Why opposition to the war in Afghanistan is so minimal (compared to Iraq)?

Today I met with the acting Director of SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Mr. Daniel Nord, on the side lines of a conference on water as a catalyst for peace treaties or future conflicts.

I asked him a question that has been on my mind for a long time, and particularly in light of the new NATO document which reveled that my home country is taking part secretly in the ISAF forces in Afghanistan.

The question was, why is there no global opposition to the war in Afghanistan, the same way the war on Iraq triggered so many global demonstrations and movements? Why is it more or less taken "for granted"?

He said the conflict in Afghanistan is not a new one, it has been going on for more than 40 years, but under different flags. The US-NATO-ISAF reintroduced the conflict in the context of the "war on terrorism" following the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The war was justified in the sense that Afghanistan refused to cooperate in eliminating the bad guys.

He said the war was introduced as a notion of "good will," that the world wants to get rid of an enemy of civilization. As opposed to Iraq, where everyone deemed it is a war for fragmenting the region to get hold of its resources, Afghanistan was seen as a nation ruled by extremist war lords and not a functioning state.

I asked if the location of Afghanistan or its resources were of any strategic significance to what the NATO calls its "most important operation today"? He said if the NATO forces pull out of Afghanistan today, Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran are likely going to interfere in its stead, and that is something that world powers do not accept.

"There's a limit though," he said, "there are casualties among NATO troops and that is why people back home want their soldiers back and safe." So it is only a matter of timing.

He agreed that the "war on terrorism" was a pretext for a lot of things, i.e. cracking down on any form of political dissidence, reorganizing the global financial power balance, etc. But in the context of the recent global changes, i.e. financial crisis, US Presidential elections result, etc, we're beginning to hear about its end, at least in rhetoric.

Proof of Jordan's participation in the international military force in Afghanistan

This is a snippet from the original document unclassified by the NATO, which you can find here, it names Jordan as one of the countries participating in the international force managed by NATO in Afghanistan (and that Jordan does not want to go public about it).

I am publishing this just to be on the safe legal side, and to maintain the credibility of this blog and my reputation as a journalist, after publishing two days ago a blog post about Jordan keeping its participation from the international force in Afghanistan a secret to its own citizens. The original blog post can be found here.

Interestingly, analyzing readership statistics and domain addresses for those who monitored the blog, I found some interesting readers:

US Army Information Systems Engineering Command, (Headquarters Usaisc), visited 3 times on 24th March 2009, at 13:50:24, 13:50:38 and 13:51:22.

Royal Jordanian Hashemite Court (Rhc) visited once on 24th March 2009, 15:37:29

Jordanian Intelligence Department (gid.gov.jo) visited 12times (So far) on 24th March 2009 between 17:42:27, and 18:37:32

....among many other unique visitors between yesterday and today. I find it perplexing that no one leaves an official comment to explain, why does Jordan want to keep this a secret, when Jordanians understand and accept its alliances (as I mentioned in the original post)?

This is high time for transparency.

Jordanian military forces in Afghanistan?!

Writing for the Atlantic, journalist Marc Ambinder refers to a newly declassified NATO document that shows the extent of Jordan's role in the war on terror. The kind of cooperation that has been long considered a national "secret," by demand of the Jordanian government, but is well known to other partners involved.

What's more interesting is that it includes Jordan as being among the countries that are part of the international forces in Afghanistan, but it also includes the notice that Jordan doesn't want its name in the public domain, fearing the internal repercussions. (See pp.29)

Jordan has tried to keep the extent of its role in various US operations a secret -- not from the world, which knows, but from Jordanian citizens. Even though its bases have been used extensively for staging and support missions, its intelligence agency cooperates with the CIA, thousands of U.S. troops are sheltered in the country and it participates in our rendition program.

Even though authoritative sources have included Jordan as among the countries aiding the United States and NATO, the U.S. government still officially classifies Jordan's participation as a secret. The idea is that even though the name might be out there, it's never been formally confirmed by the US or an official source. Well, now the NATO document confirms it. In the new era of transparency, maybe our government can advise Jordan about how to handle the inevitability that its role will be disclosed.

In my humble opinion, I think the extent of this secrecy is exaggerated, despite that the extent of cooperation remains unknown. Jordanians have long known that the US outsourced some of its terrorist interrogation activities to Jordan, thanks to access to international media.

Jordanians have seen US troops going in and out of the country like it is a summer parade. They have witnessed on a first hand basis how sloppy Jordanian policemen in ragged uniforms were superficially upgraded with state of the art SUVs, fancy walkie talkies, international training and uniforms made of "science fiction" material. Speaking of films, Body of Lies paints a very close picture entwined in fictional plot on how cooperation between Jordanian intelligence and the CIA works ( or does it, really? ) This is all, bearing in mind that the US is paying the salaries in Jordan.



I blogged a couple of years ago about this sort of cooperation, with testimonials from an ex-CIA operative in Jordan about the so called "rendition program," where Jordan received terror suspects flown secretly in from different regions around the world for thorough, and often sadomasochist, interrogation.

More recently, Johnson Chalmers, writing for Global Research about the 737 US Military Bases abroad drew Jordan as one example nation where the US deployed forces effectively to monitor operations in neighboring nations, namely Syria and Iraq. However, he insists that it is virtually impossible to tell the details regarding the nature and size of such deployment.

In Jordan, to take but one example, we have secretly deployed up to five thousand troops in bases on the Iraqi and Syrian borders. (Jordan has also cooperated with the CIA in torturing prisoners we deliver to them for “interrogation.”) Nonetheless, Jordan continues to stress that it has no special arrangements with the United States, no bases, and no American military presence.

The country is formally sovereign but actually a satellite of the United States and has been so for at least the past ten years. Similarly, before our withdrawal from Saudi Arabia in 2003, we habitually denied that we maintained a fleet of enormous and easily observed B-52 bombers in Jeddah because that was what the Saudi government demanded. So long as military bureaucrats can continue to enforce a culture of secrecy to protect themselves, no one will know the true size of our baseworld, least of all the elected representatives of the American people.

Wouldn't the NATO and its Middle Eastern allies do better if they were more transparent to their citizens about deals that would eventually be exposed? Why is there such need to hide, providing much space for opposition to fabricate stories and conspiracy theories and sell it cheap to the masses? Why leave us all, global citizens, resort to arbitrary interpretation, just when the need for public support is paramount? Anyone? Why can't we all stick to Jordanian intelligence chief character Hani Salim's motto, " never lie to me " ?

UPDATE: here is the proof that Jordan has forces in Afghanistan, from the original document.

Archive: Lisa Goldman and I on TV 8 talking Middle East blogs

This is a clip from the program Världen i Fokus (The world in focus) on Swedish TV8, back in February 2007. The reporter speaks Swedish, but you can hear Lisa Goldman and I speak in English about some of our experiences as bloggers in the Middle East, especially at the time of the Lebanon(Hezbollah)-Israel war in 2006. The interviews were done ahead of a lecture we had at Stockholm University's Journalism College.

I found this gem hidden in my gmail inbox and thought it was time I put it up!