarhar province.

As of yet, no group has taken credit for Saturday’s attack. The Taliban took credit for a similar attack that unfolded a week ago in Eastern Afghanistan that left three US troops dead and one wounded.

Following last week"s attack, Vice President Mike Pence, speaking in Wisconsin on Saturday, offered his condolences to the victims’ relatives.

"On my way here I was informed that U.S. service members were killed and wounded in an attack in Afghanistan," Pence said. "The president and I have been briefed; the details of this attack will be forthcoming. But suffice it to say, when heroes fall, Americans grieve. And our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these American heroes."

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced that he would delegate near-total authority to the Pentagon to determine troop levels in the country. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced it would send 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan to support existing forces, and in hopes of "breaking a stalemate in a war that has now been passed on to a third U.S. President." The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.

As we cautioned, "Trump, who barely spoke about Afghanistan as a candidate or president, concentrating instead on crushing the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, may be underestimating the potential risk he faces by sending more troops in harms way." Today"s latest attack is a harbinger of what Trump faces as he sends even more troops into Afghanistan.

Afghan Soldier Kills 2 US Troops In Insider Attack

This is a developing story...

Two US soldiers have been killed after an Afghan army soldier opened fired on them in eastern Afghanistan, an Afghan official told the Associated Press.

Attahullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor in Nangarhar province, told the AP Saturday that two other US soldiers were wounded in the attack, which took place in the Achin district.

He said the Afghan soldier was killed after the attack.

The insider attack was similar to an incident in March, when an Afghan soldier opened fire at a base in Helmand Province, wounding three US soldiers.
 

India Claims 500 Pakistanis (Protecting ISIS) Killed In "Treasonous" US Bombing In Afghanistan

While US officials have upped their death count from the Afghan MOAB drop to 94, Indian authorities are claiming that at least 500 Pakistani nationals (who had been protecting the ISIS operatives in this area) were killed in the US bombing in Nangarhar province.

One India reports that the area that was targetted was controlled by the Islamic State and protected by the Pakistan army, sources say.

The operation that was jointly coordinated by the 201 Selab Corps of the Afghanistan army targeted the caves and tunnels that were used as hiding places by the IS. It is now clear that the Pakistan army was backing these IS operatives in Afghanistan, official sources also confirmed.

Indian agencies who are coordinating withe counterparts in Afghanistan have learnt that there are no civilians living in the area. There were a large number of stooges of the Inter-Services intelligence who have been protecting the IS operatives in this area. The US action comes at a time when there was a huge build-up of IS forces in Afghanistan.

Indian agencies say that the Pakistan army and the ISI were nurturing these operatives. The entire area that was bombed was under the control of the ISI officials backing the IS, sources also said. The impact of the bomb was so huge that it blew up at least 500 Pakistanis and an equal number of IS operatives.

So, while India seems pleased with the result of the US bombing, not everyone else is. Reuters reports that former Afghan president Hamid Karzai accused his successor on Saturday of committing treason by allowing the U.S. military to drop the largest conventional bomb ever used in combat during an operation against Islamic State militants in Afghanistan.

Karzai, who also vowed to "stand against America", retains considerable influence within Afghanistan"s majority Pashtun ethnic group, to which President Ashraf Ghani also belongs. His strong words could signal a broader political backlash that may endanger the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.

"How could you permit Americans to bomb your country with a device equal to an atom bomb?" Karzai said at a public event in Kabul, questioning Ghani"s decision. "If the government has permitted them to do this, that was wrong and it has committed a national treason."

"I decided to get America off my soil," he said. "This bomb wasn"t only a violation of our sovereignty and a disrespect to our soil and environment, but will have bad effects for years."

Ghani"s office said the strike had been closely coordinated between Afghan and U.S. forces and replied to Karzai"s charges with a statement saying:

"Every Afghan has the right to speak their mind. This is a country of free speech."

Public reaction to Thursday"s strike has been mixed, with some residents near the blast praising Afghan and U.S. troops for pushing back the Islamic State militants.

US Releases Video Of "Mother Of All Bombs" Explosion Which Killed 36 ISIS Fighters

One day after the Trump administration demonstratively used the GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb (MOAB, also known as Mother Of All Bombs) the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal in Afghanistan, in a clear show of force meant to send a signal to North Korea, it released a video of the explosion.

.@USFOR_A releases GBU-43 #MOAB strike video against #ISIS-K cave complex, #Nangarhar, #Afghanistan #DefeatDaeshhttps://t.co/MuhU7JXuNn pic.twitter.com/qBqptpuzbE

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 14, 2017

Afghan officials said 36 militants were killed in the strike in Nangarhar province, near the Pakistan border, where the US military previously estimated ISIS had 600 to 800 active fighters. There were no civilian casualties, according to the Ministry of Defense statement, which also said several ISIS caves and ammunition caches were destroyed. U.S. officials said precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties. The ISIS commander in the area was among the dead, Afghanistan’s presidential palace said.

Hakim Khan, 50, a resident of Achin district where the attack took place, was quoted by CBS as saying he welcomed the attack on ISIS, saying, “I want 100 times more bombings on this group.”

But fierce opposition among Afghans also surfaced. Former President Hamid Karzai condemned the strike, saying it “is not the war on terror but inhuman, and (the) most brutal misuse of our country as (a) testing ground for new and dangeorus weapons. It is upon us,Afghans, to stop the USA.”

Karzi said, “I vehemently and in strongest words condemn the dropping of the latest weapon.”

Others were similarly stunned by the unexpected US show of force.

Since news of the strike broke, most social media users in Afghanistan criticized both the Afghan government and U.S. One user calleld it “our generation’s “Hiroshima,” adding, “I’m still in shock.”

In a 2003 review of the legality of using the MOAB, the Pentagon concluded that it could not be called an indiscriminate killer under the Law of Armed Conflict. “Although the MOAB weapon leaves a large footprint, it is discriminate and requires a deliberate launching toward the target,” the review said, adding, “It is expected that the weapon will have a substantial psychological effect on those who witness its use.”

Meanwhile, President Trump called the attack a “very, very successful mission.” The U.S. military headquarters in Kabul said in a statement that the bomb was dropped at 7:32 p.m. local time Thursday on a tunnel complex in Achin district of Nangarhar province, where the Afghan affiliate of ISIS has been operating. The target was close to the Pakistani border.

The U.S. estimates 600 to 800 IS fighters are present in Afghanistan, mostly in Nangarhar. The U.S. has concentrated heavily on combatting them while also supporting Afghan forces battling the Taliban. Just last week a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar, 37, of Edgewood, Maryland, was killed in action in Nangarhar.

According to CBS, Adam Stump, a Pentagon spokesman, said the bomb was dropped from a U.S. MC-130 special operations transport. He said the bomb had been brought to Afghanistan “some time ago” for potential use. Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a written statement that the strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. forces conducting clearing operations in the Achin area “while maximizing the destruction” of ISIS fighters and facilities. He said ISIS has been using improvised explosive devices, bunkers and tunnels to strengthen its defenses.

“This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K,” he added, using the U.S. military’s acronym for the ISIS affiliate.

Ismail Shinwari, the governor of Achin district, said the U.S. attack was carried out in a remote mountainous area with no civilian homes nearby. He said there has been heavy fighting in the area in recent weeks between Afghan forces and ISIS militants.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said ISIS fighters had used the tunnels and caves in Achin to maneuver freely. “The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and, in order to defeat the group, we must deny them operational space, which we did,” Spicer said.

* * *

With that we now turn our attention to North Korea, where many expect that an explosion of a similar magnitude is imminent over the next 48 hours.

Top US Commander In Afghanistan: "I Am Short A Few Thousand Troops"

The next "surge" is imminent.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army General John Nicholson, said on Thursday he is short "several thousand" troops in order to break a stalemate in a war with Taliban insurgents, signaling the matter may soon be put before President Donald Trump.

"I have adequate resourcing in my counterterrorism mission. In my train, advise and assist mission, however, we have a shortfall of a few thousand," Nicholson, who leads U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Nicholson’s testimony before the committee is the first since President Trump’s inauguration, providing much needed color into how the new commander in chief might handle a war that received little attention on the campaign trail. At this moment there are about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan tasked with training, advising and assisting Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and conducting counterterrorism missions against groups such as al Qaeda. About 7,000 are dedicated to the NATO mission. In addition to the U.S. troops, there are about 6,400 NATO troops in the country.

The number of U.S. troops is down from 9,800 last year. As The Hill writes, former President Obama had initially planned to draw down that number to 5,500, but decided instead to set the troop numbers at 8,400.

So why the need for more troops? Nicholson described the situation in Afghanistan as a “stalemate," adding that the only the way to break the stalemate is to increase the offensive capability of the Afghan forces. As a result, Nicholson asked Congress to invest more in the Afghan air force, though he didn"t offer a dollar figure on how that investment should cost.

“This investment which we are requesting the Afghan air force will help them, as you mentioned, to take over responsibility for their own close air support,” he said. “And even more importantly, this then will to an offensive capability that allows them to overmatch the Taliban or any other group on the battlefield anywhere around the country.”

This was music to the ears of perpetual warhawk John McCain, the chairman of the committee and a critic of the Obama administration"s troops levels, who said he hopes the new administration take the “opportunity” to increase the troop commitment and give commanders more flexibility. 

“This new administration has the opportunity to turn the page," he said, and finally give our commanders the resources and authorities they need to seize the initiative and force the enemy to react, instead of the other way around.”

McCain"s endorsement of Nicholson"s request may be a problem: on Thursday morning Trump revived his feud with McCain, tweeting that the Arizona senator “doesn"t know how to win anymore” and shouldn’t have called a U.S. raid in Yemen a failure.

“Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He"s been losing so long he doesn"t know how to win anymore,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets Thursday morning. “Just look at the mess our country is in - bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a "failure." Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again!”