As the battle for Marjah goes on, NATO is making plans for an even larger campaign in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and a center of the Taliban insurgency.

To help manage that growing effort, the Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. and its allies will create a new U.S.-led command in Southeast Afghanistan.

For more on the challenges that lie ahead, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and former State Department analyst on Afghanistan.

To shed light on the legacy of conflict in Afghanistan, our German partner Deutsche Welle reports on the lessons of Russia’s long war there through the experience of one former soldier.

At least 16 people were killed and several dozen wounded in a four-hour assault that involved two suicide attacks and a car bomb.

The targets were two hotels used by foreigners and at least six Indians were among the dead, along with an Italian diplomat and French filmmaker.

Hoda Abdel-Hamid of Al Jazeera English reports from Kabul during the deadly attacks.

Martin Savidge interviews Rajan Menon, professor of international relations at Lehigh University for more on the attack.

In Afghanistan, the offensive for the town of Marja in the Helmand Province seems to have been largely a success, with Afghan forces claiming to be in control of the town after a two-week battle.

James Rubin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the implications of both events. He says the Afghan government will face new challenges as it tries to govern in Marja, and that Dubai revelations are bad news for Israel.

The top Afghan commander said the military goals had almost been achieved after 13 days of fighting by fifteen thousand NATO and Afghan troops.

For more insight into the developments out of Marjah and the ongoing war against the Taliban, Martin Savidge speaks with Rajan Menon, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University. Menon discusses whether the Afghan government is prepared to govern the area and what to expect next.

James Bays of Worldfocus partner, Al Jazeera English, reports from Marjah.

For more coverage on Afghanistan visit the Worldfocus extended coverage page: War in Afghanistan.

He sought to control the damage in the aftermath of Sunday’s U.S. airstrike that killed at least 21 people in central Afghanistan.

American and Afghan forces are trying to defeat the Taliban in Helmand province and win over the people there.

For more about the fallout from Sunday’s airstrike, Martin Savidge speaks to Rick Nelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former member of the U.S. Special Operations command.

And James Bays of Al Jazeera English reports how Taliban are saying their support among the Afghan people is only increasing.

It turned out that the people were all civilians, including women and children. The Afghan government called it “unjustifiable,” and the top U.S. commander, General Stanley McChrystal, apologized.

Meanwhile, the offensive against the Taliban continues in the town of Marjah in Helmand province.

For more on the civilian toll in Afghanistan, Martin Savidge interviews Alex Thier, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace.

James Bays of Al Jazeera English has more about the war’s impact on civilians.

U.S. soldiers stay warm in Helmand. Photo: USArmy on Flickr

General David Petraeus, the commander who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said yesterday that the Marjah battle was the opening salvo in a broader campaign to turn back the Taliban, which could last 12 to 18 months.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he described the Taliban as both “formidable” and “a bit disjointed at this point.”

Can the U.S., its NATO allies and Afghan forces gain the upper hand on the Taliban over the next year?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

In our weekly roundtable, we also look at the big offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and what’s likely to be achieved.

Joining Daljit Dhaliwal are Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and Susan Chira, foreign editor of The New York Times.

NATO hopes to wipe out the Taliban presence in this part of Helmand province, clearing the way for the Afghan government to take control.

At the same time, NATO hopes to encourage lower-level Taliban fighters to give up fighting and negotiate with the Afghan government.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about about this first real test of President Obama’s new strategy for finishing the war in Afghanistan with Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and a former State Department analyst.

James Bays of Al Jazeera English reports on NATO’s campaign in Marjah, as coalition forces try to root out the Taliban and win over the local population.

Influential al-Qaeda-linked Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Worldfocus takes a look at the evolution of al-Qaeda into a fragmented network of jihadi terrorist elements, often united more by philosophy than by concrete linkages between AfPak and cells in Iraq, Yemen, North Africa and beyond.

The escalated drone war in northwest Pakistan has brought attention to the attenuated al-Qaeda core that moved from Afghanistan in late 2001.

But two events in late December — a failed Christmas Day bombing and a suicide attack on CIA operatives in Afghanistan — have led analysts to re-assess al-Qaeda’s perceived decline in popularity and power.

The somewhat resurgent organization is highly decentralized and relies more on a brand name and local franchises than on ideological, communications and operations control by the group’s top leaders.

An Asia Times commentary article from 2004 addresses the al-Qaeda brand name:

Legitimized by President George W Bush’s administration’s declaration of war, al-Qaeda has now become a global phantom, plagued by its own reputation and in need of solid ground. Indeed, the post-September 11 security environment finds al-Qaeda lacking not only a physical safe haven as it had in Afghanistan, but also the critical manpower and expertise that it had in the moments prior to September 11.

This, by any means, is not the end of al-Qaeda, however. The ultimate power in such groups is not necessarily the leadership, but always the cause that defines the legitimacy of the group and the leadership that guides it. Bin Laden’s existence, perhaps as it always has been, is largely political and symbolic - but will nevertheless remain a powerful source of his straining influence on various members of the global umma. Thus the “war on terror”, although controversial in many minds, has undermined both the conventional and unconventional abilities of al-Qaeda and its global entities…

In sum, the power of the al-Qaeda cause, once inherited and customarily altered from the Muslim Brotherhood, has remained close to the political spirit of many radical variations of Islam. The twist here is that the elimination of the “physical” al-Qaeda nexus and the resulting decentralization of its regional elements into like-minded, local leadership groups may ultimately prove more of stratagem advantage versus US policy than a vulnerability.

Then a 2005 BBC article examined the terrorist organization as a global, corporate franchise:

Most newspaper reports encourage us to visualize al-Qaeda as an army, with a high command; or perhaps as a multinational organization, with bin Laden as its chief executive officer and men like Ayman al-Zawahri as his senior management.

We are told that the Bali bombings, like those in London, Madrid and half a dozen other places since the attacks of 11 September 2001, “bear all the hallmarks of” al-Qaeda - formulaic language that has not varied since the days when the violence of the IRA and ETA was at its peak.

The implication is that its senior figures order these attacks, and that local operatives carry them out…

Just as you can buy the franchise for, say, a Holiday Inn or an Intercontinental Hotel, so you can adopt the principles of Osama bin Laden and set up your own deadly group, murdering those you identify as the enemies of the faith - and anyone else, of course, who happens to be passing at the time.

And an AP article from July 2009 compares al-Qaeda’s expansion to fast food franchising:

The al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is perhaps the best example of how al-Qaeda is morphing and broadening its reach through loose relationships with local offshoots. The shadowy network of Algerian cells recruits Islamist radicals throughout northern and western Africa, trains them and sends them to fight in the region or Iraq, according to Western and North African intelligence officials who asked to remain anonymous because of the nature of their jobs. In turn, AQIM gets al-Qaeda’s brand name and some corporate know-how.

“The relationship with the al-Qaeda mother company works like in a multinational,” says Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s former top counterterrorism judge and an expert on North African networks. “There’s a strong ideological link, but the local subsidiary operates on its own.”

Another Western intelligence official compares AQIM to a local fast food franchise, “only for terrorism.”

The cover of The Guardian Weekly from September 11, 2009. Photo: Wikipedia

The Guardian published a piece in September 2009 — on the 8th anniversary of the September 11 attacks — about the organization’s perceived decline:

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida is under heavy pressure in its strongholds in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas and is finding it difficult to attract recruits or carry out spectacular operations in Western countries, according to government and independent experts monitoring the organization…

Its activity is increasingly dispersed to “affiliates” or “franchises” in Yemen and North Africa, but the links of local or regional jihadi groups to the center are tenuous; they enjoy little popular support and successes have been limited.

Lethal strikes by CIA drones – including two this week alone – have combined with the monitoring and disruption of electronic communications, suspicion and low morale to take their toll on al-Qaeda’s Pakistani “core,” in the jargon of western intelligence agencies.

Interrogation documents seen by the Guardian show that European Muslim volunteers faced a chaotic reception, a low level of training, poor conditions and eventual disillusionment after arriving in Waziristan last year.

“Core” al-Qaida is now reduced to a senior leadership of six to eight men, including Bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to most informed estimates. Several other Egyptians, a Libyan and a Mauritanian occupy the other top positions. In all, there are perhaps 200 operatives who count.

Yet, after a failed Christmas Day bombing and a successful Khost attack on CIA operatives, The Economist ran a piece last month that refuted assumptions about al-Qaeda’s imminent demise:

ONLY a few months ago, intelligence experts were saying that al-Qaeda and its allies were in decline, both militarily and ideologically. But two bombs less than a week apart, one failed and the other successful, have put an end to such optimism.

The talk of al-Qaeda’s downfall did not come from thin air. In the view of many analysts, the network’s central leadership had been decimated through drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal belt; al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch was all but defeated; its brethren in Iraq were marginalized; and those in other regions could mount only local attacks. Al-Qaeda had failed to land a blow in the West since the London bombs of 2005. Funds were dwindling, and more Muslims were eschewing global terror.

Though still dangerous, “al-Qaeda is under more pressure, is facing more challenges and is a more vulnerable organisation than at any time since the attacks on 11 September 2001,” declared Mike Leiter, the director of America’s National Counterterrorism Center last September.

Such assessments are being hurriedly revised. Mr Leiter, Barack Obama’s favorite spook, is now among those having to explain why his newish organization, which is supposed to fuse all information on terrorist threats, failed to connect several partial warnings about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, who moved from London to Yemen last year, tried to set off explosives sewn into his underpants on board a Northwest Airlines flight, carrying 290 people from Amsterdam, as it prepared to land in Detroit on Christmas Day.

For more on al-Qaeda in Yemen, listen to Worldfocus Radio: Yemen’s Multiple Wars.

- Ben Piven

Hailed as a major victory in the war in Afghanistan, last week’s raid was revealed today by the New York Times.

The seizure has raised big questions about whether the Pakistani government knew of Baradar’s whereabouts all along.

Zeina Khodr of Al Jazeera English has more on the Afghan reaction to this major development.

Will the capture of the Afghan Taliban military chief make life any easier for U.S. troops there?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

Coalition forces are said to be engaged in numerous firefights throughout the city.

Meanwhile, the ongoing problem of civilian casualties again reared its head when two U.S. rockets hit a house over the weekend. And today a NATO airstrike killed five people mistaken for insurgents.

Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, joins Daljit Dhaliwal for more on the NATO offensive.

Katulis discusses the strategic significance of the assault on Marjah and the Afghan army’s involvement. He also talks about the Afghan government’s ability to take control of Marja once international forces leave.

For more on Afghanistan visit the Worldfocus extended coverage page: War in Afghanistan.

A Predator armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. Photo: USAF

This week, the Pakistani Taliban finally confirmed what the Pakistani army had claimed many days ago — that Hakimullah Mehsud was killed last month in a missile strike by U.S. drones.

While there are conflicting reports about which strike dealt Mehsud the mortal blow, the Pakistani Taliban are left leaderless for the second time in six months.

As the late Mehsud’s faction — as well as various other Taliban-affiliated groups — scramble to defend themselves from unmanned aerial vehicles, some policymakers are wondering whether these assassinations are strategically sound.

Although many of President Barack Obama’s harshest critics at home have lavished praise on the administration for its escalation of the drone campaign, some naysayers now contend that the U.S. may be killing high-value targets before being able to extract information from them — in northwest Pakistan, as well as in other anti-terror arenas such as Yemen.

Marc Thiessen explains this problem in Foreign Policy:

The Predator has become for President Obama what the cruise missile was to President Bill Clinton — an easy way to appear like he is taking tough action against terrorists, when he is really shying away from the hard decisions needed to protect the United States.

To be sure, unmanned drones are critical in the struggle against al-Qaeda. They allow the United States to reach terrorists hiding in remote regions where it would be difficult for special operations forces to reach them, or to act on perishable intelligence when the only choice is to kill a terrorist or lose him. Constantly hovering Predator (or Reaper) drones also have a psychological effect on the enemy, forcing al-Qaeda leaders to live in fear and spend time focusing on self-preservation that would otherwise be used planning the next attack. All this is for the good.

The problem is that Obama is increasingly using drone strikes as a substitute for operations to bring terrorist leaders in alive for questioning — and that is putting the country at risk…

With every drone strike that vaporizes a senior al-Qaeda leader, actionable intelligence is vaporized along with him. Dead terrorists can’t tell you their plans to strike America.

Meanwhile, Dawn reports that the Obama administration’s recent budget proposal includes a 75 percent increase in funds for the drone campaign, which also includes new, more advanced crafts.

View our interactive map showing approximate locations of all U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004:

See larger map. [Yellow = pre-2008 strikes / Red = 2008 strikes / Green = Obama administration strikes]

In a Sydney Morning Herald analysis piece America’s Deadly Robots Rewrite the Rules, Paul McGeough writes:

The changed ground rules making extrajudicial killing more acceptable are a product of post-September 11 thinking. In 2001 Bush overturned President Gerald Ford’s 1976 prohibition on assassinations by US intelligence agencies - but there’s something else in the works, too…

But, as critics of the drone wars struggle to get traction in public debate, it is curious that in the absence of any negative reaction to Obama’s expansion of his remote killing program last year, the former Bush administration was under attack for revelations that it had considered dispatching more traditional hit-squads abroad to take out al-Qaeda operatives.

Forty-four countries now use unmanned aircraft for surveillance - only the US and Israel deploy them as killers.

In the first weeks of his presidency Obama reportedly wrestled with the moral and strategic implications of the program. But, as reported in The New York Times, he pointedly declared to one of his earliest Situation Room gatherings: “The CIA gets what it needs.”

The American Civil Liberties Union explained in a Freedom of Information application last month: “It appears … that lethal force is being exercised by individuals who are not in the military chain of command, are not subject to military rules and discipline; and do not operate under any other public system of accountability or oversight.”

A Democrat’s targeted killings, it seems, are not quite the same as those of a Republican.

The first drones flew before the September 11 attacks - searching for Osama bin Laden. Now the US Air Force estimates that about 15 per cent of its $US230 billion ($260 billion) arms-procurement program will be spent on robot equipment within five years.

Predators can fly [420 miles], then hover for 30 hours at a stretch, feeding real-time video and other data through 10 simultaneous streams to controllers in 10 locations. Priced at $4.5 million, Predators carry sensors that intercept electronic signals and listen in on phone conversations - and they carry missiles. The newer Reapers cost $17 million and can fly nearly [3600 miles].

The US Air Force now has more drone operators in training than fighter and bomber pilots.

A recent article from the Associated Press argues that two main factors have enabled the drone war to take off: the drawdown of troops and resources in Iraq and the Obama administration’s increased intelligence-sharing with the governments of Pakistan and Yemen:

Intelligence officials and analysts say the drawdown of troops in an increasingly stable Iraq is part of the reason for the increase in drone strikes. The military once relied on drones for around-the-clock surveillance to flush out insurgents, support troops in battle and help avoid roadside bombs.

With fewer of those missions required, the U.S. has moved many of those planes to Afghanistan, roughly doubling the size of the military and CIA fleet that can patrol the lawless border with Pakistan, officials said.

“These tools were not Obama creations, but he’s increased their use and he has shifted the U.S. attention full front to Afghanistan,” said Thomas Sanderson, a defense analyst and national security fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The article goes on to explain the second reason for the drone war’s escalation:

Obama has also abandoned terms like “radical Islam” and “Islamo-fascism,” rhetoric that was seen as anti-Muslim by many in the Arab world and which [Yemen's Ambassador to the UN] al-Saidi said made it harder for governments to openly cooperate with Washington.

View our original post: U.S. intensifies drone attacks on Pakistan’s tribal region

- Ben Piven

She discusses the likelihood of success with this strategy and the difficulties that arise from working with militias rather than central governments.

In northern Afghanistan, a local effort to drive out the Taliban has been highly successful. It’s in the province of Kunduz, where the German military, the Bundeswehr, has part of its force.

Our German partner, Deutsche Welle, went to the region to report on how the people there organized a militia to drive the Taliban out. Deutsche Welle takes a look at a grassroots campaign against the insurgents.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Afghanistan, visit our extended coverage page: War In Afghanistan.

The Defense Department actually posts its drone attack footage on YouTube via DVidsHub. Some of the videos have caught the attention of millions, but critics ask whether the videos are newsworthy — or just lowbrow entertainment.

And while the drone strikes have undoubtedly taken out militants in many places that soldiers just can’t go, there is disagreement about whether UAVs are an effective anti-terror deterrent.

The military’s Predators and Reapers routinely strike Iraq, Afghanistan — and increasingly in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. Additionally, the C.I.A. is using drones to hit al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in northwest Pakistan.

The most watched “drone porn” segments are from Iraq. This video of Baghdad has over 1 million views:

Blogger Keith Thomson writes on Alternet about drone porn’s impact on the news media.

“In researching remotely piloted aircraft, I visited the stretch of Southern Nevada desert that has become to UAVs what Silicon Valley is to the device on which you’re reading this column. In 2007, Creech Air Force Base was made the home of the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing, the first Air Force wing dedicated to unmanned aircraft systems. Its daily missions in Afghanistan and Iraq could provide the military version of a SportsCenter highlight reel.

With an aim of promoting UAVs domestically as well as “enlightening” our enemies, the Defense Department recently began placing the Predator and Reaper mission clips on YouTube. Ranging from relatively detached wide shots of bombings taken by onboard cameras to startlingly graphic close-ups, the so-called “drone porn” has been a smash hit, as it were, tallying over 10 million views.

Perhaps best explaining its popularity are the thousands of YouTube commenters. Some marvel at the new technology and discuss the resulting paradigm shift in warfare. Some raise questions, including whether it’s principled, dignified or otherwise in America’s best interest to post drone prone in the first place. Most comments are along the lines of, “Hell yeah HOOOAH BABY!”

This video shows footage of a drone that destroyed two rocket rails in the Sadr City section of Baghdad:

Now, I don’t want to launch into a “kids these days” diatribe about how the human race is de-evolving into a pack of bloodthirsty, warmongering savages. I don’t believe video games, or violent films, make kids any less human or more prone to attack each other. However, I do blame a disconnection from the consequences of battle for this kind of war fetishism.

The drone footage looks like a video game (admittedly a shitty one), and of course the footage doesn’t show the targets’ lives (if they had a family, what their favorite book is, when they had their first kiss, etc.) The clips don’t even really show their faces. They are anonymous targets. The US military tells us these are The Bad Guys, so they are guilty, and deserve to die. Trials: unnecessary. Evidence: superfluous…

But the drone aspects of war are also clearly appealing to young people. The “point and shoot” video games are all the rage right now, which is partly why drone porn exists. Yet, the moral hazards of such extrajudicial killings are never explored in video games, or drone attacks, and all the usual human safeguards against killing during a ground invasion (namely that you have to look your target in the eye while killing them with your bare hands) are no longer an obstacle. Long ago, hand-to-hand combat gave way to guns, which gave way to better guns, which gave way to human-navigated aerial assault that has now been replaced by robotic drones.

The next video shows an aerial weapons team, also in Sadr City:

Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, writes about drone attacks in AfPak and modern warfare:

What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the Bush years have become commonplace under the Obama administration. And since a devastating December 30th suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an “unprecedented number” of strikes — which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike — have led to more fear, anger, and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most public “secret” war of modern times.

In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized “surge” of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

See our Worldfocus map of U.S. drone attacks in northwest Pakistan.

They discuss power-sharing with the Taliban, drone strikes along the Afghan border in northwest Pakistan and broader American foreign policy challenges in the region.

For more on the Obama and the World series click here.

Afghan Taliban hold a meeting. Photo: Deutsche Welle

As the U.S. and its coalition fight an increasingly tough war against the Taliban, there is also new talk of reaching out to elements of the group with the aim of a political settlement.

On Thursday, an international conference in London will explore ways of bringing the Taliban into the government and how to transfer more security responsibility to Afghan forces.

Today the issue was also discussed in Istanbul with the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey.

There is growing hope that an agreement with the Taliban could end the war.

Should the U.S. and its allies start engaging the Taliban in order to iron out a power-sharing agreement?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the largest Kabul attack since 2001 and announced that their goal was an assault on the presidential palace.

In Kabul, many people fear that many similar attacks will be attempted in the near future.

Al Jazeera’s Tarek Bazley reports on the increasingly shaky security situation in Afghanistan.

An MQ-9 Reaper drone. Photo: www.af.mil

In Afghanistan, the U.S. military said that 16 militants were killed in two separate attacks by unmanned drones.

They took place in war-torn Helmand province and could mark a turning point in American war tactics.

While drones have been used widely across the border in Pakistan, they have been used mainly for surveillance purposes in Afghanistan. Until yesterday’s operations, there were very few known drone strikes in Afghanistan.

As the war in Afghanistan escalates, should the U.S. broaden its use of unmanned drones against militants, even if innocent civilians die?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

Six NATO troops, including 3 Americans, were killed today, making it the deadliest day for the expanding international force in two months. A U.S. military spokesman said, the Americans died during a patrol in southern Afghanistan.

As the U.S. troop surge continues in Afghanistan, the top American commander says he believes the larger force is turning the tide against the Taliban. However, Afghanistan is also becoming increasingly deadly. Today’s losses brought the number of U.S. troops killed there so far this year to at least 10, an average of almost one service member each day.

For more about the situation in Afghanistan, Anthony Cordesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joins Daljit Dhaliwal. Cordesman discusses the reasons why we are seeing more casualties and what to expect going forward. He also talks about how the troop surge has made an impact.