Strange how Afghan President Humid Karzai had not much good to say about the U.S. activities in Afghanistan a few weeks ago but when he came to Washington, D.C., had nothing but praise for all.

Partly because of the nasty things Karzai has said and his corrupt regime over the last year, public support for the war effort has dropped as low as 23 percent.

Maybe Karzai thought that through pressure on the issue of legal immunity, he could gain concessions, but there is no sign that any concessions will be given to Afghan.

Clearly, Obama has abandoned one piece after another of the strategy he once envisioned so that today we have no strategy for an end game – at least nothing public. The White House has long since stopped speaking of political or economic reform as a crucial piece of their exit strategy.

Obama said Afghan forces would take the lead in securing the country this spring, several months ahead of what had been agreed at a NATO summit last year. There is now talk of a zero option for troops to remain behind after 2014.

The stated Counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy has been found wanting. The massive program of development assistance and government reform which accompanied the military surge has done little either to reduce the corruption and incompetence of the Afghan state or to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan public.

Exit with no strategy is a receipt for a resurgent radical Islamic regime.

In case anyone missed it, DEFCON Hill (TheHill.com), October 15, 2012, published a piece by Carlo Munoz: “NATO Outlines Afghan Postwar Plan,” who wrote that NATO agreed that troops will remain alongside their American counterparts in Afghanistan after the White House 2014 deadline.

Top defense ministers agreed to a new postwar mission in Afghanistan that will focus on training and advising the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) into 2015 and beyond, according to a NATO spokesman.

NATO officials plan to have the details of that postwar plan in place no later than 2013, International Security Assistance Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Günter Katz told reporters in Kabul.

The NATO plan, according to Katz, will not include combat operations by NATO forces but will be strictly focused on supporting ANSF units in country.

Alliance leaders agreed to fund the plan during NATO’s defense ministers’ conference in Brussels while the White House reached a tentative deal with Kabul in May on what the future U.S. presence would be in Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal. Accordingly, the postwar American force will consist largely of U.S. special operations troops backed up by Afghan commando units, known as Kandaks.

Almost 32,000 U.S. troops have already been pulled from Afghanistan with the remaining 68,000 Americans to withdraw over the next two years.

Reconstruction work, along with security operations, will be fully transitioned to the Afghan Security Forces (ANSF).

The best thing to come out of this is a message to the Taliban is that NATO is not going away soon.

An excellent analysis appeared on the Washingtonpost.com (Right Turn), May 1, 2012, by Jennifer Rubin: “President Obama’s Speech In Afghanistan.”

Rubin said: “There were two reasons for President Obama to deliver a speech on the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and sign an accord with the Afghan government for ongoing cooperation after U.S. troops leave. The first, obviously, is to grab some more of the spotlight. (Had he not ridiculously overplayed his hand by insinuating Mitt Romney would not have killed bin Laden, no one would have thought much of it.) But the second reason and the substance of the speech were more objectionable.

“Obama would have us believe with bin Laden dead we can now just ‘end’ the war. He used ‘end’ a lot in the speech. He didn’t say ‘win’ or ‘victory.’ And in fact he redefined his own mission, now saying we were only concerned about defeating al-Qaeda. His determination to root out the Taliban, which he reiterated at the onset of his Afghan surge? Airbrushed out of history.”

It is important to remember that in 2009 Obama told the cadets at West Point: “We must deny al-Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future… [W]e will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban’s momentum and increase Afghanistan’s capacity over the next 18 months.”

It would seem that we have a major conundrum here.

Obama said:  “To build a country in America’s image, or to eradicate every vestige of the Taliban” would “require many more years, many more dollars, and most importantly, many more American lives.”

There is no mention of the other terrorist networks at work in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His focus was on bringing troops home, getting out, and quiting.

Maybe Afghanistan can survive a Taliban and Al Qaeda assault. But, I agree with Rubin that it is more likely that Afghanistan will head the way of Libya, Mali, Somalia, Yemen and others — a failed state where terrorists have free reign. It seems that Obama doesn’t understand or doesn’t care.

The biggest thorn in the sides of the U.S., the coalition and the Afghan government is what is called the Haqqani Network. This is the most vicious opponent of the coalition in Afghanistan in what has been called a revenge obsessed family.

The Haqqani Network is a large radical insurgent group currently led by a father and son team, Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani, who operate out of the Pakistan area of North Waziristan, near the eastern side of Afghanistan. Their focus in Afghan is the provinces of Khost, Pakia and Paktka.

The anti-Americanism machinations are the result of two major U.S. blunders.

First, while the Haqqani family was one of the biggest recipients of U.S. aid when the mujahedeen fought the Russian, they were snubbed by the Americans when the U.S. was trying to form a government in Kabul.

Second, Mohammed Haqqani, a son of Jalaluddin, was killed in a drone strike. Also, it was reported that one drone strike killed a number of women and children of the Haqqani family.

The Haqqanis are ethnic Pashtuns of the Zadran tribe in Pakia province.

The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency uses the Haqqanis as a tool to keep ISI influence in Afghanistan. Additionally, they are able to persuade many Pakistani Taliban to fight in Afghanistan and not Pakistan. The Pakistan ISI has even warned the Haqqanis of pending U.S. drone strikes.

MajGen. Dan Allyn, USA, the U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, has said that special-operations forces have had some success in targeting Haqqani commanders, but the network was far from defeated:

“Haqqani is clearly the most lethal threat to the government of Afghanistan and the coalition,” MajGen Allyn said. “Because of Haqqani’s bases in Miranshah, they clearly have a stronger regenerative capability than any Afghanistan Taliban. There’s no question that they’re a difficult, capable enemy.”

The Haqqani will see that there will be no “Dayton-style peace agreement” like the one that ended the war in Bosnia in 1995.

Admiral Michael Mullen, CJCS, in a rare moment away from the Administration’s party line, has warned against a precipitate drawdown of the 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan, ahead of a reduction in force size next month.

General David Petraeus, USA, the commander for NATO and US troops in Afghanistan, has not yet submitted his proposed plans for the drawdown and emphasized the challenges still facing the allies.

Not surprisingly, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death a May Gallup poll showed 51 per cent of respondents said things were going well for the US in Afghanistan. Polls before that show an American majrity in opposition to our involvement in Afghanistan.

Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said that NATO forces in July will begin to transfer “security duties” to Afghan forces in seven urban areas of Afghanistan, a key measurement in a nearly decade long war. But the handoff in these first areas will be slow and is expected to take 12 to 18 months, according to all military reports.

The only positive report out of Afghanistan is that numbers of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are seeking peace deals with the Afghan government since U.S. Navy SEALs killed bin Laden last month.

The only clear way to pass civil and military control to the Afghans is to make sure we have the right number of trainers and advisors to remain in Afghan to help in building the Afghan security forces.

Most journalists do not understand how the Taliban come mainly from the Pushtu.

The Pushtu populations is primarily in central and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, which includes Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan. The Pashtuns are typically characterized by their usage of the Pashto language and practice of Pashtunwali, a traditional set of Islamic ethics guiding individual and communal conduct.

According to Wikipedia, the Pashtuns are the world’s largest (patriarchal) lineage ethnic group. According to Ethnologue, the total population of the group is estimated to be around 50 million but an accurate count remains elusive due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979. Estimates of the number of Pushtu tribes and clans range to about 350.

The Taliban have been mostly Pashtun since the fight against Soviet occupation and now fight the U.S. occupation.

The frayed alliance between Pakistan and the U.S. hurts U.S. plans to draw down troops in Afghanistan and leave behind a stable country. WDC needs better cooperation from Pakistan in shutting down Taliban havens on both sides of the border, which fuel the conflict. Without Pakistan’s cooperation, a U.S. troop withdrawal could lead Afghanistan into a renewed civil war.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani military and ISI see the situation very differently. Mostly they attribute their militant problem to U.S. errors in Afghanistan. They are unwilling to shut down havens for the Afghan or Pakistan Taliban (whom they trained in the 1990s to fight the Soviets) because they want a friendly, and anti-Indian, regime to take over in Kabul after the U.S. exit. They believe the Taliban may provide their best option.

Until the Pashtuns are ready to accept a divided allegiance to Afghans and Pakistan– there will be no peace in Afghanistan.

“It Takes a Network:The new frontline of modern warfare,” bY STANLEY A. MCCHRYSTAL |MARCH/APRIL 2011, <blockedhttp://www.foreignpolicy.com/issues/185/contents/.

Accprding to McChrystal: “Over time, it became increasingly clear — often from intercepted communications or the accounts of insurgents we had captured — that our enemy was a constellation of fighters organized not by rank but on the basis of relationships and acquaintances, reputation and fame. Who became radicalized in the prisons of Egypt? Who trained together in the pre-9/11 camps in Afghanistan? Who is married to whose sister? Who is making a name for himself, and in doing so burnishing the al Qaeda brand?

“insurgent leaders. Connected to, and often directly dispatched by, the Taliban’s leadership in Pakistan, they moved through the same areas of Afghanistan. They made shows of public support for Taliban shadow governors, motivated tattered ranks, recruited new troops, distributed funds, reviewed tactics, and updated strategy. And when the sky above became too thick with our drones, their leaders used cell phones and the Internet to issue orders and rally their fighters. They aimed to keep dispersed insurgent cells motivated, strategically wired, and continually informed, all without a rigid — or targetable — chain of command.

“became clear to me and to many others that to defeat a networked enemy we had to become a network ourselves. We had to figure out a way to retain our traditional capabilities of professionalism, technology, and, when needed, overwhelming force, while achieving levels of knowledge, speed, precision, and unity of effort that only a network could provide. We needed to orchestrate a nuanced, population-centric campaign that comprised the ability to almost instantaneously swing a devastating hammer blow against an infiltrating insurgent force or wield a deft scalpel to capture or kill an enemy leader.”

Ten years later and we are still debating tactics, techniques and procedures in Afghanistan.

SecDef Robert Gates spoke at the NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels, 11 March, asking for more NATO support at what he called “a critical juncture for our mission in Afghanistan.”

Gates emphasized three items: International Security Assistance Force accomplishments over the past year, his concern progress could be threaten by uncoordinated national troop draw down, and how to plan for a deliberate transition to Afghanistan lead.

It was agreed that the Taliban control far lees territory and have lost much of their ability to operate.

Additionally, there is some semblance of normalcy emergent

Gates also said: “There is too much talk about leaving and not enough talk about getting the job done right.”

Geez, wonder who started that?

More than six “suicide attacks” in recent weeks in Afghanistan – Kabul, Khost, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Kunduz and Faryab – have taken the lives of around 200 ordinary Afghans working for a living on a daily basis.

But should they be called suicides or homicides?

“There is a pattern. As the counter-insurgency takes momentum, and the Taliban get weaker, we get more suicide attacks, particularly on civilian targets …and it’s happening as the General in a hurry (hinting towards Gen. Petraeus) is being applauded for shortening the long war — so these attacks on Afghan civilians have an international impact as well,” said one of the Kabul-based news publishers.

It seems that whenever the Afghan government seems to be making progress in terms of its security, there are more attacks even in the relatively calm regions that can destabilize that area.

The terror created by the TV video of the attacks on the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad is on the faces of all local Afghans. Some thought that such a merciless momentum of killing civilians cannot go on. But it has.

Suicide or homicide – no matter it is still terrorism which the current Administration cannot seem to understand. The definition of terrorism – that is.