Insurgency

F inally, after eight years, the U.S. military in Afghanistan is acknowledging the fact that the war there is more against a Pashtun tribal insurgency than against an offshoot of al-Qaeda. In support of this belated realization, there is now evidence of military funding for several research projects aimed at understanding the culture of the Pashtun tribes and what is needed to win them over. The success, however, of this changed perception will rest on the Obama administration's flexibility to accept the historical reality that the concept of jihad among Pashtuns, which is fueling this insurgency, is closely tied to external interventions.

A Special Forces soldier from Baltimore County was killed Saturday in Afghanistan, officials said. Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Robert Pepper, a 1999 graduate of Kenwood High School in Essex, was on patrol in Ghazni province in Eastern Afghanistan when his unit was attacked by insurgents, according to Army Special Forces Command. He was 31. In a statement, his family called him "A good brother, a caring brother, a loving brother. " "Brandon was a good friend to all of us, and was always willing to help.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, a drumbeat of attacks across central and northern Iraq have claimed hundreds of Iraqi and American lives and have given little hope that the war is winding down. There are daily reports of insurgent attacks against Americans, Iraqi police and soft targets. In one day last week, four American contractors were killed in a rebel ambush in Fallujah and jubilant residents dragged charred corpses through the streets and hanged two of them from a bridge.

American officials are welcoming a Taliban statement that the Afghan insurgents will set up an office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The move is being seen as a first step toward peace talks aimed at reconciling the Taliban and the Western-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, something the U.S. has long sought to broker. A serious offer to negotiate would mark not only a departure from the group's previous refusal to engage in talks but also ease concerns over the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from the country by 2014.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi and American officials say they are seeing a troubling pattern of governmental corruption enabling the flow of oil money and other funds to the insurgency and threatening to undermine Iraq's struggling economy. In Iraq, which depends almost exclusively on oil for its revenues, the officials say that any diversion of money to an insurgency that is killing its citizens and tearing apart its infrastructure adds a new and menacing element to the challenge of holding the country together.

WASHINGTON - One month after the capture of Saddam Hussein, a stubborn insurgency continues against U.S. forces, fueled by foreign fighters and Iraqis angry about economic hardships and bitter about the American-led occupation, according to military officers, regional analysts and Iraqi exiles. Officers in Iraq and analysts agree that Hussein's arrest has helped corral some top officials from his Baath Party who were helping coordinate and fund attacks on Americans. But they said other elements involved in the insurgency have no ties to the former Iraqi leader.

RAMADI, Iraq -- Deadly infighting has erupted within Iraq's insurgency as homegrown guerrilla groups, increasingly resentful of foreign-led extremists, try to assert control over the fragmented anti-American campaign, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. Yet there is no evidence that the split here in the Sunni Arab heartland has weakened the uprising, diminished Iraqis' sense of insecurity or brought relief to U.S. forces, the officials say. Tit-for-tat killings...

WASHINGTON - The number of insurgent attacks, which dropped after the Iraqi elections in January, has crept back to the levels of a year ago, senior Pentagon officials said yesterday. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon that insurgent attacks - including roadside bombs, suicide missions and shootings - number 50 or 60 a day, up from 40 a day in the weeks after the elections. About half of the attacks result in injuries or damage to property, he said.

BAIJI, Iraq -- The Baiji refinery may be the most important industrial site in the Sunni Arab-dominated regions of Iraq. On a good day, 500 tanker trucks will leave the refinery filled with fuel with a street value of $10 million. The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation and then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq's largest refinery is diverted to the black market, according to U.S. military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated - and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.

WASHINGTON - President Bush and his advisers have long warned that the weeks leading up to the handover of power in Iraq on June 30 would be bloody, but yesterday's wave of attacks showed that the insurgency is perhaps stronger and more sophisticated than the administration anticipated or has been willing to admit. And it is noteworthy that the greatest number of dead and wounded were to be found in the heavily Kurdish northern city of Mosul, an area thought to be more pacified than the turbulent Sunni Triangle outside Baghdad.

I believe it is sheer folly to speculate on whether or not there was any intention of capturing Osama bin Laden. There most certainly was not. We are at war, and in war the mission of our military is to destroy the enemy. This was done in by the Navy SEALs in a brilliantly planned and executed operation under the authority of President Obama. Hopefully, remaining terrorist leaders will be rooted out and executed in a similar fashion. There is no room for half measures in war. He who kills the most and the most often will be victorious, particularly when fighting an insurgency of other non-nation foes.

The recent revelation that a high-level Taliban "commander" who was negotiating terms of peace with the Afghan government was an imposter is a stunning embarrassment for the Karzai administration, NATO and the United States. Confidence in the value of a constructive dialogue with the Taliban, not to mention a lot of money, was surely drained in the process. The lesson from this debacle is not to stop trying to engage the Taliban but to do it smarter. The U.S.-backed policy of negotiating with the Taliban is the right one. As Gen. David Petraeus and others have said, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory when faced with a terrorist insurgency.

In their never-ending quest to predict the outcome of the next congressional elections, the professional crystal-ballers peered into another blurred sphere this week after the latest round of primary elections. The conventional wisdom is that 2010 is the year of the outsider, spurred by high federal spending, high unemployment, slow economic recovery and disappointment in Washington and President Barack Obama — and that view got a boost in the Senate Republican primary in Alaska.

F inally, after eight years, the U.S. military in Afghanistan is acknowledging the fact that the war there is more against a Pashtun tribal insurgency than against an offshoot of al-Qaeda. In support of this belated realization, there is now evidence of military funding for several research projects aimed at understanding the culture of the Pashtun tribes and what is needed to win them over. The success, however, of this changed perception will rest on the Obama administration's flexibility to accept the historical reality that the concept of jihad among Pashtuns, which is fueling this insurgency, is closely tied to external interventions.

On a recent trip to Kabul for our nonprofit organization, Jobs for Afghans, we made a startling discovery: There is no true Taliban insurgency. Yes, there is a Taliban leadership, many of whom are "foreigners," meaning, non-Afghans. Yes, there are many fighting-age men who fight because they are paid to do so, by the small cadre of Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders who have plenty of opium money. They fork out the excellent wage in these parts of $8 per day for "insurgent work." But a die-hard, dedicated army of fighters who pledge allegiance to the Taliban ideology and cause?

Kabul, Afghanistan - -Insurgents armed with rockets, mortars and a truck bomb staged an unusual frontal attack Saturday on a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, killing two American soldiers and forcing the defenders to call in airstrikes to avoid being overrun. The assault, which came as thousands of American troops were taking part in an anti-Taliban offensive hundreds of miles away in the south of Afghanistan, pointed up the insurgents' ability to take the fight to a location of their choosing - in this case, a remote outpost in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan's tribal areas.

WASHINGTON -- Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad, a key wartime goal toward which the United States has spent $4.2 billion dollars, won't be accomplished until the year 2013, U.S. officials said yesterday, in what others called a significant setback for the new U.S. initiatives to quell Iraq's bloody insurgency. Power outages in the Iraqi capital are frequent, leaving residents without electricity for an average of 17 or 18 hours a day. For most residents without personal generators, that means not just no lights but dead radios and televisions, heaters, washing machines and water pumps.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - As Iraq's newly elected leaders assemble the foundation of a democracy, a killing epidemic has taken hold of this troubled nation. Ministry of Health statistics show that record numbers of Iraqi civilians are coming to violent ends, particularly here in the capital. Political assassinations and bombings have garnered worldwide attention. But Iraqi officials say that violence unrelated to the insurgency is growing and that Iraqis are more likely to die at the hands of kidnappers, carjackers and angry neighbors than they are from car bombs.

WASHINGTON -The 21,000 paratroopers, infantrymen and Marines being rushed to Afghanistan this spring will fight with a markedly narrowed mission: to kill al-Qaida and hard-core Taliban insurgents and to train Afghan soldiers and police. The new strategy, outlined by President Barack Obama at the White House on Friday, breaks from the ambitious goals of championing freedom and establishing a moderate, democratic state with a thriving economy pursued by the Bush administration. In a sober speech at the White House, Obama declared that for Americans, the Afghanistan-Pakistan region "has become the most dangerous place in the world," and he acknowledged that the struggle to contain an expanding, violent insurgency has reached a "perilous" point.

WASHINGTON - U.S. and allied combat troops will withhold efforts to destroy Afghanistan's narcotics industry, which finances the Taliban insurgency, unless Afghan government forces take the lead, a senior military officer said yesterday. But with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai widely believed to be riven with corruption and its army and police units unable to conduct complex operations, the drug industry has flourished virtually untouched, military officers said. Senior civilian and military officials have acknowledged that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, launched by President George W. Bush weeks after the Sept.