Afghanistan - The war against the Taliban

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[Sirenoftitan]

A report by the US's top general in Afghanistan is expected to admit the current strategy is not working.  General Stanley McChrystal's report is also expected to say that protecting the Afghan people against the Taliban must be the US's top priority.  But the report will not contain any recommendations on troop numbers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8230017.stm

[futurexpat?]

Afghanistan could be Obama's Vietnam. We need to get our troops out, give only truly humanitarian aid.

[Sirenoftitan]

Entertaining a group of US historians at the White House this summer, President Barack Obama revealed that he was beginning to worry about Afghanistan and the prospect that his ambitious domestic agenda would come to be overshadowed by an unpopular and unwinnable war.

It was an odd moment for Obama to be preoccupied by foreign policy – he was in the middle of a ferocious congressional battle over healthcare reforms – yet his concern turned out to be prescient.

Barack Obama rattled as Afghanistan's decision day approaches by Tony Allen-Mills, The Sunday Times

[Sirenoftitan]

Hamid Karzai edged closer to the 50 per cent share of the votes he needs for outright victory in the Afghan presidential elections with the publication of the latest set of results yesterday. However, election officials also announced that they had thrown out votes from 447 polling sites because of suspected fraud. There has reportedly been significant friction within the country's Independent Election Commission about whether or not votes should be discounted.

Karzai edges closer to victory but allegations of ballot fraud intensify by Kim Sengupta, The Independent

[Sirenoftitan]

A US foreign policy veteran has warned the West risks replicating the the Soviet Union's failure in Afghanistan without a fundamental change in policy.  Zbigniew Brzezinski said military engagement in the country was reaching levels similar to the Soviet invasion.  Mr Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, was speaking at a global strategy conference in Geneva.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8251944.stm

[Sirenoftitan]

The primary focus of the US war strategy in Afghanistan could shift towards the eastern provinces bordering Pakistan and away from the south of the country, where British forces are heavily engaged, under a plan being finalised by commanders.

Senior military officials are said to believe the Afghan Taliban's ability to find sanctuary and support across the porous border with Pakistan ‑ plus the suspected presence in the lawless tribal Waziristan area of al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden ‑ has made a bigger effort in the east essential if the insurgency is to be defeated.

US could shift Afghanistan focus towards eastern provinces by Simon Tisdall, The Guardian

[Sirenoftitan]

Deep rifts at the heart of Western policy on Afghanistan were laid bare yesterday when President Obama’s top military adviser challenged him to authorise a troop surge that his most senior congressional allies have said they will oppose.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more US troops as well as a rapid increase in the size and capability of the Afghan army were needed to carry out the President’s own strategy for prevailing in Afghanistan as the eighth anniversary of a debilitating war approaches.

President Obama's top military adviser exposes Afghanistan rifts by Giles Whittell, Michael Evans and Catherine Philp, The Times

[Sirenoftitan]

Sometimes, war comes down to the sunglasses.
Lt Chuck Anderson carefully removes his, as well as the bulky helmet that also obscures his face. He extracts his own wire rimmed glasses from somewhere inside his body armour as drops of sweat trickle down his head in the blazing heat of the day.
The face of 24-year-old Chuck from America emerges, beaming a big smile at white bearded Haji Rahmatullah and a gaggle of curious Afghan children who scurry to the apple orchard to inspect the strangers in camouflage gear.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8261612.stm

[Forty Watt]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-everyone-seems-to-be-agreeing-with-bin-laden-these-days-1790058.html

It is instructive to turn at this moment to the Canadian army, which has in Afghanistan fewer troops than the Brits but who have suffered just as ferociously; their 130th soldier was killed near Kandahar this week. Every three months, the Canadian authorities publish a scorecard on their military "progress" in Afghanistan – a document that is infinitely more honest and detailed than anything put out by the Pentagon or the Ministry of Defence – which proves beyond peradventure (as Enoch Powell would have said) that this is Mission Impossible or, as Toronto's National Post put it in an admirable headline three days' ago, "Operation Sleepwalk".

[...]

Canada's army will be leaving Afghanistan in 2011, but so far only five of the 50 schools in its school-building project have been completed. Just 28 more are "under construction". But of Kandahar province's existing 364 schools, 180 have been forced to close. Of progress in "democratic governance" in Kandahar, the Canadian report states that the capacity of the Afghan government is "chronically weak and undermined by widespread corruption". Of "reconciliation" – whatever that means these days – "the onset of the summer fighting season and the concentration of politicians and activists for the August elections discouraged expectations of noteworthy initiatives...".

[Sirenoftitan]

<snip>
But that night two months earlier, Elliott seemed perturbed, revealing how he had seen a fellow infantryman reduced to a bloody pulp after stepping on a hidden bomb. He was particularly haunted by another gruesome incident when, under fire and attempting to flee the battlefield, he was compelled to scoop up the body parts and internal organs of a fallen colleague from the dust to carry with him.

When the time came for Elliott to leave Dundee six weeks ago to return to Afghanistan, the soldier was despondent. "He was really scared about going back. At times it seemed like he knew something was going to happen," said Delaney.

Moving testimony to the British army's loss of life in Afghanistan by Mark Townsend, The Observer

[Sirenoftitan]

The US mission in Afghanistan will "likely result in failure" unless troops are increased within a year, the top general there has said in a report.  Gen Stanley McChrystal made his assessment in a copy of a confidential report obtained by the Washington Post.  He recently called for a revised military strategy in Afghanistan, suggesting the current one is failing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8266072.stm

[Sirenoftitan]

Lessons from history, again.

<snip>
In 1842, Britain made four cardinal mistakes, repeated by every invader thereafter: placing an unpopular, corrupt puppet in power; allowing foreign troops to offend local customs; enabling Afghan allies to brutalise their enemies, and failing to distribute sufficient funds to keep the fractious tribes quiescent.

Lessons of history: options and recommendations by Ben Macintyre, The Times

[Forty Watt]

Succinctly said.  In life in general, nothing is easier than getting tied up in the details and failing to see and examine what is essential.  Perhaps this can only be done in retrospect.  How many retrospectives do we need before we get the message?  Sheesh!

[Forty Watt]

On a serious note, this seems to me to be worthy of some thought and debate.  I should note that Ted Galen Carpenter, a defense and foreign policy expert, is from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

"It has been a big mistake of U.S. policymakers to completely conflate al-Qaida and the Taliban. The former is a foreign terrorist organization with the United States in its cross hairs. The latter is a parochial insurgency. It is not a direct security threat to the United States," he explains.

Carpenter says that over the years, the U.S. has drifted into war against the Taliban in Afghanistan — not primarily against al-Qaida, which U.S. intelligence officials say has been entrenched in neighboring Pakistan since being driven from Afghanistan in late 2001 by American forces. Carpenter says it is time to rethink the strategy.

"If al-Qaida is not in Afghanistan, why on Earth are we in Afghanistan? We went there to defeat al-Qaida. If this isn't the arena for al-Qaida anymore, then our mission seems to have no rational purpose whatever," he says.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/09/24/us-reassesses-taliban-role-fight-against-al-qaida/

[Jaime from Wasilla]

Seems to me that if "Terrorism" is the meme that is at the center of the problem, we would do the most effective good by taking care of the terror in our own back yard. As long as 1500-1800 American women are raped by American men every week, we have a problem of terror right here that we can do something about. We should probably do something about our own people who use fear as a tactic for manipulating our own population, too. The use of fear in this way is a form of terrorism we can do something about.   If we were to stop those two things in our own culture - the consequences of this change would effect the public policies and international policies that are at the center of much international dispute with us.

I prefer treating causes to treating symptoms, which is why I have opposed the War on Terror since it's inception. I have no moral objection to going after al-qaeda. I have no moral objection to overthrowing the Taliban (in fact- what took us so long? We should have stopped their abuse of women years ago, before they destroyed the Buddha statues)  I was appalled that we invaded Iraq.

The biggest problem we have is in thinking that military action can do anything that would win in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Those are conflicts that can only be won on the battlefield of the war of ideas, by teaching better memes than the ones offered by al-qaeda and the Taliban.  All that money spent and all those lives and we still don't have a coherent message teaching the better memes. What a waste.

[Sirenoftitan]

The White House says that President Barack Obama will take several more weeks to review United States strategy in Afghanistan.  Only then will he make a decision on whether to send more US troops.  The White House issued a statement after the president met his most senior advisers to discuss the way forward.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8284147.stm

[Sirenoftitan]

Coalition forces in Afghanistan are going to have to adopt a "dramatically different" strategy to previous ones, the top US general there says.  In his first speech since submitting a report calling for more troops, Gen Stanley McChrystal also said the operation had been "under-resourced".  The success of the military operation could not be taken for granted in the face of a growing insurgency, he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8284996.stm

[Forty Watt]

Reform or Go Home by DAVID KILCULLEN, a former adviser to Gen. David Petraeus.

COUNTERINSURGENCY is only as good as the government it supports. NATO could do everything right — it isn’t — but will still fail unless Afghans trust their government. Without essential reform, merely making the government more efficient or extending its reach will just make things worse.

Only a legitimately elected Afghan president can enact reforms, so at the very least we need to see a genuine run-off election or an emergency national council, called a loya jirga, before winter.

[...]

If we see no genuine progress on such steps toward government responsibility, the United States should “Afghanize,” draw down troops and prepare to mitigate the inevitable humanitarian disaster that will come when the Kabul government falls to the Taliban — which, in the absence of reform, it eventually and deservedly will.

[Sirenoftitan]

The US defence secretary has said more time is needed to decide whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.  Robert Gates said it would be one of the most important decisions of the Obama presidency.  Last week the top US general in Afghanistan said the operation was "under-resourced" and a "dramatically different" strategy might be needed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8291553.stm

[Forty Watt]

Still waiting, but pulling out said to be a no-go.

WASHINGTON — President Obama told Congressional leaders on Tuesday that he would not substantially reduce American forces in Afghanistan or shift the mission to just hunting terrorists there, but he indicated that he remains undecided about the substantial troop buildup proposed by his commanding general.

[...]

Several administration officials and lawmakers who attended the session on Tuesday said Mr. Obama was intent on using it to dismiss any impression that he would consider pulling out of Afghanistan. “There is no option that would entail a dramatic reduction in troops,” said one administration official, who, like others quoted in this article, requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/asia/07prexy.html?hp