The Kabul Intercontinental Attack: The Taliban’s Clear Message

Ali Omar and his son Ali Omar had returned to Kabul for a visit. The father had moved to the U.S. years ago and the son was born there. On Tuesday, they were having dinner by the pool of the Intercontinental Hotel in the Afghan capital where they were staying during their trip. It was a festive evening with several parties of well-to-do Afghans celebrating birthdays and other occasions. Then came the sound of gunfire. “The police told us it was some kids messing around and not to worry about it,” says Ali Omar the younger, the owner of an Afghan restaurant in Fremont, California. “Then the gunshots kept getting closer and closer.” His father adds, “At first, it was one or two shots from far away. After 15-16 minutes it was wild. War. Everyone was escaping.”

Smoke and flames rise from the Intercontinental hotel during a battle between NATO-led forces and suicide bombers and Taliban insurgents in Kabul June 29, 2011.

Nine Taliban fighters had entered the heavily fortified Intercontinental Hotel in a brazen attack on foreigners and Afghan provincial officials who were in town to prepare for the wind-down of coalition forces set to begin in July. Once the intruders got past three heavily defended security checkpoints up a winding road and into the hotel – still decorated in a decaying, late 1970s style of plate glass windows, marble and heavy velvet curtains – there was chaos. Ali Omar the restaurant owner began videotaping what he saw. “I recorded it up to the point where a guy came in and started shooting into the crowd, then it was a free-for-all,” he says. The video shows police standing on the pool deck with AK-47 rifles. People walk by the camera and Omar points out a policeman who he said was shot and killed minutes later. The tape cuts off as a loud explosion is heard.

Eyewitnesses say about 60-to-70 people, including women and children, were on the pool deck having dinner when men in white headscarves, carrying AK-47s and grenades and apparently suicide vests ran in shouting in Pashto and started shooting. The people on the pool deck all ran and jumped off the back wall, onto a steep, wooded hillside that leads down to a main road. The crowd had to knock down a section of a wall topped with barbwire to make it to safety on the street, according to the younger Omar, who recounted the episode, still in a blood spattered shalwar kimeez. Diners and hotel guests tell TIME the attack began around 10 p.m. Most of the fighting did not end until around 4 a.m., after NATO helicopter gunships killed three insurgents on the roof of the hotel. But the siege only came to a close early in the morning when the last bomber, who had been hiding out in the hotel, blew himself up.

The assault left between 18 and 21 dead and 13 wounded, Ministry of Interior spokesman Sadiq Sadiqi told TIME. Local news said nine civilians, two policemen, one Spanish national and nine suicide bombers were killed and that 13 civilians, five government officials and two NATO soldiers were wounded.

The Taliban had its official version. The group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tells TIME that “eight suicide attackers entered from the west gate of the Intercontinental Hotel. One of them blew himself up at the gate. He killed some guards and police and destroyed the gate.” Mujahid tells TIME that “only 13 foreigners were killed” without mentioning any Afghan fatalities. “The suicide attackers were contacting me while they were attacking and told me how many foreigners they were killing.” He continues, “then they heard the helicopters coming. They went to the windows to shoot at them and they were killed by the helicopters. It was around 4 AM when we lost connection with them. Every five minutes they were calling us to tell us about the casualties.”

The attack came a day after the end of a high-level meeting in Kabul that was preparing for the Bonn 2 Conference, a 50-nation meeting that will be held to discuss the upcoming security transition in July and the withdrawal of foreign military forces in 2014. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, told TIME that the target of the attack was guests staying at the hotel: governors and mayors from the three provinces and four cities – Kabul, Bamyan and Panjsher provinces and the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Lashkar Gah and Mehtarlam – that will be the first to see the security transitions from coalition to Afghan forces in July.

As the transition draws near, the attack on the hotel has only reinforced the belief of Afghans and foreigners that Afghan forces are not ready to take over security responsibilities. “We heard shooting and we saw the police dropping their weapons and running from the area,” says Noor Mohammad, a member of the National Directorate of Security who was still in uniform and had been at the hotel for his boss’ birthday party. “I can’t trust them. How can I trust them? They dropped their weapons because they heard some shooting. How can they ensure security for us? How can they fight against the Taliban? No way, I don’t trust them at all,” he says quietly as he cradled a hand that had been cut by barbwire as he helped his boss’ children escape down the hillside.

“In any way possible, the program will be successfully implemented. Our enemies know that they don’t have the capability to hurt our national intention,” said Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, the Chief of the Security Transition Program. “Our country is ready to take any sacrifice necessary on this path,” Ahmadzai said today at the government’s first security handover conference, Tolo TV reported. But in light of today’s attack many Afghans will continue to disagree.

Sahel Wafa, an Afghan who now works for a pharmaceutical company in London after having fled the fighting in the 1980s, watched the attack unfold from the roof of his parents’ house. He saw the entire assault and the police reaction from his vantage point across the street from the entrance to the hotel. “I don’t think they’re ready to take over security. I suppose that as soon as the Americans troops leave, you will see a lot of chaos. Not only from the Taliban, but within the Afghan people, the society. I don’t think the security forces are ready to take over at all.”

US drone wounds top Islamists in Somalia

WASHINGTON: A US drone fired on two senior commanders of Somalia’s Shebab Islamist insurgency after they were found to have ties to Al-Qaeda, the Washington Post reported late Wednesday, citing US officials.

The strike last week is believed to have wounded the two leading militants and came amid increasing concern among US officials about growing ties between Shebab and the global terror network, the Post said.

“They (Shebab fighters) have become somewhat emboldened of late and, as a result, we have become more focused on inhibiting their activities,” it quoted an official as saying. “They were planning operations outside of Somalia.”

The Post said Somalia is now the sixth country in which the United States is reportedly using drone attacks to kill suspected militants, after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen.

The US military could not immediately be reached for comment.

The official quoted by the Post said the two commanders had “direct ties” to Anwar al-Awlaqi, a charismatic American-born preacher believed to be hiding in his family’s native Yemen.

US aircraft and special forces have carried out covert attacks in the past in Somalia, but last week’s incident appeared to be the first drone strike, the Post said.

Last Thursday residents reported huge explosions near Kismayo, a southern port town controlled by Shebab, followed by the sound of aircraft.

A Shebab official in the area said his men had reported an aerial bombing raid on a Shebab base.

“The military aircraft of the enemy carried out an aerial bombardment on a base where some mujahedeen fighters were staying. Initial reports indicate several mujahedeen fighters including muhajirs (foreigners) died,” the official said, refusing to be named.

“We believe the aircraft belonged to the US,” he added.

Pakistan’s Urban Metamorphosis

It’s surprising to many that the majority of Pakistanis support the Islamists and their apologists as the saviors of their religion. But this didn’t happen overnight. The mindset of the large segment of society didn’t change with a blink of an eye.

No serious attempt has been made to analyse this phenomenon even though the transformation of Pakistani society over the last three decades points to this trend.

This new breed of Taliban supporter is overwhelmingly comprised of the upper-middle class that sprang up out of the villages or suburban areas thanks to the enormous flow of American cash that washed through the region after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and later the U.S. invasion.

The corruption in foreign aid distribution, the secret funds for Afghan Mujahideen and the generous bounties to kill or capture extremists sent the price of real estate sky-rocketing in Pakistan, making the farmers living around big cities rich. Flush with cash, the newly rich farming class left rural life behind and moved to cities.

This is a major transformation in Pakistani society. Usually population shifts of this magnitude happen over an extended period of time. In Pakistan, it happened over two to three decades, drastically changing a social order that had been in place for almost two thousand years.

Around 322 b.c. a Mauryan ruler, Chandragupta Maurya and his successors expanded his power westwards across central and western India, enforcing principles of governance and laying down rules of administration, including tax collection, maintaining the army, completing irrigational projects, enforcing law and order, devising rates of taxation, and reviving the way of life in the cities and villages. Villages became so self-contained that travel became unnecessary.

The great Mauryan Empire ended in 185 b.c., but the system the King Ashoka put in place remained in place and for the most part untouched, even by the British rulers. Village life remained unchanged until the advent of new technologies. The introduction of mechanized farming and harvesting eased the arduousness of farm work and led to an increase in productivity. But on the other hand it rendered a big chunk of the society unemployed. The void created by idleness was filled with religion. New classes emerged, new rites were formed.

A similar phenomenon was occurring in India, but was somewhat countered by the development of industry. Residents of rural areas in search of jobs moved to cities, worked in factories and united under labor unions, forming a new working class fighting for equal rights and better opportunities. In Pakistan, however, attempts to build industry were interrupted time and again by dramatic swings from martial law to democracy and back again. Unstable governance rivalries among industrial barons also slowed or disrupted the building of an industrial worker class.

The segment of the new city dwellers brought with them the customs of village life, including myths, superstitions and family structure. The new urbanites were also largely uneducated and taken aback by the bustle of city life and the ways of residents whose worldview was shaped by modern conveniences. The overwhelming majority of these new city residents have become part of the new middle and/or upper middle class trying to fit into a Westernized lifestyle, but with poor results. It is this segment of the population that wants to drink alcohol and travel while at the same time supporting the Taliban as holy warriors. They do not want to let go of their old world values and virtues. They form the base of support for politicians like former cricket legend Imran Khan, whose confrontational attitude towards the West boosts their sense of patriotism.

These new urbanites would fall into one of two extreme categories. If the family had strong but backwards religious beliefs, they spent their money building a mosque or supporting religious organizations — their own way of thanking the Almighty for their unexpected good fortune. If the family had cut its ties with such religious dogmas they chose instead to engage in conspicuous consumption — purchasing high-priced houses, acquiring personal booze collections unmatched in most bars in the West, importing expensive cars and moving money to foreign banks. More important is what they didn’t do with their new-found wealth: Reinvest the money into the local financial system.

The way out of this alarming state of affairs for Pakistan is to reform the education system that matches to the needs for the modern industrial era coupled with the formation and development of an industrial and manufacturing sector.

The vast majority of foreign aid provided by the international community is still being targeted at state security agencies, as is a disproportionately large percentage of the country’s budget. The Saudi government discovered long ago that paying to mould the minds of the youth in Pakistan was an excellent investment. The results — the rise of totalitarian Islam, contempt for democracy, romanticizing violent Islamist movements, and sectarian violence — are all too evident. It’s time for the West to become a counterbalance and seriously support civilian governments instead of relying on military dictators to further their agendas. The West should also keep on pressing the civilian administration for good governance if they want Pakistan free of extremists.

Dissent in the Muslim Brotherhood: How Egypt’s Big Tent Party Isn’t Big Enough

Most Western observers see the Muslim Brotherhood as a homogenous group of hard-line Islamists, dedicated to overthrowing the secular Egyptian state and imposing a severe interpretation of Shari’a law on its people. In reality, the Islamist group has long been something of a “big tent,” gathering within it representatives of different political leanings, all united by oppression under the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood attend a rally in Cairo’s Munib neighborhood

In conversations, some Brothers come across as old-fashioned leftists, dare I say even Marxists: their main focus seems to be workers’ rights. Others have an almost Thatcherite disdain for labor unions. Even among the true-green Islamists, there are at least two different groups: the followers of Hassan Banna and those of Syed Qutb. (I’ll save a discussion on the distinctions for another day.)

With the brutal oppression of Mubarak now gone, it’s only to be expected that some denizens of the big tent feel free to strike out on their own. Some slipped away quietly, casting their lot with liberals like Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa. Others, like Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, broke with more fanfare: after he defied the Brotherhood’s ban on any member’s standing for President, he was ejected from the party.

Now a group of prominent young Brothers have decided to go their own way, setting up the Egyptian Trend Party. (The Brotherhood, which has its own political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has said that those who join the new group will be expelled.)

This was to be expected: a couple of days before the announcement of the new party, Mohamed Kassas and Islam Lotfy told me they were disenchanted with the Brotherhood’s senior leadership. “The revolution exposed major differences between older and younger Brothers,” said Kassas. While the younger members were keen to join the uprising against Mubarak from the get-go, the older leadership were wary. Perhaps because they had suffered terribly for resisting the regime (most of the Brotherhood leadership endured long years in jail and brutal torture), the old guard hesitated for several days as the anti-Mubarak momentum built up in Tahrir Square.

The leadership eventually backed the revolution, but by then they had lost credibility among many young members. Those young Brothers who had already joined the crowds in the square found themselves – for the first time without “adult” supervision – having conversations about politics with non-Islamist peers. They discovered shared aspirations. “They wanted the same things we did, like freedom and the right to change the government,” Lotfy told me.

After Mubarak’s fall, the young Brothers were disappointed by their elders’ initial actions. The Brotherhood’s political party was created overnight, with little discussion; the youth wing would have preferred an internal election to determine the leadership of the new body. “There’s not enough distance between the Brotherhood and the party,” said Kassas. The dismissal of Aboul Fotouh was the last straw.

Launching their own party, Kassas and Lotfy have said they will uphold the aspirations of the Tahrir throngs. But while they are long on ambition, they’re short on specifics about how they would like the new Egypt to be governed. Their party will seek to build a new big tent, inviting liberals and leftists to join.

Guess who’s doing the same thing? Yes, the Brotherhood, too, wants to form a broad coalition ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall.

Dissent in the Muslim Brotherhood: How Egypt’s Big Tent Party Isn’t Big Enough

Most Western observers see the Muslim Brotherhood as a homogenous group of hard-line Islamists, dedicated to overthrowing the secular Egyptian state and imposing a severe interpretation of Shari’a law on its people. In reality, the Islamist group has long been something of a “big tent,” gathering within it representatives of different political leanings, all united by oppression under the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood attend a rally in Cairo’s Munib neighborhood

In conversations, some Brothers come across as old-fashioned leftists, dare I say even Marxists: their main focus seems to be workers’ rights. Others have an almost Thatcherite disdain for labor unions. Even among the true-green Islamists, there are at least two different groups: the followers of Hassan Banna and those of Syed Qutb. (I’ll save a discussion on the distinctions for another day.)

With the brutal oppression of Mubarak now gone, it’s only to be expected that some denizens of the big tent feel free to strike out on their own. Some slipped away quietly, casting their lot with liberals like Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa. Others, like Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, broke with more fanfare: after he defied the Brotherhood’s ban on any member’s standing for President, he was ejected from the party.

Now a group of prominent young Brothers have decided to go their own way, setting up the Egyptian Trend Party. (The Brotherhood, which has its own political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has said that those who join the new group will be expelled.)

This was to be expected: a couple of days before the announcement of the new party, Mohamed Kassas and Islam Lotfy told me they were disenchanted with the Brotherhood’s senior leadership. “The revolution exposed major differences between older and younger Brothers,” said Kassas. While the younger members were keen to join the uprising against Mubarak from the get-go, the older leadership were wary. Perhaps because they had suffered terribly for resisting the regime (most of the Brotherhood leadership endured long years in jail and brutal torture), the old guard hesitated for several days as the anti-Mubarak momentum built up in Tahrir Square.

The leadership eventually backed the revolution, but by then they had lost credibility among many young members. Those young Brothers who had already joined the crowds in the square found themselves – for the first time without “adult” supervision – having conversations about politics with non-Islamist peers. They discovered shared aspirations. “They wanted the same things we did, like freedom and the right to change the government,” Lotfy told me.

After Mubarak’s fall, the young Brothers were disappointed by their elders’ initial actions. The Brotherhood’s political party was created overnight, with little discussion; the youth wing would have preferred an internal election to determine the leadership of the new body. “There’s not enough distance between the Brotherhood and the party,” said Kassas. The dismissal of Aboul Fotouh was the last straw.

Launching their own party, Kassas and Lotfy have said they will uphold the aspirations of the Tahrir throngs. But while they are long on ambition, they’re short on specifics about how they would like the new Egypt to be governed. Their party will seek to build a new big tent, inviting liberals and leftists to join.

Guess who’s doing the same thing? Yes, the Brotherhood, too, wants to form a broad coalition ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall.

US Drone Strike Kills 27 in Pakistan

MIRANSHAH: The death toll in the second drone strike in South Waziristan has climbed to 21, bringing the total number of people killed in two attacks today to 27, Geo News reported Monday.

According to a correspondent of Geo News, a US drone fired two missiles on a house in Mandoi area of Sourth Waziristan, killing all the 21 people present inside and injuring several others.

Earlier today, a drone attacked a vehicle with two missiles in Sarakhawra area near Shawwal, South Waziristan in which six people were killed.

Pakistan: 18 Brits shown exit doors

LONDON: Pakistan has expelled a team of British military trainers sent to help with the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, as the fallout from the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden continues to rock relations between Islamabad and its western allies, a UK newspaper reported.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that at least 18 military advisers, deployed as part of a £15m programme to train the paramilitary Frontier Corps, have been withdrawn from Pakistan. Most are already back in the UK.

Their removal is seen as an indirect casualty of worsening relations between Pakistan and the US over the 2 May Navy Seal raid in Abbottabad, which was conducted without Pakistani consent.

Since Bin Laden’s death, Pakistan has sent home at least 120 US military trainers, most of whom were engaged in training the FC. The British team, a mix of seasoned officers and NCOs, had been stationed at a British-funded FC base near the capital of Balochistan, Quetta.

The training scheme began last August and was scheduled to run until at least summer 2013. The MoD hopes to redeploy the team once the tensions abate.

In an email statement, a spokeswoman said the trainers had been withdrawn “on a temporary basis” at the request of the Pakistani government in response to “security concerns”.

ICC: Muammar Gaddafi wanted for war crimes!

By Vivienne Walt

Muammar Gaddafi faces a potential war crimes trial at The Hague after the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday issued arrest warrants for the Libyan leader, along with his son Saif al-Islam and his military intelligence chief General Abdullah al-Sanoussi. The warrants allege that all three men were involved in ordering security forces to open fire on unarmed protesters last February, turning a peaceful protest movement into a four-month civil war.

A woman supporter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi holds up a picture of Gaddaattend a rally at the green square in Tripoli June 23, 2011.

The arrest warrants turn the regime’s top three figures into fugitives in all of the 150 countries that recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. The Gaddafi warrant claims that he ordered his security forces to “deter and quell by all means the civilian demonstration against his regime,” while his son Saif – who until last February was trumpeted by Western leaders as Libya’s great reformist hope – is alleged to have managed the logistics of the crackdown, effectively acting as his father’s Prime Minister. “His contributions were essential,” the warrant says of the younger Gaddafi, adding that he was “the most influential person with [Muammar Gaddafi's] inner circle, and as such, he exercised control of crucial parts of the state apparatus”. U.N. investigators believe hundreds of civilians were killed in Benghazi, Misratah, Tripoli and other cities during the second half of February, when security forces fired live ammunition into crowds of demonstrators.

Gaddafi is only the second sitting head of state (after Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir) to be indicted by the ICC since it began operating in 2003. And in theory, the crimes are serious enough to land the Gaddafis and their intelligence chief in prison for the rest of their lives.

In reality, however, the three men are already living as fugitives. Hunkered down in Tripoli, their movements have been drastically curtailed since NATO jets began bombing the capital in mid-March. Until then, Gaddafi retained a swaggering defiance against the rebels and their Western supporters, appearing atop the ramparts of Tripoli’s Red Castle fortress and delivering thundering pep talks on television, vowing to crush his foes. Now, weeks pass without any sign of Gaddafi, who has said he believes NATO forces aim to kill him.

As the NATO air campaign drags into its fourth month, Gaddafi has endured the deepest crisis of his 41-year rule far longer than NATO officials had expected. Still, there are signs that some within Gaddafi’s top ranks are scrambling for a political exit. Three government ministers held talks with foreign envoys on the Tunisian island of Djerba over the weekend, according to a brief picture of the talks shown on Gaddafi’s state-run television. Gaddafi’s envoy to Algeria met with Algerian officials on Monday to discuss the crisis, while African leaders met in South Africa’s capital Pretoria to discuss options to end the war.

It remains unclear whether the ICC warrants will speed an end to the war by accelerating the breakup of the regime, through the isolation of the Gaddafis, or will deepen its defiance by cutting off lines of retreat. Gaddafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim on Monday shrugged off the arrest warrants, saying, “The ICC has no legitimacy whatsoever. We will deal with it.”

Under the international court’s rules, the Libyan regime is now responsible for rounding up the men and sending them to The Hague for trial. “One does not need to be a law professor to understand the unlikely scenario of the Libyan authorities to act on this,” says Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch’s international justice program director, who has monitored the International Criminal Court since its inauguration.

Despite billions in funding, the court has failed to convict a single defendant in its eight-year history. Its arrest warrant against Sudan’s President Bashir was issued in March, 2009; more than two years later, the Sudanese leader is still in power and even traveling internationally – albeit only to countries that do not recognize the ICC – and officials in The Hague have appeared powerless to bring him to justice. When people are brought to court, trials can drag on for years.

With no foreign forces in Tripoli, arresting the Libyan leader and his son could require a cataclysmic split in the regime. Many military commanders and politicians have defected since February, but they have fled the capital to the rebel side, rather than moving against Gaddafi and his inner circle in Tripoli itself.

If NATO finally orders in ground forces – which it has, until now, vowed not to do – those forces could be obligated to arrest the three men should they be captured by countries that recognize the ICC. (The U.S. does not recognize the court.) And if Gaddafi finally agrees to exile, he is now barred from going to any country which has ratified the ICC. There are still plenty of destinations which would welcome him, however, including Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Angola and North Korea. And, says Dicker, “He could live in suburban Washington D.C., since the U.S. would have no obligation to arrest him.”

P.I.A. Joint Counter Terrorism

Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have agreed to jointly combat terrorism and foreign influence. According to the Iranian news agency, after the two-day counter-terrorism conference, a joint statement was issued which stated that the presidents of the three countries stressed on their commitment to eliminate terrorism, extremism, militancy and rejecting foreign influence in the region.

“All sides stressed their commitment to efforts aimed at eliminating extremism, militancy, terrorism, as well as rejecting foreign interference, which is in blatant opposition to the spirit of Islam, the peaceful cultural traditions of the region and its peoples’ interests,” the statement said.

“All sides agreed to continue meeting at foreign, interior, security and economy ministers’ level to prepare a roadmap for the next summit due to be held in Islamabad before the end of 2011,” added the statement carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

Iran and Pakistan also “supported the ongoing national reconciliation in Afghanistan.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Iranian and Pakistani counterparts Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Asif Ali Zardari held three-way talks on Friday ahead of a six-nation counter-terrorism conference on Saturday.

The three leaders discussed “ways of battling terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking,” IRNA said on Friday.

A statement posted on the Iranian presidency website said on Friday that the trio “expressed concern over a rising lack of security, extremism and terrorism, and insisted on the need for cooperation to combat these phenomena.”

The Case of Saleem Shahzad

As Pakistan plays its part in the war on terror and fights back against militants plotting against the state (and against the people), a war of information rages too. Players on all sides and in every corner are trying to direct the narrative. And some of them are trying to ensure certain facts remain hidden. In the middle of all this are the brave journalists, such as Syed Saleem Shahzad, who risk their lives trying to ferret out the facts.

In six weeks, the commission headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar will report its findings on the murder of Saleem Shahzad. Ever since the disappearance and death of the investigative journalist in late May, fingers across the country have been pointing at the ISI.

In an interview with India’s The Economic Times, author and journalist Mohammed Hanif was asked if Saleem Shahzad died because he knew too much. “In Pakistan you can criticise the military and its intelligence agencies in general terms, but as soon as you start naming names, investigating specific events, you are in trouble,” said Hanif.

Now it is time to investigate the specific events around Saleem Shahzad’s death. (Click here to vote in our poll).

Below is a timeline of events in this case.