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River Running Backward: Looking Back on Afghanistan
Afghanistan: A River Running Backward
by Conn Hallinan When historians look back on the war in Afghanistan, they may well point to last December's battle for Musa Qala, a scruffy town in the country's northern Helmand Province, as a turning point. In a war of shadows, remote ambushes, and anonymous roadside bombs, Musa Qala was an exception: a standup fight.
On one side was the Afghan National Army, the U.S. 82nd Airborne, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On the other the Taliban.
When the fight was over, the U.S.-led coalition had "won." What they had "won" was a town shattered by B-1 and B-52s bombers, A-10 attack planes, Apache helicopters, AC-130 gunships, and artillery barrages.
According to NATO, "Operation Snake" killed hundreds of Taliban.
According to the London Times, British mop-up forces found one dead
insurgent. No one knows how many civilians died in Musa Qala. NATO
claims none were killed. The locals say more than 40 died.
A
Taliban spokesperson, Qari Ypousuf Ahmadi dismissed the significance of
the battle: "Losing Musa Qala doesn't mean that we will stop fighting."
Indeed,
it has not. Last year was the deadliest since the 2001 invasion, with
more than 6,200 Afghan deaths. Suicide bombs have increased eight fold,
roadside bombs are up 24 percent, and diplomats are warned not to dine
out in the country's capital, Kabul.
"The number of districts
in which the Taliban operates exploded last year," says John McCreary,
former senior intelligence analyst for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
" This is the first year they have managed to sustain over 100 attacks
per month for a whole year since they started to climb back. One
hundred attacks per month used to be a surge figure. Now it is the new
norm."
In fact the number of attacks are averaging 548 a month.
According to the United Nations, it is too risky to send aid teams into
one fifth of the country. "The river appears to be running backward,"
one analyst told the Financial Times.
What happened at Musa Qala
happens in virtually every province in the country: The insurgents move
in, hand out money skimmed from the lucrative opium trade, drive out or
intimidate local government forces, and through roadside bombs,
midnight mortar attacks and ambushes, force NATO troops to bunker down
in fortified camps.
When the U.S. or NATO finally go on the
offensive, the coalition's lack of troops means they must rely on
artillery and air power, which translates into a greater number of
civilian casualties. Louise Arbour, the UN's High Commissioner for
Human Rights, says that civilian casualties caused by military activity
has reached "alarming levels" this past year. "
These not only breach
international law but are eroding support among the Afghan community
for the government and the international presence, as well as public
support in contributing states for continued engagement in Afghanistan."
That
erosion is accelerating. Polls indicate that the British and Australian
public wants their troops out, and in Canada, only the minority
Conservatives support the war.
German Chancellor Angela
Merkel-her eyes on polls indicating widespread antipathy for the
war-recently said she has "absolutely no time" to consider redeploying
Germany's troops to the war-torn south.
Only the French and the
U.S. have agreed to send more troops, the former just a handful, and
the latter 3,200. According to the U.S.'s counterinsurgency doctrine,
Afghanistan would require 400,000 troops to pacify, although the
country's history suggests that even that number is probably wildly
optimistic. The U.S. and NATO currently have 43,000 troops in
Afghanistan.
In a blow to the current push for more troops,
the Netherlands decided it would withdraw all its soldiers by 2010.
"The Dutch decision," says the German newspaper Der Spiegel, "may set a
precedent, raising concerns among NATO military leaders over a possible
domino effect. If only one major NATO country yields to domestic
pressure and decides to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, it could
set off an avalanche."
The possibility of an "avalanche" has so
panicked the Bush Administration that it sent Gates to Europe. "I am
concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the
magnitude of the direct threat to European Security," said Gates in
arguing for more troops.
But Afghanistan was sold to the allies
not as a war, but an international aid mission. "We are in the south
[of Afghanistan] to help and protect the Afghan people reconstruct
their own economy and democracy," former British Defense Secretary John
Reid told the Financial Times back in 2006.
However, according
to the aid organization Oxfam, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan
is "comparable with sub-Saharan Africa," and U.S. and NATO troops find
themselves in the middle of a war with a significant section of the
population.
"The Taliban is growing and creating new alliances
not because its sectarian religious practices have become popular, but
because it is the only available umbrella for national liberation,"
says Pakistani historian and political commentator Tariq Ali. "As the
British and the Soviets discovered to their cost in the preceding two
centuries, Afghans never like being occupied."
Certainly that is
the message the Taliban is putting out. "We're fighting to free our
country," says Mullah Mohammad Omar, "We are not a threat to the world."
Some
of our allies are also beginning to question the Bush Administration's
one dimensional portrayal of the Taliban as a tightly disciplined,
international terrorist organization.
"There is a hard core of Islamic
extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority
of people we are engaged against are those who are fighting with the
Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons," says British army
chief, General Sir Richard Dannatt," We will need to deal with and
eventually reconcile the elected government with the majority of these
people."
That approach has found little resonance in Washington,
where a "victory" in Afghanistan is seen as central to the war on
terrorism. "What is happening in Afghanistan and beyond its borders can
have even greater strategic long-term consequences than the struggle in
Iraq," intones the Atlantic Council of the United States.
While
some NATO countries are hedging their bets in Afghanistan, the U.S. is
already going "beyond its borders" and launching attacks into Pakistan.
Unmanned Predator aircraft have killed several Taliban leaders, along
with scores of civilians, and the U.S. is squeezing the Pakistani
government to move its military into the Tribal Areas and Northwest
Frontier to pacify Taliban forces.
Fred Kagen of the influential
American Enterprise Institute recently urged the Bush Administration to
surge troops into Afghanistan and threaten Pakistan with air strikes.
Rather
than suppressing the Taliban, however, this stepped up militarism has
unified the Pushtuns-the heart of the Taliban-on both sides of the
border, and local tribes have inflicted thousands of casualties on the
Pakistani Army, rocketed the provincial capital of Peshawar, and spread
the insurgency into the rich Swat Valley.
"There is no way for NATO to win this war," says Tariq Ali bluntly.
That
conclusion should hardly come as a surprise. As British correspondent
Ronan Thomas notes, "Strategic success in Afghanistan has often been
envisaged by outside powers-British, Soviet and now Coalition
forces-but rarely if ever achieved."
Conn Hallinan is an analyst
for Foreign Policy in Focus, a winner of a Project Censored Award, and
did his PhD dissertation on the history of insurrectionary
organizations in Ireland.
Do the UN and NATO really want to win the Afghanistan war? written by Noël St-Laurent,
March 22, 2008
Do the UN and NATO really want to win the Afghanistan war?
I personally don't think so. Why? Because the political will does not exist. Our politicians - our governments - do not have the balls to do what it takes to win wars anymore. Even the citizens of the countries of the free world don't have the balls either.
I am not a military expert. I have never served in the armed forces. And I highly respect the military.
But, the reason I say I personally don't think the UN and NATO don't really want to win the Afghanistan war is that if they wanted to, they would have already. This also applies to the old Soviet Union when they were in Afghanistan or the US in Vietnam. I don't think they wanted to win those wars either.
If a country, or a group of countries as allies such as those under the UN or NATO umbrellas really wanted to win this war, the politicians would have backed off from running the war, put it all in the hands of the military putting in charge their most competent Generals, give the Generals all the resources they need, instructing them to win the war and use the biggest sticks they have against the enemy while making sure the biggest sticks in existence are available to the military; and if necessary, to take a no prisoner approach to the war.
If any country or groups of countries can't think in those terms going to war they have no business being at war.
No one can make me believe that between all the member countries under the UN and NATO that they cannot come up with one or two million sets of boots on the ground, at sea and in the air with all the armament required to neutralize the enemy.
Noël St-Laurent
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And Victory Resembles What? written by cook,
March 22, 2008
How would "victory" be determined? Is there a number of dead Afghani's that must first be reached before V-Day? How close are we to that number today?
Who will claim that "victory"? Will it be you, Noel, or me?
Why must Afghanistan be crushed and rolled into ruin?
When will it stop; with "victory"?
Where will it end; in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan...?
Does it take "balls" to kill women and children; is that the measure of "our" civilization; is that the limit of "our" humanity?
Perhaps these questions, and many others, should first be answered before the cannon balls fly?
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I personally don't think so.
Why?
Because the political will does not exist. Our politicians - our governments - do not have the balls to do what it takes to win wars anymore. Even the citizens of the countries of the free world don't have the balls either.
I am not a military expert. I have never served in the armed forces. And I highly respect the military.
But, the reason I say I personally don't think the UN and NATO don't really want to win the Afghanistan war is that if they wanted to, they would have already.
This also applies to the old Soviet Union when they were in Afghanistan or the US in Vietnam. I don't think they wanted to win those wars either.
If a country, or a group of countries as allies such as those under the UN or NATO umbrellas really wanted to win this war, the politicians would have backed off from running the war, put it all in the hands of the military putting in charge their most competent Generals, give the Generals all the resources they need, instructing them to win the war and use the biggest sticks they have against the enemy while making sure the biggest sticks in existence are available to the military; and if necessary, to take a no prisoner approach to the war.
If any country or groups of countries can't think in those terms going to war they have no business being at war.
No one can make me believe that between all the member countries under the UN and NATO that they cannot come up with one or two million sets of boots on the ground, at sea and in the air with all the armament required to neutralize the enemy.
Noël St-Laurent