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US, NATO Must Change to Win Afghan War Says Commander
KABUL/WASHINGTON - The United States and its allies must change strategy and boost cooperation to turn around the war in Afghanistan, the top U.S. and NATO commander there said on Monday, wrapping up a much-anticipated review.
A US Army Blackhawk helicopter carrying the head of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal takes off from the Baraki Barak Joint Combat Outpost (JCOP) in Logar Province on August 21. McChrystal on Monday called for a revised strategy to turn around the war against the Taliban, describing the situation as serious but putting success within reach. (AFP/File/Manan Vatsyayana) U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said the situation was "serious" but the 8-year-old war could still be won. He gave no indication if he would ask for more troops but is widely expected to do so in the coming weeks.
With U.S. and NATO casualties at record levels in Afghanistan and doubts growing about the war in the United States and other NATO nations, McChrystal is under pressure to reverse Western fortunes within months.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," McChrystal said in a statement announcing his report was done.
The confidential report comes as Afghans anxiously awaited the outcome of their August 20 presidential election.
New, partial results released on Monday showed President Hamid Karzai maintaining a lead over his main rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, but still without the outright majority needed to avoid a runoff.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said any recommendation for more forces would have to address his concerns that the foreign military presence in Afghanistan could become too large and be seen by Afghans as a hostile occupying force.
"Clearly, I want to address those issues and we will have to look at the availability of forces, we'll have to look at costs. There are a lot of different things that we'll have to look at," he told reporters.
"While there's a lot of gloom and doom going around ... I think we have some assets in place and some developments that hold promise," Gates said on a visit to a Lockheed Martin factory building F-35 fighter jets in Fort Worth, Texas.
McChrystal has 103,000 troops under his command, including 63,000 Americans, half of whom arrived this year as part of an escalation strategy begun under President George W. Bush and ramped up under his successor, Barack Obama. The Western force is set to rise to 110,000, including 68,000 Americans by year's end.
TROOP INCREASE DIFFICULT
A further increase could be politically difficult for Obama, with members of his Democratic Party increasingly uneasy about the war and congressional elections due next year.
The White House sought on Monday to pin the blame for the grave state of the war in Afghanistan on the Bush administration, which made Iraq its top military priority.
"This was underresourced, underfunded, undermanned and ignored for years," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
"The president is focused on ensuring that we meet measurable benchmarks. ... It's going to take some doing."
Monday's Afghan election results, with nearly half of polling stations counted, showed Karzai leading with 45.9 percent against 33.3 percent for Abdullah.
Although those results predict a runoff, they are mainly from the north, Abdullah's support base.
Results yet to be tallied from the south -- the heartland of Karzai's fellow ethnic Pashtuns -- could put Karzai over the top for a single-round win, but may be challenged by Abdullah, who says ballot boxes were stuffed on a massive scale.
An independent fraud watchdog, the Election Complaints Commission, is investigating nearly 2,500 allegations of abuse, including 567 it says are serious enough to affect the outcome.
Western officials initially hailed the election as a success because Taliban fighters failed to scuttle it, but those assessments have become more cautious as fraud charges mount.
Southern areas in particular saw turnout hurt by Taliban attacks and threats. In a moving account of election day violence, Lal Mohammad, a 40 year-old farmer, told reporters in a Kabul hospital that he had been ambushed while heading to vote by fighters who cut off his ears and part of his nose.
MORE TRAINERS FOR AFGHAN FORCES
McChrystal has been working on his review since he took command in June. He sent the classified document to the U.S. military's Central Command responsible for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and to NATO chiefs.
NATO spokesman James Appathurai confirmed the report did not include a request for more resources but added, "We know we will need to provide more trainers and equipment for the Afghan security forces."
He said there was already a shortfall of 10 training teams for Afghan security forces and the need would grow as moves were made to further expand the Afghan army and police.
A top counterinsurgency expert said on Monday Afghanistan's government must fight corruption and quickly deliver services to Afghans because Taliban militants were filling gaps and winning support.
"A government that is losing to a counter-insurgency isn't being outfought, it is being out-governed. And that's what's happening in Afghanistan," David Kilcullen, a senior adviser to McChrystal, told Australia's National Press Club.
CBS News on Monday quoted a U.S. military officer in Afghanistan as saying one of the suspected bombers held in an attack last week that killed a U.S. soldier and wounded a CBS journalist might be linked to the Afghan government.
The suspect was found with a cell phone that contained a number to the Defense Ministry in Kabul, which then sent a letter saying the wrong man had been arrested, according to the CBS report.
"We think he was tied to the Ministry of Defense," Lieutenant Colonel Tom Gukeisen told the broadcaster. "Someone in that office began to put political pressure."
Two U.S. service members were killed on Monday in separate bomb attacks in the south of the country. August has been the deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops, and 2009 is already the deadliest year for foreign forces.
(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin, Jonathon Burch, Maria Golovnina, Ed Stoddard, Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Paul Simao)
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13 Comments so far
Show AllIs this the "Change" that Obama was talking about?
More change you cannot believe in!
odoco
I would like to ask McCrystal how he defines "win." Body counts - we've been there before, haven't we? Territorial acquistion with no indigenous support, physical, moral or political - we've been there before haven't we? So tell me General - explain to us all - how do you define, how will you know, when 'we' win? And if 'we' win, will the Afghan people also win? The people General, not Karzai, not the corrupt warlords working with the US military and the CIA, THE PEOPLE! How will the Afghan people win in a war of occupation by an outside force? Will it be when the Taliban are no longer a threat to what we call modernity? If that is your definition, then we will either be there forever, or we will forced to commit a genocide. So, who wins?
And why are we in Afghanistan? That question has been posed many times on the site during the last several days. Why are we there? The pipeline? As a counterweight to China and Russia? To insure international corporate access and dominance to a natural resource base? I don't know the answer - I doubt anyone posting here knows the complexities that actually comprise the answer to that question - such secrets and motives are uncommonly guarded - not for the PEOPLE to grasp, or to even know.
All I think I really know is this: 78% of the US populace, by latest count, want universal, public option health care - and it isn't happening. Over half the American public no longer supports the American war in Afghanistan - and we are still there and escalating. There is a greater gap between the rich and poor in this country than ever - and it is widening. What does it all mean? It means that the government no longer represents the interests of either our own people - or people anywhere. The corporations - as most of you know - now truly, literally own this country. That is why there is war; that is why they won't define 'win' because then there could possibly be an end-point to the madness. That is why the people are constantly fed the intellectual and emotional corporate trash created by the Astroturfers, a diet that some have partaken of, a poison that has caused a civil breach in this country not seen since the '60s, and possibly not seen since the American Civil War.
War - what is it good for? MONEY. CONTROL. POWER.
This War has nothing to do with DEMOCRACY. This War has nothing to do with JUSTICE. This War has nothing to do with the CONSTITUTION.
Then - what is this war about?
Excellent Odoco ! And remember both Iran and Pakistan can be squeezed from Afghanistan.
If this is not a failing, flailing empire, I do not know what is.
Stage a corrupt show election in order to elect a collaborator ( who is actually a Pastun patriot) who supports the war of liberation against the occupying imperialist storm troopers.
Gates is fearful the USA MIGHT be seen as an occupying power, what would make anyone think that?
Winning? What would that look like? Do we think we're smarter than the British and the Russians? Do we think we're exceptional, and that what caused the defeat of those two very powerful countries will not, in the end, apply to us as well? Weren't the British peddling the "White Man's Burden", and weren't the Soviets exporting the glories of "scientific socialism", and didn't they think that they too were exceptional and on the winning side of history? Grow up folks: there's a reason Afganistan is called the "Graveyard of Empires".We're already stuck in this tar baby, and the more blood and treasure we put into it, the worse things will get.Defeat is our only way out.
We must either completely revolt by using a national strike or because we do not have the brains or the balls to do this--we then have to vote out everyone who continues to jeopardize our national interest by supporting this insane, immoral, illegal, and counterproductive and destructive policy--I can't guarantee the latter effort due to the pile of dung this system is entrenched in. God help us
I commend Reuters for using the E word, escalation.
heroin heroin heroin heroin heroin heroin heroin heroin heroin heroin
here's just one link of many...and a brief excerpt...
http://lukery.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-is-protecting-afghanistans-heroin.html
A July 2008 AP report, carried by Boston Globe, and not many others, quotes Christina Oguz, country representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, saying that only 1% of these precursor chemicals are ever seized - even though these chemicals are all imported by the tanker-load, and have no 'dual-use' justification. Reading between the lines in the article, Oguz's 'frustration' is palpable:
She urged the international community to share more information on known smugglers of the chemicals, many of whom were "long-established and based in neighboring countries."
These chemicals are not coming into Afghanistan on the backs of mules - as the media often presents Afghanistan's export of heroin -they are coming through major transit points.
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, made the same point in his 2007 article "Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time." Murray writes:
(Afghanistan) now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.
[...]
My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched ... the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.
Let me emphasize - the US government/NATO might have arguably legitimate reasons to 'protect' the poppy farmers, they might even have reason not to attack the drug labs. But what possible excuse is there for allowing tanker after tanker of requisite heroin precursor chemicals for entering Afghanistan?
The war is Iraq is wrong, was wrong in the very beginning, and will always be wrong, whether the US is 'victorious' or not.
Why hasn't commondreams come out completely and strongly against the war under Obama? Was it okay to lambaste Bush, but now that 'our side' is committing the atrocities, we have to be quiet?
This war is wrong, commondreams is wrong when it whitewashes the legitimacy of the war with these types of articles, and ultimately it undermines the view of what the common dream used to be.
My version of a common dream is a world where all beings are granted basic human rights, that we identify what those basic human rights are, and protect those human rights for all. And where people come together to help those whose human rights are being taken away.
Attacking Afghanistan civilians because the country sheltered the Taliban is like attacking the state of New Jersey because some mafia members live there.
Stop this illegal and immoral war that is continuing the cycle of giving billions of dollars to our elite few; and death and misery to the the rest of the common people of both countries.
There is no peace without justice, and no justice if it is based on lies. AG
I absolutely agree. How do you "win" a war that is criminal to begin with? It's like saying that a rapist can "win" his rape simply by killing his victim.
I think the Commander is the one that should change...his socks and underwear, I can smell them from here!
Go home, Yanke! and clean up your own messy backyard. All military forces of all nations involved should get out of Afghanistan. Afghans certainly need help after all the devastation caused by Western military forces, but the help must be of humanitarian nature, not military. Why is it that the US insists on bringing "democracy" through the force of a gun? The mess left in Iraq is not enough?
Dear citizens of the United States of Amnesia: Remember General Stanley McChrystal? He was Donald Rumsfeld's hand-picked assassination and torture point man in Iraq. Now he's calling for more cannon fodder in Afghanistan. He should be tried for war crimes instead of dictating policy for the Obama administration.