File under Locos We Love: My friend Nir Rosen has made a hair-raising habit of getting himself “behind the lines” to report the real stories of the various insurgencies confronting the U.S. and its allies in recent years. His ability to speak Arabic and to ‘pass’, together with his perspective on what drives the various insurgencies, and of their complexity seldom grasped by most of the Western media, makes him an indispensable inerlocutor. I first noticed his unique ability to see the story from both sides in the first dispatch of his I edited while he was freelancing for TIME: A piece about a squad of Marines wandering into a Sadrist prayer service in Baghdad days after it fell. The American soldiers had no idea of what was going on; Nir did. And long before anyone else had even noticed the man, Nir drew our attention to Moqtada al-Sadr and made it clear that Sadr was the player to watch.
Later, for Asia Times, he took his readers on a rare tour of the inner workings of the Sunni insurgency. Later, he did the same on Hizballah, showing the deep roots of the movement in Lebanese society, it’s complexity — portrayed in the West as strict Islamists, he made the case that they were a broad-based nationalist movement, and provided the photograhps to prove it, of teenage girls in makeup, wearing tight-fitting Hizallah T-shirts and jeans at one of their rallies.
He has also recently exposed the myth of the surge in the course of revisiting some of the Sunni insurgents now on the U.S. payroll. .
Now, in a new act of lunatic audacity, he’s gone on embed with the Taliban, producing a stunning piece on the dynamics of Afghanistan’s insurgency — a report from the frontline worthy of the great Vietnam war correspondents, which like those, makes abundantly clear why the U.S. doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this war. (At the same time, the complexity is there, as we find him watching music videos with a Taliban commander, and reporting on the often violent splits that are plaguing the movement even as it assumes control of ever greater portions of Afghanistan.)
His Taliban interlocutors are free to move around Afghanistan unhindered. He actually rendezvous with two Taliban officers in Kabul, from where they take him to the south. “Through a respected dignitary, I was connected with Mullah Ibrahim, who commands 500 men in the Dih Yak district of Ghazni,” he writes. “We met at my friend’s office in Kabul on a hot, sunny afternoon. Midlevel Taliban leaders like Ibrahim move freely about the capital, like any other Afghan: U.S. forces lack the intelligence and manpower to identify enemy commanders, let alone apprehend them.”
Here’s an extract:
This highway — the only one in all Afghanistan — was touted as a showpiece by the Bush administration after it was rebuilt. It provides the only viable route between the two main American bases, Bagram to the north and Kandahar to the south. Now coalition forces travel along it at their own risk. In June, the Taliban attacked a supply convoy of 54 trucks passing through Salar, destroying 51 of them and seizing three escort vehicles. In early September, not far from here, another convoy was attacked and 29 trucks were destroyed. On August 13th, a few days before I pass through Salar, the Taliban staged an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the U.S.-backed governor of Ghazni, wounding two of his guards.
As we wait at the gas station, Shafiq and Ibrahim display none of the noisy indignation that Americans would exhibit over a comparable traffic jam. To them, a military battle is a routine inconvenience, part of life on the road. Taking advantage of the break, they buy a syrupy, Taiwanese version of Red Bull called Energy at a small shop next door. At one point, two green armored personnel carriers from NATO zip by, racing toward Kabul. Shafiq and Ibrahim laugh: It looks like the coalition forces are fleeing the battle.
“Bulgarians,” Shafiq says, shaking his head in amusement.
After an hour, the fighting ends, and we get back in the car. A few minutes later, we pass the broken remains of a British supply convoy. Dozens of trucks — some smoldering, others still ablaze — line the side of the road, which is strewn with huge chunks of blasted asphalt. The trucks carried drinks for the Americans, Ibrahim tells me as we drive past. Hundreds of plastic water bottles with white labels spill out of the trucks, littering the highway.
Read the whole thing; it’s well worth it. As it always is when Nir’s out on assignment.
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If Mr Rosen gets captured by some of his jihaid friends, should his host country rescue him? Should they exchange known terrorists for him in the hope that they will play nicely when they return home? Or should they say that that he is a mature adult who was taking great risks and not bail him out? Something to think about
…f–k him…they will one day cut off his head,,,,no loss there
And if they don’t, you will, right Johnny? Along with “powdering the Palestinians” as you put it elsewhere on the site…
Nir Rosen qaulity journalist.
Nice reply to johnny too.
Keep it up tony
The style of writing is quite familiar to me. Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?
Thanx for the post. It was rather interesting to read it. I like everything that is connected to that topic. I hope to read more soon. By the way look at that London young escorts
Actually, the Taliban won’t win. All they have left is a propaganda offensive, which isn’t going all that well. Your buddy, like all embeds, sees what he is supposed to see.
As far as Johnny goes, The GCIV gives any carded journalist protected status. Not sure if the Taliban qualifies as a Sovereign Nation, which they would have to do to qualify to issue credentials. I doubt that the US Army will quibble after they pick him up.
Then there is the little problem of a Predator reading those credentials from 25,000 feet before that Hellfire is shot off. The good thing about robot warriors is they don’t hesitate or flinch. No record of a Harpoon ever altering it’s flight path because of enemy fire.
That is going to be a problem as more of the warfighting duties are taken over by robots.
Politicians like the combat droids because they don’t vote and don’t have deranged mothers that hang out in front of the office. So we will see more of them.
The military is playing the game smart and spreading the jobs around. Soon every Congress critter will have his own warbot factory with the good jobs they generate.
BTW, ask your bud how he likes riding around with one eye over his shoulder looking for UAV’s with missiles hunting him? When the Taliban is hunting US officials in America with UAV’s, then we can talk about losing in Afghanistan..
Like Vietnam, it was the left that almost lost the campaign in Iraq. Part of the propaganda offensive against the Iraq campaign was saying that the battle we needed to fight was in Afghanistan. Well, now it is. So those that wanted to fight there will blow the whole plot if they start going anti-war on the ‘stan. It will prove that all they want is surrender. Try telling every soccer mom in America that she will have to wear burlap sacks when she goes out and when she does she can’t drive and has to be escorted by a male relative.
See how long the anti-war movement lasts under those circumstances. 2 hours?
I’ll believe what the American Press has to say when they can provide me with a legitimate reason why Building 7 at the WTC… which was not hit by a plane and was not hit by falling debris… fell perfectly to the ground. The first and only steel structure building to EVER collapse only from fire. The US Media tells the people exactly what they are told to tell the people.
Politicians like the combat droids because they don’t vote and don’t have deranged mothers that hang out in front of the office. So we will see more of them.
The military is playing the game smart and spreading the jobs around. Soon every Congress critter will have his own warbot factory with the good jobs they generate.
I hope Afghanistan will become peacful country
Building 7 at the WTC… which was not hit by a plane and was not hit by falling debris… fell perfectly to the ground. The first and only steel structure building to EVER collapse only from fire. The US Media tells the people exactly what they are told to tell the people.
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