Why the US is losing in Afghanistan - updates on the Pashtun insurgency

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November 4, 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-america-is-performing-its-familiar-role-of-propping-up-a-dictator-1814194.html


Robert Fisk: America is performing its familiar role of propping up a dictator

As in Vietnam, Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption


Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it - they still are - and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and - yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.

And now we are still trying to persuade his opponent to join a national unity government, an administration led by the man whose vote-stuffing was the very reason that same leader of the opposition - the good pseudo-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah - refused to run in a second round of elections. And Karzai got his fawning congrats from the Obama-Brown twins. So that's OK then. Wagons Ho. For Westmoreland, read McChrystal. Send in the brave 40,000 to join the rest of the US cavalry as it fights its way west - or rather south-west - to the Khe Sanh of Afghanistan in Year Eight of the War on Terror.

The March of Folly was Barbara Tuchman's title for her book on governments - from Troy to Vietnam-era America - that followed policies contrary to their own interests. And well may we remember the Vietnam bit. As Patrick Bury, a veteran British soldier of our current Afghan adventure, pointed out yesterday, Vietnam is all too relevant.


Video: Is Karzai a credible president?
Back in 1967, the Americans oversaw a "democratic" election in Vietnam which gave the presidency to the corrupt ex-General Nguyen Van Thieuman. In a fraudulent election which the Americans declared to be "generally fair" - he got 38 per cent of the vote - Thieu's opponents wouldn't run against him because the election was a farce.

In 1967, Washington needed the elections to give legitimacy to this revolting dictator - and thus provide credibility to its own military occupation of Vietnam in the war against Communism. As in Vietnam - where Saigon was a lonely kingdom of brutal power totally isolated from the rest of the country - Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption, protected by US mercenaries while the Americans perform their familiar role of propping up a dictator.

As ex-Lieutenant Bury sagely points out, the Afghan war is "campaigning on a par with the 19th-century British colonial army trying to manage the unwinnable... What was or is the strategy behind these long, bloody conflicts?" Well, in 1967, it was the possible communisation of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Now it is Pashtunistan, Baluchistan, Waziristan. For us, the vast ignorant "plebes", it's supposed to stop the Taliban/al-Qa'ida beasts from attacking our looming towers all over again, albeit that the 2001 murderers in question largely hailed from that friendly, moderate, brutal, oligarchical monarchical dictatorship called Saudi Arabia where - thank the good gods - they don't hold elections.

But it's part of a dreary pattern. US forces were participating in a civil war in Vietnam while claiming they were supporting democracy and the sovereignty of the country. In Lebanon in 1982, they claimed to be supporting the "democratically" elected President Amin Gemayel and took the Christian Maronite side in the civil war. And now, after Disneyworld elections, they are on the Karzai-government side against the Pashtun villagers of southern Afghanistan among whom the Taliban live. Where is the next My Lai? Journalists should avoid predictions. In this case I will not. Our Western mission in Afghanistan is going to end in utter disaster.

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Published on Friday, November 6, 2009 by The Sydney Morning Herald

US Fed Up With Troops Dying to Prop Up Karzai

by Paul McGeouh in Kabul

It seems that Hamid Karzai just can't be trusted on his own.


"Democracy?" asked a Kabul cabbie during a local television phone-in. "That's an American euphemism for occupation." (AFP/File/John D Mchugh)

When he breasted the microphone at the presidential palace on October 20, to make an oblique admission that he attempted to steal the election and would go along with the second poll which he had resisted for weeks, he was flanked by a high-powered international posse - lest he depart from the agreed script.

On one side was the US senator John Kerry; on the other, the United Nations special envoy Kai Eide; and riding shotgun were the British and French ambassadors.

Fast forward two weeks. Last Sunday, Karzai's challenger, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, played exquisite politics. Baling out of the second vote which was to be held today, he left a wounded Karzai to claim the presidency, knowing that the stench of a million stolen votes would cling to him for the next five years.

On Tuesday, Karzai was back on the presidential dais, this time to claim his prize. But lest he make any reckless promises - say, to eject some of the more odorous among his cronies from office - the enforcers came from among the cronies, his vice presidents Karim Khalil and Mohammad Qasim Fahim, both former warlords from the ranks of Afghanistan's looting class.

Arguably, the first of these appearances by Karzai was humiliating; the second intimidating. As elections go, few have been as absurd. The President set out to steal the election and got away with it in broad daylight. The UN knew what he was up to and did nothing about it. Led by Washington, the diplomatic corps in Kabul insisted that for the sake of the legitimacy of the office, there had to be a second poll - only to say it was never really needed once Abdullah pulled the rug from under Karzai.

After Karzai's vote was discounted for fraud, he gained 2.3 million of the 4.8 million votes cast on August 20. But both his share and the total vote paled beside the ''vote'' won by the Taliban - more than 10 million registered voters stayed away.

In the aftermath, Peter Galbraith - a senior UN official in Kabul who was sacked after pushing for the UN to reveal the extent of the preparation for fraud before the first vote, wrote that before the election, Karzai was seen as ineffectual and corrupt. Now he was ineffectual, corrupt and illegitimate.

In the process, something else in Karzai the man was revealed. Last March the US President, Barack Obama, sent an extra 21,000 American troops to Afghanistan to help secure this election - and while some of them were dying or suffering hideous wounds in battle, Karzai's campaign was happily rorting the process that the young Americans and troops from around the world were attempting to protect.

The unreality of Karzai's return to office was underscored midweek, when a senior Obama aide told The New York Times: "We're going to know in the next three to six months whether he's doing anything differently - whether he can seriously address corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us."

That's not a lot of time for redemption. At his tent-office off the shoulder of a crowded highway near the Kabul parliamentary complex, the man who got the third highest vote on August 20, the maverick Ramazan Bashardost, likened it to a bad movie, telling the Herald that Charlie Chaplin was playing Karzai and Mr Bean was Abdullah.

As the election drama climaxed, Obama was in the eighth week of a huddle at the White House, trying to work out Afghanistan before making a decision on a call by General Stanley McChrystal, his top general in Afghanistan, for an extra 40,000 troops.

Tactical leaks on these internal deliberations suggest a radical repositioning of US policy, the result of which will be that McChrystal will not get all that he is asking for.

The objective is being wound back - from the Jeffersonian democracy sought by the former president George Bush to the creation of a state that is capable of protecting itself.

There is a realisation that the Taliban, like drugs, are a feature of the Afghan landscape and that instead of eliminating it, the best Washington can hope for is to create circumstances in which the insurgents cannot take control of the country.

So the thinking is turning to the protection of less than a dozen key population centres. Inverting the Vietnam War theory that every village was strategically important, it relies on the Iraq experience of holding the big centres.

The sparsely populated but volatile southern province of Helmand is an example. There, 20 per cent of the foreign forces are waging a relentless war to protect 3 per cent of the population whose day-to-day existence would not be greatly altered if the Taliban were among them - but with no foreign forces to shoot at.

The public critique of Obama's private critique of the McChrystal plan for the war is intense. Last week Kerry asked, if al-Qaeda's cross-border shift into nuclear-armed Pakistan and the Islamist crisis confronting Islamabad create a much bigger threat to US interests, why was it that Washington was devoting 30 times the time and resources that Pakistan got to Afghanistan?

Stuck with Karzai, Obama is figuring how to work around him. He has called for a study of the individual Afghan provinces and the men who govern them - could they, along with tribal elders and even the local militias, be trusted to be more effective allies in managing development funds? Could elements of the Taliban be trusted to help run things in areas from which the Americans might pull back?

"How much of the country can we just leave to be run by the locals?" a senior US official asked a Washington Post reporter. "How do you separate those who have taken up arms because they oppose the presence of foreigners in their area because they are getting paid to fight us ... from those who want to restore a Taliban government?"

The answer to his question seemed to be - remove the foreign forces.

It all points to a White House acceptance of the oft-stated advice that in Afghanistan, the presence of foreign forces is as much a core issue as is what the Taliban might or might not do. Unlike Iraq, where US forces were caught between warring factions, most of the violence in Afghanistan is targeted at the foreign forces.

Observing that most of the areas of Afghanistan that were stable were under local control, the official asked two more questions - "Can you get benign local control in more places? Will that be easier to achieve, [will it be] more effective than trying to establish more central government control?"

Think-tanks around the world are in Afghan overdrive.

In a report published by the Centre for a New American Security, a former US army officer, Andrew Exum, rated three likely scenarios.

Rating it as ''frightening as it is unlikely,'' his worst case sees Afghanistan returning to its pre-September 11 nadir - Taliban back in control, hosting training camps for terrorist groups.

"Most likely," he says is that most countries in the US-led coalition will peel away, leaving American and Afghan security forces to wage a more narrowly focused long-term struggle.

His third option is the emergence of a ''functioning Afghan state'' which is "inhospitable to transnational terror groups''. This he says is possible, but would ''require a further commitment of precious US time and resources''.

Meanwhile, the White House deliberations drag on. If more troops are to be sent, it will be well into next year before they arrive in Afghanistan - and in that time, many beyond Afghanistan will wonder at the jaundice revealed by ordinary Afghans.

"Democracy?" asked a Kabul cabbie during a local television phone-in. "That's an American euphemism for occupation. We don't have patriotic leaders either - so, the people's hands are tied behind their backs."

Copyright © 2009. Fairfax Digital

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Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/06-4

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US soldiers 'drown' in Afghanistan
 
 
06/11/2009 05:56:00 PM GMT   
 
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/US-soldiers-drown-in-Afghanistan.html

 
In a rare fatal incident, two American troops have drowned in Afghanistan, while trying to recover equipment from a northwestern river, security officials say.

The soldiers died on Wednesday, while trawling in the Badghis province's Bala-Murghab River for lost supply packages, the area's Deputy Police Chief Mohammed Jabbar told a Press TV correspondent.

The supplies were lost as a US aircraft was dropping caissons and food parcels on the troops' base.

The present US contingent in cooperation with local military and police force have set out on a rescue operation.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Taliban, Ghari Yousuf Ahmadi, said that the militants had attacked the soldiers as the aircraft was on the supply mission, killing one of the soldiers while four others drowned themselves in the river.

Around 463 international soldiers have died in Afghanistan so far this year — the bloodiest over eight years of military presence under the American command. US troops comprise more than half of the mortalities.

The soldiers have killed many thousands of Afghan civilians during their clashes with the militants or attacks on mistaken Taliban hideouts.

The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) also said on Thursday that two of its soldiers have been missing for two days in western Afghanistan, the AFP news agency reported. "Afghan and coalition forces are currently involved in an extensive search for the service members," the ISAF said.

It was not clear whether the missing were those referred to by the Afghan officials, although the ISAF said the troops had been lost track of during a routine supply mission on Tuesday.

The coalition also said two other US troopers had died on Thursday in a bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan.

The report coincided with the UK Ministry of Defense (Mod)'s confirmation of the death of a British soldier in southern regions of the war-torn country.


Source: Press TV
 

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Saturday, November 07, 2009
07:20 Mecca time, 04:20 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/200911732933891543.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Troops 'injured in Afghan air raid' 

 
Soldiers called in the air raid after they came under attack from Taliban fighters [File: AFP]
 
At least 25 foreign and Afghan troops have been injured after an air raid mistakenly targeted them during a joint operation in the northwest of Afghanistan, local police say.

The troops had apparently called in air support on Friday after they became involved in a battle with Taliban fighters while searching for two missing paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.

"During the search operation ... a clash took place with Taliban," Abdul Jabar Salehthe, the deputy police chief of the northwestern province of Badghis, told the AFP news agency.

"Then aircraft mistakenly bombed the Afghan and Nato defence lines."

It was not immediately clear how many of the casualties were Afghan and how many from the international forces.

Nato search

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) confirmed that the 25 soldiers were injured in an operation to recover the two missing colleagues, but it did not mention the air raid or discuss the condition of the paratroopers.

"The wounded service members were initially treated on the scene and subsequently flown to an Isaf medical facility for further treatment," a statement quoted US Navy Captain Jane Campbell as saying.


"We are committed to taking every measure possible to rescue or recover our missing service members. We continue to do everything we can to find them", US Navy Captain Jane Campbell, Nato spokeswoman
 
"We are committed to taking every measure possible to rescue or recover our missing service members. We continue to do everything we can to find them."

Military sources have indicated that the missing men were not believed to have been captured by Taliban fighters.

Salehthe said that the paratroopers had drowned while trying to recover airdropped food packages from a river and the search for their bodies was continuing on Saturday.

The Taliban said that international forces had played down the actual toll from the air raid.

"There was ... a firefight between Taliban and Afghan and foreign forces in Murghab district of Badghis province. The fighting lasted for hours and was very intense, at a close distance," Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said.

"By the end of the day, foreign forces bombed the area where the clash was going on and due to their own bombing, 32 foreign and 43 Afghan soldiers were killed."

Badghis is one of several provinces in the previously quiet west and north of Afghanistan, where Taliban activity has increased dramatically in recent months.
 
 
 

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Saturday, November 07, 2009
13:11 Mecca time, 10:11 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/20091177340755115.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Kabul rejects 'foreign criticism'  

 
Karzai's re-election was marred by fraud and his main rival's decision to pull out of a planned runoff [EPA]
 
The Afghan government has rejected foreign criticisms of Hamid Karzai, with the re-elected president saying that they "violated national sovereignty".

International figures, including the US president and the British prime minister, have called on Afghanistan to take concrete steps to clean up the government after the presidential poll was marred by fraud.

"Over the last few days some political and diplomatic circles and propaganda agencies of certain foreign countries have intervened in Afghanistan's internal affairs by issuing instructions concerning the composition of Afghan government organs and political policy of Afghanistan,'' the foreign ministry statement said on Saturday.

"Such instructions have violated respect for Afghanistan's national sovereignty."

International leaders and the UN have acknowledged Karzai's victory in the polls, but they have issued stiff warnings that corruption must be tackled in order to ensure continuing support.

Karzai was only returned for a second term after Abdullah Abdullah, his main rival, withdrew from a planned second round runoff when his demands for major changes to the heavily criticised election commission were dismissed.

'Seriously flawed'

After the Security Council held a closed-door session on Afghanistan on Friday, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, cautioned that the political situation in the country remained "delicate".

"Clearly, the recent elections were seriously flawed," he said.



In depth :

 Your views: What now for Afghan democracy?
 Video: Abdullah pulls out
 Blogs: John Terret on Obama's call to congratulate and cajole Karzai
 Blogs: James Bays on what next for Afghanistan
 Video: Afghans dismiss runoff vote
 Inside Story: The election runoff


Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, said that the government had become a "byword for corruption" and challenged Karzai to meet the five key tests of security, good governance, reconciliation, economic development and regional relations.

The corruption monitoring group Transparency International rates Afghanistan as the world's fifth-most corrupt country.

The Afghan foreign ministry was particularly angry about comments made by Kai Eide, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, who it said "exceeded international norms and his authority as a representative of an impartial organisation".

Eide said on Thursday that the government should not assume that it would keep the backing of international donors and troops if it does not address the widespread perception of corruption and continues to welcome regional commanders into the administration.

"We can't afford any longer a situation where warlords and power brokers play their own games," Eide said.

"We have to have a political landscape here that draws the country in the same direction, which is in the direction of significant reform."

Diplomats 'surprised'

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Kabul, said that the foreign ministry statement was "very tough".

"Among diplomatic circles there seems to be some very undiplomatic language right now," he said.

"The response [from diplomatic missions] is that they are very surprised by this language ... one high-level offical pointed out that much of the Afghan government is being paid by the international community and there are international troops out there fighting to keep this government in power."

In a speech after he was declared the winner of the presidential election, Karzai pledged to combat corruption and work with his former opponents to ensure all Afghans views are taken into account.

Commenting on the speech, David Miliband, Britain's foreign minister, told Al Jazeera: "He spoke very clearly about national unity, tackling corruption, building up security forces of his own, not relying on foreign, about reaching out to his neighbours, notably Pakistan, and also about bringing the insurgency back into the political system.

"He said many things that people wanted to hear from him. Now we need to see them in practice."
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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Afghanistan Condemns U.N. Instruction on Corruption

Saturday , November 07, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572847,00.html


KABUL — Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the top U.N. official in the country went beyond his authority by giving instructions on how to rid the government of corruption and warlords.

Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide "delivered comments which exceeded international norms and his authority as a representative of an impartial organization," the ministry said in a statement.

It was strongest indication yet that the administration of President Hamid Karzai will resist prescriptions from the international community on how to rein in corruption or regional power brokers who often wield more power than the government.

A host of international figures, including President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have called for the Afghan government to take concrete steps to clean up the government following a presidential election that was marred by fraud.

The vote took two and a half months to resolve because of ballot-box stuffing and the unwillingness of Karzai and election officials he appointed to accept results that would have forced him into a runoff vote. The second round was canceled after his challenger dropped out.

Eide warned Thursday that the Afghan government should not assume that it will have the support of international donors and troops if it continues to be mired in corruption and welcome warlords into the administration.

"We can't afford any longer a situation where warlords and power brokers play their own games," Eide said. "We have to have a political landscape here that draws the country in the same direction, which is in the direction of significant reform."

He said the partnership between Afghanistan and its foreign allies was at a "critical juncture," suggesting that the international community could desert Afghanistan unless serious action is taken.

The Foreign Ministry condemned such comments as interfering in national sovereignty.

"Over the last few days some political and diplomatic circles and propaganda agencies of certain foreign countries have intervened in Afghanistan's internal affairs by issuing instructions concerning the composition of Afghan government organs and political policy of Afghanistan," the statement said. "Such instructions have violated respect for Afghanistan's national sovereignty."

Karzai promised in his first speech after being declared the victor of the recent election that he would work to eliminate corruption, but did not give any specific proposals.

In his speech, Eide said Karzai's collection of advisers and ministers "should be composed of competent, reform-oriented personalities that can implement a reform agenda." He also outlined a process for keeping fraud out of upcoming parliamentary elections, and called for stronger judicial system reforms.

A spokesman for Karzai, Humayun Hamidzada, responded soon after Eide spoke that the president plans to fight corruption but does not yet have a detailed plan. As for the warlords, Hamidzada argued that Karzai has strengthened Afghanistan by including even his opponents in his government. He did not say then that Eide's remarks were out of line.

Eide's comments were one of many reproaches in recent days for Karzai.

During a telephone call Nov. 2 to congratulate Karzai on his re-election, Obama said he told the Afghan leader that any assurances of reform had to be backed up with action. "The proof is not going to be in words. It's going to be in deeds," Obama said.

A day later, Brown said Karzai should "make clear that he is going to take immediate action on corruption." The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, told reporters that the Karzai government needs to start writing a new chapter for Afghanistan that should include a "much more serious effort to eradicate corruption."

The U.N. Security Council joined calls for reform Friday, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling the country's political situation "delicate" following deeply flawed elections.

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Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires or just
a graveyard with a pipeline running through it?

By William Bowles

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m59795&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 6, 2009



"The US does not need a final victory over the Talibs. Despite their widely advertized ferocious conflict, the US and the Talibs manage to coexist quite successfully in Afghanistan…"[1]

Come on folks, it’s just good sense, there is no way the Empire can actually win the war in Afghanistan. As I have stated before it’s not about  'winning’ but occupation. Afghanistan is basically a stepping stone on the way to some place else and leaving an oil pipeline behind with a friendly government in place to protect it. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men etc…

And this is why it bears no comparison to the idiotic occupation that the Soviets got sucked into, except for the slaughter of course. But from a strategic and economic perspective, along with Iran, Pakistan and India, Afghanistan commands the entrance to East Asia and there’s gold in them thar hills!

Just as with Iraq, Afghanistan has been turned into a garrison state, hence the strategic 'retreat’ into the cities that has been proposed by the ISAF consiglieri. It’s basically screw the peasants, let ’em rot, as long as we can hold the centre ie, Kabul and a couple of other strategically important towns, why waste ammo and lose, by comparison with the number of Afghan deaths, and what is for a war, a small number of ISAF fatalities (230 UK troops).

But remember, one Western death is considered to be the equivalent to  a lot of 'ragheads’, 'gooks’ or whatever dehumanizing derogative derives from the latest slaughter. So as far as the Western public is concerned a few hundred ISAF/USUK/NATO deaths translates to maybe thousands having died? Whatever, having the citizens on the side of the Empire is vitally important!

"The figures suggest opposition to the war has risen sharply over the past couple of weeks, a period that has seen the Karzai election debacle, and the deaths of five British soldiers.

"Over a third of people, 35 per cent, think British troops should be withdrawn immediately, compared with 25 per cent a fortnight ago.

"And overall, almost three-quarters, 73 per cent, want troops out now or within a year. And strikingly, 57 per cent think victory is no longer possible." — Snowmail Email, Chan.4 TV, 5 November, 2009

Think of it this way: the road maybe long and full of potholes but as long as the bridge stands they can get over it.[2] Afghanistan is the bridge and just one piece in a strategic jigsaw that’s been in the works getting on for a couple of centuries.

The point is, what do we mean when we say 'getting out of Afghanistan’? Just look at Iraq, who talks about Iraq anymore (unless there’s some horrendous car bombing that kills enough to make the headlines). The state/media acts as if it’s all over bar the shouting; they don’t talk about it, there is simply no mention of USUK occupation forces in Iraq.

The point is they are there and they are there to stay. The strategy maybe different, circumstances determine how the occupier deploys its forces.

So okay, for the sake of argument, all the troops leave Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan? What will they leave behind? Shattered, broken, mostly former countries or the shells of one. Many of the countries Western capitalism has gotten into since the fall of the Soviet Union, have been broken up and turned to shit (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, for starters). But this is the point! Chaos as an imperial strategy.

This is the legacy of thirty years of 'free market’ capitalism.

The point is, they will still be there, economically, politically and of course militarily even if using proxy forces (trained, equipped and led by the 'former’ occupiers). It all comes down to the same thing. As long as they have a 'government’ in place that does as its told and doesn’t mess with who owns what, they’ll live with that, as long as they can sell it back home, to us of course.

The occupation is about three objectives: 1) Opening up markets for the West previously denied them and 2) taking out and/or 'containing’ the competition ie Russia and China and 3) resources.

From the Western perspective, the real war is being fought here. Compare the war that the UK fought and won in Malaya with Afghanistan; they slugged it out in the jungle for years, using techniques that were later used in Vietnam. That war was about suppressing the Communist guerillas, or more generically, destroying Communism wherever it appeared to be gaining ground. And because of the Cold War and anti-Communism and the threat of nuclear Armageddon, they were able to sell all their wars to their public.

That was the pretext for 'being there’ then but without the Commies what other reason could be invented for going there when the need arises? The problem with this course of action is that a new enemy had to be invented (at least the old enemy actually existed) in order to actually go there.

Enter the 'War on Terror’, whose launch day, coincidentally, was September 11, 2001. It’s worth noting that nothing on the scale of 9/11 has happened in the intervening eight years. In fact in the US, aside from a lot of alleged plots to do this and that, absolutely nothing has happened. The only actual post-9/11 act that killed people, the Anthrax attack, was an 'inside job’.

The 'War on Terror’ is getting to look like the 'War on Drugs’ (an abject failure if ever there was one) and difficult to sell to a public that gets up close and personal with every (Western) death via our ubiquitous media prison.

It ain’t going well for the Empire, they’re kinda caught in a trap of their own making having sold us on the idea that we were going there for some noble ideal (oh those women-hating Taliban etc), an ideal that now visibly lies in tatters in Helmand Province and elsewhere no matter how the BBC spins it at us (Operation Panther’s Claw? Who comes up with these dumb names?).

What is critical here and why the BBC makes a big thing of 'our boys over there’ is that it’s gotten so bad 'over there’ that it is no longer (was it ever?)  about Western deaths. I mean G Brown’s pathetic bleating about defending the White Cliffs of Dover over there, went down like a lead balloon (and evidently he felt it necessary to repeat the lie yesterday, see below).

So look, it now seems that the tactic du jour is just not to be there, well not be seen being there, that’s the objective. If by some miracle, they can get an 'Afghan’ Army together enough and in one place at the same time (and pointing in the same direction, see 'Taliban link to shootings probed’), then all their problems are over, they hope.

The Afghans can go on shooting each other with weapons supplied by the West and the West can get on with business, that’s the theory. But it costs money being there and you have to do it in style, not with a lot of old Land Rovers with bits of steel bolted to the sides. Afghanistan ain’t Malaya, Cyprus, Aden, or Kenya, nor is it done in a situation such as existed back then. This is the UK’s problem, in punching well above their weight it illustrates perhaps more than anything else why it’s not about 'winning’ but simply being there that’s important.

The Taliban might have initiated the war of national liberation but I think the situation has moved well beyond them with many more people joining the resistance not only because we are slaughtering them in their thousands, but none of the billions in 'aid’ that was meant to 'win their hearts and minds’ has ever reached them.

The only cash crop the country has in abundance is the Poppy. A crop that’s worth (in Western countries anyway, who knows how much to those thousands of subsistance farmers who grow the stuff) $65 billion a year and it has to leave the country somehow.

But one can guess at the numbers of Westerners in the so-called International Stabilization Force plus all the hangers-on, the 'civilian contractors’ (what a euphemism for a hired gun), the innumerable NGOs, the UN and so forth, and of course let’s not leave out the CIA, who are hooked into the opium trade (just as they were in the 'Golden Triangle’ with the CIA’s Air America doing the runs).[3]

But obviously the occupiers are not there to clean up the opium trade except insofar as it serves as a piece of propaganda for domestic consumption. And bleating about the Taliban’s treatment of women rings hollow when the occupiers are backing a government that legalizes marital rape.

The 'election’ farce is a replay of the US experience in Vietnam when the CIA finally 'neutralized’ the puppet Diem (their man in Saigon) and I wouldn’t mind betting that if things don’t work out with Karzai that he might get 'neutralized’ as well.[4]

The degree of desperation in the UK is evident from the following,

"The UK will not be "deterred, dissuaded or diverted" from its Afghan mission, despite the risks posed to troops, Gordon Brown is expected to say.

"The comments come after five soldiers were killed in Helmand on Tuesday by a policeman being trained by UK forces.

"The prime minister will say in a speech the mentoring [sic] must continue "because it is what distinguishes a liberating army from an army of occupation"." — 'Afghan mission will go on – Brown’, BBC News, 6 November, 2009

Contrast this with what G Brown’s was telling us a couple of days ago,

"The British military blamed Tuesday’s attack in Helmand on a "rogue" Afghan policeman, but the UK PM said possible Taliban involvement was being examined." — 'Taliban link to shootings probed’, BBC News, 6 November, 2009

These oafs can’t make their minds up about who exactly they are fighting.

"…the government says the Afghan mission is vital to ensuring al-Qaeda does not increase its powers, and will therefore help improve the UK’s defences against terrorist attacks.

/…/

"He is expected to predict that the "heroism" of personnel currently serving in Afghanistan will be taught to future generations "just as in the past we learned of the bravery and sacrifice of British soldiers in the First and Second World Wars"." — 'Afghan mission will go on – Brown’, BBC News, 6 November, 2009

This is the worst kind of jingoism that taps into every prejudice people in the West have and reinforced virtually every day with some reference to previous imperial wars ie, the endless re-running of war movies and documentaries on TV.

So just who are we fighting in Afghanistan 'al-Qu’eda’ or the Taliban? But what difference does it make who we fight as long as it serves the purpose of justifying why we are there. Just how slaughtering Afghans reduces the risks of terrorist attacks in the UK is explained as follows:

"Mr Brown reiterated his belief that the main terrorist threat to the UK continues to emanate from Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying anyone who questioned why UK troops were in Afghanistan should reflect on the terrorist atrocities since 2001." — 'Afghan mission will go on – Brown’, BBC News, 6 November, 2009

Of course this is not the reason given when we invaded the country in 2001.

"To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11." — Tony Blair, 17 July, 2002, 'This war on terrorism is bogus’, Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 6 September, 2003


"CentGas can not begin construction [of an oil pipeline] until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place." — "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 February, 1998

'A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week’s attacks [on the World Trade Center]. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place – possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place. He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby. Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.’ — "US 'planned attack on Taleban’", BBC News, 18 September 2001.

References

1. Andrei KONUROV, US Objectives in Afghanistan
'The US has deployed 19 military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asian countries since the war began in October, 2001. These bases function autonomously from the surrounding space, are networked by airlifts, and get supplies from outside of Afghanistan, also mostly by air. The system of bases makes it possible for the US to exert military pressure on Russia, China, and Iran… The US does not need a final victory over the Talibs. Despite their widely advertized ferocious conflict, the US and the Talibs manage to coexist quite successfully in Afghanistan…’ Strategic Culture Foundation, 3 September, 2009

2. See 'US objectives’ above.

3. CIA-assisted plot to overthrow Laos foiled
Former Air America/CIA asset Vang Pao arrested, by Larry Chin, Global Research, 6 June, 2007.

For Air America, you gotta go to the best source of information on the subject, the CIA itself. Reams of FOIA docs on Air America down the decades.

4. See 'JFK and the Diem Coup’, By John Prados, November 5, 2003

 

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Seven Afghan Security Forces Killed in NATO Airstrike
 
 
07/11/2009 08:30:40 PM GMT   
 
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Seven_Afghan_Security_Forces_Killed_in_NATO_Airstr.html

 
Seven members of the Afghan security forces were killed in a NATO air strike in remote western Afghanistan, the defense ministry said on Saturday.
   
The statement comes as NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating an incident in Badghis province Friday in which more than 25 international and Afghan forces were wounded.
   
Five of the 25 wounded were US occupation soldiers, injured in what a Western military official, speaking anonymously, said was friendly fire. However, ISAF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, of the US Air Force, told AFP: "We have nothing to confirm friendly fire."
   
"No ISAF members were killed," he said, confirming that five injured ISAF soldiers were Americans. Investigations into Friday's incident were ongoing and no further details were available, he said.
   
In what appeared to be a reference to the same incident, however, the Afghan defense ministry said members of the Afghan army and police had been killed. "Due to a NATO forces air strike on November 6 in Badghis province seven Afghan security personnel (both Afghan army and national police) were martyred and also some were wounded," it said in a statement. "The commando brigade informs us that foreign forces also sustained some casualties," it said.
   
The incident is believed to have taken place during a clash involving ISAF and Afghan soldiers searching for two paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division who went missing Wednesday during a routine supply mission.
   
Separately, the Afghan army said a five-day operation that ended on Friday in northern Kunduz province had resulted in the deaths of 133 militants. The Afghan army said at least three Afghan soldiers and more than a dozen Taliban militants were killed on Saturday in southern Afghanistan.
   
An Afghan army convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in Girishk district of troubled Helmand province killing three Afghan troopers, southern military corps commander General Shair Mohammad Zazai told AFP.
   
In neighbouring Zabul province a joint operation by Afghan and foreign forces in Naw Bahar district killed 18 Taliban fighters, he said.
¬
Source: AJP
 

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Afghan insurgents learn to destroy key U.S. armored vehicle

By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m59844&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan have devised ways to cripple and even destroy the expensive armored vehicles that offer U.S. forces the best protection against roadside bombs by using increasingly large explosive charges and rocket-propelled grenades, according to U.S. soldiers and defense officials.

At least eight American troops have been killed this year in attacks on so-called Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and 40 more have been wounded, said a senior U.S. military official who, like others interviewed on the issue, declined to be further identified because of the issue's sensitivity.

The insurgents' success in attacking the hulking machines, which can cost as much as $1 million each, underscores their ability to counter the advanced hardware that the U.S. military and its allies are deploying in their struggle to gain the upper hand in the war, which entered its ninth year last month.

The attacks also raise questions about how vulnerable a new, lighter MRAP, the M-ATV, which is now being shipped to Afghanistan, are to the massive explosive charges that Taliban-led insurgents have been using against its bigger cousin.

The insurgents are also hitting MRAPs with rocket-propelled grenades that can penetrate their steel armor, according to U.S troops in Afghanistan, several of whom showed McClatchy a photograph of a hole that one of the projectiles had punched in the hull of an MRAP.

The Pentagon has spent more than $26.8 billion to develop and build three versions of the largest MRAPs, totaling some 16,000 vehicles, mostly for the Army and Marine Corps, according to an August report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Another $5.4 billion is being spent to produce 5,244 M-ATVs, the smaller version that U.S. defense officials contend offers as much protection as the large models do, but is more maneuverable and better suited to Afghanistan's dirt tracks and narrow mountain roads.

"The traditional MRAP was having real problems . . . off road in Afghanistan," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. "And clearly we have to do a lot of work off-road. And these new vehicles will provide our forces the ability to travel more safely off road — certainly off paved roads — than they would have been able to do with other vehicles."

Defense officials acknowledged the growing problem of successful attacks on MRAPs, and said the U.S. military is constantly developing improvements for the vehicle that include better sensors and tactics.

"It's not all about the armor. We can't build something that is impervious to everything," said Navy Capt. Jack Henzlik, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are using a comprehensive strategy to try to provide for the protection of our forces."

The issue was the subject of a high-level meeting convened on Wednesday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made the production of MRAPs his highest priority in 2007 as U.S. troops in Iraq were suffering massive casualties from roadside bomb attacks.

The use of powerful explosive charges against MRAPs "is a problem that he (Gates) is keenly aware of, very concerned about, and is determined to make sure this building is doing everything it can to combat," Morrell said. "We have never advertised MRAPs or M-ATVs as a silver bullet for the IED (improvised explosive device) problem. This is but one element of a vast array of capabilities that we need to bring to bear to protect our forces."

However, retired Army Col. Douglas A. MacGregor, a former armored cavalry commander and combat veteran and an expert on armor warfare, said that vehicles such as the MRAP have "very limited utility" in a war against a guerrilla group such as the Taliban.

"The notion of a wheeled armored constabulary force as a prescription for a close combat situation is nonsense," he said.

U.S. troops rely on the MRAP's V-shaped hull, which is designed to deflect explosive blasts, and heavy armored plating to protect them against the landmines and IEDs that are causing most American combat deaths in Afghanistan.

October was the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the 2001 U.S. invasion. At least 59 were killed, bringing the total for the year to at least 272 dead, according to the Internet site iCasualties. At least 139 of those troops died in IED blasts, according to the Pentagon.

"Pentagon officials note that insurgents are building larger IEDs and are finding better ways to conceal them," the Congressional Research Service report said.

"The biggest question is what took them so long," said a senior Pentagon official with extensive experience with the MRAP program and familiarity with the weapons and techniques that the militants in Afghanistan have developed to "compromise" the vehicle.

The fact that the large MRAPs — which range from 7 tons to 24 tons depending on the model — often are confined to narrow mountain roads and valleys in Afghanistan has made it easier for insurgents to prepare ambushes using anti-tank mines, IEDs or rocket-propelled grenades capable of penetrating armor, the official said.

U.S. defense officials insisted that many more U.S. troops would be killed and injured in Afghanistan and in Iraq if they'd been equipped with vehicles other than MRAPs.

"KIA (killed in action) rates in particular are noticeably reduced in MRAPs," said Irene Smith, a spokeswoman for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, the Pentagon agency created to develop defenses against roadside bombs.

U.S. defense officials in Washington and Kabul declined to reveal the number of MRAPs that have been crippled or destroyed since the first vehicles were deployed in Afghanistan in 2003, saying they didn't want to provide the Taliban with information on the effectiveness of their tactics.

McClatchy is voluntarily withholding some U.S. soldiers' descriptions of insurgent tactics out of concern that they may not be known by all of those fighting U.S.-led forces.

The soldiers spoke out of what they said was a heightened concern about the vehicles' vulnerability to ambushes, especially on mountain roads where there's no room for the vehicles to turn around.





 

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Obama leaning toward 34,000 more troops for Afghanistan

By Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m59835&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

As it now stands, the administration's plan calls for sending three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. and a Marine brigade, for a total of as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

Another 7,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the international force's Regional Command (RC) South in Kandahar, the Taliban birthplace where the U.S. is due to take command in 2010. Some 4,000 additional U.S. trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said.

The first additional combat brigade probably would arrive in Afghanistan next March, the officials said, with the other three following at roughly three-month intervals, meaning that all the additional U.S. troops probably wouldn't be deployed until the end of next year. Army brigades number 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers; a Marine brigade has about 8,000 troops.

The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.

It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-risk" one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-risk" one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

The officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss internal administration planning, cautioned that Obama's decision isn't final, and won't be until after administration officials discuss it with the NATO allies at a Nov. 23 meeting of the alliance's North Atlantic Council and its Military Committee.

Coalition forces now include 67,000 U.S. and 42,000 troops from other countries. The Army's counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.

Although the administration privately is holding out little hope of persuading Canada or the Netherlands to abandon their plans to withdraw combat troops, much less getting additional allied troops, it wants to avoid creating the impression — at home and abroad — that the U.S. "is going it alone" in Afghanistan, said one military official.

In an interview last week with The New York Times, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner complained that the American administration is leaving its NATO allies in the dark about its new strategy.

"What is the goal? What is the road? And in the name of what?" Kouchner asked, according to the Times. "Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem . . . . We need to talk to each other as allies."

The officials said that Obama also wants to complete his Nov. 11-19 Asia trip and a state visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, the arch foe of Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, before he announces his Afghanistan plan.

Administration officials also want time to launch a public relations offensive to convince an increasingly skeptical public and a wary Democratic Congress — which must agree to fund the administration's plan — that the war, now in its ninth year and inflicting rising casualties, is one of "necessity," as Obama said earlier this year.

"This is not going to be an easy sell, especially with the fight over health care and the (Democratic) party's losses" of the governors' mansions in New Jersey and Virginia last week, said one official.

Generating public, congressional and international support for a troop increase will require heavy pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to crack down on endemic corruption and drug trafficking, surrender more power to provincial and local governments and improve public services, the officials said. Karzai won a second term last week when his first-round election opponent bowed out of a run-off.

"Another reason for the president to hold off for a bit on ordering more troops to Afghanistan is that we can tell Karzai that if he doesn't act firmly now, there won't be any support for a troop increase," said one official. "That has the added advantage of being true, and it's easier to hold off on sending more troops than it is to threaten to pull them out once they're there."

U.S. allies already have begun applying pressure. On Thursday, Kouchner called Karzai "corrupt," and the next day, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that if Karzai's government didn't attack corruption, international support against the Taliban-led insurgency would evaporate.

"Sadly, the government of Afghanistan had become a byword for corruption," Brown said in a speech. "And I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption."

As McClatchy reported last week, the Obama administration has been quietly working with U.S. allies and Afghan officials on an "Afghanistan Compact," a package of reforms and anti-corruption measures that it hopes will boost popular support for Karzai and erase the doubts about his legitimacy raised by his fraud-tainted re-election.

The officials said that as of Friday, when Obama's top military advisers met for at least the seventh time to discuss the strategy in Afghanistan, the president had spent nearly 20 hours in meetings on Afghanistan. The planned troop increase may be his best hope to balance the competing political, economic and international pressures his administration is feeling.

Republicans have pressed for a decision, and many at the Pentagon and in conservative political circles argue that Obama, who has little experience in military affairs, should back his commander and send him whatever troops he's requested. The president, they note, called McChrystal the best general the military had to tackle Afghanistan when he appointed him to his post last summer.

Other military officers, particularly in the Army, warn that committing more troops to Afghanistan could risk "breaking" the force by reducing the time soldiers can spend at home between deployments, overtaxing equipment and destroying families. Those problems could worsen if Iraq's January elections are delayed or disrupted, and with them the administration's timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from that country.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, are urging Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan. Some in his own administration, notably Vice President Joe Biden, aren't convinced that more troops would guarantee success and advocate instead more drone attacks and more training for Afghan forces.

Training Afghan troops, police and border guards, however, is proving to be a slow and frustrating process, hampered by corruption, illiteracy, ethnic rivalries and logistical problems, and carried out in the shadow of doubts about what kind of government the troops are serving.

Finally, Obama must reckon with domestic economic pressures. The unemployment rate reached 10.2 percent in October, the highest since 1983, and there are growing fears that changes in the nation's health care system could send the federal budget deficit even higher.

Obama campaigned saying that he'd fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the defense budget, but Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the Afghan war — which some administration officials privately concede could cost $700 billion to $1 trillion — might require a supplemental funding bill next year. Among the cost estimates the Pentagon is considering is $1 trillion over 10 years, two senior defense officials told McClatchy.

Because of these pressures, it's become "highly likely that the administration would send more troops," said Paul Pillar, the director of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University. "Then it is a matter of degree," particularly given the struggling U.S. economy.

For all the debate and deliberation, however, the proposed new deployments still may not answer the fundamental question about Afghanistan, Pillar said: Would a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan pose a threat to the United States?




 

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Afghan officials say NATO airstrike killed soldiers, civilians

By Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m59831&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 7, 2009

KABUL -- Afghan officials said Saturday that a NATO airstrike inadvertently killed several Afghan soldiers and policemen a day earlier in northwestern Afghanistan.

The strike took place amid fighting in Badghis province as Afghan and U.S. troops were searching for two American paratroopers who disappeared in the area Wednesday.

According to the U.S. military, soldiers on the search operation came under an attack that killed four Afghan soldiers and two policemen, and wounded five American soldiers and 17 Afghan security forces.

But Afghan officials attributed the casualties to a NATO airstrike that hit in or around a coalition base in the area. The district's mayor, Abdul Shukor, put the death toll of the airstrike at 20 -- six Afghan soldiers, two policemen, and 12 civilians. Shukor described the area of the bombing as a military checkpoint near a warehouse.

A NATO statement said authorities were investigating whether "close air support" caused some of the casualties. A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said earlier Saturday that the casualties resulted from a "hostile engagement, not an accident." He said he had no reports of civilian casualties in the area.

The Taliban said earlier that it had found the drowned bodies of the two soldiers, but U.S. officials did not confirm they had died. A parliament member from Badghis, Amir Tawakal, said the soldiers drowned while they were fishing.

Vician said he did not know whether the two 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers were on foot or in their vehicles when they disappeared, but that he believed they were part of a larger group of soldiers.




 

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Weekend Edition
November 6-8, 2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau11062009.html

The Afghan Trap

A War Without Logic


By SAUL LANDAU

“All we have to do is send two mujahedeen [warriors] to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth saying ‘al-Qa'ida’ in order to make generals race there, and we cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses – without their achieving anything of note!”

--Osama bin Laden, November 1, 2004, CNN

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan,…but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

--Former Foreign Service officer and Marine Captain Matthew Hoh, Washington Post, October 27, 2009

President Obama can leave, reduce, maintain or increase troop strength. Escalation proponents omit Bush’s original mission: to get bin Laden. Then he talked himself into war in Iraq and forgot bin Laden.

Max Boot banged war drums then. Now he wants more war in Afghanistan. Boot wants to escalate because “Afghanistan’s corruption problem, like its security problem, can be best addressed by additional troops.” Marines bayoneting corruption in Kabul?

“Only by sending more personnel, military and civilian,” he concludes, “can President Obama improve the Afghan government’s performance, reverse the Taliban’s gains and prevent Al Qaeda’s allies from regaining the ground they lost after 9/11.” (NY Times, Oct. 21, 2009) Wow! How about using the Air Force to fight global warming?

Boot omits the original Bush myths justifying invading Afghanistan. The Taliban government did house al-Qaida’s training camps, as Bush claimed, and Al-Qaida operatives perpetrated the 9/11 deeds. But these facts did not relate to the actual 9/11 deeds. Bush’s impulse to make war in Afghanistan quickly turned to actual zeal in March 2003. Iraq became his focus of the terror war. Most Tallies had escaped to the safety of neighboring Pakistan – a loyal U.S. ally.

The 9/11 fanatics, however, conspired in apartments in Germany and used U.S. flight schools to learn how to steer large aircraft into larger buildings. Box cutters cut throats as well as cardboard. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were Saudis; no Afghanis. Jihadists later hit Spain, France and England, their countries of residence. The July 7, 2005, bombers of the British public transportation system learned their “skills” on the web, not in Afghan training camps.

By 2009, no more that 100 suicidal jihadists remained in Afghanistan, according to National Security Advisor General Jim Jones. “As we disrupt [al-Qa’ida], they will seek other safe havens,” explained CIA Chief Leon Panetta. “Somalia and Yemen are potential al-Qa’ida bases in the future.” Imagine the headlines: “U.S. troops to Somalia and Yemen; deficit mushrooms.”

Boot and other escalation advocates equate Afghan Taliban fighters with al-Qaida. A U.S. intelligence study, however, concluded that 90 per cent of the Taliban belong to “a tribal insurgency.” “Their opposition derives from the U.S. ‘as an occupying power’,” wrote Bryan Bender. According tothe intelligence report, the Afghan Tallies have no cross-border ambitions. (Boston Globe October 9, 2009)

Those proposing escalation on human rights grounds have invented their own Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the CIA paid warlords to fight the Soviets – because they represented Western culture. Some of these brutes now support President Karzai, who turned election fraud into comic opera. Karzai’s brother, a suspected narcotrafficker, is reported to be on the CIA payroll (NY Times, Oct 28). Do we commit to such “democratic” allies in Kabul?

More humanitarian aid -- schools and hospitals -- at a time when the U.S. can’t take care of its own needs? Such incongruities inspired Nick Meo: “trying to defeat al-Qa'ida with hundreds of thousands of occupying troops and Predator jets is like trying to treat cancer with a blowtorch.” (Telegraph, Oct. 18, 2009)

After eight years of war, bin Laden remains free. Drones have killed supposed chiefs and number twos along with countless innocents. Their deaths dramatize the obvious downside of occupying armies.

Since 1945, the U.S. armed forces have failed to prevail in conflicts where locals resist. Washington gossip indicates Obama leaning toward advice from NY Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

“A strong, healthy and self-confident America,” wrote Friedman, “holds the world together and on a decent path. A weak America would be a disaster for us and the world.”

He despairs over the U.S. military’s projection “that stabilizing Afghanistan and removing it as a threat requires rebuilding that whole country… a 20-year project at best, and we can’t afford it.” Friedman understands that “nation-building at home” does not coincide with the $4 billion a month Afghan cost -- $1.3 million per soldier. (Congressional Research Service, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23808.htm#)

Friedman doesn’t follow his own logic and advise Obama to “quit.” Instead, he proposes “shrinking down in Afghanistan.” This “will create new threats, but expanding there will, too. I’d rather deal with the new threats with a stronger America.” (NY Times, October 28) The cojones problem again?

Saul Landau won Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins award for human rights. Counterpunch published his A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD. He is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose films on DVD are available. (roundworldproductions@gmail.com)

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Pentagon Pouring Your Money Into Afghanistan:
Are They Preparing for a Very Long War?

Forget the "debates" in Washington over Afghan War policy. Construction activity and the flow of money suggests that the Pentagon plans to be there for a long, long time.

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on November 9, 2009, Printed on November 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143819/

In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year's Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was "the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s." At the same time, another much less publicized U.S.-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.

While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year -- ranging from small-scale power plants to "public latrines" to a meat market -- the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.

In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the U.S. Army alone awarded $2.2 billion -- $834 million of it for construction projects. In fact, according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent "roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years" in that country and, "if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation."

Bogged Down at Bagram

Nowhere has the building boom been more apparent than Bagram Air Base, a key military site used by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. In its American incarnation, the base has significantly expanded from its old Soviet days and, in just the last two years, the population of the more than 5,000 acre compound has doubled to 20,000 troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors. To keep up with its exponential growth rate, more than $200 million in construction projects are planned or in-progress at this moment on just the Air Force section of the base. "Seven days a week, concrete trucks rumble along the dusty perimeter road of this air base as bulldozers and backhoes reshape the rocky earth," Chuck Crumbo of The State reported recently. "Hundreds of laborers slap mortar onto bricks as they build barracks and offices. Four concrete plants on the base have operated around the clock for 18 months to keep up with the construction needs."

The base already boasts fast food favorites Burger King, a combination Pizza Hut/Bojangles, and Popeyes as well as a day spa and shops selling jewelry, cell phones and, of course, Afghan rugs. In the near future, notes Pincus, "the military is planning to build a $30 million passenger terminal and adjacent cargo facility to handle the flow of troops, many of whom arrive at the base north of Kabul before moving on to other sites." In addition, according to the Associated Press, the base command is "acquiring more land next year on the east side to expand" even further.

To handle the influx of troops already being dispatched by the Obama administration (with more expected once the president decides on his long-term war plans) "new dormitories" are going up at Bagram, according to David Axe of the Washington Times. The base's population will also increase in the near future, thanks to a project-in-progress recently profiled in The Freedom Builder, an Army Corps of Engineers publication: the MILCON Bagram Theatre Internment Facility (TIF) currently being built at a cost of $60 million by a team of more than 1,000 Filipinos, Indians, Sri Lankans, and Afghans. When completed, it will consist of 19 buildings and 16 guard towers designed to hold more than 1,000 detainees on the sprawling base which has long been notorious for the torture and even murder of prisoners within its confines.

While the United States officially insists that it is not setting up permanent bases in Afghanistan, the scale and permanency of the construction underway at Bagram seems to suggest, at the least, a very long stay. According to published reports, in fact, the new terminal facilities for the complex aren't even slated to be operational until 2011.

One of the private companies involved in hardening and building up Bagram's facilities is Contrack International, an international engineering and construction firm which, according to U.S. government records, received more than $120 million in contracts in 2009 for work in Afghanistan. According to Contrack's website, it is, among other things, currently designing and constructing a new "entry control point" -- a fortified entrance -- as well as a new "ammunition supply point" facility at the base. It is also responsible for "the design and construction of taxiways and aprons; airfield lighting and navigation aid improvements; and new apron construction" for the base's massive and expanding air operations infrastructure. The building boom at Bagram (which has received at least a modest amount of attention in the American mainstream press) is, however, just a fraction of the story of the way the U.S. military -- and Contrack International -- are digging in throughout Afghanistan.

Rave Reviews for Kandahar

In March, according to Pentagon documents, Contrack was awarded a $23 million contract for "the design and construction of [an] Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance ramp, Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan." Last year, in the Washington Post, Pincus reported that a planned expansion at the airfield, also once used by the Soviets and now a major U.S. and NATO base, was to accommodate aircraft working for a Task Force ODIN -- an Afghanistan-based version of the Army unit which used drones and helicopters to target insurgents planting IEDs in Iraq. Today, Task Force ODIN-Afghanistan -- the acronym stands for "observe, detect, identify and neutralize," with a nod to the chief Norse god -- is up and running, and still reportedly piloted out of "Bagram in one of two small, nondescript ground control stations." Whether ODIN aircraft are also operating out of Kandahar Airfield is -- like so much information about the U.S. military in Afghanistan -- unclear. Certainly, though, many more NATO and U.S. aircraft will be flying out of the base once Contrack, as it notes on its website, completes its "[d]esign and construction of replacement runways with asphalt and touch down areas with concrete pavement" and "rehabilitation of 6 existing taxiways," among other projects.

Contrack's Kandahar contract is set to be fulfilled by late December, but like Bagram, the base already gives every appearance of permanence. "It's one of the busiest single runways in the world," Captain Max Hanlin from the 2nd U.S. Army Division's 5th Stryker Brigade told Agence France-Presse recently. Originally built to house 12,000 troops, Kandahar Air Base now supports 30,000 or more NATO and U.S. personnel. Some do battle in the inhospitable terrain of the surrounding region, while others have never been outside the wire and wile away their time in the base's cafes and small shops (where troops reportedly can buy, among other items, belly dancer costumes), party in the "Dutch corner," play roller hockey in the base's central square, or dance the night away at a Saturday rave. "They are shaking glowsticks as if they have no concept of the mines and the war outside," said one U.S. officer, watching troops on the dance floor.

In recent days, U.S. forces announced a decrease in recreational perks and an imposition of more austere circumstances -- salsa and karaoke nights have already been cut at Kandahar -- prompting worries by NATO allies that their recreational facilities will be overrun by entertainment-starved U.S. troops.

A Mob of FOBs

It seems that no one outside the Pentagon knows just exactly how many U.S. camps, forward operating bases, combat outposts, patrol bases and other fortified sites the U.S. military is currently using or constructing in Afghanistan. And while the Americans have recently abandoned a few of their installations, effectively ceding the northeastern province of Nuristan to Taliban forces, elsewhere a base-building boom has been underway.

In April, Contrack was awarded another $28 million contract for work on airfields -- to be performed at unspecified sites in Afghanistan. In June, Florida-based IAP Worldwide Services was awarded a $21 million contract to enhance electrical power distribution at the U.S. Marines' still-growing Forward Operating Base (FOB) Leatherneck in Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold. Scheduled for completion in June 2010, that project is only part of IAP's work, which has involved "almost two dozen power plants at U.S. Army bases in Afghanistan and Iraq" that, according to the company's promotional literature, its teams have "delivered, installed, operated and maintained."

FOB Dwyer, also in Helmand Province, is fast becoming a "hub" for air support in southern Afghanistan, according to Captain Vincent Rea of the Air Force's 809th Expeditionary Red Horse Squadron. To that end, Marine Corps and Air Force personnel are building runways and helipads to accommodate ever more fixed-wing and rotary aircraft on the base. The two services collaborated on the construction of a 4,300-foot airstrip capable of accommodating giant C-130 Hercules transport aircraft that increase the U.S. capability to support more troops on more bases in more remote areas.

"With the C-130s coming in more frequently, more Marines can travel at a given time and will definitely help Camp Dwyer and other FOBs and COPs (Combat Outposts) to build up," says Capt. Alexander Lugo-Velazquez of Marine Light/Attack Helicopter Squadron 169. In September, the Air Force reported the completion of the first phase of a six-phase construction project at FOB Dwyer which will eventually include additional fuel pits and taxiways, increased tarmac space, and the lengthening of the runway to 6,000 feet. In October, according to government documents, the Army also began soliciting bids -- in the $10-$25 million range -- for construction of fuel storage and distribution facilities at FOB Dwyer. These, like the infrastructure upgrades at Bagram, are not scheduled to be completed until sometime in 2011.

In Helmand, as well as Farah, Kandahar, and Nimruz provinces, between June and September the Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan alone established four new forward operating bases, "10 combat outposts, six patrol bases, and four ancillary operating positions, helicopter landing zones and an expeditionary airfield." In October, defense contractor AECOM Technology signed a $78 million, 6-month extension contract with the Army to "provide general-support maintenance as well as the operation of maintenance facilities, living quarters and offices at two U.S. military bases as well as forward operating bases and satellite locations" in Afghanistan.

Defense contracting giant Fluor has also been hard at work landing lucrative deals in Afghanistan. In March, the Army reported that, in accordance with President Obama's spring surge of troops, Regional Command East in Afghanistan had tasked Fluor to expand four existing forward operating bases and, if need be, build another eight new ones.

In Regional Command South, it was reported that "[e]mergency work to expand eight FOBs [wa]s underway after being competitively awarded to Fluor under LOGCAP IV." This is the current version of a military program first instituted by the Pentagon in 1985. It has been the key means by which military logistics and supply functions have been turned over to private contractors. (The previous version of the program, LOGCAP III, was awarded solely to Kellogg, Brown and Root Services or KBR, then a division of the oil services giant Halliburton, primarily in support of U.S. operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait and was plagued by scandals.)

In Afghanistan, companies like Fluor are clearly digging in. Fluor, in fact,describes itself as "co-located with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, where the team coordinates, provides oversight, and implements Fluor's execution plan to provide the necessary resources and labor to accomplish this mission" of "providing multi-functional base life support and combat services support (CSS) to the U.S. and Coalition Forces in Afghanistan."

The company is "simultaneously constructing and managing the expansion of eight Forward Operating Bases[...] in Southern Afghanistan. This includes the construction of an FOB to accommodate 17,000 to 20,000 U.S. Military personnel." Fluor, no doubt, expects to be "co-located with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan" for a long time. In July 2009, the defense giant was awarded a $1.5 billion contract for LOGCAP IV services in Afghanistan; in October, the Army reported that the LOGCAP program was responsible for erecting 6,020 units of containerized housing known as relocatable buildings or RLBs in Regional Command South.

In July, under an existing LOGCAP IV contract, scandal-tainted defense contractor DynCorp International, along with partners CH2M Hill and Taos Industries, received a one year $643.5 million order to "provide existing bases within the Afghanistan South AOR [area of responsibility] with operations and maintenance support, including but not limited to: facilities management, electrical power, water, sewage and waste management, laundry operations, food services and transportation motor pool operations," as well as "construction services for additional sites." With an eye to the future, the Pentagon has included four one-year options in the contract which, if taken up, would be worth an estimated $5.8 billion.

Just recently, the Australian military indicated it was also digging in for a long stay, announcing a $37 million upgrade of its main base near Tarin Kowt in Oruzgan province, to be completed by mid-2011. As at other NATO facilities, increasing numbers of U.S. troops have been operating out of Tarin Kowt recently and, in late September, the U.S.-based company Kandahar Constructors signed a $25 million deal with the Pentagon for runway upgrades there, also to be completed in 2011.

Speaking the Language of Occupation

In 2009 alone, after many billions of dollars had already gone into the construction, expansion, and maintenance of U.S. bases in Afghanistan, American taxpayers were called upon to pay for more than $1 billion in construction contracts -- and based on the evidence at hand, including those future options, this may prove just a drop in the proverbial bucket.

All of this has been happening without a clear plan laid out in Washington for the future of U.S. military operations in that country, without a legitimate national government in Kabul, and of course with no shortage of infrastructural repairs needed at home. Americans curious to know much of anything about the Pentagon's Afghan building boom beyond Bagram would have found little on the nightly news or in major newspapers. It has essentially been carried out in the dark, far away, and with only the most modest reportorial interest.

Forget for a moment the "debates" in Washington over Afghan War policy and, if you just focus on the construction activity and the flow of money into Afghanistan, what you see is a war that, from the point of view of the Pentagon, isn't going to end any time soon. In fact, the U.S. military's building boom in that country suggests that, in the ninth year of the Afghan War, the Pentagon has plans for a far longer-term, if not near-permanent, garrisoning of the country, no matter what course Washington may decide upon. Alternatively, it suggests that the Pentagon is willing to waste taxpayer money (which might have shored up sagging infrastructure in the U.S. and created a plethora of jobs) on what will sooner or later be abandoned runways, landing zones and forward operating bases.

The building and fortifying of bases in Afghanistan isn't the only sign that the U.S. military is digging in for an even longer haul. Another key indicator can be found in a Pentagon contract awarded in late September to SOS International, Ltd., a privately owned "operations support company" that provides everything from "cultural advisory services" to "intelligence and counterintelligence analysis and training" to numerous federal agencies. That contract, primarily for linguistic services in support of military operations in Afghanistan, has an estimated completion date of September 2014.

 


Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

© 2009 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143819/

[bigron]

Obama will send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan


By Patrick Martin

                                 

WSWS, November 9, 2009

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59874&hd=&size=1&l=e

According to US press reports Sunday, President Barack Obama has decided to send tens of thousands of additional US troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to suppress growing popular resistance to foreign occupation.

The New York Times reported Sunday on its web site that the White House had narrowed its options in Afghanistan to three—all involving troop increases of 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000 respectively. The plans for escalating the war have come in response to the urgent request by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan.

Citing "administration and military officials," McClatchy Newspapers reported Saturday night, that Obama has already settled on 34,000 troops, but was waiting to announce it until after briefing the other governments participating in the NATO occupation and completing a trip to Asia, now set for November 11-19.

McClatchy identified the new military units to be deployed in Afghanistan as including three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and the 10th Mountain Division, at Fort Drum, New York, and a Marine brigade. These forces, comprising 23,000 soldiers, would serve in combat and support roles. Another 7,000 troops would establish a new division headquarters in Kandahar, where the US is to take command of all NATO and allied forces in a Regional Command (South). Another 4,000 military trainers would likely be sent as well. The details could still change, officials told McClatchy, and would not be finalized until a NATO meeting November 23.

Two top military officers indirectly confirmed the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Washington audience Wednesday that the administration would request a supplemental funding bill to meet the cost of the additional troops, with Pentagon officials giving a ballpark estimate of $50 billion. The regular Pentagon appropriations bill, signed by Obama at the end of last month, already allots $130 billion to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

General George Casey, the Army chief of staff, called for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the course of a series of interviews on Sunday morning television talk shows. He was brought on to the programs to respond to questions about the killing of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas by an Army major apparently upset over an impending deployment to the Afghanistan war.

"I believe that we need to put additional forces into Afghanistan to give General McChrystal the ability to both dampen the successes of the Taliban while we train the Afghan civilian forces," he said on the NBC program "Meet the Press." On the CNN program "State of the Union," Casey disputed suggestions that a major escalation in Afghanistan would overstrain the military, pointing to increased military recruitment in the past two years. "Since 2007, we have added 40,000 soldiers to the active force, which is a significant step forward," he said.

According to the New York Times account, Obama is leaning toward the proposal to send 30,000 troops because it is backed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates: "His view is thought to be pivotal because of Mr. Obama’s respect for him and his status as a holdover from a Republican administration."

This speaks volumes about the real constituency of the Obama administration. Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination in large measure because of his public posture as the major candidate most opposed to the Bush administration’s war policies. His election was fueled by an outpouring of antiwar sentiment, particularly among young people. But in this critical decision, it is the military brass and Bush administration holdovers, not the American people, who are driving White House decision-making.

The US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan were not carried out to defend the American people or to punish those who carried out the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—contrary to the propaganda of the Bush administration, the Democratic Party, the Pentagon and the US media. Afghanistan was targeted long before 9/11, as part of the drive by American imperialism to assert its predatory interest in the oil riches of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

The reactionary character of the war is demonstrated in the daily atrocities in which US and NATO soldiers slaughter the people they are supposedly in Afghanistan to "liberate." The latest such incidents took place on Wednesday and Saturday of the past week.

On Wednesday, a rocket strike by the International Security Assistance Force (the official name of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan) killed at least nine civilians, including three children, in Helmand province, scene of some of the heaviest resistance to the US occupation regime.

The next day, dozens of angry villagers brought some of the bodies to the governor’s office in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. The protesters were dispersed by policemen firing into the air. US officials issued their standard declaration that only "Taliban militants" had been hit, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office condemned "the attack on civilians."

In a separate incident in the same time period, an overnight air raid killed a resident of Baramkhil village in Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan. Several hundred people demonstrated the next day in protest, claiming the victim was an innocent civilian.

On Saturday, another reckless bombing raid took a toll among civilians, soldiers and policemen of Karzai’s puppet regime, and even US troops. In the course of a massive mobilization of American and Afghan forces searching for two US Green Beret paratroopers, missing in northwestern Baghdis province since Wednesday, a NATO warplane hit the search operations center.

The US military confirmed six Afghan policemen and soldiers were killed, and five American and 17 Afghan soldiers wounded. The district mayor gave a higher death toll, including two more Afghan soldiers and 12 civilians.

Meanwhile two more British soldiers were killed in Helmand province, bringing total British losses this week to nine, including five soldiers killed in one incident when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them while they were resting at a joint British-Afghan base camp.

The Sunday Times of London reported that British army chiefs were drawing up plans to pull British troops back from a series of outlying bases in Helmand province, abandoning towns captured from the Taliban forces in bloody fighting last year and the year before. This would include the town of Musa Qala, where 15 British soldiers were killed in fighting in 2007.

A senior British commander told the newspaper: "The new strategy will have to be handled sensitively. But we can’t do everything, everywhere. We must concentrate our efforts in a few geographical areas. We have to select specific areas to hold and then do the job properly."

According to the Times account: "Military chiefs are concerned that Musa Qala, with a population of less than 20,000, ties up several hundred British soldiers, who have to be supplied by scarce helicopters or risky land convoys."

One unstated concern is that the overrunning of any sizeable number of troops in such an isolated town could make continuation of the war politically impossible. Popular sentiment in Britain has turned sharply against the war, with the latest BBC poll showing 64 percent of the public feel that the war is "unwinnable", up from 58 percent in July.



 

[bigron]

Vietnam replay: A war that can’t be won

by William P Polk, Le Monde diplomatique
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59868&hd=&size=1&l=e



The US-Nato presence in Afghanistan, and its chosen government there, exactly replicate the situation in Vietnam in the early 1960s. 
And, betting on same percentages that prevailed in Vietnam, the US can only lose more money, men and, in the end, the conflict

November 8, 2009

The documentary Combat Patrols Afghanistan, made by Bing West, who was embedded with US soldiers, has a message popular among Americans: "More senior-level attention must be paid to inflicting severe enemy losses in firefights and to arresting the Taliban, so that their morale and networks are broken... [We] need also to design concepts that bring more lethality to the ground battlefield" (1). Like US policy on Afghanistan, the film neglects the country and its people. The Taliban, anchored in a venerated religion (a primitive Islam) and a social/cultural code, are the only effective political-military organisation in the eyes of the majority Pashtun population. To fight the Taliban is to fight all Afghans, a fight we cannot win.

When I first went to Afghanistan in 1962 to write a US National Policy paper, I imagined a rocky hill, deeply gullied, on which were scattered 20,000 ping-pong balls, representing autonomous village-states. These communities were united with others by religion and custom but ran their own affairs and were mostly self-sufficient. The Russians found, after the invasion of 1979 and a decade of fighting with the loss of 15,000troops, that they could smash many of these villages and chase away thousands of people, but they could never win the war. Even with their large forces and victory in most battles, they never controlled more than 20% of the country. By the time they pulled out in 1989, the war against the mujahideen had almost destroyed the Soviet Union.

The British led the way here, fighting wars with the Afghans in 1842, 1878-80 and 1919, losing about as many English and British Indian soldiers as the Russians, before giving up. Zamir N Kabulov, who spent 30 years in Kabul as ambassador for the Soviet Union, then Russia, notes that the Americans have repeated all the Russian mistakes and are making new ones. The US is trying to smash the Taliban without incurring many American casualties, to split the Taliban leadership and break their links with the Afghan people, and work through a US-chosen native government of its choice.

'All failed dismally’

These tactics invite comparison with Vietnam, where the US tried and failed to split the (communist) Viet Minh leadership and attempted to find, and deal through, moderates who would turn against hardliners. The US made enormous efforts to sever relations between the Viet Minh and the people, regrouped into strategic hamlets (2). And the US worked through its choice of native government. In fact the US had a greater chance of success in Vietnam than it does in Afghanistan because the ideology of communism was foreign to many Vietnamese, whereas Islam and the cultural code are widely shared in Afghanistan.

According to the most extensive official account of the Vietnam war, The Pentagon Papers (3): "The attempt to translate the newly articulated theory of counterinsurgency into operational reality [through] a mixture of military, social, psychological, economic and political measures [was] marked by consistency in results as well as in techniques: all failed dismally." General David Petraeus has reinvented that policy and General Stanley McChrystal is trying to implement it.

As a member of the Policy Planning Council, I gave a talk to the US National War College in 1963 predicting that we would lose the war in Vietnam. I divided the challenge into political, administrative and military, and assigned to each a percentage of importance. I then put those categories in a historical perspective. The political component accounted for about 80%, and had been won by the Viet Minh by the late 1940s. As President Eisenhower observed, Ho Chi Minh could have won a free election even in the South. To the administration I assigned 15%: by the end of the 1950s the Viet Minh had destroyed the administration of the South, killing many officials, policemen, teachers and even doctors, so no taxes could be collected, no messages delivered, no services provided, and no movement made, even by South Vietnamese soldiers after dark. The remaining 5%, the military engagement, was what we fought over for the next decade; and neither counterinsurgency nor large-scale combat had any real effect.

In Afghanistan, the US-led coalition can exercise little if any influence on the politics or culture of the country. The Afghans hate foreign intrusion, always have done. On administration, the US has drawn up a list (as Congress required) of checkpoints of our success: they are few and ephemeral. As soon as our troops pull out, the Taliban, like the Viet Minh, will overturn what has been created.

Everything is for sale

Richard Oppel Jr, in The New York Times of 23 August 2009, described Khan Neshin province. Its governor told him he had "no body of advisers to help run the area, no doctors to provide healthcare, no teachers, no professionals to do much of anything. About all he does have are police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation’". It may be better in some other areas, but it is certainly worse elsewhere. Nation-building in Afghanistan is worth, at best, 8% — half of my estimate for Vietnam.

So that leaves the US military intervention: with superior firepower, the US will win all the significant engagements. But the insurgents will fade only to return. So let us estimate the military effort at a generous 3%, which makes the odds against a US victory about 10 to one.

The people hated and feared the former South Vietnam government, as they do the current Afghan one. The corruption of the South Vietnamese government was monumental. Officials stole aid money and food given to their people; and they sold to the enemy Viet Minh equipment and arms given as war matériel by the US. They left the dangerous jobs to the US. A Marine Corps colonel in the interagency task force I then headed told me that when the South Vietnamese army learned of US plans, Marines were certain to be ambushed.

In Afghanistan, the government we condoned and effectively installed is involved in the drug traffic, sells offices in the police, army and civil service, decides law cases by the size of bribes, steals everything its officials touch, and has been caught selling ammunition to the Taliban. Everything is for sale. The re-election of Hamid Karzai was not a travesty; it was a joke. The result was announced before the votes were counted. And the Karzai government has almost no effect outside of central Kabul. US troops find that Afghan soldiers keep as far out of danger as possible; many go over to the Taliban. As in Vietnam, the US’s opponents, helped by the local population, "own the night".

What is different from Vietnam is the presence in Afghanistan of the warlords, hated and feared, who almost control the government. Karzai had to call back the notorious Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum (4) to "win" his election and now has made him effective co-ruler. These warlords, associated in the public mind with the US, are the Taliban’s greatest asset.

President Obama says we must win. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates says we must stay there "a few years" (the senior British general, Sir David Richards, says 40). The Spaniards, Canadians, Germans and Norwegians are reconsidering. My calculation, based on the Iraq campaign, is that the Afghan war will cost the US economy between $3 and $6 trillion, more than 25% of US GDP, making most of Obama’s domestic plans impossible.

Politically fatal

Afghanistan is on the way to being as politically fatal to Obama as Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson. Despite this, Obama has decided to stay the course, proclaiming that Afghanistan is the fountainhead of terrorism. Terrorists based there will attack the US. This is wrong. Terrorism will be promoted rather than contained by military action in Afghanistan (especially as attacks have spilled over into Pakistan, Somalia and Iraq). More "boots on the ground" means increased danger. Terrorists do not need Afghanistan, remote and poorly served by communications and transport: the 9/11 attackers were based in Europe, and future terrorists could attack from anywhere. "Winning" in Afghanistan would incite them.

Despite the US’s long experience with terrorism, back to its own revolution, it has not understood its nature and cause: terrorism is the weapon of the weak to be used when it is the only means to redress "wrongs". This story has been repeated over the past two centuries in South America, Ireland, Spain, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, France, Palestine, Turkey, South Africa, Kenya, India, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, China and Russia. When we approve of the terrorists’ aims we call them freedom fighters, but the difference is in our attitude toward their objectives, not their means of action.

We also confuse the Taliban and al-Qaida, yet they are very different: the Taliban form a national political organisation, a government in internal exile, based on the traditional leadership and the largest community in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida is a loose amalgam of people from all over the world who act on their own; it is not an organisation and lacks central command. Osama bin Laden is not a general but a guru. The issues vary but, in general, they arise from the ragged, violent heritage of (mostly but not entirely western) imperialism.

The use of force could prove dangerous to US society and to its political and legal system. Prudence dictates maintaining the fine line that divides the desire for security from tyranny. Forty years of warfare in Afghanistan, as the neocons advocate and the generals predict, will probably not defeat the enemy but could destroy what the US most cherishes. Washington needs to base its defence policy on some simple principles: create a long-term policy that addresses issues that empower terrorists; search for a compromise that will open the path toward national reconciliation in Afghanistan, on the basis of Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo. And beware of the instant experts who provide Obama with winning formulas that always fail.

William P Polk is a former member of the Policy Planning Council, a professor of history at Chicago University and president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He is author of Violent Politics. A History of Insurgency, Terrorism & Guerrilla War: From the American Revolution to Iraq (Harper, New York, 2008) and Understanding Iran (Macmillan, New York, 2009)

(1) "Close-in Firefight Afghanistan July 09" (video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN2Qk2Tbzo8).

(2) This programme, devised by the US and South Vietnam in 1961, aimed to fight insurrection through population transfers.

(3) Their full, official title is "United States-Vietnam relations, 1945-67: A Study prepared by the Department of Defence".

(4) Dostum is accused of allowing thousands of Taliban, imprisoned in 2001 in the north of the country, to be murdered when their rule was overturned.


Source: http://mondediplo.com/2009/11/03vietnam




 

[bigron]

Britons not convinced Afghan war can be won - Stirrup


Reuters

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59851&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 9, 2009

LONDON (Reuters) - Britons are not convinced the war in Afghanistan can be won, Britain's chief of defence staff said on Sunday, as two new polls showed support for the war was dwindling.

"People remain to be convinced about whether or not this is doable," Jock Stirrup, told the BBC.

His comments came as the defence ministry announced the 231st British military death since fighting began in 2001, the eighth in the last week.

"We have not done a sufficiently good job in answering three basic questions," he said.

"Is it important enough to us as a country, to our security, to justify the price that our people are paying? ... is it physically doable? ... and are we doing it properly?"

Two polls published on Remembrance Sunday showed public support for the war has fallen, a blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has this week sought to bolster backing at home to keep British troops in Afghanistan.

Continuing loss of British lives in Afghanistan could damage Brown's Labour Party in an election he must call by next June and which the opposition Conservatives are favourites to win.

A ComRes poll for the BBC found 64 percent of Britons now believe the war is "unwinnable", up from 58 percent in July, while two-fifths of people said they did not know why British forces were in Afghanistan.

More than half agreed that corruption in Afghanistan's government meant the war was "not worth fighting for".

Stirrup said the troops were not there to defend the Afghan government, reiterating Brown's comments earlier this week that British troops were there to protect Britain from terrorism.

"We are there to hold the security ring so that political solutions can be delivered, but we are only holding the security ring until the Afghans are capable of doing it themselves."

He said he thought the estimates of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, that the Afghan national army would be able to take over security by 2013 were "optimistic", and said 2014 was likely.

A YouGov poll for Sky news found that support for the war had dropped to 21 percent, from 28 percent in August, while 63 percent said British troops should not be in Afghanistan, up from 57 percent three months ago.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Louise Ireland)





 

[bigron]

South Asia
Nov 10, 2009 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK10Df01.html
 
'Cronies and warlords' wait in the wings


By M K Bhadrakumar

For a fleeting hour or two, a question hung in the rapidly chilling autumn air in the Hindu Kush: did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown speak last weekend at the behest of United States President Barack Obama or did he speak out of turn, as even experienced politicians are wont to? Then it went away. It really does not matter either way.

The damage has been done. Brown's speech on Afghanistan at the Royal College of Defense Studies in London on Friday was appalling in its content, timing and context. Perhaps, the indiscretion was deliberate. Politicians all over need to ventilate frustrations once in a while. Whenever cornered, they instinctively look for a scapegoat.

Things are not going well for the British troops deployed in Afghanistan. Ninety-three men have been killed this year - and, as Brown poignantly said, "That 93 is not just a number. Ninety-three families whose lives will never be the same again; 93 families without a dad, or a husband, a brother or son; 93 families this Christmas with a place at their table no one else will ever be able to fill."

A truly tragic situation, indeed. This tragedy was brought down on the British people by Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, who should not have so enthusiastically volunteered for the war in 2001 when the George W Bush administration was contemplating the invasion of Afghanistan as one of the options to mitigate the anguish and anger the American people felt after the September 11 attacks. Of all countries in Europe, Britain knows Afghanistan best, after all. It is not the Falklands.

The British government is under pressure to explain the meaning of this war to a baffled public opinion. At the same time, paradoxically, the British establishment is keeping its fingers crossed and hoping against hope that Obama doesn't waffle.

Hanging onto the American coat-tails and keeping an open-ended presence in the heart of Asia bordering Iran, Central Asia, Xinjiang and Kashmir is critically important for Britain strategically to sustain its residual standing as a "global power" at the present transformational period in the world order, when the US is increasingly turning its attention to the East.

However, all this play still does not justify Brown's speech. Simply put, Afghans do not like Britain's tutorial - not only on good governance but on any topic under the sun. There is a long history behind contemporary Anglo-Afghan relations, which Afghans haven't forgotten. Two, Brown could have avoided the use of undiplomatic language - "Cronies and warlords should have no place in the future of a democratic Afghanistan." That's old-fashioned imperial language.

Three, Brown went far too "personal" - finger-pointing at President Hamid Karzai repeatedly by name. You don't finger-point at the president of a sovereign country. Four, Brown butted into a "no-go" zone - Karzai's appointments of cabinet ministers and provincial governors in his new government, having been re-elected for a second five-year term.

These appointments are central to the political contract in Kabul and it is extremely doubtful if Karzai is in a position to oblige Britain or any foreign power. At any rate, it is a bad idea for outside powers to arbitrate between Afghan groups and personalities during a cabinet formation.

The efficiency bar is never applied to power brokers in this part of the world. Look at India, Bangladesh or Pakistan, the three biggest "democracies" in South Asia. Few technocrats or professionals hold ministerial posts in the governments in Delhi, Dhaka or Islamabad. There is a cultural context that cannot be overlooked. Ministerial positions are considered as sinecure positions in these countries. Often there is a need to ensure equilibrium between different interest groups by accommodating them in cabinet positions.

In this part of the world, no one asks uncomfortable questions as to whether the politicians holding ministerial posts are indeed worthy of their exalted status - whether they have had formal education or are intellectually endowed and can think through problems and issues or are professionally competent. It is simply assumed that they are where they are because of what they are as politicians.

Besides, according to the Afghan constitution, Karzai has to go to parliament and seek endorsements for his cabinet appointments - a criteria that is lacking in India or Bangladesh or Pakistan. There is a power calculus at work in Kabul, one that cannot be micromanaged by Karzai.

Therefore, what Karzai can be expected to do is to appoint efficient civil servants to assist the political figures - "cronies and warlords" - who sit in his cabinet. On the contrary, what Western countries are trying to do is to impose on Karzai an English-speaking cabinet. Such an approach can only have one outcome, that is, a government that pulls in a dozen or more directions with no one in charge. That will be a sure recipe for greater inefficiency and corruption.

Therefore, Britain seems to be needlessly muddying the waters in the Afghan leader's difficult equations with the West, and this right on the eve of Obama's announcement of his new war strategy. What the calculation behind this could be is hard to tell. If any North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member country is singularly responsible for the deterioration of Karzai's equations with the West, it is Britain. And it all began as a scuffle over the appointment of provincial governors in Helmand and over the creation of the post of a viceroy for Lord Paddy Ashdown to browbeat Karzai, and it progressively widened into a rift that inveigled third parties.

The Afghan Foreign Ministry didn't even take a full day to rebuff the British leader's "instructions on the composition of Afghan governmental organs and the political policy of Afghanistan".

Now, what does London do? Is the British contingent in Helmand going to be withdrawn, which was precisely what Brown threatened he would do? Clearly, Karzai should be allowed to have a team of his choice in Kabul. He is entitled to it, just as is any occupant of No 10 Downing Street in London.

For argument's sake, what are Britain's choices today? If Karzai chooses his ways and policies and doesn't follow London's guidelines, will Britain remove him from power? Even assuming that Britain had such profound influence or clout, who would replace him? The three Afghan leaders in the succession chain would be Karzai's first and second vice presidents and the speaker of parliament. From the current lineup, Britain will have to settle for Mohammed Fahim, Karim Khalili or Younus Qanooni.

Thereby hangs a tale. It is yet to sink in that Karzai's victory signifies a turning point in Afghan politics. He rubbished the shenanigans in the Western political armory. Karzai's appearance on the victory rostrum in front of the Western media, flanked by Fahim and Khalili, said it all. If the West has not grasped the meaning of it, then it has lost its way completely.

Secondly, a splendid occasion is at hand to gracefully "legitimize" Karzai II, as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner suggested last week in an interview with the New York Times. Kouchner pointed out that Western political experts who knew nothing about Afghanistan detected fraud by sampling ballots. "This is science. But politics is not science. It's the common touch," he said.

Kouchner obviously desires a good working relationship with Karzai's government. France has deployed a 3,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan. That is a sensible approach. Of all Western statesmen today who articulate on Afghanistan, Kouchner has a special claim to offer advice. He knows Afghanistan. He was a participant in the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, living and working inside Afghanistan as a young doctor assisting the mujahideen.

Equally, Kouchner underlined that NATO is in a virtual quagmire in Afghanistan. He asked with biting sarcasm, "What is the goal? What is the road? And in the name of what? Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem. We [NATO] need to talk to one another as allies."

The West should propose to Karzai to seek help from all available quarters, especially from regional powers and other regional security bodies that are wiling to cooperate. At the present stage, as a reconciliation process with the Taliban is about to commence, the attempt should be to lend credence to Karzai's standing as far as possible, but at any rate not to discredit it for whatever reason. Karzai is not the enemy. He still prefers to be on the side of the Western alliance. Allow him to continue to the extent he can while navigating his way in a political arena of immense complexity.

It is not in the interests of Afghanistan's stabilization that a cabal of foreign countries - the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - continues to hold the strings of conflict-resolution. Clearly, this is not the time for Britain's "great game" maneuverings in pursuit of its lost glory as a world power. The best bet for NATO is to get behind Karzai as quickly as possible.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

 
 
 

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South Asia
 Nov 10, 2009 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK10Df03.html 
 
It's payback time in Kabul


By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration is talking tough to Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the need for decisive action on corruption and governance reform, but its main objective is to prevent particularly corrupt and incompetent warlords from getting plum ministries as rewards for helping clinch his re-election, Inter Press Service (IPS) has learned.

Obama told reporters last week that he had emphasized to Karzai in a phone call to congratulate him on his re-election that there would have to be "a much more serious effort to eradicate corruption" and that "the proof is not going to be in words, it's going to be in deeds".

The New York Times reported the day after the Obama-Karzai


   

conversation that the Obama administration wanted Karzai to prosecute certain high-profile figures known to be involved in corruption. The story referred to the president's brother, Kandahar warlord Ahmed Wali Karzai, former defense minister Mohammed Fahim and General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

And last Wednesday, Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Karzai must "take concrete steps to eliminate corruption", adding it means "you have to rid yourself of those who are corrupt, you have to actually arrest and prosecute them".

The new public rhetoric and press stories have given the impression that the Obama administration is now pursuing far-reaching reform of Afghanistan's system of governance. But the sudden intensification of administration pressure on the issue of corruption is aimed less at far-reaching reform of the system than at avoiding a significant worsening of the problem in the wake of Karzai's re-election, which was dogged with allegations of fraud.

In return for their pledges to guarantee huge majorities for Karzai in the August 20 election, the Afghan president had to make promises to a number of power brokers or warlords in the provinces. Some of those were promised key ministries in the next government, according to Gilles Dorronsoro, a specialist on Afghanistan at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The main concern in Kabul and Washington in the wake of Karzai's re-election is how many of the warlords to whom Karzai is indebted will be rewarded with ministries when the new cabinet is announced.

"Everybody who supported Karzai now expects their payback," said Dorronsoro, who spent the entire month of August in Afghanistan.

It is understood that the Obama administration's pressure on Karzai over the corruption issue is aimed in large part at heading off the nomination of some of the most incompetent and corrupt warlords to key ministries, and that Karzai is aware of this US concern.

It now seems very likely, however, that some lucrative ministries will be given to warlord allies of Karzai.

Dorronsoro believes the administration's influence on Karzai's new government is going to be constrained by Karzai's dependence on provincial and sub-provincial warlords who control the actual levers of power outside Kabul. The US pressure on Karzai "can only work on a few ministries and a few issues", he told IPS.

It is understood here that administration officials are well aware of the political constraints on Karzai imposed by the power of warlords in the provinces. They understand that reforming the governance system of Afghanistan cannot be achieved simply by leaning on Karzai.

"There is no Afghan government in the way there is an American government," counter-insurgency guru David Kilcullen observed on a panel at the US Institute of Peace last August. "There are only a series of fiefdoms."

Kilcullen cited those warlord fiefdoms, and the lack of law and order that accompanies them, as the main driver of popular support for the Taliban insurgency.

The power of the warlords, which US policy abetted by providing them with cash, arms and legitimacy in the wake of the overthrow of the Taliban regime, poses serious obstacles to any US initiative aimed at reducing corruption.

Although US commander General Stanley McChrystal warned that US ties with regional power brokers have alienated much of the Afghan population from foreign troops, US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military contingents remain heavily dependent on them for the provision of perimeter security for their fixed bases and to protect supply convoys, as IPS has reported.

Even the idea of prosecuting the president's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai over his role in the drug trade is likely to generate disagreement within the administration, because the Central Intelligence Agency's operations directorate continues to use his paramilitary organization for intelligence and counterinsurgency operations.

There is no evidence that the administration is moving toward a more aggressive posture toward the warlords in general. Instead, the problem is viewed as one in which US interests in supporting the central government must be balanced with its interests in cooperation with provincial and sub-provincial power holders, IPS has learned.

National security officials tend to believe, for example, that the way to handle the problem of abuses by the militia personnel and police affiliated with individual warlords is not to take on the warlords but to do more to train national police.

Despite the flurry of activity on the corruption issue, the administration still hasn't decided what approach it should adopt to promote governance and anti-corruption reforms. Several different options are said to be still under discussion.

One of the approaches being proposed by some officials is to get Karzai to agree to a detailed plan of action which would involve both the United States and other states heavily involved in Afghanistan, as reported by McClatchy last Monday.

The report referred to the plan as the "Afghanistan Compact" and said the administration had been working with the Karzai government and other allied governments "for months", according to McClatchy.

But an intelligence official told McClatchy he was doubtful about such a compact, because it would require Karzai to renege on promises he had made to his warlord allies.

A previous "Compact on Afghanistan", which was agreed to by the Karzai government and 50 other states at a conference in London on February 1, 2006, has been an embarrassing failure.

That document included benchmarks for progress in bringing about the rule of law, human rights, public administration reform and "anti-corruption", among other areas, by the end of 2010. In those politically sensitive areas, however, the Karzai regime not only did not deliver on the 2006 pledges but has even retrogressed on many of the targets.

Some officials are suggesting that the administration avoid using the term "compact" altogether, because of the well-known fate of the previous effort.

One of the problems associated with trying to get Karzai to do anything about governance and corruption, IPS has learned, is that it has taken months in the past to work out any agreement with Karzai on any politically sensitive issue. There is now a sense in the administration, however, that it may not have that much time to have an impact on Karzai's behavior.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

(Inter Press Service) 
 
 

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Afghanistan’s Sham Army

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091109_afghanistans_sham_army/

Posted on Nov 9, 2009

By Chris Hedges


New Afghan army recruits stand at attention during a graduation ceremony at the Afghan National Army base on the outskirts of Kabul

Success in Afghanistan is measured in Washington by the ability to create an indigenous army that will battle the Taliban, provide security and stability for Afghan civilians and remain loyal to the puppet government of Hamid Karzai. A similar task eluded the Red Army, although the Soviets spent a decade attempting to pacify the country. It eluded the British a century earlier. And the United States, too, will fail.

American military advisers who work with the Afghan National Army, or ANA, speak of poorly trained and unmotivated Afghan soldiers who have little stomach for military discipline and even less for fighting. They describe many ANA units as being filled with brigands who terrorize local populations, exacting payments and engaging in intimidation, rape and theft. They contend that the ANA is riddled with Taliban sympathizers. And when there are combined American and Afghan operations against the Taliban insurgents, ANA soldiers are fickle and unreliable combatants, the U.S. advisers say. 

American military commanders in Afghanistan, rather than pump out statistics about enemy body counts, measure progress by the swelling size of the ANA. The bigger the ANA, the better we are supposedly doing. The pressure on trainers to increase the numbers of the ANA means that training and vetting of incoming Afghan recruits is nearly nonexistent.

The process of induction for Afghan soldiers begins at the Kabul Military Training Center. American instructors at the Kabul center routinely complain of shortages of school supplies such as whiteboards, markers and paper. They often have to go to markets and pay for these supplies on their own or do without them. Instructors are pressured to pass all recruits and graduate many who have been absent for a third to half the training time. Most are inducted into the ANA without having mastered rudimentary military skills.

“I served the first half of my tour at the Kabul Military Training Center, where I was part of a small team working closely with the ANA to set up the country’s first officer basic course for newly commissioned Afghan lieutenants,” a U.S. Army first lieutenant who was deployed last year and who asked not to be identified by name told me. “During the second half of my tour, I left Kabul’s military schoolhouse and was reassigned to an embedded tactical training team, or ETT team, to help stand up a new Afghan logistics battalion in Herat.”

“Afghan soldiers leave the KMTC grossly unqualified,” this lieutenant, who remains on active duty, said. “American mentors do what they can to try and fix these problems, but their efforts are blocked by pressure from higher, both in Afghan and American chains of command, to pump out as many soldiers as fast as possible.”

Afghan soldiers are sent from the Kabul Military Training Center directly to active-duty ANA units. The units always have American trainers, know as a “mentoring team,” attached to them. The rapid increase in ANA soldiers has outstripped the ability of the American military to provide trained mentoring teams. The teams, normally comprised of members of the Army Special Forces, are now formed by plucking American soldiers, more or less at random, from units all over Afghanistan.

“This is how my entire team was selected during the middle of my tour: a random group of people from all over Kabul—Air Force, Navy, Army, active-duty and National Guard—pulled from their previous assignments, thrown together and expected to do a job that none of us were trained in any meaningful way to do,” the officer said. “We are expected, by virtue of time-in-grade and membership in the U.S. military, to be able to train a foreign force in military operations, an extremely irresponsible policy that is ethnocentric at its core and which assumes some sort of natural superiority in which an untrained American soldier has everything to teach the Afghans, but nothing to learn.”

“You’re lucky enough if you had any mentorship training at all, something the Army provides in a limited capacity at pre-mobilization training at Fort Riley, but having none is the norm,” he said. “Soldiers who receive their pre-mobilization training at Fort Bragg learn absolutely nothing about mentoring foreign forces aside from being given a booklet on the subject, and yet soldiers who go through Bragg before being shipped to Afghanistan are just as likely to be assigned to mentoring teams as anyone else.”

The differences between the Afghan military structure and the American military structure are substantial. The ANA handles logistics differently. Its rank structure is not the same. Its administration uses different military terms. It rarely works with the aid of computers or basic technology. The cultural divide leaves most trainers, who do not speak Dari, struggling to figure out how things work in the ANA.

“The majority of my time spent as a mentor involved trying to understand what the Afghans were doing and how they were expected to do it, and only then could I even begin to advise anyone on the problems they were facing,” this officer said. “In other words, American military advisers aren’t immediately helpful to Afghans. There is a major learning curve involved that is sometimes never overcome. Some advisers play a pivotal role, but many have little or no effect as mentors.”

The real purpose of American advisers assigned to ANA units, however, is not ultimately to train Afghans but to function as a liaison between Afghan units and American firepower and logistics. The ANA is unable to integrate ground units with artillery and air support. It has no functioning supply system. It depends on the American military to do basic tasks. The United States even pays the bulk of ANA salaries.

“In the unit I was helping to mentor, orders for mission-essential equipment such as five-ton trucks went unfilled for months, and winter clothes came late due to national shortages,” the officer told me. “Many soldiers in the unit had to make do for the first few weeks of Afghanistan’s winter without jackets or other cold-weather items.”

But what disturbs advisers most is the widespread corruption within the ANA which has enraged and alienated local Afghans and proved to be a potent recruiting tool for the Taliban.

“In the Afghan logistics battalion I was embedded with, the commander himself was extorting a local shopkeeper, and his staff routinely stole from the local store,” the adviser said. “In Kabul, on one humanitarian aid mission I was on, we handed out school supplies to children, and in an attempt to lend validity to the ANA we had them [ANA members] distribute the supplies. As it turns out, we received intelligence reports that that very same group of ANA had been extorting money from the villagers under threat of violence. In essence, we teamed up with well-known criminals and local thugs to distribute aid in the very village they had been terrorizing, and that was the face of American charity.”

We have pumped billions of dollars into Afghanistan and occupied the country for eight years. We currently spend some $4 billion a month on Afghanistan. But we are unable to pay for whiteboards and markers for instructors at the Kabul Military Training Center. Afghan soldiers lack winter jackets. Kabul is still in ruins. Unemployment is estimated at about 40 percent. And Afghanistan is one of the most food-insecure countries on the planet.

What are we doing? Where is this money going? 

Look to the civilian contractors. These contractors dominate the lucrative jobs in Afghanistan. The American military, along with the ANA, is considered a poor relation.

“When I arrived in theater, one of the things I was shocked to see was how many civilians were there,” the U.S. officer said. “Americans and foreign nationals from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia were holding jobs in great numbers in Kabul. There are a ton of corporations in Afghanistan performing labor that was once exclusively in the realm of the military. If you’re a [military] cook, someone from Kellogg Brown & Root has taken your spot. If you’re a logistician or military adviser, someone from MPRI, Military Professional Resources Inc., will probably take over your job soon. If you’re a technician or a mechanic, there are civilians from Harris Corp. and other companies there who are taking over more and more of your responsibilities.”

“I deployed with a small unit of about 100 or so military advisers and mentors,” he went on. “When we arrived in Afghanistan, nearly half our unit had to be reassigned because their jobs had been taken over by civilians from MPRI. It seems that even in a war zone, soldiers are at risk of losing their jobs to outsourcing. And if you’re a reservist, the situation is even more unfortunate. You are torn from your life to serve a yearlong tour of duty away from your civilian job, your friends and family only to end up in Afghanistan with nothing to do because your military duty was passed on to a civilian contractor. Eventually you are thrown onto a mentoring team somewhere, or some [other] responsibility is created for you. It becomes evident that the corporate presence in Afghanistan has a direct effect on combat operations.”

The American military has been largely privatized, although Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has still recommended a 40,000-troop increase. The Army’s basic functions have been outsourced to no-bid contractors. What was once done by the military with concern for tactical and strategic advancement is done by war profiteers concerned solely about profit. The aims of the military and the contractors are in conflict. A scaling down of the war or a withdrawal is viewed by these corporations as bad for business. But expansion of the war, as many veterans will attest, is only making the situation more precarious.

“American and Afghan soldiers are putting their lives at risk, Afghan civilians are dying, and yet there’s this underlying system in place that gains more from keeping all of them in harm’s way rather than taking them out of it,” the officer complained. “If we bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, we may profit morally, we might make gains for humanity, but moral profits and human gains do not contribute to the bottom line. Peace and profit are ultimately contradictory forces at work in Afghanistan.”

The wells that are dug, the schools that are built, the roads that are paved and the food distributed in Afghan villages by the occupation forces are used to obscure the huge profits made by contractors. Only an estimated 10 percent of the money poured into Afghanistan is used to ameliorate the suffering of Afghan civilians. The remainder is swallowed by contractors who siphon the money out of Afghanistan and into foreign bank accounts. This misguided allocation of funds is compounded in Afghanistan because the highest-paying jobs for Afghans go to those who can act as interpreters for the American military and foreign contractors. The best-educated Afghans are enticed away from Afghan institutions that desperately need their skills and education.

“It is this system that has broken the logistics of Afghanistan,” the officer said. “It is this system of waste and private profit from public funds that keeps Kabul in ruins. It is this system that manages to feed Westerners all across the country steak and lobster once a week while an estimated 8.4 million Afghans—the entire population of New York City, the five boroughs—suffer from chronic food insecurity and starvation every day. When you go to Bagram Air Base, or Camp Phoenix, or Camp Eggers, it’s clear to see that the problem does not lie in getting supplies into the country. The question becomes who gets them. And we wonder why there’s an insurgency.”

The problem in Afghanistan is not ultimately a military problem. It is a political and social problem. The real threat to stability in Afghanistan is not the Taliban, but widespread hunger and food shortages, crippling poverty, rape, corruption and a staggering rate of unemployment that mounts as foreign companies take jobs away from the local workers and businesses. The corruption and abuse by the Karzai government and the ANA, along with the presence of foreign contractors, are the central impediments to peace. The more we empower these forces, the worse the war will become. The plan to escalate the number of American soldiers and Marines, and to swell the ranks of the Afghan National Army, will not or defeat or pacify the Taliban.

“What good are a quarter-million well-trained Afghan troops to a nation slipping into famine?” the officer asked. “What purpose does a strong military serve with a corrupt and inept government in place? What hope do we have for peace if the best jobs for the Afghans involve working for the military? What is the point of getting rid of the Taliban if it means killing civilians with airstrikes and supporting a government of misogynist warlords and criminals?

“We as Americans do not help the Afghans by sending in more troops, by increasing military spending, by adding chaos to disorder,” he said. “What little help we do provide is only useful in the short term and is clearly unsustainable in the face of our own economic crisis. In the end, no one benefits from this war, not America, not Afghans. Only the CEOs and executive officers of war-profiteering corporations find satisfactory returns on their investments.”

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).

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Taliban prisoners on hunger strike in Kandahar

Associated Press

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59882&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 09, 2009

KABUL (AP) -- About 350 Taliban prisoners are on a hunger strike at a prison in Kandahar and a delegation from the Ministry of Justice is going to the lockup in southern Afghanistan to investigate their complaints.

Mohammad Shafiq, one of the prisoners, says the inmates began the hunger strike Sunday evening. They are complaining about poor food, water and health care.

A Justice Ministry official says a delegation is trying to determine what prompted the hunger strike.



 

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Allied forces ‘may abandon most of northern Helmand’


BY Tom Coghlan and Michael Evans, Times

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m59881&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 9, 2009

A new strategy for Afghanistan that could lead to a British troop withdrawal from a former Taleban stronghold in northern Helmand province sparked immediate controversy yesterday.

According to a senior Nato source, Western military commanders in Afghanistan are considering a radical shift in policy that would see British and US forces conduct a tactical pull-out from most of northern Helmand, including the town of Musa Qala. The source said that the plan to withdraw from northern Helmand would be considered if proposed reinforcements, currently being examined by President Obama, were not approved. General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Kabul, has asked for 40,000 more troops but President Obama has yet to make a decision.

British military sources said, however, that a withdrawal from Musa Qala would be viewed as a defeat and could not be countenanced. They said it would also be a betrayal of the governor of the district, who risked his life to take a stand against the insurgents.

Mullah Abdul Salaam, a former Taleban commander, switched sides to become district governor of Musa Qala only hours before British troops from 52 Brigade and Afghan soldiers retook the town from insurgent control in December 2007. British troops had withdrawn from Musa Qala in 2006 after a "deal" with the local tribal elders, but the Taleban seized control until the arrival of 52 Brigade.

The plans now being considered in Kabul would pull British and American troops out of the towns of Musa Qala and Nawzad to focus on stabilising the highly populated central areas of the province. The only remaining Western forces in the north of the province would be those defending the hydro-electric dam at Kajaki.

The plans are the most radical among options being considered by General McChrystal under a broader plan to shift forces towards the defence of more populous areas of the country, ceding outlying and remote areas. The new doctrine is focused on concentration of forces around population centres, main arteries and economic corridors with the ultimate aim of protecting the population and allowing intensive reconstruction.

A senior Nato officer confirmed that proposals existed for a pull-out from Nawzad and Musa Qala, but said: "No decision has been made."

The senior British military sources insisted that total withdrawal from Musa Qala was not an option but acknowledged it was possible that the area in which troops currently operated in the district could be reduced to make available more resources for enhancing security in places such as Kandahar and Lashkar Gah.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, also denied that Britain was planning to pull out of Musa Qala, but he confirmed on the BBC Andrew Marr show that Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) would be focusing more on Afghanistan’s main population centres.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "Focusing on people, not territory, is not a retreat, it is the strategy set out by the Prime Minister in April and by General McChrystal in his recent review of strategy for Isaf. Nevertheless there are currently no plans to withdraw from any area of Helmand."

US forces in eastern Afghanistan have already begun withdrawing from a number of combat outposts, mostly in remote areas close to the porous Pakistan border. Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Vician, US Army spokesman, confirmed that US forces have so far withdrawn from six outposts, four in Nuristan province and two in Paktika province.

Brigadier James Cowan who commands 11 Light Brigade in Helmand, denied that British troops might withdraw from outlying towns in the province. "We are here to protect Helmand, we have no plans whatsoever to withdraw," he said.



 

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
06:14 Mecca time, 03:14 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/200911103328650297.html   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Taliban displays 'US weapons'   VIDEO
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uj6sRlzgik&feature=player_embedded

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage showing the Taliban in Afghanistan displaying what appears to be US weapons.

The fighters say they seized the arms cache from two US outposts in eastern Nuristan province.

Days after the alleged assault, the US military pulled out its troops from the area.

Al Jazerera's Jonah Hull reports.
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera 
 
 
 
 
 

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White House: No Afghanistan troop decision made

By Ed Henry, Senior White House Correspondent, CNN
11/10/09

STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

-White House denies reports U.S. president decided to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan
-Media suggested President Barack Obama planned to send 40,000 more troops
-White House "doubtful" Obama will announce decision before he leaves Asia trip Thursday
-White House says decision will be revealed in "coming weeks"


U.S. Army soldiers are picked up from a mission on October 15, 2009 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- White House National Security Adviser Retired Gen. Jim Jones issued a rare public statement Monday vehemently denying media reports that suggest U.S. President Barack Obama has privately decided to send close to 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

"Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false," Jones, who has a low public profile, said in a statement. "He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources."

The statement was issued shortly after CBS News' veteran Pentagon correspondent David Martin reported that Obama has "tentatively decided" to send four more combat brigades to Afghanistan and thousands more support troops starting early next year. That would bring the total number of new troops to close to the 40,000 more troops originally requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Two other senior administration officials told CNN that the CBS report and other similar speculation is false.

The two senior administration officials suggested the information is being leaked by Pentagon sources who are trying to box in Obama by setting public expectations that he will send close to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, as requested by McChrystal.

"People at the Pentagon are trying to force a certain outcome," one of the senior administration officials told CNN.

Both senior administration officials insisted Obama has not made any decision on troop levels in Afghanistan, noting that the president has another meeting with his national security team Wednesday to receive a final set of recommendations from the Pentagon brass. The senior officials said the president could not possibly make a decision on troop levels before receiving the Pentagon's final recommendations.

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday it was "doubtful" that Obama will announce a troop decision before he leaves for a trip to Asia on Thursday. Gibbs added it was also unlikely that Obama would make such an announcement during his trip to Asia, which is largely focused on economic matters and separate diplomatic issues like North Korea's nuclear program.

Obama is scheduled to return from Asia on November 20, after stops in Japan, Singapore, China, and South Korea. Officials have suggested Obama could announce a troop decision shortly before or after Thanksgiving.

Gibbs has said repeatedly the decision will be revealed in "coming weeks."
 
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/09/afghanistan.obama/index.html


 

[bigron]

Tuesday, November 10, 2009
07:03 Mecca time, 04:03 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/11/2009119232159638965.html
   
News Americas 
 
Karzai hits back against critics 

 
Karzai said nobody cared about Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks [AFP]
 
Afghanistan's president has come out fighting against calls by the US to crack down on corruption, arguing that his government is not solely to blame and saying that the West is in his country only for its own ends.

Hamid Karzai made the comments in a US television interview on Monday, days after his American counterpart, Barack Obama, told the newly re-elected leader that he must do more to make his government accountable to the people.

Responding to those criticisms, Karzai told the US Public Broadcasting Service that he had always sought to crack down on corruption within his government when there was sufficient evidence.

"Where we have found such corruption, we have addressed it. Where this is only talk, and nothing else, then of course that doesn't get reduced," he said.

Corruption 'slogan'

"So when you say corruption in highest government circles, you must mean something by that. What does that mean? Does it mean awarding contracts to relatives? Does it mean corruption in implementing projects? Does it mean all sorts of others, you know, nepotism and cronies? What does that mean?

"We have been discussing this for the past four to five years in the Afghan cabinet and government circles, and with the international community. Unfortunately, that is more a slogan. It doesn't come to giving us the details," he said.

Also on Monday, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United Nations, Zahir Tanin, said widespread criticism of the elections had strained ties with the international community.


"The United States and its allies came to Afghanistan after September 11. Afghanistan was troubled like hell before that too, nobody bothered about us", Hamid Karzai,  Afghan president
 
"We will achieve nothing without the consistent political, military and financial support of the international community," Tanin said.

"Most importantly, we will achieve nothing without mutual understanding built on trust and co-operation."

"Recent public debate about Afghanistan has strained this understanding," he added.

Obama congratulated Karzai last week on being declared the winner of Afghanistan's presidential election, but said the re-election had "to be a point in time in which we begin to write a new chapter".

The US president said he had told Karzai that "the proof is not going to be in words, it's going to be in deeds".

The most senior US military officer also urged Karzai to tackle what he called the high level of corruption in the Afghan government.

"We are extremely concerned about the level of corruption and the legitimacy of this government ... It's far too much endemic," Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week.

Karzai's re-election itself was called into question after a UN-backed polls watchdog said there had been widespread fraud in the first round, forcing him into a second round runoff.

But his last remaining rival, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the runoff, citing the Karzai government's refusal to accept his demands for changes to the electoral commission.

Shared responsibility

Karzai said there was "the usual corruption in any government, especially in a third-world country like Afghanistan, with years of breakdowns and lack of governance, lack of institutions and lack of capacity".

Then there was "corruption of a different kind which is a lot more serious, which is new to Afghanistan - which is with the arrival of a lot of money to Afghanistan".

"The contractual mechanisms, the contracts that go from one to second to third to fourth, the lack of transparency in the award of contracts, the serious corruption in implementing projects, in buying bad quality material."

Karzai said that many multi-million dollar projects often end up under-funded, while a great deal of the money awarded in the original contract goes missing.

"A project that costs $10m actually receives $3m or $4m or even less than that," Karzai said.

"For that sort of corruption, it is the international community also that shares responsibility with us, and that is what I hope we can correct together."

With international pressure mounting on Karzai to take a firm stand against alleged corruption in government, the Afghan president said in the interview that the "the West is not here primarily for the sake of Afghanistan".

"It is here to fight the war on terror. The United States and its allies came to Afghanistan after September 11. Afghanistan was troubled like hell before that too, nobody bothered about us," he said.

"We were being killed by al-Qaeda and the terrorists before September 11th for years, tortured and killed, our villages were destroyed, and we were living a miserable life.

"The West didn't care nor did they ever come. Rather, they were asking us to make up with the Taliban and the terrorists and al-Qaeda."

Thousands of US and Nato troops are still in Afghanistan more than eight years after they invaded the country to topple the Taliban government.

UN pullout 'no impact'

While the Taliban was swiftly forced from power, it has staged regular attacks against the replacement government in Kabul and foreign troops.

Obama is now considering a request from the senior commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan to have up to 40,000 extra US troops deployed to the country, on top of a US military presence that is expected to reach 68,000 troops by the end of the year.

The United Nations recently ordered the temporary withdrawal of two-thirds of its staff amid fears that they would face a string of attacks by Taliban fighters, but Karzai said that the UN's move would have "no impact" on the country.

"They may or may not return. Afghanistan won't notice it. We wish them well wherever they are," he said.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

The Afghanistan war on Remembrance Sunday

By Christopher King

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m59919&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 10, 2009

Christopher King argues that the reason why British politicians and military leaders are struggling to explain why British troops are fighting in Afghanistan is because they cannot bring themselves to be honest with the public, i.e. that they are in Afghanistan to fight a US war of aggression that has nothing to do with Britain.

Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph when Britain remembers its war dead: a simple ceremony, always in grey weather, its brevity welcome since the attempt to grasp its meaning is unbearable.

Anthony Blair was present. In future he should stay away and similarly Gordon Brown.

Prior to the ceremony, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff, a useful pilot, spoke of our current war. "We have not done a good enough job of explaining what we are doing in Afghanistan," he said. Curiously, Gordon Brown, our prime minister, said exactly the same thing shortly before. I had listened with interest as the existence of a convincing explanation was implied but none came.

Sir Jock was not so reticent: We are still fighting Al-Qaeda who have suffered great damage and are now concentrated in a small area of Pakistan. Our troops are defending the national interest by supporting the Afghan government. Afghanistan’s army is more advanced than its police (one of whom killed five British servicemen a few days ago) and recruitment is improving. The Taliban have suffered significant losses; however, we are not fighting the Taliban: we are fighting to protect the population. General McChrystal (the American commander in Afghanistan) has "some of the best counter-insurgency brains in the world to advise him. They say that he needs more force." They have a new strategy and a new plan.

Of course they have a new plan. None of the old ones worked over eight years and nor does any of this explanation. Sir Jock implied that Al-Qaeda is now cornered in Pakistan. I might not possess one of the best counter-insurgency brains in my street but even I know that one cannot corner a bunch of terrorists, who look like everyone else, in a small area of Pakistan. These finely honed, specialized brains have not been able to locate Osama bin Laden whose face everyone in the world knows and whose capture was allegedly the primary objective of the invasion. Frankly, any brain in reasonable condition, chosen at random from the street, could readily conclude that if present levels of force are ineffective, more force might work.

Perhaps. Calculations of troop to population ratios based on the counter-insurgency manual by General Petraeus, head of US Central Command and McChrystal’s superior officer, indicate that at a ratio of 20:1 a NATO force of 640,000 would be needed for Afghanistan’s 32 million civilians (the ratio applies to persons of fighting-age). Either a massive increase in armed force above the current 100,000 NATO troops is needed or increasing numbers by the 40,000 that the cerebrations of McChrystal’s advisers want, will still not give success.

These "explanations" are rubbish. They do not correspond with the reality of American-led occupation, absence of any achievable objective, an absurd nation-building plan carried out by soldiers, a corrupt, discredited, puppet government, corrupt elections, an unreliable Afghan army that hardly exists and a population that hates the foreign occupiers who continue to kick their doors down and kill them.

This is an American war. It has nothing to do with the UK or NATO. It is, on the face of it, retaliation against Osama and a small number of Al-Qaeda – as a guess, a hard core of less than 100 men, perhaps less than 50, following the 9/11 World Trade Centre attack. No Afghans were involved. The Taliban were not involved. The Pakistanis were not involved. The attackers were mostly Saudis and were based not Afghanistan but in Germany and the United States itself. The plan originated in the Phillippines. George Bush’s assertion that the Taliban "made common cause with and gave safe haven to Al-Qaeda" has no basis. It was a lie.

A common "explanation" was advanced by Sir Jock’s boss, General Richards, who said in his Chatham House speech that Taliban success in Afghanistan would have a "hugely intoxicating impact on extremists world-wide [in] the perceived defeat of the USA and NATO, the most powerful alliance in the history of the world and the debilitating impact on these countries. Anything might then be possible in the extremists’ eyes." Surely General Richards has noticed that it was Al-Qaeda who are the extremists. The Taliban who he is fighting never had any interest in attacking the US or UK. Osama bin Laden has not been found. His ideology has gained strength and he has gained recruits from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He achieved his objective of getting US troops out of his own country Saudi Arabia and has gravely damaged his enemy the US financially, in casualties and in reputation. While the US and UK are immersed in their wars their economies are collapsing while China, India and other Asian countries are busily developing their economies. This is not Obama’s "right" war. It is the wrong war.

More plausible explanations that have been advanced are:

The US wants to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a militarily strategic area near the oilfields, Russia, China, etc. The US wants bases there as part of its global dominance plan
The US covets Afghanistan’s oil and mineral resources. (Their geologists might know something that we do not. China recently made a copper mining deal there)
The US did not want to appear impotent against terrorists as well as smokescreening the incompetence of its security organizations and their in-fighting
The US needed to give NATO and US bases in Europe a reason to exist following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US now controls NATO and, through its permanent bases and subverted politicians, controls European relationships with Russia and Europe itself.
Any or all of these are more plausible reasons for the US occupation of Afghanistan but none is a reason why UK soldiers should be prepared to kill and be killed there.

The problem is that the US is following its usual pattern of intervention and installing a puppet government as it did in Iran [in 1953] and Iraq. It has constructed massive bases there and as in Iraq, clearly has no intention of ever leaving, whatever its reasons.

What is extraordinary and deeply worrying is that our military leaders are now making the political case for aggressive warfare, in the UK echoing our politicians. In the US General McChrystal bullies the Obama administration by actively publicizing his personal views. This is because NATO is now a political organization. In permitting this, US and European politicians are in process of losing control of their armed forces. In the UK it is also because our politicians are such liars that no-one believes them. They need backup.

The traditional role of our armed services is that they are subject to political control at all times. That was the position when Anthony Blair and a Parliament comprised mainly of fools and traitors ordered them to invade Iraq. At that time, on 10 March 2003, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, asked the attorney-general for an unambiguous assurance in writing that the war was legal. He was wise and absolutely correct to do so. He received from Peter Goldsmith, whose Jewish tribal interests were with Israel and the United States, a false assurance that the war was legal. It is now well established that the Iraq war was illegal. Anyone who chooses can read United Nations Resolution 1441, on which Jack Straw sold the war and Peter Goldsmith based his opinion, for himself. The reader will find not only no authorization for war but statements that this resolution gives neither authorization nor automaticity for war. It is also established that the weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have, as the reason for war, did not exist. Goldsmith and Straw were liars and involved the UK and our armed forces in war crimes. That is the state of our armed forces’ reputation.

At the present time it is not the place of the UK chiefs of defence staff to sell the Afghanistan war or any war to the public. It is their job to defend the country and to ensure that they do so within the Nuremberg principles and the Geneva Conventions, which are part of UK law. That is not what they are doing, which is why they have had such difficulty over eight years in "explaining" what is being done in Afghanistan. In adopting this politicized position the UK chiefs of defence staff are open to accusations of war crimes. All the evidence is that the war on Afghanistan is a war of aggression. The "insurgency" is the fight of the Pashtun and other Afghans to defend their country from invasion, as is their right. There is no case against them.

The Afghanistan war is lost, both in law and in the field. US and NATO politicians and services chiefs cannot recognize reality. Over eight years, Afghan mujahideen (freedom fighters) have fought the "most powerful alliance in the world" into retreat with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and home-made explosive devices. The argument is over. Even if it should be possible to overwhelm the poverty-stricken, poorly armed mujahideen by massively reinforcing the mechanized, hi-tech armies of the US and Europe, it would now prove nothing – except the failure of humanity in those belligerent countries, law having already failed. The mujahideen have won the field. The world has seen and knows it.

It is true that the Taliban were dismal when in government to our way of thinking – but not to theirs. From public information they are no worse than the corrupt puppet Karzai government that the US has installed. If we are to convince Afghans of our values it will not be by shooting them. As I have said previously, the only way forward is by negotiation and a programme of economic development. It is time to get on with it.

The British chiefs of defence staff have a brief window in which to act with honour: cite the Nuremberg Principles and bring the UK armies home. Once public disgust reaches the point that even our corrupt, US-subverted politicians see no alternative, that opportunity will have gone.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK

 

[bigron]

South Asia
Nov 11, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK11Df05.html 
 
Pentagon starts an Afghan building boom

By Nick Turse

In recent weeks, President Barack Obama has been contemplating the future of United States military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year's Recovery Act not only saved jobs but also was "the largest investment in infrastructure since [president Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s". At the same time, another much less publicized US-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.

While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year - ranging from small-scale power plants, to "public latrines", to a meat market - the real construction boom is
military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.

In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian US Agency for International Development awarded US$20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the US Army alone awarded $2.2 billion - $834 million of it for construction projects. According to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent "roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years" in that country and, "if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation".

Bogged down at Bagram

Nowhere has the building boom been more apparent than Bagram Air Base, a key military site used by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. In its American incarnation, the base has significantly expanded from its old Soviet days and, in just the last two years, the population of the more than 5,000-acre (2,023-hectare) compound has doubled to 20,000 troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors.

To keep up with its exponential growth rate, more than $200 million in construction projects are planned or in progress at this moment on just the air force section of the base. "Seven days a week, concrete trucks rumble along the dusty perimeter road of this air base as bulldozers and backhoes reshape the rocky earth," Chuck Crumbo of The State reported recently. "Hundreds of laborers slap mortar onto bricks as they build barracks and offices. Four concrete plants on the base have operated around the clock for 18 months to keep up with the construction needs."

The base already boasts fast-food favorites Burger King, a combination Pizza Hut/Bojangles, and Popeyes as well as a day spa and shops selling jewelry, cell phones and, of course, Afghan rugs. In the near future, notes Pincus, "The military is planning to build a $30 million passenger terminal and adjacent cargo facility to handle the flow of troops, many of whom arrive at the base north of Kabul before moving on to other sites." In addition, according to the Associated Press, the base command is "acquiring more land next year on the east side to expand" even further.

To handle the influx of troops already being dispatched by the Obama administration (with more expected once the president decides on his long-term war plans) "new dormitories" are going up at Bagram, according to David Axe of the Washington Times. The base's population will also increase in the near future, thanks to a project-in-progress recently profiled in The Freedom Builder, an Army Corps of Engineers publication: the MILCON Bagram Theatre Internment Facility (TIF) currently being built at a cost of $60 million by a team of more than 1,000 Filipinos, Indians, Sri Lankans, and Afghans.

When completed, it will consist of 19 buildings and 16 guard towers designed to hold more than 1,000 detainees on the sprawling base, which has long been notorious for the torture and even murder of prisoners within its confines.

While the United States officially insists that it is not setting up permanent bases in Afghanistan, the scale and permanency of the construction underway at Bagram seems to suggest, at the least, a very long stay. According to published reports, the new terminal facilities for the complex aren't even slated to be operational until 2011.

One of the private companies involved in hardening and building up Bagram's facilities is Contrack International, an international engineering and construction firm which, according to US government records, received more than $120 million in contracts in 2009 for work in Afghanistan. According to Contrack's website, it is, among other things, currently designing and constructing a new "entry control point" - a fortified entrance - as well as a new "ammunition supply point" facility at the base.

It is also responsible for "the design and construction of taxiways and aprons; airfield lighting and navigation aid improvements; and new apron construction" for the base's massive and expanding air operations infrastructure. The building boom at Bagram (which has received at least a modest amount of attention in the American mainstream press) is, however, just a fraction of the story of the way the US military - and Contrack International - are digging in throughout Afghanistan.

Rave reviews for Kandahar

In March, according to Pentagon documents, Contrack was awarded a $23 million contract for "the design and construction of [an] Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance ramp, Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan". Last year, Pincus reported in the Washington Post that a planned expansion at the airfield, also once used by the Soviets and now a major US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base, was to accommodate aircraft working for a Task Force ODIN - an Afghanistan-based version of the army unit which used drones and helicopters to target insurgents planting improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

Today, Task Force ODIN-Afghanistan - the acronym stands for "observe, detect, identify and neutralize", with a nod to the chief Norse god - is up and running, and still reportedly piloted out of "Bagram in one of two small, nondescript ground control stations". Whether ODIN aircraft are also operating out of Kandahar Airfield is, like so much information about the US military in Afghanistan, unclear. Certainly, though, many more NATO and US aircraft will be flying out of the base once Contrack, as it notes on its website, completes its "design and construction of replacement runways with asphalt and touch down areas with concrete pavement" and "rehabilitation of six existing taxiways," among other projects.

Contrack's Kandahar contract is set to be fulfilled by late December, but, like Bagram, the base already gives every appearance of permanence. "It's one of the busiest single runways in the world," Captain Max Hanlin from the 2nd US Army Division's 5th Stryker Brigade recently told Agence France-Presse.

Originally built to house 12,000 troops, Kandahar Air Base now supports 30,000 or more NATO and US personnel. Some do battle in the inhospitable terrain of the surrounding region, while others have never been outside the wire and wile away their time in the base's cafes and small shops (where troops reportedly can buy, among other items, belly dancer costumes), party in the "Dutch corner", play roller hockey in the base's central square, or dance the night away at a Saturday rave. "They are shaking glowsticks as if they have no concept of the mines and the war outside," said one US officer, watching troops on the dance floor.

In recent days, US forces announced a decrease in recreational perks and an imposition of more austere circumstances - salsa and karaoke nights have already been cut at Kandahar - prompting worries by NATO allies that their recreational facilities will be overrun by entertainment-starved US troops.

A mob of FOBs

It seems that no one outside the Pentagon knows just exactly how many US camps, Forward Operating bases (FOBs), combat outposts, patrol bases and other fortified sites the US military is currently using or constructing in Afghanistan. And while the Americans have recently abandoned a few of their installations, effectively ceding the northeastern province of Nuristan to Taliban forces, elsewhere a base-building boom has been underway.

In April, Contrack was awarded another $28 million contract for work on airfields, to be performed at unspecified sites in Afghanistan. In June, Florida-based IAP Worldwide Services was awarded a $21 million contract to enhance electrical power distribution at the US Marines' still-growing FOB Leatherneck in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold. Scheduled for completion in June 2010, that project is only part of IAP's work, which has involved "almost two dozen power plants at US Army bases in Afghanistan and Iraq" that, according to the company's promotional literature, its teams have "delivered, installed, operated and maintained".

FOB Dwyer, also in Helmand province, is fast becoming a "hub" for air support in southern Afghanistan, according to Captain Vincent Rea of the air force's 809th Expeditionary Red Horse Squadron. To that end, Marine and air force personnel are building runways and helipads to accommodate ever more fixed-wing and rotary aircraft on the base. The two services collaborated on the construction of a 4,300-foot airstrip capable of accommodating giant C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, which increase the US capability to support more troops on more bases in more remote areas.

"With the C-130s coming in more frequently, more Marines can travel at a given time and will definitely help Camp Dwyer and other FOBs and COPs (combat outposts) to build up," says Captain Alexander Lugo-Velazquez of Marine Light/Attack Helicopter Squadron 169. In September, the air force reported
completion of the first phase of a six-phase construction project at FOB Dwyer, which will eventually include additional fuel pits and taxiways, increased tarmac space, and the lengthening of the runway to 6,000 feet.

In October, according to government documents, the army also began soliciting bids - in the $10 million to $25 million range - for construction of fuel storage and distribution facilities at FOB Dwyer. These, like the infrastructure upgrades at Bagram, are not scheduled to be completed until sometime in 2011.

In Helmand, as well as Farah, Kandahar, and Nimruz provinces, between June and September the Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan alone established four new forward operating bases, "10 combat outposts, six patrol bases, and four ancillary operating positions, helicopter landing zones and an expeditionary airfield". In October, defense contractor AECOM Technology signed a $78 million, six-month extension contract with the army to "provide general-support maintenance as well as the operation of maintenance facilities, living quarters and offices at two US military bases as well as forward operating bases and satellite locations" in Afghanistan.

Defense contracting giant Fluor has also been hard at work landing lucrative deals in Afghanistan. In March, the army reported that, in accordance with President Obama's spring surge of troops, Regional Command East in Afghanistan had tasked Fluor to expand four existing forward operating bases and, if need be, build another eight new ones.

In Regional Command South, it was reported that "emergency work to expand eight FOBs [was] underway after being competitively awarded to Fluor under LOGCAP IV." This is the current version of a military program first instituted by the Pentagon in 1985. It has been the key means by which military logistics and supply functions have been turned over to private contractors. (The previous version of the program, LOGCAP III, was awarded solely to Kellogg, Brown and Root Services, or KBR, then a division of oil services giant Halliburton, primarily in support of US operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait, and was plagued by scandals.)

In Afghanistan, companies like Fluor are clearly digging in. Fluor, in fact, describes itself as "co-located with the US Army in Afghanistan, where the team coordinates, provides oversight, and implements Fluor's execution plan to provide the necessary resources and labor to accomplish this mission" of "providing multi-functional base life support and combat services support [CSS] to the US and Coalition Forces in Afghanistan".

The company is "simultaneously constructing and managing the expansion of eight Forward Operating Bases ... in Southern Afghanistan. This includes the construction of an FOB to accommodate 17,000 to 20,000 US Military personnel." Fluor, no doubt, expects to be "co-located with the US Army in Afghanistan" for a long time. In July 2009, the defense giant was awarded a $1.5 billion contract for LOGCAP IV services in Afghanistan; in October, the army reported that the LOGCAP program was responsible for erecting 6,020 units of containerized housing known as relocatable buildings, or RLBs, in Regional Command South.

In July, under an existing LOGCAP IV contract, scandal-tainted defense contractor DynCorp International, along with partners CH2M Hill and Taos Industries, received a one-year $643.5 million order to "provide existing bases within the Afghanistan South AOR [area of responsibility] with operations and maintenance support, including but not limited to: facilities management, electrical power, water, sewage and waste management, laundry operations, food services and transportation motor pool operations", as well as "construction services for additional sites". With an eye on the future, the Pentagon has included four one-year options in the contract which, if taken up, would be worth an estimated $5.8 billion.

Just recently, the Australian military indicated it was also digging in for a long stay, announcing a $37 million upgrade of its main base near Tarin Kowt in Oruzgan province, to be completed by mid-2011. As at other NATO facilities, increasing numbers of US troops have been operating out of Tarin Kowt recently and, in late September, the US-based company Kandahar Constructors signed a $25 million deal with the Pentagon for runway upgrades there, also to be completed in 2011.

Speaking the language of occupation

In 2009 alone, after many billions of dollars had already gone into the construction, expansion, and maintenance of US bases in Afghanistan, American taxpayers were called on to pay for more than $1 billion in construction contracts - and based on the evidence at hand, including those future options, this may prove just a drop in the proverbial bucket.

All of this has been happening without a clear plan laid out in Washington for the future of US military operations in that country, without a legitimate national government in Kabul, and of course with no shortage of infrastructural repairs needed at home. Americans curious to know much of anything about the Pentagon's Afghan building boom beyond Bagram would have found little on the nightly news or in major newspapers. It has essentially been carried out in the dark, far away, and with only the most modest reportorial interest.

Forget for a moment the "debates" in Washington over Afghan war policy; if you just focus on the construction activity and the flow of money into Afghanistan, what you see is a war that, from the point of view of the Pentagon, isn't going to end any time soon. The US military's building boom suggests that, in the ninth year of the Afghan war, the Pentagon has plans for a far longer-term, if not near-permanent, garrisoning of the country, no matter what course Washington may decide upon. Alternatively, it suggests that the Pentagon is willing to waste taxpayer money (which might have shored up sagging infrastructure in the US and created a plethora of jobs) on what will sooner or later be abandoned runways, landing zones and forward operating bases.

The building and fortifying of bases in Afghanistan isn't the only sign that the US military is digging in for an even longer haul. Another key indicator can be found in a Pentagon contract awarded in late September to SOS International, a privately owned "operations support company" that provides everything from "cultural advisory services" to "intelligence and counterintelligence analysis and training" to numerous federal agencies. That contract, primarily for linguistic services in support of military operations in Afghanistan, has an estimated completion date of September 2014.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War. A paperback edition of his book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books) was published earlier this year. His website is NickTurse.com.

(Copyright 2009 Nick Turse.)

 
 
 

[trailhound]

Just wanted to mark this thread so i see when you update. I been reading this thread but BigRon's done such a complete job havent had anything to add. Great thread though.

[bigron]

lostdog2323

Many thanks for your encouraging comment

Ron

[bigron]

Afghan Resistance Statement

A Glance At the American Elections Drama

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m59897&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 9, 2009

On November, the 2nd, the first episode of the American colonialist drama ended which had started two months ago on August 20. For the last four years, the American rulers have been blaming Hamid Karzai for the constant failures in the country.

They allege that corruption is rampant in government offices, the people are alienated and Hamid Karzai including his immediate relatives have secret links with drug traffickers. As evidence, they constantly refer to the releasing of some well-known heroin smugglers by Hamid Karzai from prison. Contrarily, Hamid Karzid accuse them of disbursing their financial assistance to Afghanistan through the channels of foreign NGOs which are involved in embezzlement and corruption, spending only 20% of the assistance in Afghanistan and putting the rest 80% in their own pockets. While their bickering continued, the American rulers brought forward a new pawn by the name of Abdullah who agreed to all legitimate and illegitimate wants of Washington.

The People Boycott Elections:

People positively responded to the statement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, calling for boycott with the election. Seeing that only a minuscule numbers of voters turned out on the day of polling, the followers of Karzai and Dr. Abdullah in northern and southern Afghanistan resorted to stuffing the empty boxes with fraudulent ballots. The Election Complaint Commission received 2800 complaints about frauds and rigging in votes. American rulers with the complicity of the United Nations jointly handed over the complaints to the Complaint Commission which was headed by a foreigner and its foreign members outnumbered the Afghan members. Even one Afghan member of the commission stepped down, accusing the foreigners of taking every thing in their own hands and taking decisions on themselves without consultations with their Afghan counterparts.

After the passage of two months, the Complaint Commission invalidated 30% of H. Karazai votes, pushing him below the 50% threshold. Doing this, they gave Hamid Karzai a message that they knew tactics, which will strip him of power or induct him through legal means. As another instrument of pressure on Karzai and the Afghan people, the Americans suspended payment of all ongoing projects and stopped launching new.

Meanwhile, American Democrat Senator and Chairman of the Foreign Relation Committee, John Kerry visited Kabul to find out whether Karzai was ready to accept all American demands or he still was in the bickering mode. After a few days of hot discussion, pressures and telephonic calls from the White House, Karzai unconditionally accepted all American demands and the Americans announced that a run-off would be held. This was a political ploy to legitimize Karzai victory.

John Kerry applauded Karzai for being a sagacious statesman, whereas Hillary Clinton said that Abdullah’s pull-out of the second round of elections would not leave negative impact on the legality of the elections. The Independent Election Commission with the consultation and instruction from the American rulers declared Karzai as next president of Afghanistan. Ironically, now the same H. Karzai who was a little before responsible for all corruption and heroin trafficking, was legitimate president after bowing to the American demands. The American and British rulers immediately congratulated him on his victory and the UN General Secretary, visiting Kabul, congratulated Karzai to further rubberstamp his victory.

Veracity of the stance of the Islamic Emirate:

Our people surely remember that the Islamic Emirate always maintained that the real decision about the results of elections is made in Washington. The elections are held in order to throw dust in the eyes of people and hide their colonialist agenda under the clout of elections. They want to keep the common people occupied in the election drama to distract their attention from the civilian casualties caused by the blind bombardment of the invaders, poverty, unemployment and corruption. This is to ensure that people are not able to form a common front against these atrocities. Our people are aware that Americans as per their habit left Dr. Abdulla, in the lurch after using him against Hamid Karzai to domesticate the latter.

They had given him fleshy promises at the outset but then left him in the middle. Still, the White House rulers will keep him as a spare in order to use him time and again for taming Karzai. No doubt, they will always install the one who dances well to the tune of the Americans.

Islamic Emirate as a Force of the People:

Events in our country in the last two months showed that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is both a military and a public force. It is a public force because people positively responded to the call of the Islamic Emirate for boycott with the elections and stood by it and it is a military force because all the American, NATO and the stooge regime military and police force could not prevent the Mujahideen from carrying out attacks on the polling day, on August 20. The Mujahideen made 200 attacks throughout the country on that day, paralyzing the whole elections process.

Observers believe, the military strength displayed by the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate on the polling day of the run-off elections faced the Americans with frustrations while the audacious martyrdom- seeking attack on UNAMA guesthouse in Kabul played out their last strength to hold the runoff.

Conclusion:

These events show that the Islamic Emirate is an undeniable reality. The last eight years have proved that no one could obliterate this reality by dint of military force, political maneuvering and propaganda campaigns. The invaders should understand to admit this reality today rather than admitting it tomorrow. They should let the Afghans to start a new life under the shade of a just Islamic system in an independent country. The colonialist’s ambitious dreams of colonizing of the 18th and 19th centuries are not feasible in this 21st century. The people are awake now. They know that it is their natural right to have freedom and a government of their choice. The colonialists should willingly grant them this right; otherwise, they will surely grab the right from them.




 

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'These People Just Want To Be Left Alone'

In Afghaninstan the US soldiers are losing heart for a fight they feel their presence is only prolonging

Sean Smith spent a month embedded with the US Army's 501st Parachute Regiment in June this year. With inadequate vehicles, relations with Afghan security forces at a standstill and the constant threat of IEDs, the soldiers are losing heart for a fight they feel their presence is only prolonging.

Posted November 09, 2009 - Video - Real News

WATCH HERE :

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23925.htm

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Afghanistan: Karzai Rival 'Withdrew Under US Pressure'

By Syed Saleem Shahzad -

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23928.htm

November 09, 2009 -- Islamabad, 6 Nov. (AKI) - The United States put pressure on Afghan president Hamid Karzai's rival, Abdullah Abdullah, to withdraw from the country's presidential race and hand victory to Karzai, sources have told Adnkronos International (AKI).

Sources said the American pressure was part of a deal struck last week with the Pakistani military, which in exchange agreed to establish direct contact with the Taliban and obtain peace with Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan.

The deal was said to have been negotiated during US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's visit to Pakistan last week, when she met army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the head of Pakistan's military intelligence Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha.

As part of the deal, the US ended negotiations with Abdullah which included offering him the position of chief executive officer of Afghanistan.

Instead the US swung its full support behind Karzai, said an unnamed senior Pakistani diplomat involved in Af-Pak-US negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Sources told AKI the deal would make a major contribution to reconciliation between the warring factions of the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistan armed forces and help end a bloody two-year insurgency in the country in which hundreds have died.

The deal also highlighted the key role played by the Pakistani armed forces in regional politics, according to sources.

Clinton played a major role behind the Indian decision to withdraw its forces along the Pakistan-India border near the disputed territory of Kashmir, allowing Pakistan's army to step up its fight against Al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas in coming months, sources told AKI.

The administration of US president Barack Obama fears that failure to combat extremism in Pakistan will have a dominoe effect on the whole region and lead to certain defeat of American interests in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Last month, the US Congress approved a 1.5 billion dollar annual aid package to Pakistan for the next five years as part of a joint commitment to fight terrorism in the region.

The Pakistani military was opposed to Abdullah arguing that his participation in a new Afghan government would have been detrimental to dialogue with the Taliban. It also considered Abdullah as pro-India.

Abdullah said his withdrawal from the Afghan presidential run-off on Monday was in protest at the failure of key poll officials to resign.

He claimed he did not believe there would be a fair ballot after the first round of voting was overshadowed by mass electoral fraud.
   

 

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Admiral Mullen Announces Afghanistan Strategy

Prepare to Nonviolently Resist

By Jeff Leys

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23930.htm

November 09, 2009 "VCNV" -- This past Wednesday, Admiral Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) announced that the Pentagon will seek additional war funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2010. While he did not give a firm dollar amount, the New York Times reported that defense budget analysts are kicking around the number of $50 billion. The Times also reported that Jack Murtha, Chair of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, indicated on October 30 that he expects the supplemental spending bill for 2010 to be in the range of $40 billion. The final dollar amount won’t be known until the White House submits its “emergency” supplemental spending request to Congress, most likely around February 2.

In the immortal words of Coach Vince Lombardi: “What the hell is going on out there?”

We should be so lucky if it were a simple matter of the Green Bay Packers screwing up the power sweep.

Instead, it’s a matter of the Obama Administration now leading us down the path of the most expensive year in war funding since President Bush began the so-called “Global War on Terror” (now morphed into the “Overseas Contingency Operations” under President Obama).

You read that correctly. War spending in 2010 will exceed $190 billion if indeed the Pentagon seeks-and Congress approves—$50 billion in “emergency” funding. That’s more than the $179 billion spent under President Bush in 2008, the previous high water mark for war spending. War spending in 2010 will also far exceed spending in 2009 (which is about $145 billion).

While Admiral Mullen did not announce a new war strategy for Afghanistan, it is difficult to conceive for what this additional $40 to $50 billion will be used if not used to expand the war in Afghanistan (and to perhaps continue the occupation of Iraq at near current troop levels without the substantive reductions promised earlier this year).

Let’s compare the numbers from 2009 to 2010 for three key areas of spending: Personnel costs; Operation and Maintenance costs; and Procurement costs.

Funding levels in 2009 were: Personnel - $19.9 billion; Operation and Maintenance - $80.4 billion; and Procurement - $31.9 billion.

Current funding levels in 2010 are: Personnel - $14.1 billion; Operation and Maintenance - $80.3 billion; and Procurement - $22.2 billion. (With all the talk about building Afghanistan’s army and police forces, it is worth noting that spending on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund increases from $5.6 billion in 2009 to $6.6 billion in 2010, so it’s not likely that the “emergency” supplemental will include significantly more funds for this category).

Total funding levels in these three main areas are approximately $15.6 billion less in 2010 than in 2009. While Procurement funding declines in 2010 compared to 2009, this decline is most likely the result of returning to a more normative definition of what constitutes “emergency” war spending than the very expansive definition that was implemented under President Bush and that resulted in the explosion of Procurement spending to approximately $45 billion in both 2007 and 2008 (Procurement spending in 2005 was $18 billion and in 2006 it was $22.9 billion before this expansion).

The Congressional Research Service notes in a September 2009 report that the President’s budget for 2010 includes both the increase in troop levels in Afghanistan to 69,000 ordered by President Obama earlier this year and the anticipated reduction in U.S. troop levels in Iraq through August 2010.

Which leads one to ask the question:

In announcing that the Pentagon intends to seek additional war funding for 2010, did Admiral Mullen tip the hat that President Obama intends to dramatically increase the level of U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan—edging towards that 40,000 additional troops that General McChrystal seems to be requesting?

Or that the U.S. intends to otherwise dramatically increase the level of combat operations in Afghanistan and into Pakistan, which would carry the potential for significant increased costs in Operations and Maintenance as well as in Procurement funds?

Or that the U.S. intends to maintain troop levels in Iraq near current levels for the remainder of 2010?

Mullen’s statement comes within the context of Obama’s speech to service members in which he said that the U.S. would not send members of the military into harm’s way without adequate resources. It comes within the context of Obama assuming personal responsibility for his decisions as commander-in-chief when he became the first U.S. President in decades to personally participate in the ceremonies at Dover upon the return of U.S. service members who died in war. The sequencing of events seems to be preparing the way for President Obama to issue the order to dramatically increase U.S. troop levels and combat operations in Afghanistan.

Somehow we must reinvigorate the antiwar movement that seems to have largely gone missing over these past several months.

One campaign under way to rise to the challenge is the Peaceable Assembly Campaign ( www.peaceableassemblycampaign.org ).

From January 19 through February 2, the PAC will maintain a two week vigil at the White House and engage in regular acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, starting on the day President Obama enters his second year in office, continuing through his anticipated State of the Union address to Congress, and concluding on the day he is to submit his budget for 2011 to Congress.

Then after February 2, the Peaceable Assembly Campaign will focus its work upon Congress. Similar to the Occupation Project effort of 2007, the PAC will organize lobbying—both legal and extralegal (i.e., civil disobedience)—in the home offices of Representatives and Senators who do not commit themselves publicly to oppose additional funding for the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

You can become involved with the Peaceable Assembly Campaign at www.peaceableassemblycampaign.org

Now is not the time to equivocate in our opposition to the continuing and expanding wars. The die is being cast by the Obama Administration. It is our choice on how we respond. And rather than being directed at the Administration, perhaps we should direct Coach Lombardi’s challenge to ourselves. After all…

What the hell IS going on out here?
   

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Blazing Afghanistan

Posted By Jeff Huber On November 9, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

Afghanistan has become a Mel Brooks movie.

President Hamid Karzai handpicked an election commission that threw the election his way. UN overseers declared the election was crooked and decreed that a runoff was required. Karzai didn’t want to face a runoff, but John Kerry and other U.S. officials talked him into accepting it.

Karzai’s opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, demanded that the crooked Karzai change the crooked election officials before the runoff, and Karzai refused. So Abdullah refused to participate in the runoff, and Karzai’s handpicked election officials canceled the runoff and declared Karzai the winner. The U.S. and other Western powers swarmed to decree Karzai Afghanistan’s "legitimate" president.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that it is time for a "new chapter" in Afghanistan’s history, "based on improved governance, a much more serious effort to eradicate corruption," and more joint training of Afghan forces "so the Afghan people can provide for their own security."

Then the corrupt Karzai government Afghanistan government rejected UN criticism of its corruption. The Foreign Ministry says criticism from the international community violates “respect for Afghanistan’s national sovereignty.”

What a crock of bull feathers. Afghanistan is an occupied country. Nobody respects its national sovereignty.

Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad reports that a big league dope deal went down between Hillary Clinton and the Pakistani military and intelligence dudes in which the Pakistani military and intelligence dudes offered to broker a deal with the Taliban. In exchange, according to Shahzad, Hillary agreed to blow off Hamid Karzai opponent Abdullah Abdullah and somehow talked the Indians into removing troops from the Kashmir region so the Pakistanis could focus on pounding the Taliban in the Swat Valley. This supposedly will give us a graceful way of bowing out of our AfPak troop commitment. That’s an incredible tale that has a gnat’s antler’s chance of being true.

We’ve been fed leaks that President Obama is maybe going to go along with Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s demand for more troops, but a hot-off-the-presses story from Germany’s Der Spiegel indicates maybe otherwise. U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones expressed decided skepticism toward McChrystal’s agenda. "Generals always ask for more troops," Jones said. "Take it from me."

With regard to Afghanistan, Jones said, "You can keep on putting troops in, and you could have 200,000 troops there and the country will swallow them up as it has done in the past." This bodes well for the decision process that is taking place in the White House. It suggests that Obama may not let the Pentagon steamroll him the way it steamrolled Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam.

The Shazhad story sounds crazy, but it’s crazy enough to make sense.

If one assumes that the White House has changed its mind vis-à-vis Afghanistan – that Obama has come to his senses and realizes the Afghanistan conflict is not a "war of necessity" – then it would take a dollop of skullduggery to skulk out of it.

The Jones interview with Der Spiegel is unlikely to be a chance media encounter. Jones has kept his cards close to his chest throughout his tenure as national security adviser. What little he’s said about the AfPak situation has been anti-hysterical. In early October, he told CNN “I don’t foresee the return of the Taliban, And I want to be very clear that Afghanistan is not in danger – imminent danger – of falling.”

That was in clear contrast to the falling-sky picture of Afghanistan that McChrystal and his supporters have been painting. (We need more troops now, now, now or all will be lost. Pish.)

Rumors abound. McClatchy reports that Obama is leaning toward sending 34,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. That’s a lot fewer troops than the 80,000 McChrystal supposedly has asked for as his "low risk" option, but it’s still 34,000 troops too many.

Any effort at conducting counterinsurgency in support of the Karzai regime will be a farce. No matter how much lipstick the Obama administration tries to smear on him, Karzai has been exposed as a tinhorn slob who has family ties to CIA payoffs and the Afghan drug trade. Putting one more G.I. in harm’s way to back Karzai would be a national disgrace, and pouring one more penny of national treasure into Afghanistan would be asinine.

Obama should forget about his second term. He needs to do the right thing now. There’s no "winning" in Afghanistan. Sending a half-million troops there won’t accomplish what McChrystal’s after, a nation-birthing project that will bring Afghanistan from the middle ages to the 21st century sometime around the dawn of the 22nd century. Escalating the war in Afghanistan would be the worst possible course of action our nation has ever taken, even worse than our foolish entanglement in World War I.

Our best move, by far, would be to follow the course of action Shahzad suggests we may be taking: bribing Pakistan’s military and intelligence service into negotiating with the Taliban and hunting down what little is left of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, and bringing our troops home. That’s not a pretty solution, but it’s the best one available, and sometimes you have to let reality have its way.

Read more by Jeff Huber
•Hillary’s Dope Deal? – November 8th, 2009
•Such a Waste of Fine Infantry – November 5th, 2009
•So Much for Europe – November 4th, 2009
•‘Twas Brillig in Bananastan – November 3rd, 2009
•War Porn – November 1st, 2009

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/11/09/blazing-afghanistan/

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General Erection


                       


Posted on Nov 9, 2009
By Mr. Fish

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/20091109_general_erection/

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Gorbachev urges US pullout from Afghanistan

 
Monday, 09 Nov, 2009 | 07:51 AM PST | 

WASHINGTON, Nov 8: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Sunday advised the United States against sending additional troops to Afghanistan, instead urging renewed diplomacy and ultimately a complete withdrawal of US forces.

“I think that what’s needed is not additional forces,” Gorbachev told CNN, adding that “withdrawal from Afghanistan should be the goal.” Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader, who governed from 1985 until its break-up in 1991, presided over the pullout of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Although the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan has been viewed by many historians as a defeat for Soviet imperialism, Gorbachev urged the United States to follow his country’s model, as Washington mulls the way forward in violence-ridden Afghanistan.

He told CNN that Washington should focus on “dialogue” in Afghanistan to bring to an end “the long suffering of that people.” The Soviet leader said that his government also mulled increasing troops during its occupation of Afghanistan, but ultimately decided against it.

“This is something we discussed too, years ago. But we decided not to do it. I think that our experience deserves attention,” Gorbachev said.

Instead, he said, “we decided to emphasise the domestic developments in Afghanistan, national reconciliation,” Gorbachev told CNN.—AFP
 

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/international/gorbachev-urges-us-pullout-from-afghanistan-919
 

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November 9, 2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick11092009.html

Why Afghans Oppose the Escalation

Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans


By PATRICK COCKBURN

The US is poised to send tens of thousands more soldiers to the country. The nature of the conflict is changing. What should be a war in which the Afghan government fights the Taliban has become one which is being fought primarily by the American and British armies. To more and more Afghans this looks like imperial occupation.     

In disputes in Washington and London about sending more troops it is seldom mentioned that Afghans are against the deployment. Contrary to western plans, just 18 per cent of Afghans want more US and NATO/ISAF forces in Afghanistan according to an opinion poll carried out earlier this year by the BBC, ABC News and ARD. A much greater number of Afghans, 44 per cent, want a decrease in foreign forces in Afghanistan.     

In the light of these figures, it is hardly surprising that the Taliban have been able to win support. The cruelty of their rule before 2001 is becoming a distant memory. They are successfully portraying themselves as the defender of the country against foreign occupation. Matthew P. Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul province east of Kandahar, resigned last week because he had become convinced that the US military should not be in Afghanistan. A former US Marine officer who served in Iraq, he says in his resignation letter that the US has joined in one side in a 35-year-old civil war between the traditional Pashtun community and its enemies. “The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency,” he says. “In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people.” He says that most of the insurgents fight again the presence of foreign soldiers and not for the Taliban.   

What is true for the Americans in Zabul is true for the British in Helmand. It may seem to military commanders on the ground that, with more troops, they could hold more ground and send out more patrols. This is hardly surprising. Throughout history generals have believed that they are a few thousand troops short of victory. But Afghans, who have long experience of war, think that more foreign troops means greater violence and more dead and wounded Afghans. Support for the Taliban is highest in those areas where there have been US or NATO shelling or air strikes inflicting civilian casualties. In other words the Taliban’s best recruiting sergeants are the American and British armies.

The future good of Afghanistan is not the first reason why Britain has an army of 9,000 troops in Afghanistan according to Gordon Brown. He said on Friday that they are there to protect people walking the streets of Britain: “our children will learn of the heroism of today’s men and women fighting in Afghanistan protecting our nation and the rest of the world from the threat of global terrorism.”  We are fighting there, he adds, so that we are safe in our homes and guarded against the atrocities carried out by al-Qa’ida not only in London, but in New York, Bali, Baghdad, Madrid, Mumbai and Rawalpindi.     

The problem with this argument is that al-Qa’ida is based in Pakistan not Afghanistan. There is no particular reason its leaders should return to Afghanistan since they have a measure of support in the Pakistani intelligence services and among fundamentalist Jihadi organizations.  If Britain has sent 9,000 troops abroad to fight al-Qa’ida then they are in the wrong country. Mr Brown slyly tries to evade this point by claiming that “three quarters of terrorists’ plots originate in the Pakistan-Afghan border regions.” His sudden geographic imprecision as to where these plots are concocted avoids having to admit that they originate in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan. The US military says there only 100 Al-Qa’ida militants in the whole of Afghanistan.     

In reality the presence of a large British military force in Afghanistan is making Britain a more dangerous and not a safer place to live in.  Interrogation of would be suicide bombers captured before they could blow themselves up, reveal that their prime motive since 9/11 has been opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was evidently the motive of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army psychiatrist, when he killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas.     In portraying Britain as being at war with al-Qa’ida, Mr Brown, like President Bush and Tony Blair, walks straight into the trap laid by al-Qa’ida at the time of 9/11. Its aim was not only show that the US was vulnerable to armed attack, but to provoke retaliation against Muslim countries. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida’s chief strategist, stated soon after 9/11 that the purpose of the provocation was to tempt the US into reprisals which would open the way for “clear cut jihad against the infidels.”     

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US and Britain have faced similar dilemmas. These wars were started by President Bush, with Tony Blair trotting along behind, in the expectation that they would be short and cheap. The initial military assaults were wholly successful but the American and British armies were then caught up in prolonged, bruising, guerrilla wars. By then too much prestige was at stake and too much blood had been spilt for a withdrawal. The very puniness of the armed insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, in each case probably a few thousands of fighters, makes the humiliation of retreat all the greater.     

The main reason for Britain’s original military commitment in Afghanistan was to maintain its position as America’s principal ally in the world. As recently as 2006, this seemed a sensible strategy, but any engagement in Afghanistan, as a brief look any history of the region will show, is always going to be dangerous. The Taliban had not really been defeated on the battlefield in 2001, but its militants had gone back to their villages or taken refuge over the border in Pakistan. It took time for the Pakistan government, on which they were highly reliant, to decide that it was safe to unleash them once more because the US was too bogged down in Iraq to do much about it.     

By this time also the government of President Hamid Karzai had gone far to discredit itself.  It is less of an administration than a racket. Its officials probably make more money out of opium and heroin than the Taliban. Corruption affects every aspect of life. Even the price of bread is higher in Kabul than in Pakistan because of official and unofficial levies. Some 12 million Afghans, 42 per cent of the population, live below the poverty line, trying to survive on 45 cents per day, according to the Afghan government and the UN. They are malnourished or starving. Unsurprisingly, they do not feel much loyalty to a government in which ministers live in their ‘poppy palaces’, built with the profits of the drugs trade, or foreign aid consultants earn $250,000 a year.

“Sadly, the government of Afghanistan has become a by-word for corruption,” said Mr Brown. “And I am not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption.” Taken at face value, this means that Britain will withdraw its troops since one certainty in Afghanistan is that a government so viscerally crooked is not going to reform. “Cronies and warlords should have no place in the future of Afghanistan,” continued the prime minister, but Mr Karzai prepared his election victory by allying himself with the most blood-stained warlords in the country. Presumably, Mr Brown’s pledge is no more than rhetoric.     

The US and Britain have tumbled into a second war in Afghanistan which they were not expecting. Justifying their own misjudgements, American and British leaders claim that Afghanistan is a war that has to be fought because it is the epicenter of the war against international terrorism. Failure to stand and fight means that the Taliban would soon be back in Kabul with al-Qa’ida in their baggage train. In Pakistan the local variant of the Taliban would seize control of nuclear weapons. These threats are all grossly exaggerated. The Afghan Taliban comes from the Pashtun community which is 42 per cent of the population. The majority of Afghans will always oppose them. Of course, present Afghan or Pakistani leaders have every interest in painting themselves to their foreign backers as the one alternative to the Taliban.

“The Pashtun insurgency,” says Mr Hoh, “is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies.” Britain should not be part of that assault which will not succeed in crushing a regional Pashtun rebellion on behalf a non-Pashtun state. Once this is accepted, then the need for a large combat force in southern Afghanistan disappears. What ultimately happens in Afghanistan should be left to the Afghans.

Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."                                   

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
10:18 Mecca time, 07:18 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009111152756126460.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Taliban expands control of Nuristan  
 

The Taliban claims to have appointed some local officials and reopened schools in Nuristan

 
Taliban fighters are expanding their control of Afghanistan's Nuristan province, an area they claim to have recaptured from US troops.

A video obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera purports to show Taliban fighters in the Kamdesh district.

Their leaders say they have appointed some local officials and reopened schools.

Sections of the footage also show Taliban fighters brandishing what appeared to be US weapons.

The fighters said they had seized the arms cache from two military outposts in eastern Nuristan, abandoned by US forces last month.

Angela Eggman, a Nato spokeswoman, said it was not clear from the video where or when the weapons were obtained.


 
 
"Before departing the base, the units removed all sensitive items and accounted for them," she said.

But General Mohammad Qassim Jangulbagh, Nuristan's provincial police chief, disagreed, saying: "The Americans left ammunition at the base."

Farooq Khan, a spokesman for the Afghan National Police in Nuristan, concurred, saying US forces left arms and ammunition when they moved from the area, which he said was now in fighters' hands.

The Pentagon said the closing of the outposts in Nuristan was part of plans by General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, to shut down isolated units and focus on more heavily populated areas.

Afghanistan review

The developments come as Barack Obama, the US president, is due to meet military and national security advisers to discuss sending more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The White House has rejected a series of leaked reports saying Obama has already made up his mind to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. It says no decision has been made.

In video
Taliban fighters brandish what they say are US weapons seized from abandoned outposts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uj6sRlzgik&feature=player_embedded

 
Meanwhile, Afghan police and Nato troops say they have seized a massive quantity of illegal fertiliser, enough to make hundreds of deadly roadside bombs, in the city of Kandahar.

A Nato spokesman said on Tuesday that raids at two sites in the southern city yielded more than 200 tonnes of ammonium nitrate - or about 10 lorry loads - and the arrest of 15 people.

Sunday's raids appeared to be one of the largest hauls of the war so far and Nato officials expressed hope that the seizure would hurt Taliban fighters, whose homemade bombs have become the biggest killer of foreign forces.

Acting on a tip, international forces and Afghan police discovered 1,000 45kg bags of ammonium nitrate fertiliser and 5,000 parts for roadside bombs in a warehouse.

An additional 4,000 45kg bags of fertiliser were found in a nearby compound soon after.

John Pike, director of the military think-tank Globalsecurity, said the seizure included enough fertiliser to make hundreds of roadside bombs.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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Obama considering 4 options for Afghanistan, sources say

By Suzanne Malveaux and Mike Mount, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

-Obama to discuss options with war council Wednesday afternoon, sources say

-One confirmed option calls for sending about 34,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan

-President expected to discuss how Afghan President Hamid Karzai figures into strategy

-Obama has not decided the number of U.S. troops he will send, White House officials say


President Obama is continuing to weigh his options about the U.S. troop level in Aghanistan.

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama is considering four scenarios to move forward in Afghanistan and is expected to discuss them at his eighth meeting with his war council on Wednesday afternoon, sources told CNN.

Though the options are not being spelled out, one is fairly well-defined.

That option, a senior administration official and U.S. military official independently confirmed, calls for sending about 34,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

A military official said the plan would send three Army brigades, totaling about 15,000 troops; a Marine brigade, about 8,000 troops; a headquarters element, about 7,000 troops; and 4,000 to 5,000 support troops.

The troops would be spread across the country, mainly focusing in the south and southeast, where much of the fighting is.

The military official said the option has been a favorite at the Pentagon in the past few weeks to send to the president.

The combat brigades would be brought in gradually, in three-month intervals.

That is one option, the senior administration official emphasized, saying the president had not decided.

The other options, the official said, would be "different mixes," or "different components of it."

On Wednesday, the president will address a number of issues with his war council, beyond how many troops to send. Obama also is expected to consider the kind of cooperation the United States can expect from the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the kind of civilian support the United States is willing to offer, and the kind of support the United States can expect from other countries, the senior administration official said.

All those factors could lead to "further refinements" or some "greater elements being considered," the official said.

"He's got to fine-tune this, put it all together ... for what direction best advances our interests," the official said.

Despite reports to the contrary, Obama has not decided the number of U.S. troops he will send to Afghanistan, White House officials said.

Such reports are "absolutely false," Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. And anyone who suggests otherwise, "doesn't have, in all honesty, the slightest idea what they're talking about."

White House officials would not say whether Wednesday's meeting with the war council would be the president's final meeting before deciding on Afghanistan, but they did say he would continue to discuss the war effort in smaller groups, including when he travels to Asia. He leaves Thursday.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/11/obama.afghanistan/index.html

[bigron]

Poll: Opinion split with Obama's wait on Afghanistan decision


STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

-People divided on whether Obama is taking too long on Afghanistan troop decision

-Most men want him to make decision now; women want to give him more time

-Fifty-two percent say Obama should consult with generals in making decision


President Obama has been meeting with national security advisers to decide his next course of action in Afghanistan.

Washington (CNN) -- Americans are split over whether President Obama is taking too long to decide whether to send more U.S. troops to the war in Afghanistan, according to a new national poll.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also indicates that, by a narrow margin, Americans think that the president should listen to the recommendations of the generals in charge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The poll's release Wednesday morning comes hours before the president is to meet again with his national security advisers to discuss policy in Afghanistan.

According to the survey, 49 percent of people questioned say the president is taking too long to decide whether to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan; 50 percent do not.

"There is a gender gap on this question, with most men saying Obama is taking too long and most women willing to give him more time," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That's due in part to the partisan differences between men and women, but gender differences on the use of military force, and maybe even differences in how the genders make important decisions, can also be contributing to the split."

The poll indicates that 52 percent think Obama should listen to the generals, with 48 percent saying the president should take other matters into account as well. But a troop buildup remains unpopular, with a separate question indicating that a majority opposes sending more troops.

Roughly one in five Americans opposes more troops, yet also thinks that Obama should pay attention to the U.S. military leaders in that country, Holland said. "That suggests that a lot of people who don't support a troop build-up are unaware of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for a bigger U.S. military presence there.

"And that, in turn, indicates that the military leaders in the field might provide Obama some political cover if he decides to increase troop strength there," he said.

McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has reportedly requested as many as 40,000 additional troops.

Though the public is divided down the middle over whether Obama is taking too long to make the decision on troops, the poll suggests that there is widespread agreement that Afghanistan will never have a stable democratic government.

Only one in 10 people questioned said that will occur within a year; only one-third said that will ever happen. That may be one big reason why 56 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops, while 42 percent favor increasing troop strength.

According to the poll, four in 10 support the war in Afghanistan, with 58 percent opposing the conflict.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted October 30-November 1, with 1,018 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall sample.

CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/11/obama.poll.afghanistan/index.html

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 ASIA NEWS  NOVEMBER 11, 2009.

Obama Receives New Afghan Option

'Hybrid' Compromise Would Combine Troops, Trainers to Hold Back Taliban and Boost Local Military.


By PETER SPIEGEL and YOCHI DREAZEN
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125790053246642651.html


U.S. soldiers train at Forward Operating Base Tillman in Afghanistan on Tuesday. President Obama is weighing an option that would deploy as many as 10,000 new training forces to the war.


WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday will consider a new compromise plan for adding troops to Afghanistan that would deploy 30,000 to 35,000 new forces, including as many as 10,000 military trainers, over the next year or more.

The new scenario combines reinforcements for fighting Taliban insurgents with trainers aimed at rapidly increasing the size and capabilities of Afghan troops to take on more operations themselves. It wouldn't aim to eliminate the Taliban, but weaken it until Afghan forces can secure major population centers themselves.

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Reuters U.S. soldiers train at Forward Operating Base Tillman in Afghanistan on Tuesday. President Obama is weighing an option that would deploy as many as 10,000 new training forces to the war.
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A senior military official said this hybrid option is now drawing the most attention at the Pentagon. It will be considered along with options already proposed by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, when President Obama meets Wednesday with his war council at the White House.

Officials said Mr. Obama is now expected to unveil his new Afghanistan strategy shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia on Nov. 19.

The issue of troop levels has put Mr. Obama in a difficult position. Gen. McChrystal has argued that tens of thousands of additional troops are needed to successfully curb the Taliban's resurgence. But many Democratic lawmakers have signaled they don't support such a buildup, and the American public's support for the war has waned.

Officials briefed on the recent deliberations said two options still on the table are similar to scenarios laid out by Gen. McChrystal. One would send at least 40,000 soldiers, which the general has said is the minimum needed to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign. Another would increase U.S. forces by 10,000 to 20,000 troops. Gen. McChrystal has described that as a "high-risk" option, because his planners are uncertain it would achieve Mr. Obama's goals.

Another McChrystal scenario would dispatch 80,000 added troops, but U.S. officials said that isn't under serious consideration now. The U.S. currently has 68,000 troops in Afghanistan.

The hybrid option has emerged in recent weeks. The total troops proposed are "at the top end of the bracket in terms of what McChrystal asked for -- it may not reach 40,000, but it won't be far off," said an official briefed on the hybrid plan. "The overall strategy is going to be -- which McChrystal has made a big deal about -- getting Afghans up to the right pace. The strategy therefore needs capacity builders, trainers."

The U.S. would press allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to send additional forces to get closer to Gen. McChrystal's desired total.

All the options are "phased approaches" that would send the additional forces to Afghanistan in waves, said a senior military official. The surge of troops for Iraq sent 30,000 there in five months, but the full complement of additional troops to Afghanistan wouldn't be on the ground until late next year at the earliest, due to manpower constraints.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Tuesday said Mr. Obama has yet to choose among four options, and other administration officials said no final decisions have been made.

Under the hybrid option, deployments could begin as early as January, said a defense official familiar with the plan. It would include three U.S. Army brigades and a Marine Corps regiment, which would total more than 20,000 reinforcements, including support troops. Another 7,000 troops would be sent as part of a new headquarters unit in southern Afghanistan, and would include some military trainers.

Additional training units would bring the total number of reinforcements to more than 30,000. Details of the compromise plan were first reported by McClatchy newspapers and confirmed by officials familiar with the option.

The buildup of forces could extend over more than two years, with a review of the strategy at the end of 2010, said an official familiar with the plan.

Write to Peter Spiegel at peter.spiegel@wsj.com and Yochi Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com