Stratfor and Mary Baker / Phoebe Cates

The latest Strafor article deals with the end game in Afghanistan as the U.S. looks to wind down its military presence in the country. 

This is a complex situation, with many players: the Americans, the Taliban, Hamid Karzai's Afghani government and Pakistan all negotiating with each other either openly or through back channels for a settlement they can all live with.

Of course, none of the parties in the negotiations, for good reason, can exactly trust each other. George Friedman discusses the positions of each of the major players, the realities facing them and what they hope to achieve in the end. 

Since the article was about conniving and deception my mind naturally turned to Mary Baker and the film loosely based on her antics, Princess Caraboo. Phoebe Cates played Princess Caraboo/Mary Baker in the film, and so she, along with Mary baker, get the rare dual honor of being Hot Strafor Babes for this article.

Mary Baker was a 19th Century English servant girl who, through the aid of spouting gibberish and acting haughty, convinced the residents of a small English town that she was Caraboo, an oriental princess who had been kidnapped from her home in the Indian ocean by pirates and ended up in England when she jumped off their ship and swam to shore.

Her ruse lasted for a couple of months, but eventually she was unmasked when somebody recognized her from an engraving (pictured to the right) of her printed in a local newspaper.

Needless to say the bumpkins who fell for her act were a bit miffed when she was exposed, but they arranged passage for her to Philadelphia where she kept up her oriental princess schtick for a while. Eventually she returned to England, and may have traveled through Spain and France. However her act was worn out, and when last heard from she was selling leeches. 

Phoebe Cates gained fame due to the pool scene in Fast Times in Ridgemont High. She starred in a number of other films, most of them not very good -- in fact, I'm still getting periodic electroshock treatments in a so far unsuccessful attempt to scrub any memory of Drop Dead Fred from my cortex -- but Princess Caraboo is actually fairly entertaining. If you haven't seen it, unlike most of her movies, it is worth watching.


Afghanistan: Moving Toward a Distant Endgame
By George Friedman,  February 7, 2012

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested last week that the United States could wrap up combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2013, well before the longstanding 2014 deadline when full control is to be ceded to Kabul. Troops would remain in Afghanistan until 2014, as agreed upon at the 2010 Lisbon Summit, and would be engaged in two roles until at least 2014 and perhaps even later. One role would be continuing the training of Afghan security forces. The other would involve special operations troops carrying out capture or kill operations against high-value targets.

Along with this announcement, the White House gave The New York Times some details on negotiations that have been under way with the Taliban. According to the Times, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the senior-most leader of the Afghan Taliban, last summer made overtures to the White House offering negotiations. An intermediary claiming to speak for Mullah Omar delivered the proposal, an unsigned document purportedly from Mullah Omar that could not be established as authentic. The letter demanded the release of some Taliban prisoners before any talks. In spite of the ambiguities, which included a recent public denial by the Taliban that the offer came from Mullah Omar, U.S. officials, obviously acting on other intelligence, regarded the proposal as both authentic and representative of the views of the Taliban leadership and, in all likelihood, those of Mullah Omar, too.

The idea of negotiating with the Taliban is not new. Talks, as distinct from negotiations, in which specific terms are hammered out, have gone on for some time now. Several previous attempts have ended in failure, including one instance when the supposed representative proved to be a fraud. However, according to the Times report, the negotiations took on a degree of specificity last summer. They began in November 2010, initiated by a man named Tayyab Agha, who claimed to speak for Mullah Omar. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama regards authenticating the present offer as unimportant and the intermediary as having authority; the question on the table is the release of Taliban captives as a token of American seriousness.

The Taliban see themselves as already having made a major concession. Their original demand was the complete withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for negotiations. The talks have continued in spite of the U.S. refusal to comply. The Taliban shifted their position to a very specific timetable for withdrawal, something Panetta may have been hinting at last week, though not on a timetable to the Taliban's liking. Two more years of combat operations -- not to mention an unspecified time in which U.S. special operations forces will continue working in Afghanistan -- is a long time. In addition, the United States has not delivered on the release of the Taliban, an issue that has not emerged as a campaign issue in the U.S. presidential election.

Still, U.S. operations have become less aggressive. This is in part due to the season: It is winter in Afghanistan, a time of year when large-scale operations are not practical in many areas. At the same time, we are not seeing the level of operations we have seen in previous winters after Obama increased the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. This in part reflects a realization of the limits of U.S. military power in Afghanistan. Regardless of the motive, the Taliban interpret it as a signal -- and it is understood in Washington as a signal, too.

The Pakistani-Taliban Channel

To get negotiations going, the United States had to reach two conclusions. The first was that negotiations could not happen without Pakistani involvement. U.S. accusations that current and former military figures in Pakistan maintained close ties with the Taliban undoubtedly were true. Conversely, this meant Pakistan represented a clear channel the United States could use to reach the Taliban. That channel permitted the Obama administration to conclude that it had no hope of meaningfully dividing the Taliban.

Certainly, the Taliban are an operationally diffuse group. Even so, Mullah Omar is at their center, with the political operatives surrounding him representing the political office of the Taliban. The line of communications with the Taliban runs through Pakistan and terminates with Mullah Omar. This means that U.S. hopes of splitting the Taliban politically and conducting factional negotiations are not realistic. Particularly after a series of attacks and suicide bombings in Kabul last fall, it also became apparent that the United States would not be able to manage negotiations at arm's length using Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his advisers as the primary channel.

The Pakistanis and the Taliban also had to face certain realities. The Taliban had claimed that the United States and its allies in Afghanistan had lost. This underpinned their demand for an immediate U.S. withdrawal; their offer to permit this without harassment was made under the assumption that the United States had a defeated military force at risk.
 
Read the rest of Afghanistan: Moving Toward a Distant Endgame at Stratfor.
 

Stratfor and Véra Clouzot

In this article Friedman examines the Afghanistan logistics situation in the aftermath of the incident at the Pakistani outpost. Pakistan closed the ground routes into Afghanistan and Russia is threatening to shut down the alternate route through their territory. 

Pakistan believes that the U.S. is stalemated in Afghanistan and, even though the U.S. could prosecute the war at current levels for some time, that there is no path open for an eventual victory.

For that reason Pakistan is using its response to the border fire fight as an excuse to distance itself from the U.S. and to ingratiate itself with the Taliban, who would almost certainly gain influence in any future post-NATO Afghani government.

Meanwhile Russia is using the fact that, in the advent of a prolonged closing of the supply route Pakistan, the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), which passes through Russian terrotory could be interrupted by them.

The Russian threats are part of the chessgame going on in Central Europe, where the U.S. is deploying missle batteries, interceptors and troops to guard their assets. Russia sees these moves as the return to the U.S. policy of containment with the belt tightened even closer to the Russian homeland than it was during the Cold War.

As for the article's Hot Stratfor Babe, since the article was about trucking in supplies, the movie The Wages of Fear which involved truckers moving a dangerous cargo of nitroglycerine naturally sprang to mind. For that reason I selected Véra Clouzot, the movie's female lead, for the article's  Hot Strafor Babe honor.

It you've ner seen The Wages of Fear, it is a good movie. It revolves around a group of seedy expats who are all broke and stranded in a remote South American village. Ms Clouzot plays a vixen who works in the local cantina. Eventually the chance to make enough money to escape the town appears in the form of the local industry -- a U.S. oil firm which they would ordinarily be to useless to get hired by -- has a well fire and needs somebody to drive 2 truckloads of nitroglycerine to the well site along some very dangerous roads.

Véra Clouzot  had a very brief film career, starring in only three films, all directed by her husband Henri-Georges Clouzot. She also wrote one screenplay for him. however, brief as her career was, it was well received, with the film Diabolique being considered a classic. 

As a bonus, after the article I've included a clip from The Wages of Fear where Véra is playing a tart who is washing the floor of the cantina she works in as she flirts with one of the layabout expats as well as a second longer clip in the cantina that gives a good feel for the film.


Pakistan, Russia and the Threat to the Afghan War
By George Friedman, November 30,2011

Days after the Pakistanis closed their borders to the passage of fuel and supplies for the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, for very different reasons the Russians threatened to close the alternative Russia-controlled Northern Distribution Network (NDN). The dual threats are significant even if they don’t materialize. If both routes are cut, supplying Western forces operating in Afghanistan becomes impossible. Simply raising the possibility of cutting supply lines forces NATO and the United States to recalculate their position in Afghanistan.

The possibility of insufficient lines of supply puts NATO’s current course in Afghanistan in even more jeopardy. It also could make Western troops more vulnerable by possibly requiring significant alterations to operations in a supply-constrained scenario. While the supply lines in Pakistan most likely will reopen eventually and the NDN likely will remain open, the gap between likely and certain is vast.

The Pakistani Outpost Attack

The Pakistani decision to close the border crossings at Torkham near the Khyber Pass and Chaman followed a U.S. attack on a Pakistani position inside Pakistan’s tribal areas near the Afghan border that killed some two-dozen Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistanis have been increasingly opposed to U.S. operations inside Pakistani territory. This most recent incident took an unprecedented toll, and triggered an extreme response. The precise circumstances of the attack are unclear, with details few, contradictory and disputed. The Pakistanis have insisted it was an unprovoked attack and a violation of their sovereign territory. In response, Islamabad closed the border to NATO; ordered the United States out of Shamsi air base in Balochistan, used by the CIA; and is reviewing military and intelligence cooperation with the United States and NATO.

The proximate reason for the reaction is obvious; the ultimate reason for the suspension also is relatively simple. The Pakistani government believes NATO, and the United States in particular, will fail to bring the war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion. It follows that the United States and other NATO countries at some point will withdraw.

Some in Afghanistan have claimed that the United States has been defeated, but that is not the case. The United States may have failed to win the war, but it has not been defeated in the sense of being compelled to leave by superior force. It could remain there indefinitely, particular as the American public is not overly hostile to the war and is not generating substantial pressure to end operations. Nevertheless, if the war cannot be brought to some sort of conclusion, at some point Washington’s calculations or public pressure, or both, will shift and the United States and its allies will leave Afghanistan.

Given that eventual outcome, Pakistan must prepare to deal with the consequences. It has no qualms about the Taliban running Afghanistan and it certainly does not intend to continue to prosecute the United States’ war against the Taliban once its forces depart. To do so would intensify Taliban attacks on the Pakistani state, and could trigger an even more intense civil war in Pakistan. The Pakistanis have no interest in such an outcome even were the United States to remain in Afghanistan forever. Instead, given that a U.S. victory is implausible and its withdrawal inevitable and that Pakistan’s western border is with Afghanistan, Islamabad will have to live with — and possibly manage — the consequences of the re-emergence of a Taliban-dominated government.

Under these circumstances, it makes little sense for Pakistan to collaborate excessively with the United States, as this increases Pakistan’s domestic dangers and imperils its relationship with the Taliban. Pakistan was prepared to cooperate with the United States and NATO while the United States was in an aggressive and unpredictable phase. The Pakistanis could not risk more aggressive U.S. attacks on Pakistani territory at that point, and feared a U.S.-Indian entente. But the United States, while not leaving Afghanistan, has lost its appetite for a wider war and lacks the resources for one. It is therefore in Pakistan’s interest to reduce its collaboration with the United States in preparation for what it sees as the inevitable outcome. This will strengthen Pakistan’s relations with the Afghan Taliban and minimize the threat of internal Pakistani conflict.

Despite apologies by U.S. and NATO commanders, the Nov. 26 incident provided the Pakistanis the opportunity — and in their mind the necessity — of an exceptional response. The suspension of the supply line without any commitment to reopening it and the closure of the U.S. air base from which unmanned aerial vehicle operations were carried out (though Pakistani airspace reportedly remains open to operations) was useful to Pakistan. It allowed Islamabad to reposition itself as hostile to the United States because of American actions. It also allowed Islamabad to appear less pro-American, a powerful domestic political issue.

Pakistan has closed supply lines as a punitive measure before. Torkham was closed for 10 straight days in October 2010 in response to a U.S. airstrike that killed several Pakistani soldiers, and trucks at the southern Chaman crossing were “administratively delayed,” according to the Pakistanis. This time, however, Pakistan is signaling that matters are more serious. Uncertainty over these supply lines is what drove the United States to expend considerable political capital to arrange the alternative NDN.

(click here to enlarge image)

The NDN Alternative and BMD

This alternative depends on Russia. It transits Russian territory and airspace and much of the former Soviet sphere, stretching as far as the Baltic Sea — at great additional expense compared to the Pakistani supply route. This alternative is viable, as it would allow sufficient supplies to flow to support NATO operations. Indeed, over recent months it has become the primary line of supply, and reliance upon it is set to expand. At present, 48 percent of NATO supplies still go through Pakistan; 52 percent of NATO supplies come through NDN (non-lethal); 60 percent of all fuel comes through the NDN; and by the end of the year, the objective is for 75 percent of all non-lethal supplies to transit the NDN.

Separating the United States yields a different breakdown: Only 30 percent of U.S. supplies traverse Pakistan; 30 percent of U.S. supplies come in by air (some of it linked to the Karakoram-Torkham route, probably including the bulk of lethal weapons); and 40 percent of U.S. supplies come in from the NDN land route. [continued after the jump]

Stratfor and Katherine Heigl

This Stratfor article deals with the security and, in particular, the logistic implications of Obama's announced draw down in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is about as remote a country from the U.S. that one could find. That's always caused me to be a little skittish at the thought of putting too many American troops there. Supplying them means we have to rely on Pakistan, the Stans, Turkey and Russia, which is hardly a comforting thought. 

The nightmare scenario, even though it isn't that likely, has always been the fear of American troops having to stage a repeat of Xenophon's Anabisis to get out of there if things went pear-shaped.

Thinking of the high cost of supplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan brought to mind high maintenance women as the Hot Stratfor Babe for the article. Needless to say, considering the fact I generally draw from actresses or models, I was facing an embarrassment of riches to choose from.

In the end, after much research and soul searching, I settled on Katherine Heigl. I never saw her show Grey's Anatomy, but I remember that a flap surrounded her time on the show because of her self-promotion, high salary demands and out of control diva antics. So for that she gets the honor of being this article's high maintenance Hot Stratfor Babe. 


OBAMA'S AFGHANISTAN PLAN AND THE REALITIES OF WITHDRAWAL
By Nathan Hughes, June 23, 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama announced June 22 that the long process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan would begin on schedule in July. Though the  initial phase of the drawdown appears limited, minimizing the tactical and operational impact on the ground in the immediate future, the United States and its allies are now beginning the inevitable process of removing their forces from Afghanistan. This will entail the risk of greater Taliban battlefield successes.

The Logistical Challenge

Afghanistan, a landlocked country in the heart of Central Asia, is one of the most isolated places on Earth. This isolation has posed huge logistical challenges for the United States. Hundreds of shipping containers and fuel trucks must enter the country every day from Pakistan and from the north to sustain the nearly 150,000 U.S. and allied forces stationed in Afghanistan, about half the total number of Afghan security forces. Supplying a single gallon of gasoline in Afghanistan reportedly costs the U.S. military an average of $400, while sustaining a single U.S. soldier runs around $1 million a year (by contrast, sustaining an Afghan soldier costs about $12,000 a year).

These forces appear considerably lighter than those in Iraq because Afghanistan's rough terrain often demands dismounted foot patrols. Heavy main battle tanks and self-propelled howitzers are thus few and far between, though not entirely absent. Afghanistan even required a new, lighter and more agile version of the hulking mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle known as the M-ATV (for "all-terrain vehicle").

Based solely on the activity on the ground in Afghanistan today, one would think the United States and its allies were preparing for a permanent presence, not the imminent beginning of a long-scheduled drawdown (a perception the United States and its allies have in some cases used to their advantage to reach political arrangements with locals). An 11,500-foot all-weather concrete and asphalt runway and an air traffic control tower were completed this February at Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion in Helmand province. Another more than 9,000-foot runway was finished at Shindand Air Field in Herat province last December. [continues after jump]

New feature - Stratfor articles

I subscribe to Stratfor, a website that provides analysis of global affairs. As part of the subscription they email me frequent items. After a couple of years of getting them  I've recently noticed, observant devil that I am, that some of them come with a copyright that allows me to reproduce them on my website.

You may be interested in reading them, so as an experiment I'm going to start posting them. If you like the articles I'll continue to post them. Leave you comments for or against. Here is the first... 

MILITANCY AND THE U.S. DRAWDOWN IN AFGHANISTAN

By Scott Stewart

The drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq has served to shift attention toward Afghanistan, where the United States has been increasing its troop strength in hopes of forming conditions conducive to a political settlement. This is similar to the way it used the 2007 surge in Iraq to help reach a negotiated settlement with the Sunni insurgents that eventually set the stage for withdrawal there. As we've discussed elsewhere, the Taliban at this point do not feel the pressure required for them to capitulate or negotiate and therefore continue to follow their strategy of surviving and waiting for the coalition forces to depart so that they can again make a move to assume control over Afghanistan.

Indeed, with the United States having set a deadline of July 2011 to begin the drawdown of combat forces in Afghanistan -- and with many of its NATO allies withdrawing sooner -- the Taliban can sense that the end is near. As they wait expectantly for the departure of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan, a look at the history of militancy in Afghanistan provides a bit of a preview of what could follow the U.S. withdrawal.

Occasional Links

Why the recession is lasting so long.

Communicating through touch.

Revolution in China?

Fairness is hard-wired into the brain.

What makes unemployment go down.

Noah's Ark was round.

Evolution is driven through constant warfare, not adaptation to the environment.

The rise of Asia.

Data über alles.

"The British are our friends."

Afghan War Rugs

After the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and to the present day, Afghan weavers have incorporated imagery of modern weapons into their Oriental rugs.

To the left are details from some of the rugs, from top left to bottom right, crouching infantry, a bomber, a retreating tank and a missile.

A wealth of information about rugs of this style, thir history, a blog, numerous images, as well as war rugs for sale, can be viewed at the site: warrug.com (which is where I got the pictured details from).

Both Soviet and present day Coalition forces are represented. There are also "War on Terrorism" rugs, which, according to Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman a psyops specialist, appear to draw heavily from propaganda leaflets distributed to the Afghans. The side by side comparisons of the leaflets to the rugs are convincing (sorry, I had to link inside a frame to get to that page so the site-wide navigation is broke on that link).

It is a fascinating and informative site. I'm sure many of the rugs are just cranked out for the troops in country, and Lord only knows the politics of whoever is weaving them, but the rugs do have a beauty about them.

Sunday Links

The global electoral college.

Can Ford be saved?

Giving Caesar control over the things that are Christ's.

3M's new x-ray business.

Good news in Kashmir.

Are the orcas starving?

The facts of press bias.

A turnaround in housing?

Computing in the cloud.

The real Italian job.

Smarter smart cars.

Tens of thousands march for independence.

You've seen Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Knol,.... Introducing Google Fighter Jet.

Rebooting the immune system to cure multiple sclerosis.

Afghanistan on the edge of disaster.

Wednesday Links

Drugs of the Stone Age.

Born in Columbia, made in the USA.

Putin's weak-kneed western defenders.

With only a billion years left, is it time to move the Earth?

100 more banks to fail?

Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound.

Sometimes you just have to stand on principle.

Global warming goes poof.

Russia to world: "death solves all problems".

Your Mexican drug dollars at work.

Not enough ads for all the startups?

Aid workers vs. the Taleban.

Good times breed bad times.

UFOs over England?

World Champion Anand wins a second game as black, and one as white.

Robotic surgery on a beating heart.

Wednesday Links

Impossible fractals.

The world's fastest train.

Easy to gain, very hard to lose.

A Stasi for England.

3,000 year old beehives.

The British army triumphs in Afghanistan.

Introducing Many-Eyes.

Robots that follow.

The Energizer Bunny credit crisis.

Was this Henry VIII's problem?

Wednesday Links

Is the Taleban winning?

Your dog is smarter than a wolf.

45 beautiful motion-blur photos.

Totalitarian games.

The next President will disappoint you.

9 things you should not buy new.

The oldest dinosaurs.

Bob Marley in the Balkans.

"Requiring" renewable energy.

Algorithms and data structures.

Password-protected websites aren't.

Are elephants better at arithmetic?

Seneca barely misses a riot.

Big Brother in a box—already available in 60 countries.

120 generations in the Harz mountains.

Wednesday Links

How to save the Republicans.

All that data that Google has been collecting on you for years?—it now belongs to any government that needs it.

Is Pakistan's ISI flexing its muscles in Afghanistan?

"Not only is self-righteousness a standard part of his work, it’s what he’s selling."

The human rorschach test.

The new Hitler, or the new Lincoln?

Why the world's best technology company will win Yahoo.

Litvinenko was murdered by the Russian state.

30 offshore windfarms.

The McCain campaign in turmoil.

The future of mind-machine control.

Introducing Stealthnet.

Already piling up the spin.

A huge stockpile of uranium from Saddam's (non-existent) WMD nuclear program shipped to Canada.

Gas prices by county.

The other vice-presidential woman.

Friday Links

Are passenger trains doomed in America?

Every body's talking.

Using biofuels is putting people into poverty.

1,000 more German troops for Afghanistan.

It's a fractal world after all.

The wave of Democrats.

It's baaaaaaaaaack!

Facebook takes the lead.

April 16, 1178 BCE.

Brazil the money magnet.

Fat people will pay!

Sunday Links

Introducing Bored.

Tuning out news of American success.

Eight years of wrongness.

Their time has almost come.

More human feet washing onshore in British Columbia.

Let's kill two birds with one stoning.

Introducing Texter.

The Solstice Cyclists.

Paying off a debt with a daughter.

Pi as a crop circle.

The world's new cultural capital?

The growing danger of political segregation.

Friday Links

17 mistakes startups makes.

The first picture of a laser pulse. Wow!

Big Brother wins in Sweden.

Curing cancer with the immune system?

The Volt cometh.

Old video games resurrected.

Is REM sleep necessary for intelligence?

Iran on its heels?

Bad boys get more girls.

How wiretapping works.

Russian justice.

The ethics of stealing WiFi.

The Taleban cleared from Kandahar.

Where are the missing Tibetan protesters?

The first hydrogen cars are here.

Canada's thought police.

Wednesday Links

Close to winning in Afghanistan.

Spy vs. Spy—the Internet version.

A tale of two tattles.

The strangest looking mammals.

What dictionaries tell us about our brains.

Wir lieben Obama!

The 1-room schoolhouse for the 21st century.

Logarithms are us.

Why Al Qaida is failing.

Cutting the corporate tax because it's the right thing to do.

Blowing up the Danes.

The dangers of old dad.

Billboards that watch you.

Christian martyrs in China.

No jokes please, we're Russian.